How to request a mass-change in capitalization for tags?
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.
3 answers
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The following users marked this post as Works for me:
| User | Comment | Date |
|---|---|---|
| Lorenzo Donati | (no comment) | Aug 17, 2023 at 16:42 |
Following a lot of discussion in comments, we're going to split this request:
-
Capitalization changes: these were previously discussed and we'll make these changes for you. We can do this at the tag level; there's no need to edit posts individually.
-
Other renamings and deletions: there is a larger discussion about tagging philosophy that the community should resolve first.
Meanwhile, we (on the Codidact team) acknowledge that tag management is too hard (hence this proposal and its responses). And as pointed out in a couple places here on EE, it's much easier to create tags than to clean them up and that's a problem; I'll be following up with the team and/or on main Meta about raising the bar for creating new tags.
Update: All of the renames on the list in the question are now done. (A few were already done; I did the rest.) I also did the two merges and deleted two unused tags from this list that I noticed while doing other things (dc-dc and pmsm-motor).
Feel free to provide a list here and someone will go through and update them. For instance, I've just renamed [led] to [LED]. Please include both the old tag name, the new name, and ideally an explanation of why the change is being requested.
Thanks for your diligence here!
1 comment thread
Apart from correcting capitalization, which is a valid change, I think you are at the same time doing a lot of subjective changes to certain tags and it can get very intrusive on the site. I don't agree with a lot of the tag changes proposed here.
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.
For example analog + ground might make sense for tagging questions about grounding in a RF circuit. safety + ground might form another perfectly valid tag combination for an entirely different topic, namely VAC power supplies. Sometimes it might make sense to form a specific tag like safety-ground, sometimes it might not. Mostly depending on if there exists a widely established engineering term or not.
Things like analog comparators, analog switches, analog-to-digital converters do need their own specific tags since they are about a specific kind of IC and these are all well-established terms/names.
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.
As mentioned in another thread, just because something is super common like voltage, current or ground, it doesn't automatically make that an invalid tag. Because once again, tags do not need to be stand-alone. It is not always convenient to form a single tag out of several.
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.
For example DC-DC or DC/DC (converter) is a common term for buck and or boost converters. "Buck" and "boost" are in turn kind of synonymous for step-up and step-down. There is no single correct term and none of these are particularly accurate (the converter technology itself might be the more correct name: linear, flyback, sepic or whatever).
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.
Coils are common electronic components and the tag can make perfect sense in combination with other tags, for example coil + voltage for a relay question. The alternative is to create a whole lot of strange tags: coil-voltage, coil-current, coil-resistance, coil-temperature and so on - just to mention some thing that may be relevant in terms of relay coils specifically.
SAR should probably be deleted since it is ambiguous. It probably means successive approximation ADC, but it could as well mean Specific Absorption Rate and a couple of other things.
Conclusion:
I don't think we need to have a huge meta discussion for every tag change like on Someplace Else, because that's burdensome and it isn't reasonable that it should take more effort to change a tag than it took to create it in the first place. I actually think it is way too easy to create tags on Codidact.
But on the other hand we should avoid situations where a single person unanimously goes ahead with major tag changes. A reasonable middle-ground might be to create some manner of moderator chat for this site, and if more than one veteran user agrees that something should be changed, that's probably good enough.
Also please note that while re-tagging a post, other issues in the post should ideally get fixed at the same time, such as grammar/spelling, bad title etc. This in order to fix as many issues as possible while doing the intrusive edit "bumping" of the post. Please keep in mind that this site is fairly low traffic and therefore "bumping" is very intrusive.
2 comment threads