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The tag is for questions relating to the Mathematica software. People (typically newcomers) sometimes mistakenly add this tag to questions when they really mean math, not Mathematica. This misunderstanding is very common, and not surprising, given that typing "mat..." causes the autocompletion to suggest and that "mathematica" is the term used for math in many languages.

I corrected two such misuses of the tag today. (1), (2). This is not a popular tag, currently there are only 68 uses.

We have the same problem with the site name of Mathematica.SE and it's so common that we need to migrate questions to Math.SE daily.

StackOverflow had the same problem with their mathematica tag and they solved it successfully by renaming it to wolfram-mathematica. (meta)

I propose doing the same on TeX.SE. Rename to but keep mathematica as a synonym.

Link to chat discussion on the topic.


Update: It seems people are in favour of just renaming the tag to wolfram-mathematica and not having any synonym for it, so I'm modifying the proposal to suggest this solution (i.e. no synonym). If you disagree, please comment.

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    If you keep it as a synonym, it will still show up when people start math.... Is the idea that they will then see that it is a synonym, appreciate what that means and think again?
    – cfr
    May 14, 2016 at 0:29
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    @cfr Actually it's wolfram-mathematica that would show up visibly. It's less likely that people would select that by accident or as a misunderstanding.
    – Szabolcs
    May 14, 2016 at 8:45
  • This is a very good proposal, but I would go even further and not have the synonym. May 14, 2016 at 11:52
  • @HenriMenke Personally I'm fine with that if it is technically possible.
    – Szabolcs
    May 14, 2016 at 12:38
  • @HenriMenke Dropping the synonym would seem best to me, too.
    – cfr
    May 14, 2016 at 13:33
  • @cfr OK, I updated the post to say no synonym.
    – Szabolcs
    May 14, 2016 at 14:03

1 Answer 1

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This should now be done: set up. I've removed the old tag.

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  • Just for clarity in the record for the future, can you clarify the status of the old mathematica tag?
    – E.P.
    May 21, 2016 at 19:37

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