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Anyone know how to ban tags? I can't figure out how to so it, although the tagging interface is kinda hard to navigate. Can diamond mods do this or is this an action only SE employees can take?

I agree that [stingy] has negative connotations and, even though it's a synonym that now redirects to [frugal], I'd like to stop people from using it.

Also, as other sites have done with "obvious" tags, [bike] and [bicycle] are particularly useless here, since all questions here will relate to bikes; however, people keep using the tags. Yeah, I know that SE isn't going to run out of tags anytime soon, but it may prevent people from tagging well since a question can only have five tags.

Any additions or objections to this?

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Reset to default
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Now that a synonym is created, if somebody types "stingy", it will automatically be replaced with "frugal" on any new posts. There's a second (merge) step to

For tags like "stingy", after you make the tag a synonym you can merge the tags... I just did this with making a synonym for and then merging all the bike tags to bicycle tags. I didn't see it generate any spurious front page activity.

No idea if we can outright ban a tag, but I added a bit to the bicycle tag wiki to point out that nobody really wants that tag. I guess we could remove the tag from the site entirely, but it's likely to just pop up again...

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I don't think you need to make a case that a synonym MAY occur in the future unless you have data to support it.

As long as the (I'm guessing) one person who created this tag gets the message, I think a synonym is just noise in the system.

If it was organically and commonly created by average users, then perhaps. I seriously doubt that's the case here.

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  • "Bike" was used several times, and "bicycle" has been used several times (and I've pruned it out).
    – Goodbye Stack Exchange
    Commented Feb 28, 2011 at 15:14
  • @niel that's fine, I was specifically referring to the [stingy] tag
    – Jeff Atwood
    Commented Feb 28, 2011 at 22:07
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    any chance we can get the [bicycle] tag stamped out? It's since been used again, and a general tag like this can prevent people from using actual, useful tags. And if we miss the tag at first, pruning it ends up resurrecting a possibly doubtful question later on.
    – Goodbye Stack Exchange
    Commented May 10, 2011 at 2:56
  • @neil sure this is done. This is an "intrinsic" tag which is similar to a blacklisted tag but more .. permanent, and used as a positive indicator for question site migrations, when matched.
    – Jeff Atwood
    Commented May 10, 2011 at 4:50
  • Thanks. I should have asked this back in February!
    – Goodbye Stack Exchange
    Commented May 10, 2011 at 5:07
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I'm happy to leave that to the editors - I think we're going to keep seeing occasional questions with "bike" synonyms as tags, even if the author has to create the tag. Banning it would take a certain amount of definitional effort, both "what gets banned" and "which tags exactly". There's enough editing talent to make those corrections a small and manageable part of the process.

I'm even inclined to support the tag if the question clearly only relates to bicycles rather than dicycles, unicycles, tricycles and so on. I might even take it as a challenge to think of such a question.

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  • I certainly wouldn't mind more questions about unis and trikes. I had to look up dicycles. Those look interesting. By "editors", do you mean whoever retags down the road or specifically mods?
    – Goodbye Stack Exchange
    Commented Mar 7, 2011 at 4:31
  • @Neil Fein: I meant anyone with the ability to edit tags. I don't think it's really a big issue, it's something that I think will vaguely niggle people until they get irritated enough to clean up the tags (like you've done), but I don't think it's a big issue. And I keep typing "@neil finn". Can you sing?
    – Мסž
    Commented Mar 7, 2011 at 4:46
  • I love dicycles. I'd build one except that it's a lot of work for something I don't have anywhere to store or any idea what I'd do with once I had it. But I can definitely see a "dicycle" tag arising, and also see it confusing a lot of people.
    – Мסž
    Commented Mar 7, 2011 at 4:48
  • I can sing well enough to accompany my own playing, although my range is only about an octave plus a little bit. I am a songwriter, though. :)
    – Goodbye Stack Exchange
    Commented Mar 7, 2011 at 4:49

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