Can we encourage those posing questions to tag more appropriately with tweaked help text?

Question

When questions are posted, the system demands they have at least one tag. These are typically used responsibly and well. However, in a significant number of cases, they aren't. For example:

• some users create overly granular tags (e.g., adding a cake tag when asking about Jeremiah 44:19 -- n.b. hypothetical example!);
• some omit the tag of the book or corpus under investigation;
• others mis-apply some existing tag (I think the contradiction tag is a bit magnetic in this regard);
• etc.

This is the help that is provided when a question is being prepared (having clicked in the "Tags" field):

There are two forms of help given on the page to users:

1. The greyed-out "dummy text" in the tags field itself;
2. and the prominent bullet-list that appears in the right sidebar.

(There is also a broader Help page with in the "Asking" section.) Is there any way either of these can be tailored for a specific site? Or perhaps this is another constraint of being a "beta" site? Some additional information would be helpful here.

It would be good minimally (imo!) to add in the bulleted list (in first position!) something like:

► include the tag related to your specific biblical text

I realize that discipline in creating tags is a different matter, and our tag-wikis are (reasonably) well curated, so that we have at least some help there. But this latter matter is an on-going project.

Thoughts and facts :) appreciated!

---

Related:

• What is our tagging philosophy?
• Should most questions be tagged with the book they are asking about?
• How can we educate new users about our site distinctives?

Answer 1

If we put together a short bullet list to replace or augment the existing text, this apparently can be done. Below is a proposed bullet-list that is minimally altered based on the request above; please comment or edit to improve this.

Current:

How To Tag

A tag is a keyword or label that categorizes your question with other, similar questions.

► favor existing popular tags; avoid creating new tags
► use common abbreviations
► don't include synonyms
► combine multiple words into single-words with dashes
► maximum of 5 tags, 25 chars per tag
► delimit tags by space, semicolon, or comma

Proposed:

How To Tag

A tag is a keyword or label that categorizes your question with other, similar questions.

► include a tag for the relevant biblical book, group of books, or hermeneutic
► favor existing popular tags; avoid creating new tags
► combine multiple words into single-words with hyphens
► maximum of 5 tags, 25 chars per tag
► delimit tags by space, semicolon, or comma

Enumeration of changes:

1. The first bullet is new and is somewhat altered from that offered in question

   ► include the tag related to your specific biblical text

   because I thought being more specific about "book" and avoiding the somewhat vague "related" might be helpful, but these modifications are open to feedback.

2. Bullets "use common abbreviations" and "don't include synonyms" were eliminated because they didn't seem to add much (the only abbreviation tag I can think of is nt-use-of-the-hebrew-bible which nobody new is going to come up with anyway; if synonyms exist, people may as well include them so that we find and merge them), and I'm working on the theory that fewer items leads to a higher likelihood of reading.

3. The hyphen vs. dash distinction is, of course, irrelevant, but I figured we may as well tweak while we're tweaking.

If someone has a proposal to replace the gray "dummy text", please add it here.

Answer 2

We can help you out with this, though not quite in the way Susan requested in her earlier answer. Sorry about that... we probably weren't as clear as we could have been when we talked to you about this before. The content you're requesting looks fine, the issue is a system limitation our end.

Basically, we can make changes to the "How To Tag" sidebar, but not in the bulleted list section. (At least, not on a site-specific basis and not easily.) Instead, we can put a block of text between the intro sentence and the bulleted list. For example, check out the question asking page on Anime SE and click on the field for adding new tags. You'll see the standard intro,

How To Tag

A tag is a keyword or label that categorizes your question with other, similar questions.

followed by site-specific text

Type the name of the anime or manga your question is about (Example: log-horizon).

For questions not specific to any one work, use concept tags to describe your question (Examples: tropes, anime-production, anime-history, etc.)

and then the standard bulleted list

Tagging rules:

► favor existing popular tags; avoid creating new tags

► use common abbreviations
...

The takeaway here is, if you can agree on a paragraph or so of text that you want in the middle of the sidebar, we can insert it for you. Sorry to make you start over from nearly scratch, but that's what the system can support at this time.