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I accept that this question is similar to "do not do this", but please hear me out.

TeX is, at least in part, about beautiful typesetting. Now, although beauty is subjective, there are a number of commonly-agreed things that are generally considered ugly, and I believe that one of the measures of TeX.SX's "improvement of the Internet" is a question of beauty.

The idea of a tag would be to act as a flag to tell the questioner that what she is trying to do may result in something that is less than beautiful -- a sort of "beware of what you wish for".

Of course, I don't insist on that tag name. I did think it a bit better than my original , , and ideas, as it looks positive, rather than negative, but I'm open to suggestions.

The tag description text would need careful crafting. Here's a starter:

What you are trying to do may be possible with TeX, but many, experienced, typographers think that the results are less beautiful than they otherwise might be. Please reconsider why you need to do this; but, of course, go ahead if you believe you're right.

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    When I read [beauty-alert], I thought it was for flagging specially beauty answers. While I like the idea, I think a different name would be better. Probably [Comic Sansy], [borderline ugly] or [highly questionable] instead :D
    – Tom Bombadil
    Jul 6, 2012 at 10:39
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    We already have {best-practices}, which should show people the right direction (though we may want to add a few general questions with comprehensive answers there). I would go against your proposal because someone usually explains why something is a bad practice in one of the top comments/answers, and because many people don't really have a choice (some are forced to implement ugly styles with typographically insane rules, which must have been randomly created by people who had never actually opened a book in their entire lives).
    – ienissei
    Jul 6, 2012 at 13:12
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    meta-tags are strongly discouraged, see meta.tex.stackexchange.com/questions/302/our-set-of-tags and blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/08/the-death-of-meta-tags
    – Caramdir
    Jul 6, 2012 at 14:35

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Similar to the linked question, I vote against such a tag.

Let's consider some points:

  • Is it a meaningful category?
  • Is is useful for filtering or look-up?
  • Which tag features to we need? Such as following the tag RSS feed?

Looking at the idea:

The idea of a beauty-alert tag would be to act as a flag to tell the questioner that what she is trying to do may result in something that is less than beautiful

So the intention is just using it as a sign. So we might use a sign, a colorful symbol in the question perhaps, but not an additional tag - because tags are more than just a word list below the question.

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    My first attempt: i.stack.imgur.com/w84mF.png :)
    – Paulo Cereda
    Jul 6, 2012 at 11:29
  • Much more sensible than my suggestion. Thank you. I like the idea of editing to add a sign.
    – Brent.Longborough
    Jul 6, 2012 at 14:59
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    I ♥ @Paulo.​​​​
    – doncherry
    Jul 6, 2012 at 15:09
  • @doncherry: /blushes :)
    – Paulo Cereda
    Jul 6, 2012 at 19:58
  • I guess the tag would have all the same objections as there were to the do not do this tag.
    – Seamus
    Jul 17, 2012 at 12:23

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