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I am seeing this happen again and again. Sometimes people tag the .NET and C# questions with "assembly" tag while in reality it belongs for Assembly programming questions.

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closed as off-topic by Martijn Pieters, hims056, 3ventic, Aziz Shaikh, ɥʇǝS May 7 at 16:41



Well, I have answered quite a few questions in both categories because of this. Not a real problem, in my book, but an assembly language programmer would be wise to sub-tag it with the dialect he's using. –  Uphill Luge Jan 11 '11 at 14:42
See also the 2012 tag cleanup. –  user142852 Apr 29 '12 at 14:28

4 Answers 4

To answer the question in your title: You can't.

People will always use the tags they think are appropriate. They won't necessarily appreciate that the tag has another meaning.

You can do one (or all) of the following - depending on your reputation level:

  • Retag the question to remove the offending tag or replace it with a more appropriate one.
  • Add a comment to the question pointing out that the tag has been misused.
  • Flag the question for moderator attention - though I'd be reluctant to do this except in very rare circumstances.

I don't think the question would deserve a down-vote though.

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Yes, removing a tag and leaving a comment seems to be best option... –  Madhur Ahuja Jan 11 '11 at 12:13

Change to when it's appropriate to do so. Eventually the latter will show up in the tag suggestion list when a user types "ass" and this will become less of a problem.

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When I type "ass" it comes up with asp-classic. ;-) –  tvanfosson Jan 11 '11 at 14:37
Sounds right to me! ;) (Sorry, I don't even know you, I just said that because it's funny.) –  Powerlord Jan 11 '11 at 16:22
I've been doing this as I notice things on the front page. -1 to Microsoft for reusing a common term like this. –  ohmantics Feb 3 '11 at 21:12

No. Assemblies are a core part of the .NET framework. You will not evict us from the tag. You therefore have two choices.

  1. Go move your primitive low level language questions to
  2. Live with us in peace and harmony, singing folky songs around the campfire

Personally, I'd suggest #1. The harder the language, the more cranky the developer, imho. This is well demonstrated by C++ developers. C devs are a derivation from the rule, but I believe that's because of all the pot they smoke. Hippies.

So I don't think it is quite possible that we can hang and shoot the sheet around the keg. I can't stand listening to people talking about how they pushed and popped their registers while I'm trying to explain how I'm publishing my latest mobile app to Azure when the current iteration completes.

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I don't agree that this can't be done. Rather I think, that the term is non intiutive and this is the reason why it gets constantly confused.

IMO the tag 'assembly' should be used for .NET and 'assembler' or 'asm' for assembler related questions. I think that this would be more intuitive to use for both.

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An "assembler" is a tool that converts assembly language to machine code. The questions are usually about the language and not the tool, so "assembler" is wrong. –  interjay Nov 4 '13 at 15:00
@interjay, yes, I know very well what an "assembler" is, but I'm sure that assembly progrmamer know the difference. ;) And having a tag that is missleading just because it is "correct" is not much better. –  Devolus Nov 4 '13 at 16:52
It's just as misleading (probably more) to use the tag for .NET assemblies. –  interjay Nov 4 '13 at 16:56

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