There are a subset of tags that often correlate with off-topic questions. (The ones I can think of off the top of my head on SO at least are and . In the vast majority of cases, the questions are off-topic for SO and on-topic for either SU or SF.

Should there be some kind of additional confirmation for some tags, along the lines of "are you sure you wish to post this here?" with something contextual ("managing iptables questions should be posted at ServerFault", "ffmpeg questions about command line usage should be posted on SuperUser", etc.)?

This could be similar to the "questions containing jfiddler links must contain code". –  gunr2171 May 5 at 13:20
I'd love to see a "[ar] questions shouldn't be about Augmented Reality" popup. But honestly if people don't read the tag wiki summaries they're probably just going to click through any warnings anyway. –  Wooble May 5 at 13:27
@Wooble I disagree -- those summaries just pop up briefly while typing in tags, but a separate confirmation I think would be a stronger deterrent... (?) –  Joe May 5 at 13:28
Im not familiar with those tags, but it sounds to me that if you need to warn people about using a tag then your real issue is the tag, not the people. –  David Grinberg May 5 at 17:23
Hmm, some ffmpeg questions are on topic like how to use the API –  staticx May 5 at 17:26
@Dgrin91 We can't do anything about the fact that the ffmpeg people chose to name a program the same thing as the library. The tag could be split in two, maybe: ffmpeg-libav and ffmpeg-cli (ignoring for a moment that libav also refers to something else). ffmpeg-cli is, AFAIK, always off-topic on SO. So the user could be prompted to post on SU in that case. –  njahnke May 5 at 17:27
Go look at the ffmpeg tag and see how many of them are related to the library. If you use that tag and mean the library, you click through and post your question. But vast majority are wrong. –  Joe May 5 at 17:36
I would really like to see this for the bootstrap tag. It is purportedly for the process of bootstrapping, but get's misused a lot as a way to refer to twitter-bootstrap –  KyleMit May 5 at 18:05
Add SEO to the list –  John Conde May 5 at 18:13
I agree somewhat with the road @staticx is going down. There are a number of tags that can go either way. In these cases I think generally either 1) the user knows what they are doing and will decide correctly or 2) the user does not know what they are doing and will still not know which site is correct after seeing the warning. Perhaps put this post into a review queue automatically is what I would say except that some of the queues tend to clog up rather easily. –  demongolem May 5 at 18:21
@Wooble I disagree as well, as some what long time user of this site, I have never read anything in the tag wikis. –  iamkrillin May 5 at 18:40
@demongolem If the warning gives them a link to click on to take them to the appropriate SO site to post the question on, then some users will figure it out. –  David Conrad May 5 at 18:50
@njahnke There are plenty of reasons for ffmpeg-cli to be on-topic. Most folks use STDIO to interface with FFmpeg, and its input and output can be tricky to manage at times. While I agree that there are an awful lot of posts purely about FFmpeg that should be moved to SuperUser, let's not exclude folks from making what would otherwise be an on-topic question, just because the FFmpeg binary is involved. –  Brad May 5 at 19:15
I am often tempted to remove all pdf/png/(other file type) flags from questions that relate to copying or moving or storing these files in general. Should not these tags be reserved for questions about these file formats, and not "I happen to have files called 'x'"? Example:…;… –  Jongware May 5 at 21:24
regex could use a warning when no other tags are selected... –  zzzzBov May 6 at 4:53

1 Answer 1

From a UX perspective:


It is considered bad practice to increase the number of steps and "confirmations" required to achieve a task in an application. Generally, you are better off performing the action and then giving the user the option to undo.

In this case, that would be like posting the question, and in case it gets downvoted or flagged, notify the user that it may be more appropriate for a different SE site.


It may be possible to require extra confirmation from low-reputation or new users, and then stop requiring such as soon as they reach some reputation line.

More thoughts:

Rather than trying to "add" to the system while keeping the original source of confusion intact, it might be a good idea to figure out and resolve why users are confused in the first place.

I think it's not unreasonable to consider, for instance, renaming ffmpeg to ffmpeg-api if it is considered that only questions about the API are relevant (just an example).

I like this idea (the compromise). We get this with the Xcode tag a lot and it seems to be users who don't understand the difference between a compiler and IDE. So usually low-rep users. –  user1118321 May 6 at 4:25
There's also a lot of "I'm using xcode so I'll add that tag" going on. In general, people are pretty bad at tagging, and paying attention to tag excerpts... –  Charles May 6 at 7:55
I think the renaming suggestion was a good idea. To bad I cannot vote on parts of the answer :) –  daramarak May 6 at 8:48
I dont think a warning needs to be a blocking warning, just an exert of text that shows up on the page, maybe above the tagging block "The [sometag] tag is often missued, etc ...." –  iamkrillin May 6 at 13:05
@iamkrillin: we already have that feature in the wiki summaries that show up when you're typing tags. Some of them literally say "DO NOT EVEN THINK OF POSTING THIS QUESTION". They're... ineffective. –  Wooble May 6 at 15:59
@Wooble The summaries show up while typing, but that requires that the user is focused on the summary while they're typing. If a warning appears (semi-)permanently like iamkrillin suggests, then the user is more likely to see it and think about it, especially if they're new. –  bfrohs May 6 at 16:02
It's 'bad UX' in that users dislike it. However, this is about discouraging people from doing something. The perfect way to do that is to make it hard. –  Marcin May 6 at 16:03
@Marcin you're correct, but the presumption that it's about "discouraging people from doing something" is false IMO. I don't think the goal is to have fewer ffmpeg questions overall (which is what "discouraging" promotes), it is reducing the number of off-topic questions. I think the best way to do that is to make sure that users who are prone to misunderstanding the meaning of the tags are more informed of the meaning. The user's intent is not evil; the posting of the off-topic question is usually due to confusion. –  Chris May 6 at 17:35

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