In my effort to clean-up and organize tags on EE.CD I arrived at a point where there are a lot of old tags with wrong capitalization.

How should I request the staff to change them?

Should I post here on meta a list (maybe as an edit in this post) with something like this:

old --> NEW

for example:

led --> LED
Wireless --> wireless
triac --> TRIAC
...
etc.

Or should I mark the tags with some text in its guidance text or WIKI text, so that the devs could handle them using a script that searches the DB entries for some canned text like (for example):

CHANGEINTO:"LED"
CHANGEINTO:"wireless"
CHANGEINTO:"TRIAC"

And if this latter approach is good, how do I ping the devs to tell them I'm done and they could implement the change? Do I post another question? Do I flag this question?

Thanks for the help!

EDIT

The tags to be renamed (old vs. new names are listed below). The reason why I ask for the change is to make them complying with the tag guidelines I proposed and the community seemed to agree with (post here).

BTW, in the list there are also tags that should be deleted because violate those guidelines. Some show a non-zero question count but most are deleted questions. I marked them with "DELETE" below.

• ac --> AC
• ac-circuit --> AC-circuit
• ac-power --> AC-power
• adc --> ADC
• Analog --> DELETE
• Antenna --> antenna
• arm --> ARM
• bode-plot --> Bode-plot
• can-bus --> CAN-bus
• clk --> DELETE
• coil --> DELETE
• tvs --> TVS
• diac --> DIAC
• triac --> TRIAC
• bjt --> BJT
• jfet --> JFET
• dac --> DAC
• dc --> DC
• dc-dc --> DELETE
• dc-generator --> DC-generator
• dma --> DMA
• esd --> ESD
• darlington --> Darlington
• emi --> EMI
• esd-protection --> ESD-protection
• esl --> ESL
• esr --> ESR
• Pi-filter --> pi-filter
• rlc-filter --> RLC-filter
• ground --> DELETE
• high-speed --> DELETE
• Intrinsic-Safety --> intrinsic-safety
• ipc --> IPC
• library --> DELETE
• losses --> DELETE
• master --> DELETE
• math --> DELETE
• measurements --> measurement (merge with existing tag; "measurement" survives)
• Mixer --> mixer
• mosi --> DELETE
• pmsm --> PMSM
• no --> DELETE
• oamp --> DELETE
• op-amp --> opamp (merge with existing tag; "opamp" survives)
• ota --> OTA
• pain --> DELETE
• plc --> PLC
• PMSM-motor --> DELETE
• pole --> DELETE
• smps --> SMPS
• ppg --> PPG
• c --> C
• vhdl --> VHDL
• PTC --> DELETE
• ram --> RAM
• rf-switch --> RF-switch
• sar --> SAR
• scattering-coefficient --> scattering-coefficients
• Shoot-through --> shoot-through
• smd --> SMT
• software --> DELETE
• solid-state --> DELETE
• solids --> DELETE
• spi --> SPI
• spice --> SPICE
• thermal --> DELETE
• usb --> USB
• uvlo --> UVLO
• vfd --> VFD
• wifi --> WiFi
• Wireless --> wireless
• zero --> DELETE

EDIT

In response to Lundin's answer.

Your objections are in part valid but I think some of them are based on false premises. Moreover I think that maybe you miss the implications of having a tag hierarchy facility and tag synonyms (more about this below).

SMD is, I believe, a more common term than SMT. Both are commonly used. These should be synonyms, as should surface-mount-device and surface-mount-technology.

MOSI is a common, de facto standard name for a SPI signal. There's no reason to delete it.

"op-amp" should probably be made synonymous for operational-amplifier.

Please, bear in mind that my work on tags is still ongoing and some of the deletion I suggested are just an intermediate step.

For example, just to address some of your criticism: mosi was to be deleted to be next re-added as a "synonym" for the SPI tag (as a standalone tag is absolutely too specific, and outside of SPI context has no meaning).

The same is for SMT: I was waiting for the devs to make those modifications, so that I could re-add SMD to SMT as a synonym (technically SMT is a more general term, but having SMD as a child tag of SMT is too specific, IMO).

opamp is already a synonym for operational-amplifier (actually opamp is the main tag because it was already there before I added operationa-amplifier). op-amp will be added as synonym as soon as the devs apply the changes I requested.

If you haven't already, please check the hierarchy button in the tags page and see the effect of my (still ongoing) work on building a tag structure. That would be impossible on SE and would be impossible if tags were treated simply as keywords.

Whereas I don't think that "AC-circuit" and "AC-power" are necessarily well-established terms. The first can mean anything, the latter should perhaps be tagged VAC.

Please, keep in mind that the work is ongoing, so I tackled the most egregious issues first. You are right that there are still tags that are debatable like AC-circuit, but you can tell that it wasn't something I created because it doesn't have a guidance text (I did create a few tags without guidance text, but they are quite specific and they were put in a hierarchy).

Tags like AC-circuit are used for a lot of questions and I will need the community guidance to disentangle them, so I postponed those until I finished the "grunt work".

I will post on meta about the destiny of such tags to have feedback once the most of the less controversial issues are solved.

First of all, please note that there is no criteria stating that a tag must be able to "stand alone" - sometimes a topic is filtered out by a combination of tags. For example the tag analog may be an "adjective tag" but it could be meaningful in combination with various other tags, to narrow down the scope to a specific term.

Sorry, I disagree in this. I went on with some modifications because it seemed the community had reached some consensus. I posted a proposal some time ago which seemed to be well received. I also stated clearly that my premise was that for me tags were not a "keyword" facility but something that should help form hierarchies of related concepts (i.e. "structure").

That's a whole different approach from your "tags are keywords" POV. I understand that the choice is debatable, that's why I asked on meta, and no one objected to what I proposed (even Olin and Monica Cellio agreed explicitly commenting on that post).

Please, bear in mind that your vision of how we should use tags, while a perfectly acceptable POV (not mine, though), is not applicable effectively to our facility because we have a hard limit to 5 tags. A complex question involving many EE areas could not be tagged effectively, because if tags were simply keywords the post would need to be tagged with dozens of tags.

And those are questions that could also be very good questions (well researched and with lots of info)!

Moreover, tags as keywords aren't really adding any value IMO, because if you wanted to search for anything that puts together "analog" and "ground" it would simply suffice to use the search bar with those two terms. Tags as keywords would simply duplicate this (and possibly in a worse way).

On the contrary, having a complex, curated tags structure will allow something that is not possible with keywords: searching for logical relationships between questions.

Compare this tag sequence:

analog-comparator, digital-ground, safety-ground, DC-motor

to this one (assuming you could use more than 5 tags):

analog, digital, ground, safety, DC, motor, comparator

The first one gives quite a precise description of the topic of the questions. However, the second could be applied to a huge number of unrelated posts.

The main criteria for tags: they must be related to electrical engineering and they must correspond to commonly used terms in electrical engineering, physics or applied electronics. It need not necessarily be the best or most technically correct term.

I largely agree, but that's why synonyms are so useful. For example I explicitly added scope as a synonym to oscilloscope for this same reason.

posted over 1 year ago

CC BY-SA 4.0

1y ago

Lorenzo Donati‭

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