tag:census vs. us-census

Question

So, I should have posted this before I did it, but I noticed that the application of the census tag was pretty diverse, in a way which wasn't very helpful. The "tag wiki" summary was not very helpful, and the full explanation of the tag suggests co-tagging with a specific place (e.g. [usa]).

This doesn't seem to be of much use, as tags are meant to help people find questions. I would think that a single specific tag is much more effective than combining tags.

EDIT: I should say, "in this case." I noticed, for example, tags like language and japanese and can see a case for using those as they are currently. Interest in language is sometimes a flag which transcends specific boundaries. Interest in "census" (especially as minimally-defined in the tag wiki/excerpt) is not really a thing, as best I can tell.

Therefore, I created a new tag, us-census and wrote a tag wiki entry for it, and changed the tag on most of the extant questions using the census tag.

Next time I'll post here first but... any objections?

Answer 1

Let me start by saying that every effort to raise the quality here on Open Data SE is much appreciated :)

In this case, however, I have some reservations.

the application of the census tag was pretty diverse

In what way? As far as I can tell, all census questions are about census data one way or another. If not, then the tag should be removed from the respective question.

The "tag wiki" summary was not very helpful

Improvements are always welcome :)

Interest in "census" (especially as minimally-defined in the tag wiki/excerpt) is not really a thing

An under-defined tag is one thing. However I wouldn't go so far as to say that there is no interest in census questions outside of the US.

Now to your proposed us-census tag. I currently see a few issues:

• As a non-US citizen it took me quite a while to realize that us-census refers to an institution and is not just a combination of a country (usa) and a topic (census).

• Currently 5 people follow the usa tag. If we remove this tag from all of the us-census questions, then these 5 people won't see those questions highlighted any longer, although they would be very relevant. On the other hand, co-tagging all us-census questions with usa seems pretty redundant. (This is basically the same dilemma that we have with the data.gov tag.)

I get your point that currently people cannot favorite questions that deal specifically with the US Census (although they can of course favorite or ignore usa and census separately). Searching, on the other hand, is not a problem: [usa] [census] has exactly the same effect as [us-census] and is only 3 characters longer.

One idea might be to think of the us-census tag as an equivalent to the data.gov tag. In that case, however, I'd suggest that we call it census.gov to avoid any confusion and limit it to questions dealing with US Census specifics.

In any case, I look forward to hearing how others think about this.