Why do we ask for the body of the question to demonstrate the tags it uses?

Question

In a few questions I've raised in the past, it's been pointed out to me that it is not enough to just include the tags you categorize the Q into, but also call it out in the body of the Q itself. I've had this pointed out for a statistics Q, a designer-reasons Q, and most recently, a rules-as-written Q.

This is fair enough: it helps with clarity. But we don't seem to treat a family of tags the same way. Game system tags (3.5e vs 4e vs 5e D&D, for example) are added in without need of mentioning them in the body. And in fact, even if the body makes it clear which system it is using, if the Q is not yet tagged with the specific system (not the same as using the system-agnostic tag), we wait until the querent tags it with a specific game system first before answering.

Using game systems tags is one of the first things a new querent will learn. If they have a 5e question, it is easiest to find the 5e tag. Therefore, game systems have the most used, most visible tags, and they are the most demonstrative of how tags should work. If there is an exception being made for them that the other tags do not share, it is not entirely clear. If adding the 5e tag to a question is enough to mark it as a 5e question, then a new user will understandably rationalize that adding a rules-as-written tag will make it a RAW question. And adding a statistics tag will make it a statistics question. And so it goes.

Has this been discussed before? If so, where? If not, why do we consider game system tags to be different from all the rest, in the regard that you have to be explicit with the latter in the body, but the former does not?

Answer 1

1. Because in practice most people don't read the tags

Based on many years of experience observing how questions and answers interact here, it is very common (not a majority, but definitely still a common event) for someone to read a title, find it interesting and click to open the question, read the body, and then start writing an answer without ever reading the tags.

(This is a source of a steady drip of answers that are off topic for non-D&D questions, since they skip reading the system tag, assume it's D&D, and write an off-topic answer based on D&D rules.)

Many people don't read tags.

2. Because it's not the answerer's responsibility to check the tags for extra info, it's the asker's responsibility to write a clear question first

Tags are for searching and sorting. Their job is to categorise a question after the fact, for the convenience of future searchers, and to help connect the question with the relevant experts. That's all tags are designed to be for.

When someone clicks through to a question, the behaviour observed and described above — answering based on the title and body, not the tags — is a pretty reasonable response most of the time. We here at Stack Exchange are about leveraging normal human behaviours to best create a repository of expertise on a site's topic. The more we have to fight human nature, the worse we're accomplishing our mission.

So, as a result, we cater to that normal human cognitive process — read question, write answer — and we have a small horde of editors who are ready to revise questions so that they are easily answerable, and we have tools to hold questions that can't be knocked into answerable shape by a 3rd party editor.

To this end, questions are expected to completely describe their problem, before any tags are applied, and be understandable without reading the tags.

(We make an exception for system tags because it works in practice, with the few times it doesn't work being low-frequency and causing little difficulty to fix by 3rd parties.)

3. Because we need to be able to agree how to tag a question without reading any minds

Tags belong on questions only if they categorise the question. It's not enough for the writer to “know” whether a tag applies, because we have to be able to curate it independently of their hidden brain-knowledge.

We need to be able to each individually look at a question, and be able to basically agree on how to tag it according to objective criteria. In the long term, that objective criteria can only exist in the title and body of the question itself, nowhere else, or it gets lost. We don't have permanent guaranteed access to the question-writer every time we need to reconsider how a particular question is curated; we don't have (public) access to old comments; we can't go haring off searching chat or meta on the off chance that the question was once discussed and there exists clarifying material elsewhere.

No, the question itself needs to fully contain its justification for its tags, and tags aren't self-justifying just by their existence (because tags categorise question content, not themselves).

Answer 2

Game systems are not demonstrative of how tags should work in general: their usage is exceptional and breaks the rules of how tags get used, but we do it that way because it works really, really well without causing any trouble. Every other tag is demonstrative of how tags should work: we tag based on information already in the question.

Tagging basics

Describing the content of the question is how tags work by default. From our help center on tags:

A tag is a word or phrase that describes the topic of the question.

When the text of a question seems to carry no indication of why a tag is there, the tag does not belong and gets removed and never added. Tags exclusively describe the content already there, and do not add new information themselves. A question about casting a fireball doesn't get (or keep) the armor tag unless it's clearly a question that is also about armor, for example.

That's the default, at least.

