Tags about quantities: should we have them?
I've noticed there are a lot of tags referring to general physical quantities (e.g. current
, voltage
, frequency
)
I'm not sure if they are useful. For example, what usage would have the tag voltage
? If a question is about a particular voltage, e.g. breakdown voltage for a diode or threshold voltage for a comparator, then one would probably use a more specific tag.
But "voltage" alone? OK, one could ask a question about the meaning of voltage or the like, but otherwise it seems a tag prone to become a kitchen sink.
For example, at the time of this writing, there are 46 questions tagged voltage
and they cover a bewildering range of subjects, for example:
- Cables voltage ratings.
- Testing on induction motor.
- Analog computer operations.
- Transformer phasor graphs.
- Arc welding.
- Various examples of circuit analysis.
- Tunnel diode modeling.
- Semiconductor devices equations.
- etc.
Is it useful a tag that can be applied to such a wide variety of questions? What usefulness would people get to click on that tag and browse all the tagged questions?
And if we decided to get rid of it (and similar general tags), what would we use for questions that are actually on voltage itself as a concept?
1 answer
Using voltage
as a way of saying "I'm dealing with voltage here" is pointless - most electronics questions do.
I think the voltage
vs current
tags are however relevant in the case when you need to be more specific about which one of the two that applies.
For example if you have a digital signal and a question about EMC, it becomes highly relevant to provide information about whether the signal is voltage modulated or current modulated (aka a current loop).
Similarly questions about voltage drop over cables might apply, in which case current consumption is highly relevant and you need to mention both. Or questions about common industry standards 0-10V vs 4-20mA. And so on.
It might make sense to switch some of the voltage
tags to supply-voltage
in case they are dealing with power electronics.
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