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Sometimes we have questions with answers boiling down to a few, usually two, opposing points of view.

Examples include using the chain for more than it's lifetime, using gearbox oil on chain, riding with babies in box-bikes, using sunscreen or not, helmet-wars, etc.

Although part of the essence of Stack Exchange is to have objectively answerable questions, where the "right" answer would be a verifiable solution to a well-delimited problem, I think most users benefit from the discussion that creates around polemic arguments, so that these users might have more contact with fundamentals of different alternatives and choose more appropriately which one they prefer to follow.

By definition, polemic is a topic where usually consensus doesn't emerge, be it for lack of definitive information, for emotional and other human factor bias, or excess of interfering factors for each particular situation.

So, as experience shows these kind of questions are recurring and are working positively, which particular TAG we should/could assign to them?

Polemic? Argument[ative]? "mixed-feelings"? (this one not serious)

Other?

Thanks for reading.

2 Answers 2

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No, we should not have tags for things other than what the question is about. Tags like you're suggesting are "meta-tags", which are discouraged on the Stack Exchange network.

More here: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/08/the-death-of-meta-tags/

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All of the example questions which you reference have correct, delimitable answers. Tagging them as questions which expect discussion will only encourage the kind of comment streams we are supposed to avoid.

In addition, tags are intended to allow a user to follow a subject of interest. I am not interested in offering the ability to follow and comment on all argumentative subjects only.

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