Feedback Requested: How do you use the tagged questions page?

"To that end, please help us understand why you need tag moderation options and why tag usage guidance makes sense here"

The tag excerpt is a dedicated brief explanation of what the tag is. It was designed to be used for places like this where we have limited screen real-estate.

Using only the first sentence forces a decision between having:

• A description of what the tag is
• Guidelines on how the tag should be used
• Purposeful run-on sentences to fit both the description and usage guidelines

Ideally, we want both a description and the guidelines, without having to sacrifice readability by using run-on sentences. Mainly because both the description and guidelines are important for both new users and curators:

• New users need to know that javascript isn't the same as java; that unityscript isn't the same as unity-game-engine; that c++ isn't the same as c; etc. They have to know what each tag represents. Curators benefit less from this, because they're usually familiar enough with what concepts tags represent.

• Curators (and new users!) need to know that mysql and sql-server should take precedence over sql; that api should be removed and retagged; that javascript is OK to tag on typescript questions; etc. They have to know how each tag should be used.

New users won't click "Go to Wiki" and read the usage guidelines in the tag excerpt since they won't even know that it exists, and curators will be slowed down by having to navigate away from the page.

I get wanting to redesign the page to have less text immediately in the face of new users, but that's the only way to get them to actually read something.

we want to better understand how the tagged questions page fits into your workflows when using Stack Overflow.

I'm taking the "tagged questions page" to mean https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/<some_tag> for various values of <some_tag>.

That is my primary working page when I look for questions to read or answer (answering questions being the lion's share of my interaction with SO). I typically access it by clicking on one of my watched tags on the main questions page, or similarly from the tagged questions page itself. This quickly and easily gets me a selection of questions that I might be interested in answering or at least reading. I cycle through my watched tags doing this.

I occasionally open a question I see on the main questions page, but that page moves very fast and predominantly contains questions that do not interest me, so usually I go there (via the left sidebar) only to get from a page that does not present the watched tags list to one that does.

• Compared to the tagged questions page, the tag wiki page is a better spot for any kind of tag moderation/management needs.

If you mean moderating / curating questions bearing a given tag then no, not at all. Why would I go to the tag wiki for such a thing? I go to where I can find the questions.

But if you mean moderating / curating the metadata for the tag itself, then yes, the tag wiki page seems more appropriate than the tagged questions page for working with that.

[...] However, [the tag wiki] could probably use some design love to make it easier on the eyes and less a wall of text for the really popular tags.

I suppose you mean the tags that have attracted the efforts of many members to fill their wikis with a lot of detail. To that, I give a firm "maybe". I'm inclined to think that you're more likely to want some editorial love for those. It may be that the tag wikis could benefit from a design refresh, but I'm not immediately recognizing that as a good candidate for addressing the kind of wall-of-text problem you describe.

The tagged questions page isn’t a great option for Q&A discovery.

It is for me. That's exactly how I use it every day.

The search filter isn’t offering anything different than what can be had from the general question page or for those so inclined to jump off from the search bar directly.

I'm not quite sure what you're getting at there. Maybe that the search bar gets pre-populated with a filter for the relevant tag? In that case, I agree that it's not a very compelling reason to use the tagged questions page. Rather, it is a convenience for those who do use that page.

It's also a few extra clicks to get there.

Are you looking at the same site that I am?

Maybe that's true for arbitrary tags, but I can get to any of the tagged questions pages I ordinarily visit in at most two clicks from any page on the site, and in just one click from some of the pages that I visit regularly. They are among the easiest pages to reach that do not have a permanent link in the top bar or the left sidebar.

Note: We suppose some people are entering the tagged questions looking for questions to answer/curate with no direct intention of finding something specific,

That's how I use it.

but with the most popular tags, subject matter experts are likely using a multitude of tags to locate things they can answer/curate with a degree of confidence.

So? I cycle through the tagged questions pages for tags in which I'm interested. This helps with the volume, especially with one of my tags being pretty popular, and it helps a little bit with reducing the need to code shift, since I consider questions from just one tag at a time. It's one click for me to move from one of them to another.

please help us understand why you need tag moderation options and why tag usage guidance makes sense here.

Maybe I've missed some context, but I'm not a mod so I don't do moderation in that sense. I do perform the kind of curation activities that non-mods have available to them, but I don't ordinarily separate those in a different box from my other SO activities. And as already described, the tagged questions page is central to those activities for me.

As for usage guidance, that doesn't show up on the tagged questions page now (or if so, I don't recognize it), and I've never considered that a deficiency. I would not be especially averse to having it, but neither would I spend any energy on advocating for it.

I am using tags and tagged questions page as my core navigation workflow when browsing on Stack Overflow.

Each day, the first thing I do when I open Stack Overflow is to click through some of my watched tags to see what is new there. Either for commenting, answering or moderating.

I have been doing that since the day I joined. Yes, this is not the only way how I move around the site and how I land on particular post, but it is essential.

When it comes to searching, it is much faster to click on the tag and then type the search phrase (it is faster than typing the tag) and the tag helps in narrowing down the results and not showing me unrelated posts that might sound similar but use completely different technology and are not usable to me.

Seeing tag excerpt on that page is also crucial, as it offers usage guidance to tags. It is the most important information for everyone (regardless of their experience on sites and what they are currently doing) and what and it needs to be immediately visible even when people are not actively looking to prevent them from misusing the tag or posting completely off-topic questions.

