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I was looking through the new tags and saw . IMO, should be a synonym of , so I tried to flag it as a potential synonym.

Except that I need a "5 score" in to make the suggestion.

  1. has a whopping 8 questions. If I understand the score properly (I might not), I need to post positively-scored answers to five of them to make SE happy.

  2. We're not StackOverflow where a bazillion people are participating and a means of filtering out too many young users had to be imposed.

  3. Tag synonym suggestions are voted upon (not sure by whom, though... probably just the Mods), so people really can't just willy-nilly make synonyms.

Question: Is it possible to modify the restriction? Like, to zero? Or do we actually have so many people reviewing tags and making mistakes that this restriction makes sense?

By the way, ditto becoming a synonym of , which I also can't suggest because, oddly, I appear to not have a score of 5 in .

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    $\begingroup$ Another (possibly preferred) option is to make a meta post asking for a community consensus so that one of the mods can do it, but I don't actually know if modifying the restriction is an option or not. To be honest, before someone answers, my suggestion would be to turn this question into one asking to synonymise the two tags, if that's the actual goal of this question. Otherwise if the goal is purely to find out if modifying the restriction is possible(?), then fair enough $\endgroup$
    – Mithrandir24601
    May 7, 2019 at 18:45
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    $\begingroup$ @Mithrandir24601, The reason I didn't (and won't) ask about synonimizing the tags is that I'm concerned about the process. Sure, I could ask in Meta every time this happens (it's happened a number of times, and I've posted such questions), but that clutters up Meta for no good reason. There's already a consensus process in place. It makes no sense for there to be another. This question is simply asking if the filter to protect that process is set too high. $\endgroup$
    – JBH
    May 7, 2019 at 18:48

3 Answers 3

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Yeah, the synonym-suggestion interface really doesn't work well on most sites. First, there's the problem you brought up. Second and possibly more important, even if you do manage to suggest a synonym, people who can vote on it will never see it unless you publicize it. Yes, there's a page people can visit -- but who does? Even reviews can be hard to get sometimes, and those have push notifications!

Most of my sites ignore this interface. Instead, people propose tag reworkings on meta. If something has community support, or some support and no objections after a while, a moderator can implement it.

Please use a separate meta question for each related cluster of tags. "What should we do about X, Y, and Z that have overlap and conflicting usage?" is good. "Let's make X a synonym of Y, merge A into B, and delete C", where none of these tags are related, is not good -- it's harder to disentangle them. And I'm suggesting questions, as opposed to one question with each answer representing a proposed reworking, because that's more limiting. On Writing I've seen tag questions get several answers, each proposing to solve the problem in a different way. That works well, allowing the space of multiple answers and comments to refine the plan.

Finally, an ideal question of this sort links to the tags (as you've done), quotes the tag wikis (if they exist), and points out the issues (e.g. why X should be a synonym of Y or why the {A, B, C} cluster is confusing).

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  • $\begingroup$ I'm happy with this, would you suggest it as a functioning policy of the site? I.E., when/if others ask about this, this is the answer I direct them to? $\endgroup$
    – JBH
    May 8, 2019 at 15:54
  • $\begingroup$ @JBH let's see if the community supports this approach; I'm not going to make a ruling by fiat. $\endgroup$
    – Monica Cellio
    May 8, 2019 at 15:56
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    $\begingroup$ Yeah, this is why I posted my original comment to the question - from what I've seen, going through meta seems to be the approach on all the sites that I've looked at (which admittedly is a small subset), so while WB is of course free to do this a different way, my automatic assumption based on SE as a whole is that synonyms are sorted out on the site meta as per this answer $\endgroup$
    – Mithrandir24601
    May 9, 2019 at 21:01
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We've done a lot of tag reorgs on Writing.SE. Monica is a mod there too and usually us non-mods post to Meta to see what other people think and she or another mod will either do it or weigh in, etc.

In this case, someone used because they didn't think of . There's just one question on it. I think it would have been fine if you simply retagged it.

BUT...given that "money" is a pretty common keyword, it does make sense to make it a synonym and I support that move. You don't need positive scores in 5 questions on the tag to propose this, just 5 net upvotes total. But yeah that's hard with only 8 questions. Though even when you can propose it, no one will see it.

Since we can't make SE change the policy of notifications for synonyms and such, we can just use meta.

I support your proposal to make a synonym of

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Money and finances are not synonyms.

Money is about currency. That stuff we use to exchange for goods.

Finances are about budgeting. You know that process where you realize that you can't go to Las Vegas every weekend. So if you want to do that, you have to raise more money to finance it.

If you want to get rid of money, I would suggest making it a synonym of . Incidentally, I fixed the single question by retagging it.

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  • $\begingroup$ What good is posting a query about synonyms concerning two tags if any user can simply go do what they want to "repair" it? Should you be thanked for not waiting for community consensus? $\endgroup$
    – JBH
    May 9, 2019 at 14:10
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    $\begingroup$ @JBH But I didn't "repair" money. What I repaired was the single question, which used money when it meant to use currency. And in that question, finances made no sense but currency did. The problem that you proposed to fix was that people could pick money at all. If you still want to fix that, you still can. But I think it is silly to fix money to finances when what the person meant to say was currency. Should I have left it broken just so you could break it further? If money had been synonymized to finances, that question would still have needed retagged to currency. $\endgroup$
    – Brythan
    May 10, 2019 at 0:45
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    $\begingroup$ I guess the question becomes "how much focus are we expecting people to apply to tags"? It's hard enough to get people to write focussed queries! Me, I think "economics" would cover everything (and if that's even a tag!) I agree that money and currency are reasonable synonyms, but money is also a reasonable synonym for finances (money woes = financial troubles) and economies as a whole, so...there? By the way, I think that one question tagged "money" should be retagged "SPAM". Either that or "PLEASE DELETE ME FORTHWITH". $\endgroup$
    – elemtilas
    May 10, 2019 at 0:55
  • $\begingroup$ @elemtilas That question is new since we started this discussion. The one I edited is this one. $\endgroup$
    – Brythan
    May 10, 2019 at 0:57
  • $\begingroup$ @Brythan -- Ah, I see! $\endgroup$
    – elemtilas
    May 10, 2019 at 1:01
  • $\begingroup$ @Brythan Above comments are a perfect example why SO policy is not to do re-tag cleanup on tags while there's a discussion underway about that tag. Yes, it leaves mess there that could trivially be cleaned up by anyone in the discussion; and yes, currency was better than finances. But by changing things that are under discussion, we muddy the waters of the discussion. This policy is usually for burnination, but applies equally here too. $\endgroup$
    – Dewi Morgan
    May 16, 2019 at 19:58

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