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Already I am seeing tags used for individual movies - Inception, Tree-of-life, Star Wars.

Should we be encouraging tagging on individual movies, or will that get out of hand with each movie getting its own tag.

I can see the argument for series of movies - Star Wars, James Bond - but I am unsure about the use of tags for individual movies.

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The basic thing to think about, is how you want to use tagging on your site.

Gaming intends to tag any game's title. Yes, it will eventually result in odd tags like [atom-zombie-smasher] or [fish-squid-time-machine] or [the-great-gatsby], but for us, the game's title is the core thing that people sift through information on. It does cause problems if a game doesn't get enough questions (it needs 2 within 6 months), or if the title is long (let's not get into the 26 letter titles), but we work to handle those issues.

SciFi and Fantasy, on the other hand, does a variety of things. As appropriate, the tags go for author, series, universe, or work, resulting in the individual names only for isolated cases. This allows them to focus on more prominent elements than being narrow, as the narrowness isn't as necessary.

As such, it is viable to tag every title if that is decided on, but it is by no means necessary. The site may be able to operate with a less granular tagging system.

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I can't find where I've read about this before, but I'm quite sure that little-used tags are automatically removed by the system after some time. So to some extent, this will be a self-correcting problem. Tags for movies of low popularity will, after a time, not clutter our tag collection.

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    After 6 months, any tags that only have a single instances are clipped. This is great if it gets rid of useless tags, but harmful if it leaves a question without any tags (which results in untagged).
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    Commented Nov 30, 2011 at 21:22
  • @GraceNote: Thanks for the clarification. :)
    – Flimzy
    Commented Nov 30, 2011 at 21:22
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    How about tagging director name to the such questions? I think it might be good idea, can browse questions based on 'director'.
    – pramodc84
    Commented Dec 7, 2011 at 5:16
  • @pramodc84 are you referring to questions that result in [untagged] tag?
    – tshepang
    Commented Mar 4, 2012 at 11:24
  • @Tshepang Ye, Anyway these tags are automatically removed and excess tags will be taken out.
    – pramodc84
    Commented Mar 5, 2012 at 5:36
  • @pramodc84 "How about tagging director name to the such questions?" - Certainly not, the tags describe the question, not the subject of the question. And for most questions, the director is just utterly irrelevant. And who directed Final Destination 3 anyway?
    – Napoleon Wilson
    Commented Jul 15, 2014 at 9:50
  • @NapoleonWilson For standalone films, the director seems relevant to pretty much every aspect of the film. For series, why not just tag the series?
    – Kyle Strand
    Commented Feb 3, 2017 at 3:25
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I think that you take it on a case by case basis with the good rule of thumb being it's OK to tag series of movies.

I can see Inception being a good tag because it is a movie that generates a lot of discussions, but would we really want a Snakes on a Plane tag?

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  • I loved Inception, but I'm not sure any single movie should be worthy of its own tag. How do we distinguish between worthy and unworthy movies?
    – iandotkelly Mod
    Commented Nov 30, 2011 at 21:06
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    I've had it with these mother****in' tags on this mother****in' question.
    – Flimzy
    Commented Nov 30, 2011 at 21:07
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    @iandotkelly: Tags are an organizational tool, used (in part) to aide in searching for questions. Therefore the "worthiness" of a movie to have a tag is not measured by whether it's "just a movie" versus "a series" or "genre"... but whether or not people will want to search for it. And the number of questions that relate to a question is a pretty close proxy to how popular it will be in searches, as well.
    – Flimzy
    Commented Nov 30, 2011 at 21:09
  • @Flimzy - I think you are correct, especially if the system removes little-used tags. I'll hold off for a bit, but if no better answers come up - your answer has convinced me.
    – iandotkelly Mod
    Commented Nov 30, 2011 at 21:12

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