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I've noticed a couple of questions about train stations in the past few days and we don't really have an appropriate tag though obviously they're going to be a pretty important travel topic.

Most questions about stations have also been about trains so using the tag was obvious. But some questions are only about the stations and don't mention trains at all.

I propose broadening the to so that it will also include stations regardless of whether or not trains are also part of the question.

  • I'm in two minds. On the one hand, there are plenty of questions about trains which are not about stations. In this case, stations is nice and separate from trains. You're saying when there's a question about a train station, we should use stations and rail or just rail? Don't we lose some granularity this way? – Mark Mayo♦ Dec 6 '13 at 6:09
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    Why on earth would separating stations from trains be "nice"? So you could also use the former for cattle stations and radio stations? We don't need a stations tag - we only need a rail tag because that inherently, historically, and unexceptionally covers stations, trains, engines, cabooses, tracks, platforms, engineers, different guages, and Thomas the Tank d-; – hippietrail Dec 6 '13 at 8:42
  • Because some questions are about trains, and other questions are about stations? We have planes and airports as separate too... – Mark Mayo♦ Dec 6 '13 at 12:42
  • We have questions about squat toilets and modern Japanese toilets too. Should we split the toilet-usage tag? I really don't get what the benefit you see could possibly be. People interested in train station questions getting annoyed at all the non-station train questions in their inbox?? \-: – hippietrail Dec 6 '13 at 17:13
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    Strawman! No, my point being if there's a question about planes, it doesn't get stuck with all the questions about heathrow airport. Similarly there's no need to stick all the questions about say, platzkart travel on trains with question on opening hours of Kings Cross station. – Mark Mayo♦ Dec 6 '13 at 23:33
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    Normally I'd recommend adding new specific tags when some topic actually gets a number of questions. Then I would actually recommend making a new tag for each specific train station that applies to, if it happens, how many questions about stations / Kings Cross station do we have? – hippietrail Dec 7 '13 at 2:38
  • If we wanted to go with the planes analogy we would need air-travel => rail-travel, airports => train-stations, aircraft => trains, then we have a tag for each airline and each major aircraft builder. I think that's mostly pragmatic except for the manufacturers, but I don't think splitting up train stuff is as pragmatic. – hippietrail Dec 7 '13 at 2:38
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tl;dr Don't change.

If by stations in "some questions are only about the stations and don't mention trains at all" you mean specifically train stations IMO then is good enough for both. On the basis that there can't be many train stations whose existence is not justified in some way by trains. Also, there can't be many trains that run terminus to terminus without intermediate stops (though I acknowledge the likes of LGW's inter-terminal shuttle) - though for them stations (intermediate rather then termini) woud not apply anyway. The point I am trying to make is that trains and stations are too closely related to be worth separating for TSE.

Related tags currently in use include:






















  • I believe we now also have a train-stations tag. In the 2.5 years since I proposed this I feel we have "zoomed into the fractal" enough now to warrant having these as separate tags. The only problem I see now is that our tag "trains" is equivalent to both the tags "aircraft" and "air-travel" where most of our questions tagged "trains" are actually about "rail travel". So while I no longer mind splitting up I still feel the tag should be renamed, but no longer to "rail" but "rail travel". WAIT now I'm confused. You're saying both "don't change" and "don't separate". \-: – hippietrail Sep 29 '16 at 2:44
  • What's "OTT"? By the way, while looking into this I found a worse mess. We have both metro and subways and they are not synonyms of each other but each a synonym of a different tag. – hippietrail Sep 29 '16 at 2:57
  • Too many synonyms?? – hippietrail Sep 29 '16 at 3:26
  • It doesn't require dev assistance. It requires mod assistance. Which is easier to obtain. At least that is my understanding. – hippietrail Sep 29 '16 at 7:38
  • Really?! Is there a meta.SE topic on this? It sounds like a real problem. – hippietrail Sep 29 '16 at 13:45

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