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Why do we (currently have) 277 questions tagged with ? This seems like one of the most generic and pointless tags out there.

I realise that back when tablets were new and unusual in the Android world there was even a competition with prizes for questions tagged as but tablets were so rare then that this was understandable, not so any more, these days it would just cause us problems.

The roughly equivalent tag is synonymised to , and we've already run clean-ups on Manufacturer tags and actively discourage model specific tags, except where really needed.

Possible solutions:

  1. Go through a tag cleanup exercise to pare down to just questions that really are specific problems that would only affect tablets but aren't specific enough to need tagging with the model (I'm struggling to think what they would be). Edit the wiki to note that the Tablet tag should only be used when really needed.

  2. Synonymise with (will probably need to do a tag clean-up exercise, at least on the questions with only the tablet tag if nothing else).

  3. Leave things as they are, tablets really are a different category of questions that need identifying.

  • The reason this still exists is because cleanup has never been completed! hardware is another monster that probably needs cleaning up as well, I think we might want to remove phone as a synonym and direct people to dialer. – Matthew Read Jan 10 '14 at 16:32
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    Cleanup done, 115 questions left. – Izzy♦ Jan 22 '14 at 22:08
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I agree with GAThrawn on "solution 1": a cleanup never hurts. I'm currently not sure whether we really should remove/synonymize the tablet tag, as I pointed out in my comment on Flow's answer:

Here comes the idea to GAThrawn's "what they would be":
What about questions really specific to "dialer-less devices", e.g. including issues with apps requiring the dialer (or rather "SMS receiving functionality") for activation (WhatsApp might be one example)? While questions specific to such an app could take its tag (whatsapp-messenger in this example), what about more generic question as e.g. "How to deal with apps like this in general / are there generic work-arounds"?

Creating an alternative tag (dialerless-hardware) might be a fit for this special case; but there could be more we are currently unaware of, and which might not fit this pattern.

Hence my suggestion: Let's start with "solution 1" and do a cleanup. While doing that, keep these thoughts in mind, collecting ideas. Those could include:

  • alternative tags to be created, matching a larger group of the tablet questions
  • synonyms to other tags, including the "tablet" substring, pointing to existing and fitting tags
  • re-tagging to existing tags (automatically happens during cleanup)

Whenever an idea seems to be a possible solution, update this question (using comments when unsure, or directly using answers otherwise). Once the cleanup is done, we are wiser, and most likely able to decide on further steps (if any are still required then).

  • I finished the cleanup, which left 115 questions. Dividable in 3 categories: 1) missing tag for the specific tablet device, 2) not specific to a single device, but tablet-specific (as opposed to phones; mostly as "non-dialing-devices", sometimes also "large-screen-devices"), 3) not sure what category to put them in. – Izzy♦ Jan 22 '14 at 22:12
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I would keep the tablet tag. But I would also have kept the phone tag, as I think that there exist questions that are only relevant for phones and tablets.

Please don't confuse this with irrelevant tags added to posts. If a question isn't phone specific, there is no need to add the phone tag. Side note: But there is also no big harm in adding it, as long as the tag doesn't occupy the spot for a more relevant one.

  • A tag isn't useful simply by virtue of being relevant. tablet and phone are far too broad to be useful categories. Nobody needs a phone tag on a dialer question, for example; the latter, better tag is obviously only applicable to phones. – Matthew Read Jan 10 '14 at 16:31
  • I disagree. For the same reason I would not remove the 'usb' tag from a question tagged with 'usb-tethering', as long as the more generic tag, 'usb' in this case, does not occupy a slot of a more relevant tag. It does no harm, on the opposite I think it will be a bit helpful. I enjoy exploring stackexchange sites by tags and I think someone could find the top e.g. 'tablet' questions helpful. – Flow Jan 10 '14 at 17:02
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    One more point (and here comes the idea to GAThrawn's "what they would be") are questions really specific to "dialer-less devices", e.g. including issues with apps requiring the dialer (or rather "SMS receiving functionality") for activation (WhatsApp might be one example). While questions specific to such an app could take its tag (whatsapp-messenger in this example), what about more generic question as e.g. "How to deal with apps like this in general / are there generic work-arounds"? Creating a dialerless-hardware tag? – Izzy♦ Jan 10 '14 at 17:13

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