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The trend in tagging is towards merging tags and tag synonyms, so I imagine this will be quite contentious.

Given the different default behaviours and configurations of different Ubuntu releases (6.06 vs. 8.04 vs. 10.04, and everything in between), would it be worth splitting the generic ubuntu tag into different tags by distribution (e.g. ubuntu-10.04 and ubuntu-8.04 already exist) and eliminating the "blanket" tag? Should the same be done for any OS or other piece of software where the behaviour can radically change between versions (e.g. windows)?

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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I strongly disagree. There are a very large number of [ubuntu] tagged questions that have nothing to do with the released version and apply to every possible version.

For example there are several questions about how to configure the /etc/network/interfaces file. This really hasn't changed during the lifetime of ubuntu and any answer would apply to all versions.

The same is true for [windows] there are a large number of questions that would apply to any windows version or at least any recent w2k+ version.

I am not saying that I am against re-tagging this to a release specific tag where it is appropriate, but a complete elimination of the tags just wouldn't make sense to me. There are are too many questions that are pretty generic.

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  • +1, many questions are generic to multiple versions of an OS.
    – Ward - Trying Codidact Mod
    Commented Aug 10, 2010 at 20:27
  • Sounds good. Would it be worth doing an organised scan through of questions with these tags and recategorising if needed?
    – Andrew
    Commented Aug 11, 2010 at 3:02
  • I don't know about those tags specifically, but it is frequently worth reviewing old questions and looking to see if they can be improved.
    – Zoredache
    Commented Aug 11, 2010 at 3:19
  • I did much the same thing with the 'suse' tagged questions last week. That's a much, much, smaller list than 'ubuntu' but it made things cleaner.
    – sysadmin1138 Mod
    Commented Aug 12, 2010 at 4:23
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I agree with that. And anyone who put [ubuntu] in is interesting or ignore list may just use a wildcard instead, e.g. [ubuntu*].

Although an Implicit tagging hierarchy (i.e. all [ubuntu-10.4] tagged questions will also be found when searching for [ubuntu] without that tag being visibly there) might then be useful, too.

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  • Tag hierarchy, I like the sound of that.
    – jscott
    Commented Aug 11, 2010 at 10:48

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