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I have seen created tags that may/may not be useful as Sports SE progresses.

Several examples are: , , and . and was in regards to in-game scoring/characteristics of American football. plays football (soccer).

Most existing tags cover sports (, , ), aspects (, ), how-tos (, ), and to name a few.

How far within a particular sport/event/etc do we want to create tags for? What is a good basic guideline to follow when considering tag creation?

From the help center: "As a general rule, you should avoid creating new tags if possible, and new users are not allowed to create new tags. Even if you have sufficient reputation, you should only create new tags when you feel you can make a strong case that your question covers a new topic that nobody else has asked about before on this site."

The purpose of this question is to reasonably scope useful tags...not place stringent requirements on what merits creation of a tag. For example, or any athlete-specific tag would not be considered reasonably scoped or useful. Adding a tag based on mention or reference would not be considered reasonably scoped or useful unless the question is about said tag (see this).

Q: The tag has been introduced. Does a tag with the verbiage "Please do not ask too many of these." merit tag creation in the first place?

A: Such a tag (and other similar tags) do not describe the content of the question.

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  • This is a good question and I have wondered the same thing myself recently
    – jamauss Mod
    Commented Jan 15, 2013 at 6:55
  • @jamauss We had a request for cricket-fielding. Another example why this question is being asked.
    – user527
    Commented Jan 15, 2013 at 14:29
  • 1
    I think cricket-fielding should not be a separate tag in itself. It can be tagged under cricket. If each component of cricket, or for that matter any sport, are created, we could have hundreds of tags.
    – Orangecrush
    Commented Jan 15, 2013 at 15:26
  • @Orangecrush Exactly. field-goal could be used for multiple sports. It becomes ambiguous really fast.
    – user527
    Commented Jan 15, 2013 at 15:39
  • Reference: meta.sports.stackexchange.com/q/293/527
    – user527
    Commented Jan 15, 2013 at 15:48
  • @Orangecrush A transfer tag? Would a transaction tag be more appropriate for use among other sports? I ask because transfer is not well known or widely used in terms of drafts and trades in North American sports.
    – user527
    Commented Jan 29, 2013 at 14:21
  • @edmastermind29 IMO, a transaction tag would be very vague and I don't think an author would easily connect this with the transfer window. Would you rather have separate transfer and draft tags? Coz, technically, they both are different.
    – Orangecrush
    Commented Jan 29, 2013 at 15:12
  • @Orangecrush I wouldn't connect transfer with draft...meaning I wouldn't ask about the NFL Draft and use the tag transfer. Read the prelim tag wiki I defined and a few questions I tagged for transaction.
    – user527
    Commented Jan 29, 2013 at 15:15
  • @Orangecrush And if the user is in doubt, the tag wiki further defines what the tag is used for. And if we are to separate them, I don't think either would get much exposure, if at all.
    – user527
    Commented Jan 29, 2013 at 15:17
  • @Orangecrush Looking at the latest answer, transaction is a very general tag and separating the tags may prove useful...but given the low quantity of any question regarding any type of transaction, I just wanted to raise awareness and consider mitigating the issue when the opportunity presents itself.
    – user527
    Commented Jun 11, 2013 at 2:25

3 Answers 3

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Tags should be created when they are necessary. No more and no less.

Tags should be specific where possible, and we should let the auto-pruning mechanism take care of tags rather than lump things together haphazardly.

A good example of this is the current use of the tag. This is used to lump together all sports equipment. However, it would be far more useful to have tags like , and for questions specific to these pieces of equipment. Searching on is really non-intuitive when I should be able to limit my search to questions about balls, bats, rackets or gloves. These pieces of equipment share little in common except for the fact that they are equipment used for sports and thus should get their own tags.

Things like , and other things should also get their own tags.

Tags are a folksonomy, a way to categorize things that should arise organically instead of being forced like your proposing here. However, they should be specific rather than generic whenever possible. The more different things you lump into a tag, the less useful the tag becomes.

