The About meta-tagging qn tried to help us reach a policy on meta-tags. I'm not convinced by Jeff's argument, but I'm relaxed about losing most of them, with the single exception of the [big-list] tag.
An example: on the Showcase of beautiful typography done in LaTeX question, Robert Cartaino commented:
When you are asking users to contribute to a list of answers, the question should be marked community wiki. I have converted this question.
Such questions have a special status, as experienced SO and MO users will know. It is good and not harmful to tag these questions [big-list], as is common practice on MO but not SO, because:
- It helps beginners understand what is expected of questions if we have this tag;
- In case there is resistance to CW-ifying such a question, it helps to be able to point at the questions covered by the [big-list] tag;
- It is not (unlike the examples Jeff gave) subjective in its application, rather its application is crystal clear;
- I often find it useful on MO in searching to restrict searches so that they either include the tag or exclude it, and I expect other MO users find this useful too.
I propose that we explictly encourage applying [big-list] to this sort of question in our FAQ, even if our FAQ ends up discouraging all other meta-tags.
