Poll: Proposal for a "standard" set of SQLA tags

[Chris_Kleisath]

As has been announced on this site, the SQL Anywhere team at Sybase/SAP are in the process of implementing a replacement for this StackExchange based version of SQLA. This project is proceeding quite well, and we hope to make a further announcement of this very soon! We have been working with Breck Carter, the administrator of this site to integrate all data from this site into the new site. We are also considering various approaches to integrated the existing NNTP newsgroup content.

One concern that has come up is to provide users with an easy method to restrict their attention to areas of interest as the Q&A site becomes busier. As a result, I would like to ask the SQLA community what it thinks about a "standard" set of tags for questions.

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Proposal:

• Most of the questions on SQLA do not refer to the specific component being used, making it hard to restrict attention to a specific component.
• The current NNTP newsgroups have a natural grouping that would be nice to retain
• A “standard” set of tags would ease searching for those users interested in only one of our components
• Other more specific tags would of course continue to be welcome

1. Technology tags: A tag to identify which SQL Anywhere technology the question refers. Most questions that ask about the SQL Anywhere software should use one of these tags.

sqlanywhere-server
ultralite
mobilink
sql-remote
qanywhere
client-tools
installer
high-availability

2. Version tags To identify which version the question refers. This tag may not be necessary in all cases.

v-8
v-9
v-10
v-11
v-12

3. Platform tags To identify the operating system platform. This tag will not be necessary in all cases.

linux
windows
windows7
solaris
aix
hpux
macosx
unix
ipad
iphone
blackberry
android

To identify the bitness in questions where this is important.

32-bit
64-bit

4. Newsgroup tags All newsgroup threads will be tagged with this when imported.

NNTP-Newsgroup

Additionally, each thread/question will be tagged with specific newsgroup information.

sqlanywhere.general
sqlanywhere.linux
sqlanywhere.mobilink
sqlanywhere.replication
sqlanywhere.product_futures_discussion
sqlanywhere.ultralite
sqlanywhere.qanywhere
ianywhere.wireless
ianywhere.general
sqlanywhere.web
relayserver.general

5. Other miscellaneous “standard” tags

ebf
vendor-announcement
employment-opportunity
product-suggestion
sqlanywhere-product     
      - questions about the SQL Anywhere product, as opposed to the software components.
meta-sqla           
      - questions about the SQLA site itself
faq             
      - answers about the SQLA site itself
poll            
      - a poll of users of the SQLA site
sqla-announcement       
      - announcements about the SQLA site 

If you are in favor of this proposal, please add a comment, or vote.

[Former Member]

Chris,

I found the Newsgroup categories "general", "mobilink", etc. most useful, so I MOST like the "Technology Tags" proposed. I can see the other proposed tags will be useful, but my habits always were: 1) Browse certain newsgroups (i.e. Mobilink) as often as possible for the excellent education the questions/answers provide and 2) do a Google search whenever I had a speicifc question/problem. So the version tags, platform tags, etc won't be that interesting to me. THANKS to Sybase/SAP for working on this!! Your support of SQLA and the replacement is of great value to us!

[Former Member]

I hope you're proposing to make the standard tags selectable. If these are available to be picked from a list, I think it would help improve the frequency of their use. And there's no question they'd help make a large amount of data far more usable as time goes on.

[Chris_Kleisath]

I don't think this GUI enhancement will make version 1, as we are already working on several other enhancements, such as threaded comments. Users with the right level of reputation/karma will be able to re-tag questions using the "standard" set.

[VolkerBarth]

@Chris: I would suggest to keep using the SQLA phrase "reputation" instead of "karma" as OSQA does by default. The latter is related to the field of religion and might offend/irritate persons with a different religious background (e.g. Christians like me). – Don't get me wrong, I don't want to start a religious discussion here, I just think such a valuable technical site should be free of any religious notions.

[Breck_Carter]

I'm all in favor of the proposal... with the following warning: Don't get carried way, don't try to make tags into search keywords. Google doesn't need tags to search the web. And don't take tags too seriously, they are of little use on StackOverflow.

[Chris_Kleisath]

@Volker - we're not sure about use of the word "reputation", but we are considering using a different word.

[Chris_Kleisath]

@Breck - I agree. We shouldn't get to carried away with it. These are more along the lines of "best practices" and NOT "hard and fast rules".

[VolkerBarth]

Great news!

I am really glad to hear that the new site is going to get fed with the NNTP contents, too, though I can't imagine how much crowded this will get in contrast to the still rather empty SQLA site. That alone seems to make a sensible tagging system necessary.

The suggested tags are alright IMHO, although I would suggest the following slight changes:

• One might shorten "sqlanywhere-server" and the NNTP newsgroup name part "sqlanywhere." a little bit, for example just to "server" and "sa". Otherwise questions with several tags might get rather long tag lists.
• Likewise, if 99 % of the forthcoming contents come from the NNTP forums, the then very common tag "NNTP-Newsgroup" seems quite verbose - something like "NNTP" should suffice, methinks.

The version tags ("v-9" ...) are useful and better than the so far used ones which include the product names ("asa-9", "sa-10") – the latter seem less useful for those not so familiar with the SQL Anywhere product name history:). – Maybe there ought to be some maintenance-related tags, too ("v-11-0-1"). At least there's some usage for tags like "sa-11.0.1" here.

As Carol has implied, I would suggest that there's some GUI feature to recommend/enforce the use of the standard tags.

Besides that, I would like to suggest further polls on the upcoming NNTP import decisions to be made.

[reimer_pods]

For me usability is a major topic with a new implementation. I think your answer is targeted in that direction, so I subscribe to that. And yes, the community should have a chance to vote on design decisions.

[Chris_Kleisath]

As I mentioned in the comment above, GUI changes to suggest the "standard" tags won't make version 1. Your suggestion on further polls related to NNTP import decisions is being planned.