We should add and remove tags as appropriate, but we should also be willing to see that there are a group of questions sharing a commonality and tag them as such (recently the tag was requested, and knowing there are a fairly large volume of questions specific to rackets I added it.). This should be the kind of thing we do in our tagging practice, thwarting efforts like this is counterproductive and makes this site less useful to the people who use it.

Controlling tags is really not all that important. Low use tags get pruned automatically (<1 question total in the tag) and if a question meets the threshold it's probably worthwhile to keep. The big thing is making sure that duplicate tags are kept clean. Generally removing tags should be held for tags that are problematic, off topic or don't fit the question.

In response to your edit is not good, not because of the "please don't ask too many of these" verbiage in the tag wiki, but because it describes the nature of the desired answers, not the question itself.

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  • +1 for the first line alone. I agree with a majority of your post. My question was intended to reasonably scope tags vs. forcefully controlling tags. When tags appear because Zinedine Zidane was involved, it is not a reasonably scoped tag. Part of the organic process is to eliminate weeds as to not let a practice of creating tags that are not reasonably scoped or useful (and subsequently, pruned) continue.
    – user527
    Commented Jun 10, 2013 at 20:58
  • @edmastermind29 I agree for the most part, not having player specific tags is fine, but not having equipment and technique specific tags will be a detriment to growth in my opinion.
    – wax eagle
    Commented Jun 10, 2013 at 20:59
  • On the other side of the argument, your side, I agree with your stance regarding equipment and technique specific-tags. However, perhaps with your tomahawk tag for example, the concern is, "Are these specific tags useful to the extent that it will be able to standalone as its own tag?" Should we focus more on having tags specific to equipment and technique...or stick with technique + tomahawk, for example?
    – user527
    Commented Jun 10, 2013 at 21:07
  • @edmastermind29 yes, I think so. They are often as equally important as the sport tag in categorizing the question. Perhaps specific techniques in low interest sports aren't needed, but in higher interest sports that have a significant number of techniques they would be appropriate (like if we had 100 golf questions, specific techniques would be good there)
    – wax eagle
    Commented Jun 10, 2013 at 21:15
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Great meta question... The following are my two cents on the matter:

  • I don't think creating tags for players (no matter the sport) is a good idea. After all who decides which players are worth having their own tag? I personally think it's unnecessary to have such tags. I mean what does tag say more than for a question that is well-suited for this site?

  • I am not sure is a good tag either since, yet again, it doesn't say anything more than what existing tags say. I mean there is no special expertise required for answering field goal questions.

  • In the question linked by @edmastermind29 I tried to make a case for creation of tags representing different leagues, which have different rules and fanbase. You might be interested in football but never watch Serie A to know how their league regulations differ from MLS for instance.

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  • Agreed. Expect 10,000+ tags if we made player tags constructive. Tags like field-goal are ambiguous, yet too localized at the same time. What's the difference between using golf and technique as a tag, as opposed to tee-shot, approach-shot, bunker-shot, recovery-shot, putt, or lay-up? In addition, we're only allowed five tags, but that's plenty if things are reasonably scoped.
    – user527
    Commented Jan 16, 2013 at 16:46
  • Those are actually all appropriate tags and should be used in addition to a tag like technique or perhaps instead of it. Generic tags are not a good thing.
    – wax eagle
    Commented Jun 10, 2013 at 20:43
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I'm new to this site and I noticed when I posted a question that there was no tag for the World Cup. Major tournaments such as that, Uefa Champions League, La Liga etc should have a tag. Also tags for major sports awards such the Ballon D'or would be a good idea.

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    Welcome. Whenever the usage is justified, tags can be added at that time. Flag the question with your request to get the moderators' attention. UEFA is covered under the uefa tag. Major sports awards would be covered under the awards tag.
    – user527
    Commented Nov 20, 2013 at 14:14

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