free-software, fsf, free-software-definition and other associated tags

Question

For both the FSF and OSI we have a few set of related tags:

• free-software, fsf, free-software-definition
• osi, open-source-definition

I created the two -definition tags, as I thought they were more appropriate for questions concerning the definitions than the straight fsf and osi tags, which concerned the organisations.

But after a little bit of time, I think it would be better to consolidate these tags into free-software and open-source, for a few reasons:

• There are few questions that are focused on the organisations, and that will probably always be the case. Those that do will probably be well served by using either free-software/open-source and the history tag.
• We have several questions that concern approval by the organisations on the basis of the definitions. The tags would end up being redundant in these circumstances.
• Simpler and fewer tags are better in general.

I think we should make free-software and open-source be the core tags with the others as synonyms. These tags will need careful tag wikis which explain that they are for questions which concern the organisations/definitions and they should not be used for general FLOSS-related questions. (I think a general FLOSS tag would be too general and should not be used.) We will need to diligently watch these tags to make sure that they don't get used for general questions.

Thoughts?

Answer 1

I think we should keep the fsf and osi tags. Both organizations are very important players in the FLOSS community and do far more than just maintaining and defending their definitions.

Further, I am against the tags free-software and open-source because they are too general. Per definition of this site, any on-topic question would be tagged with these tags.

A tag wiki which explains detailed rules about when they should be used and when not won't do anything. In my experience, few people actually read even the tag excerpts before applying a tag. I've tried it with some tags on Stackoverflow where I wrote explicitly into the tag excerpt "do not use this tag for questions about X" - people still do. A tag name must speak for itself or people will keep misusing it.

Answer 2

In agreement. We don't need masses of tags at this stage: people won't have enough questions to validly use each one that much.

If we wait until we have moderators, they can perform these actions immediately - we don't have too many users who can play with tag synonyms, and most of them will have their scores in different tags.