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I saw a question with the tag , but the content was not about football, as I use the term. The question was about "American football." What most countries call "football", Americans call "soccer."

To build a truly international community the system should somewhat automatically ask the user which kind of football they are asking about, whenever this tag is chosen.

What tags should be used in which situations?

Can the Stack Exchange software do something like this or do we need flagging and moderators for this?

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5 Answers 5

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I can't help but think of the metric system with this quesiton ;)

My opinion..

= the NFL game, football as understood by Americans

= FIFA, the game the rest of the world knows as football

= an additional tag applied to questions so that it will (hopefully) be easier for Americans to find questions they're looking for.

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    I'd go further and synonymize [football] and [soccer]. Not sure which should be the master; usually if there's a spelling difference (e.g. 'optimization' vs. 'optimisation'), we've chosen to go with the American spelling, but Americans are seriously outnumbered in this case.
    – Michael Myers
    Commented Feb 8, 2012 at 20:58
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    I think it would be reasonable to have [football] be the master with [soccer] and [futbol] as synonyms.
    – corsiKa
    Commented Feb 8, 2012 at 21:12
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    I second @corsiKa's suggestion.
    – wax eagle
    Commented Feb 9, 2012 at 3:18
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I would say tag to all the questions related to the NFL.

To avoid confusion, the questions related to football or soccer should be tagged to .

and should become synonyms of . This will clearly avoid most of the confusion.

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Generally speaking I prefer the rest of the world over the US, but I think this is needless confusion. Several people have already not understood what was happening (e.g.). I propose making the master.

Those who refer to the sport as "football" might be ignorant of what "soccer" is, but they should never be confused about its meaning and misuse it. Since they're synonyms, typing in "football" will get them the right tag anyways. On the other hand, it's obviously easy to be confused about "football".

Arguing about what is "correct" or what the majority of the world uses isn't productive; we should focus on what's most usable for most of the site's users. If you disagree with me that is more usable, then I think we should use a combined name; something like perhaps. I agree it's a little clunky, but it should be clearer. Feel free to suggest something else if it would work better.

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    I don't know about soccer football, but I would potentially be in favor of blacklisting [soccer] and [football] and using a master [association-football]
    – corsiKa
    Commented Feb 24, 2012 at 22:30
  • For what its worth, the poster who made that post, as well as another virtually identical post, doesn't seem to have a firm grasp of the SE mindset, or professionalism in general. At the very least, it didn't seem to come through on posts thus far.
    – corsiKa
    Commented Feb 24, 2012 at 22:54
  • @corsika - yeah, it looked like a troll
    – Rory Alsop
    Commented Feb 25, 2012 at 10:44
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What about...

  • arena/indoor football?
  • Australian-rules football?
  • Canadian football?
  • Gaelic football?

Not to mention Rugby League and Rugby Union.

The point being that all of their respective constituencies will refer to the game as "football".

Is "association football" suitably well-known as the origin of "soccer"?

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    indoot football is called "futsal", aussie rules is just that "aussie rules". Even the Australians don't mix up aussie rules and football. Don't want to sound insensitive but nobody really follows/knows about the Canadian or Gaelic football. What is commonly known as "football" is world's largest sport with a still growing viewership. I think it's pretty obvious what the word "football" should refer to.
    – posdef
    Commented Jun 1, 2012 at 5:43
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I think Futball should be for soccer and Football should mean american football... But personally the best way to solve the issue is to disallow the generic football tag.

American-Football

Futball

Soccer

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    "Futball" is the Hungarian word for the English word "Football". "Futbol" is the Spanish word for the English word "Football". What Americans call "Soccer" is called "Football" in almost every other English speaking country, and non-English speaking countries use their term for "Football" (e.g. "Futbol" or "Futball")
    – Marcus Swope
    Commented Feb 22, 2012 at 22:12

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