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A while back there was a revamp of the ask page which introduced a lot more per site customization. Of relevance here is that we can have the page react to tags:

  • Tag-related error messages and warnings, regex-based (seen with custom error text in screenshot 4, with the default text on screenshot 5, and with a tag warning here).

  • The warning and error messages described in the two bullet points above have a limit of 1000 characters.

We occasionally still get questions tagged with and . While the excerpts rather aggressively declare them off-topic, those are obviously not read often enough and the existence of the tag gives the impression the question type is on topic (because why else would we have the tag?).

We have what looks to me like a nail and a suitable hammer, now to make sure we strike true; we need good text for the warning or error. Some considerations:

  • Making it an error will prevent the question from being posted with the tag.

  • I think we'll want to guide askers to fix the question type or frame rather than just omitting the tag.

  • I'm assuming the two tags are similar enough that the text will be either near identical, or we can just use the same one keying off "- recommendation", thus covering them both as part of this question.

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    \$\begingroup\$ We ought to properly tag off-topic questions that are currently without the tag, so an error and an inability to edit the tags would cause harm. \$\endgroup\$ Aug 23, 2021 at 15:30
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    \$\begingroup\$ @Akixkisu I'm pretty sure it wouldn't prevent edits, only the question being asked with the new tag. Though I don't know whether those errors are the same as the blocklist (which does prevent tag edits) \$\endgroup\$
    – Someone_Evil Mod
    Aug 23, 2021 at 15:36
  • \$\begingroup\$ I don't know how it works, we should research it. \$\endgroup\$ Aug 23, 2021 at 15:39
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    \$\begingroup\$ @Akixkisu So purely based on current behaviour, errors seem to stem from burniated tags. Admittedly, that doesn't mean we can't have it throw an error for a non-blocked tags. I'll put out an inquiry on whether it's possible. \$\endgroup\$
    – Someone_Evil Mod
    Aug 23, 2021 at 15:50
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    \$\begingroup\$ If anyone else wants to examine the questions (including deleted) with the tags, this SEDE query will give a CSV of all questions (including deleted), and you can get a list of question IDs having the tags by importing the CSV into R and running this code, adjusting the date as desired: data[data$CreationDate>"2020-01-01"&(grepl("game-recommendation",data$Tags)|grepl("tool-recommendation",data$Tags)),1] \$\endgroup\$ Aug 25, 2021 at 20:06
  • \$\begingroup\$ I believe the reason we didn't originally block the tag was so we could still add it to questions that were definitely game recommendations (and then close them). We're not beholden to that decision though, we could now decide to block it (and then still close those questions if we think they're game recs). \$\endgroup\$ Aug 26, 2021 at 19:29
  • \$\begingroup\$ Note: not all questions asked with these tags are off-topic; the tag is sometimes misused. See former game rec questions in SEDE. \$\endgroup\$
    – Laurel
    Aug 28, 2021 at 17:49

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