Game system tags are a useful exception

Some stacks have tags that are an exception to that rule. On RPG.SE it's the system tag: we don't need you to say "I'm playing D&D 3.5e" somewhere in every question if the question is tagged dnd-3.5e. This is like how on Stack Overflow nobody asks you to tell them the programming language you're using as long as your question is given a programming language tag such as python or c++.

This is an exception to the norm. It's an exception we've developed because it causes no trouble and is pretty intuitive. So you're right, we don't treat them the same way. But this doesn't mean we can start using other tags the same way without causing trouble.

We did treat RAW that way for a while, and we specifically stopped because it was causing trouble. I'll get to that in moment.

And in fact, even if the body makes it clear which system it is using, if the Q is not yet tagged with the specific system (not the same as using the system-agnostic tag), we wait until the querent tags it with a specific game system first before answering.

That's not quite how it is. When it's clear what system they're using, we just add the tag and move on. However there's only one circumstance we count as being clear: they say explicitly what system they're using in the question text. In all other cases, we don't guess, and we do what you're describing there.

Rules as Written is not (any longer) an exception

Until 2016, we handled Rules as Written like system tags: if you add the rules-as-written tag to something then suddenly, regardless of what's in the question text, it's now a rules-as-written question and only rules-as-written answers count. This was a problem because a lot of people didn't understand what using rules-as-written meant, and thought it was equivalent to rules.

The community collectively endorsed a change to that plan in February 2016: A low-intervention approach [rules-as-written]: back to tagging basics. As the name suggests, we've gone back to the basic tagging practices I described at the top for how the rules-as-written tag gets used: the question gets the tag if it's clear the tag belongs, otherwise, it does not get the tag. If it has the tag despite it not belonging we ask for clarification on why they added it, and then modify the question to clarify why the RAW tag belongs or to remove the RAW tag because it doesn't.

There aren't other exceptions

We judge the content of your question and what tags it should have by what's written in the title and body. It gets tags that correspond to that content, and tags never add new information that wasn't already there. The sole exception is the system tag which is allowed to clarify the game being used all on its own.

Your question is only a statistics question as long as it would be read that way going solely by the question's title and body. Then we add or remove the tag based on whether it is truly a statistics question. Adding the statistics tag does not, itself, make an otherwise not-statistics question a statistics question.

Answer 3

Eh, I'm just going to repost my answer from the linked Q since we seem to be doing this again here, mildly edited.

This is not a problem specific to tags.

Someone can always make an unclear question. They can do it with words in the title, words in the question, or words in the tags. The site response to lack of clarity is, I trust, well trod enough not to require me to go over it. Get them to clarify, vote to close if needed.

Tags do convey implicit information, which is why they exist, have tag wikis, etc. It's good, and a useful shorthand. If someone wants a system-agnostic technique they don't need to spend a paragraph explaining "I want a technique I can use across the various games I run, man". I can only imagine most attempts at doing this would lead to even more pedantic arguing in comments.

This is a long way to go for a pretty simple answer.

For example, game system tags are pretty self explanatory. If it says [dnd-5e] then it can be assumed to be a normal D&D 5e question. Some uses of tags are clear and don't need further elaboration. (It's possible to have a question tagged [dnd-5e which isn't just trivially about the scope of D&D 5e, in which case you do need more information, see below.)

However, just adding a tag sometimes doesn't really give enough information, or at least is going to create bad answers. Let's take as an example "Give me a way to alternate melee and ranged attacks in one full attack" simply tagged with [feat] isn't going to sufficiently signal to an answerer that you only want feats as an answer to the question. Maybe it's just a "suggestion," maybe it's because you already mentioned a feat in your question, maybe it's because you're a noob and think "well of course the only way to get this would probably be a feat." This question is unclear despite the application of a tag. Your [statistics] question is an example of this - is the tag describing your question, the answers you want, is it just a semi related add on (people do this too much out of tag lust or something)...?

Rules-as-written is a special case, it's a meta tag that we are tolerating that IMO causes more problems than it solves, as it's not a term unambigiously clear to everyone, so you really need to use your words more (scope of sources allowed? what do you personally mean when you say RAW?) when using it as a tag.

If your question is not clear - make it clear, using tags, words in the body, words in the title, etc.

If you do not understand a question - including its tag use - ask for clarification. It's the one actual intended, constructive use of the comment system.