It is easy to open tag Wiki from there if you need or want to know more.

For instance if you go to windows now it shows

Windows is a family of graphical operating systems developed by Microsoft for server, client, and mobile platforms.

That is totally useless information. Yes, we all know what Windows is. In similar manner, anyone asking in some tech stack will usually know that basic info.

But what they may not know and what may not be immediately obvious is what is written in the tag excerpt which is now well hidden behind Wiki link. This is important information for anyone asking, answering, and curating.

Writing software specific to the Microsoft Windows operating system: APIs, behaviours, etc. GENERAL WINDOWS SUPPORT IS OFF-TOPIC. Support questions may be asked on https://superuser.com

Me, I use the tagged questions page as my SO home page. For years I always started at [c] and answered many questions there, until it got too boring. (But that's another story.) Today I always start at [floating-point].

Since I'm there to answer questions on a favorite topic (not ask them), I don't really need any tag info at all. But it does matter what I see: Since I see it all the time, I notice if it's bad, and I feel bad on behalf of non-experts (question askers) who might be encountering bad tag info for the first time.

In particular, the tag info for [floating-point] has always had a minor but annoying problem — and it's much worse now, after the change.

What I would like to see in the tag info system (but have never seen) is a concise description of what tag information is for, and where it is used, and how best to compose it so that the words we write work well in all the ways that the tag info is used.

In particular, there seem to be two kinds of tag info — I'll call them "short form" and "long form" — but it's not obvious to a casual observer how and why they differ. (I'm sure that, somewhere, there are formal names for these forms, and perhaps descriptions of how they're to be used, but as a casual observer I guess I've never encountered them.)

As an example of how this goes wrong, the "minor but annoying problem" I alluded to is that one of the two descriptions for [floating-point] includes this nice, helpful note:

If your question is about small arithmetic errors (e.g. why does 0.1 + 0.2 equal 0.300000001?) or decimal conversion errors, please read the tag page before posting.

But the problem is that it's not necessarily "nice and helpful", for the simple reason that a first-time reader may not have any idea what or where the "tag page" is! A reader has to somehow know that "read the tag page" actually means "click the 'Go to wiki' button".

And it's hard to fix this problem, because the short- and long-form descriptions don't have unique names, and they're referred to in different ways in different parts of the UI: an "Info" tab, a "Go to Wiki" button, a "More info" button, etc. So you can't write a blurb like that in such a way that a new reader won't be confused in at least one of the places that the text gets displayed.

At the moment, though, that problem is moot, because now, the blurb at the top of the [floating-point] tagged questions page is just:

Many questions asked here about floating-point math are about small inaccuracies in floating-point arithmetic.

, which is so tautologically generic that I feel it's quite useless.

And, finally, although it's not usually how I use it, I can definitely imagine going to a tagged questions page not as an answerer, but as an asker, which is why I would like to see the tag info displayed there be useful.

[Belated postscript: If this and other meta questions like it, on the minutiae of tag maintenance, are intended to be understood and answered by SO policy wonks who are intimately familiar with the details, I shouldn't answer, because I am not and will never be an SO policy wonk who is intimately familiar with the details. But if there's interest in understanding how this stuff looks to SO non policy wonks, I'd like to think that my experience — imperfect and uninformed though it certainly is — might have some relevance.]

Generally, for me, it's the place where I find the tag wiki link. The page itself has no purpose for me given there are better ways to find questions.

There are a few niche tags, which I sporadically check by clicking them in my watched tags. They may only get one question a month, which is easy to miss as part of a bigger filter or in the watched tags.

For this reason, I specifically check for new questions, which might need moderation or to which I might know an answer, by going to the tagged question page. There are obviously different ways to get a view of these questions, but for me, this is the simplest way. For this purpose I therefore need neither the tag excerpt, nor any other kind of tag usage guidance.

I'm not really active now, but speaking from a couple of years ago when I was. I primarily came to SO to answer questions about [mapbox-gl-js].

The tagged questions page isn’t a great option for Q&A discovery.

It's the best tool for Q&A discovery.

The search filter isn’t offering anything different than what can be had from the general question page or for those so inclined to jump off from the search bar directly.

I don't understand this remark. It's the same search filter, that's the point, right? It just starts pre-populated with the tag name. Why would it need to be different?

It's also a few extra clicks to get there.

You're making some assumption about "where from" that I'm missing.

Note: We suppose some people are entering the tagged questions looking for questions to answer/curate with no direct intention of finding something specific

Hello!

but with the most popular tags, subject matter experts are likely using a multitude of tags to locate things they can answer/curate with a degree of confidence.

No idea. I generally just looked at that one tag, not in any combination.

we want to better understand how the tagged questions page fits into your workflows when using Stack Overflow.

I didn't know it existed. I don't feel like it would ever be a routine part of my workflow.

I have "watched tags" highlighted on the main feed. I really wish I could specify more watched tags, but there seems to be a rather short limit.

Highlighted the watched tags provides just a first cut. Most tags are so broad that I'd really like to filter it down to questions that hit at least two of the tags on my watch list.

I also have a list of ignored tags. I should probably add more to that.

It's hard for me to imagine a reason why I would go to a tagged questions page. If I were looking for an answer, I'd do a more specific search. If I were looking for questions to answer, I'd like to see anything that hits a least a couple of my interests.

The on-hover information is essential when tagging a question, especially to maintain all the curation that has been done on the tag set. Without it, it would be hard to find the "canonical" tag for a topic.