What is the difference between the tag social-event and parties?

Question

While I was going through the list of tags, I noticed the tag parties (27 questions) which reminded me of the tag social-event (41 questions).

Here is the definition for each one:

parties: Questions for which the location is in a party, or a party-based setting.

.

social-event: For questions about issues that take place in a situation where there are many other people around, ranging from strangers to close friends.

I'm not a native English speaker, so I could be wrong here, but aren't those the same thing?

• If yes, could we turn parties into a synonym of social-event?

• If no, what is the difference between them and could we edit the descriptions to makes it clearer?

Answer 1

I think it remains a major difference between parties and social-events: the event mood. Parties imply that the people attending them have a good time, it's a joyful context, while social events may be something else, like a funeral or a family gathering. To me, parties are a subset of such social-events, thence I don't see the problem in the existence of a specific tag to tackle them.

However, looking at the questions tagged either with parties or social-events led me to the conclusion that most questions tagged with social events are actually dealing with party situations. It may therefore be a good idea to do as you suggest and consider editing the tags' description.

I suggest using those descriptions:

parties: Questions for which the location is in a party, or a party-based setting.

social-events: Questions for which the situation involve numerous people and/or social interactions. (It may either be a family dinner, a conference, a funeral, and so on).

As you can see, I think the current description of the parties tag is pretty clear. About the second one, I am not sure whether it is useful to add the content in brackets as the previous sentence should be enough to describe the tag usage, but I wanted to have your opinion on it.

Answer 2

We should make parties a synonym of social-events.

I agree with the avazula's answer that the difference between a party social event and a non-party social event is that a party is always meant to be a joyful occasion. However, I don't think this is significant enough to warrant a separate tag.

To give some examples, parties can include:

• birthday
• anniversary
• graduation
• house party
• frat party
• dinner party

Not necessarily parties, but still a social event:

• family reunion
• picnic with friends
• charity dinner
• poetry slam

^{(Side note: I deliberately left out things like weddings and funerals, because those events have a well-defined cultural significance and etiquette associated with them, unlike these examples.)}

The distinguishing factor that makes a time spent with others a "social event" seems to be that it involves some amount of preparation, planning, organizing, inviting, etc. So then, the only real difference between a "social event" and a "party" is that parties are thrown with the main goal of having a fun, often celebratory time (whereas a more general "social event" might have a main goal of raising funds for charity or sharing family news). I don't think we need a separate tag for that.

Reason 1: Either way, the body of the question will still need to contain the details of what the occasion is and what the expectations are for guests at the event. Calling it a "party" doesn't really give us any more information than "social event".

Reason 2: From the tag help page,

Tags are a means of connecting experts with questions they will be able to answer by sorting questions into specific, well-defined categories.

Tags can also be used to help you identify questions that are interesting or relevant to you.

I think "social events" and "parties" are close enough in nature that someone who is knowledgeable about one will also be knowledgeable in the other, so again, there's no need to treat them as different types of questions.

Answer 3

We shouldn’t have either tag.

As described in the tag help page,

Do not use meta-tags in questions. Here are some tips to help you determine whether a tag is a meta-tag:

• If the tag can’t work as the only tag on a question, it’s probably a meta-tag. Every tag you use should be able to work, more or less, as the only tag on a question. Meta-tags, like [beginner], [subjective], and [best-practices], are not helpful by themselves – they do not communicate anything about the content of the question.
• If the tag commonly means different things to different people, it’s probably a meta-tag. For example, the meaning of the tag [subjective] is, itself, subjective; the same is true for tags like [best-practices] and [beginner]. Best practices to whom? Beginner by what criteria? Use only tags that have a broadly accepted, objective definition.

What does party convey to readers? It tells us the setting of the interaction was with some number of other people who were (supposed to be?) in a happy mood. Sure, but that’s already going to be in the question body -- it doesn’t tell us if what type of interpersonal skills OP needs help with, which is what the site is actually about. The social-events tag is even worse, because there’s even less information conveyed!

Instead, we should be using skill-oriented tags. For example, is the issue with understanding what is considered the proper behavior? etiquette. Does OP need to quietly handle a conflict at an event without disrupting others? conflict-aversion. Want to get people to stop trying to get you to drink at parties? saying-no.

Tags describing a very general type of “social event”, party or otherwise, don’t give us useful information. We should get rid of both, and replace them with tags that are actually descriptive of the situation and skills OP wants to learn about.

^{(As with my other answer, I’ve deliberately left out things like weddings and funerals, because those events have a well-defined cultural significance and etiquette associated with them, so those tags do give us useful information.)}