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I'm getting little bit tired of finding the

Please don't use the BUGS tag until the community find confirmation there is a bug

comment under most questions.

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  • 1
    If we are going to do this I propose we alias Bugs with Unconfirmed-bugs
    – Sjoerd C. de Vries
    Feb 22, 2016 at 22:15
  • Hey, I wrote that! Sorry... :)
    – rhermans
    Feb 23, 2016 at 10:59
  • 4
    @rhermans Ego te absolvo a peccatis tuis in nomine Patris et Filii etc.:)
    – Dr. belisarius
    Feb 23, 2016 at 15:12

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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Update:

  • Moderator-only tags are probably a no-go, and probably not the best idea anyway.

  • Tag Warnings are a great idea IMO and I have requested their implementation on our site.

  • If Tag Warnings are not enough I propose and as replacements.

Interesting proposal. I don't really like making tag names needlessly longer, but I seem to recall that you were the first to propose wolfram-mathematica on Stack Overflow and later it became apparent such a change was in fact beneficial.

As it stands we have the tag summary:

This tag is reserved for questions where the problem has been vetted by this community and the observed behavior is confirmed to be a bug. Please do not use this tag for new questions.

I guess the question is how many people actually read that, and how many ignore it? I don't have those numbers. If people are reading this and applying the tag anyway I don't think it will matter what we name the tag.

I wonder of some tags should be moderator-only, like here on meta. I don't know if this is possible, and I cannot recall reading about this on the main meta site but I shall look for it.

If it is possible to make , , etc. only applicable by moderators is that a good solution? This would increase the workload for moderators, but at the moment it seems we are not having trouble handing flags, etc. in a timely fashion.

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  • Nice, And how do you propose the mods to be notified of a candidate? Via flags?
    – Dr. belisarius
    Feb 22, 2016 at 17:03
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    @Dr.belisarius Is "nice" facetious here? Yes, I guess a flag would be needed if one of us did not come across the question in the regular course of events. As I said it would increase the moderator workload but it would firmly prevent this tag from being misapplied, whereas I can easily imagine some users throwing on confirmed-bugs because it is confirmed in their own mind.
    – Mr.Wizard
    Feb 22, 2016 at 17:20
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    I think the idea of mods-managed tags is "nice". No pun intended.
    – Dr. belisarius
    Feb 22, 2016 at 17:23
  • @Dr.belisarius Okay, more internet ambiguity. Thanks for clarifying.
    – Mr.Wizard
    Feb 22, 2016 at 17:36
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    As the guy who has to deal with a lot of tagging stuff, I'm sure that unless bugs can be restricted in some way (e.g. the mod only idea), users old and new will keep putting it on questions that haven't yet gone through community vetting. So, the additional "confirmed" really won't do much, unless we can find some magical incantation that will hypnotically force people to read tag wikis.
    – J. M.'s missing motivation Mod
    Feb 22, 2016 at 18:41
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    Did the moderators ask for tag warnings?
    – Karsten7
    Feb 22, 2016 at 21:37
  • @J.M. The same kind of arguments were used before (ie. people won't read it, no matter what). I believe that putting the keyword as a second word on the tag and using another strong word as first (in this case my try is "confirmed", but could be another one, and more explicit) force more people into thinking what they are doing
    – Dr. belisarius
    Feb 22, 2016 at 23:10
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    I support [tag:Bug?] available to all, and bug-confirmed for users with some reputation including a Tag-waring explaining the rules.
    – rhermans
    Feb 23, 2016 at 11:10
  • @Karsten Tag Warnings were apparently proposed while I was taking somewhat of a break from Stack Exchange. That seems like an excellent first step. Let me see if I can get this done.
    – Mr.Wizard
    Feb 26, 2016 at 20:54
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    @rhermans I'm pretty sure ? is not allowed in tag names. What about possible-bug and confirmed-bug if the Tag Warnings don't get the job done?
    – Mr.Wizard
    Feb 26, 2016 at 20:56
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    I like your updated suggestions. No pun intended. Just in case
    – Dr. belisarius
    Mar 5, 2016 at 17:06
  • Maybe make bugs a synonim that defaults to possible-bug ?
    – shrx
    Mar 7, 2016 at 8:31
  • @shrx I am trying to remember if that is possible. The existing questions with the bugs tag are confirmed-bug and I would need to make sure that I don't accidentally change all of those to possible-bug. I think this can be done in two steps but I don't believe I've ever done this particular operation and I wouldn't want to make a mess of it.
    – Mr.Wizard
    Mar 7, 2016 at 11:48
  • It seems we still don't have Tag Warnings yet, which is not surprising as the developers are busy people and it is currently and manual operation. I think I should probably wait for that before making other tag changes.
    – Mr.Wizard
    Mar 7, 2016 at 11:50
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Yes (why didn't we do this years ago?)

It's 2020 and people keep tagging unconfirmed bugs as every month or so. Some examples:

and dozens more. It is clear to me that the meaning of is contrary to what new users expect from a tag called "bugs", and most users do not read the tag description to correct themselves. Other users have noted the same problem. The name would actually mean what people expect it to, so renaming it seems like an obvious choice, even if it does not dissuade users from tagging new questions all the time.

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    I also think "vetted by this community and the observed behavior is confirmed to be a bug" is rather vague. The tag wiki should have some clear guideline like "one other user can reproduce and agrees this is a bug" or "confirmed by either a moderator or a WRI employee". But that's a separate issue.
    – lirtosiast
    Apr 1, 2020 at 1:46

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