Restrict tag choice to existing tags instead of adding the please-use-existing-tags tag? And what qualifies as an existing tag?
I don't see the purpose of the please-use-existing-tags tag. As far as I know, the tags are meant to associate a post to certain topics represented by tags. In which case, I don't know why anyone would want to look up all posts with the please-use-existing-tags tag, especially when the nonexisting tags may have already been changed to existing tags in the post.
Is it possible instead to restrict users choice of tags rather than letting users have the ability to type in any tag whatsoever?
Post Script
Also, what are considered existing tags? I did find the list of tags, but rarity of use didn't necessarily imply an unhelpful tag, although that was usually the case.
For example, "tdv" is a very specific tag, but also its own little topic within energy modelling. In contrast, "getting" does not seem like a very useful tag.
@mldichter I believe that this was initially created so that Unmet Hours moderators could let others know that they were using tags incorrectly, with the hope that in future posts they would use an existing tag. @__AmirRoth__ is a moderator who frequently does this, maybe he can shed more light there.
I would definitely agree that Unmet Hours tags can be cleaned up. It would be great to have a way to force people to select a tag as they type, instead of potentially entering in any new tags by mistake. If you are motivated enough, you could re-tag posts yourself to help clean things up.
@Aaron Boranian I agree. I've also entered tags before that were sort of the best I could think of when I wrote the post, but a moderator later changed my tag to the standard synonym used on unmethours, which tended to be a better descriptor or made the post easier for someone to find via the tag.
But I'm still not really sure what are considered "correct" tags. Is there a documentation page, or something similar, for posting on unmet hours and how to choose tags appropriately? The only thing I found was setting an email alert whenever a tag is used.
@mldichter many of the unusefull tags (e.g. "getting") actually don't have any questions associated with them because they've been retagged. I'm not sure if these are periodically deleted from the list or not, but that might be another area for improvement.
Cf askbot feature request here, which didn't get any traction since 2015. If you happen to have an Askbot account with some karma, go upvote it please.
Actually better yet: go upvote the feature request on the Github askbot-devel#564