What should the usage guidance be for tags where that aspect has different levels of granularity?

Question

We have a number of tag groups, mostly for tagging the cultural background of a question, where the cultural aspects have different scopes, different levels of granularity, that causes the tags in that group to overlap.

What should our usage guidance (the tag wiki excerpt) be for these tags? How do we help our users how to choose the most appropriate tag?

Examples

Location

An example is the location. If a querant lives in Amsterdam, a lot of locational tags can apply that may or may not be relevant:

• amsterdam
• randstad
• north-netherlands ("above the rivers", as Dutch people say, but in Dutch of course)
• the-netherlands
• western-europe
• europe

Religion

The same goes for religion, for instance calvinism is a branch of protestantism which itself is a part of christianity, an abrahamic-religion.

I'm sure other examples exist, but I'll use location here.

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We can't use the whole range of tags, from city to continent. So we want the OP (or subsequent editors) to choose the relevant tag, the one with the appropriate scope. How can we craft our usage guidance to tell our users to do so?

Ideally, I think we want something like

Use this tag if {$location} is relevant to the question. Please consider the appropriate scope.

How exactly do we word this?

I think we need to add a line indicating what we mean by "appropriate scope".

Answer 1

We don't use location tags here, we use culture tags

As I wrote elsewhere culture really exists as a fractal. We will occasionally have questions which validly are scoped to a continent-wide culture, and sometimes we'll have questions which are scoped to a very narrow subculture (including particular internet subcultures.) But I suggested that by default the general granularity we would see would be a country-language culture combination. For various reasons, most countries have developed distinct cultures over their histories, and as most questions on this site are conversation related, languages make sense as a default scope.

For predominantly mono-lingual countries, it's simplest just to use the country name as a tag. For multi-lingual countries, it will probably be helpful to specify both the country and language, so for example, french-switzerland and german-switzerland. (The Swiss may prefer to use their own endonyms like Romandy, but that's a discussion to be had when it arises.)

If we get many questions about some particular culture which is specific to Amsterdam, then it would be appropriate to use both tags, amsterdam and the-netherlands, but only if it is about a subculture which is genuinely unique to amsterdam and also is known as the Amsterdam Culture, rather than some other name. But if we get only a couple of questions about that culture, then it doesn't warrant a tag! Religion tags are probably not likely to be used too frequently here, but they could be appropriate in Ireland for example. In that case, the specific religious categorisations should not be used, but instead the cultural categorisations: Catholic and Protestant.

As far as the tag wikis, considering that most of the tags you raised should not exist, we don't really need to worry about it. For the country tags, I would recommend that they explain that they are for questions in that country and the dominant language of that country. Continent level tags should say that they are only to be used for the rare questions about cultures which are genuinely continent-spanning, and are not to be used with a country level tag.

Answer 2

Since the tag excerpts are intended to be for usage guidance and it's desirable for users to get answers that best for the cultural context of their situation, without being too specific, I think it's a good idea to offer a higher level of domain but not a lower level. As examples, try these.

calvinism

Use this tag if you need answers from a viewpoint that includes the culture and beliefs of Calvanism. If appropriate, consider using protestantism or christianity instead for a broader viewpoint.

protestantism

Use this tag if you need answers from a viewpoint that includes the culture and beliefs of Protestantism. If appropriate, consider using christianity instead for a broader viewpoint.

atlanta

Use this tag if you need answers from a viewpoint that includes the culture of Altlant, Georgia. If appropriate, consider using georgia-usa or southern-usa or united-states instead for a broader viewpoint.

georgia-usa

Georgia, state in USA. Use this tag if you need answers from a viewpoint that includes the culture of Georgia. If appropriate, consider using southern-usa or united-states instead for a broader viewpoint.

georgia

Georgia, country in Europe. Use this tag if you need answers from a viewpoint that includes the culture of the country of Georgia. If appropriate, consider eastern-europe or europe instead for a broader viewpoint.

southern-usa

Use this tag if you need answers from a viewpoint that includes the culture of the southern USA. If appropriate, consider united-states tag instead for a broader viewpoint.

These are, of course, only samples, and we can update tag excerpts as needed. For example, if georgia-usa doesn't exist when atlanta is created, it can be left out of the excerpt, and be added whenever it's needed.

Answer 3

Just a thought, but wouldn't the tag description for amsterdam read something like:

Amsterdam is a city in the Randstad megalopolis located in the northern Netherlands...

Honestly I don't see why people would need to be this specific with their location tagging, but if a specific city tag were created the tag description should probably point to where that city is, negating the need for further location tags.

The same should probably work for religion tags and other more granular tags. If it's a specific grain of something that already has a tag, it would be logical to have that noted in the tag description.

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I think the usage guidance should be something to the effect of:

Please limit your question's scope by using one location tag only. There's no need to use all tags that apply to your location. If your question is about the same situation in multiple locations, consider asking separate questions.