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It seems to me that - as this is a User Experience site - every question posted could reasonably be tagged with . It's more or less a meaningless tag. Certainly when I notice a question has been tagged with this it isn't tagged with anything of any relation to the actual post itself. It is often paired up with too, but we can't really get rid of that one as not all UX questions are about web design, so it is still useful (albeit highly misused).

It seems that is the default 'I don't know what to tag my question, so I'll just tag it 'interaction design' instead', which makes the whole purpose of tagging questions lose the purpose. I've been deleting uses of user-interaction when they appear to have been used in this way.

Should this tag be removed and blacklisted so that people have to actually tag their questions with something meaningful instead? We can just assume that every question posted is going to be related to User Interaction in general.

If you can think of a good reason to keep this tag around then leave an answer to show why, or leave your suggestions as to whether or not we should keep it around.

4 Answers 4

Reset to default
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[user-interaction] removed from (689 post, 850 history, 1 tag)
total: 1 tags deleted, 689 posts modified, 850 post histories modified
29 history records had empty tags; retagged to [untagged]
29 post records had empty tags; retagged to [untagged]

I haven't set up a blacklist. Let's see if the tag resurfaces and becomes a problem again first.

In the meantime, please go through the questions list and fix those questions up through retagging or deleting as needed.

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I believe it is broad enough that it could be eliminated as anyone who selects that tag could and should select other tags that are narrower in scope and are more descriptive of what the nature of the question truly is.

Essentially by removing the tag we are saying "Yes, your question is about user-interaction... but what type?"

More granularity would make for more meaningful categorization which is the value tags provide in the first place.

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How about having a "Interaction-paradigm" tag or similar tag? I could think of a few legit UX questions very specific to User-Interaction and nothing else.

My point is User-Interaction is a subset of UX, removing it could cause a community wide panic.

Quoting a brief discussion on UX chat with JonW

Any question with psychological aspects about "why this design" would mostly not be about interaction. Say a billboard, physical entities or even videos. elevator button syndrome related questions - how will you tag it?

I understand where you are coming from, moderation for "user-interaction" tag is a hassle these days. say, if someone were to use the user-interaction tag (after its removal), is it possible to show him/her a list of alternatives he/she could use instead of this generic tag? That would definitely be more helpful and productive.

don't judge me for quoting myself :P if someone has already read it on chat - it would be weird to read it again.

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    With regard to psychological aspects I always struggle with those questions because that is what Cog Sci SE is for. Human psychology may be a reason for a particular interface or interaction, but if the question is strictly about user psychology and not about a type of user-interaction then there may be an argument to migrate to CogSci. Case by case basis of course, but it is certainly a borderline area.
    – Charles Wesley
    Jul 19, 2013 at 17:09
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While I agree with your argument, I just checked the usage of the tag and it is not 'that' rampant.

682 tags out of 8629 questions currently, is 7.9% questions.

Interaction design tag usage

Here is what the big picture looks like:

website-design is the most used tag at 948 (10.98%) instances so far

usability at 805 (9.32%) and forms at 753 (8.72%) follow.

enter image description here

Now, comparing with other 'big' SEs to check the % utilization of tags:

SuperUser 180,422 questions: windows-7 26129 (14.48%),linux19168 (10.62%),windows` 18635 (10.32%) and so on

Arcade 32,778 questions: skyrim 2377 (7.25%), minecraft 2175 (6.63%), diablo-3 1988 (6.06%) and so on

askubuntu 110,118 questions: 12.04 14685 (13.35%), installation 8506 (7.72%), 11.10 6023 (5.46%)

Photography 8626 questions: lens 1095 (12.69%), equipment-recommendation (really!?) 851 (11.04%), canon 792 (9.18%)

I would think that look at the top tags should give you the flavor of the SE. User interaction might be a day to day thing for UX people, but for people outside the domain, it is a new term and would be helpful to see questions pertaining to that. Maybe we can make it a synonym of 'interaction-design' to give it a better sound or something if need be.

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    OK, I kind of agree with your line that it gives people a flavor of the site, but surely the actual name of the site does that better? That's like saying StackOverflow should allow the tag Programming to be used cos it helps identify the site, even though it's a meaningless tag when used on questions. Also, one of the reasons that user-interaction is only at 7.9% is because that tags gets edited out of questions when people retag them to use actual useful tags. And also (possibly) because existing users know what the site is about and don't tag their questions with meaningless tags.
    – JonW Mod
    Jul 17, 2013 at 21:41
  • @JonW The name of the site is "User Experience" and we already have that tag as black listed. That is my point with the flavor, 'User Interaction' is not quite ubiquitous. I would say interface design is a more popular buzzword that user-interaction/interaction-design, hence my vote that it (all 2 tags) not be black listed, rather merge the 2 tags into something more aggreable.
    – rk.
    Jul 17, 2013 at 23:14
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    I don't think you're getting my main point though. It's not that the tag is used too much, or that it is too prevalant, it is that it exists in the first place. No question is enhanced by it being tagged User-Interaction. Tags are supposed to help people search for specific types of questions / situations. This tag is meaningless for this purpose as it covers everything. I disagree with merging the two tags though, Interaction-Design is a more unique topic in its own right though. Not all UX questions are about Interaction Design. However all UX questions are about 'User Interaction'
    – JonW Mod
    Jul 18, 2013 at 8:06

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