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I'm seeing some cases of tag spaghetti. Why might we need all of , , and as separate concepts?

Questions to ponder:

  1. Should "costs" be a synonym of "price" instead?
  2. "Price" is often used on questions about air travel or tickets, and as we know, the price of a plane ticket is called a "fare". Is this distinction too subtle for many of our non-native English users? Is it even important?
  3. So should "fares" be made a synonym of the broader "price"?
  4. Should some of us use more of our time to retag questions about ticket and transportation prices to remove "price" and add "fares"?

Any other points?

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  • Rail fare would make sense to some, but I worry it's a very English term for it (I could be wrong). But if they're asking about the price of a ... tour, or haircut (I think we've had those), or tango show, it seems wrong to have it as a synonym.
    – Mark Mayo
    Oct 22, 2014 at 7:44
  • I'd be more in favour of retagging transportation ones as fares and anything else (tour, hostels?) as price
    – Mark Mayo
    Oct 22, 2014 at 7:45
  • @MarkMayo: Great - when will you start and how vigilant will you be on this from now on? (-: Tags don't just curate themselves you know.
    – hippietrail
    Oct 22, 2014 at 9:00
  • In my opinion price is not even a good tag. They either show up shopping questions or if looking for low prices the budget tag is sufficient. But that's just me.
    – hippietrail
    Oct 22, 2014 at 9:01
  • sure, but we've not reached consensus yet :) So re price, for something like hostels where we can't use fare, what could we use instead? Always budget?
    – Mark Mayo
    Oct 22, 2014 at 11:57
  • Eg Why is Diet Coke more expensive than regular Coca-Cola and other soft drinks in Indonesia? - budget doesn't seem applicable here.
    – Mark Mayo
    Oct 22, 2014 at 11:58
  • As I suggested we could merge fare into price since a fare is just a price of a particular thing (ticket). But do we even need price? Isn't it a bit of a meta tag? What kind of questions would benefit from price and no other tag, the test Joel gives for deciding whether a tag is any good. Prices fluctuate anyway. I don't think curiosity questions are good bases for growing our tag forest. Find some good non-curiosity questions to make such points.
    – hippietrail
    Oct 22, 2014 at 12:05
  • I lay back and thought about it for a minute. I still think fares are distinct from other types, and so am leaning towards changing price questions to costs, as you suggested. We'd still need it as a synonym though. Will wait and see what others' thoughts are.
    – Mark Mayo
    Oct 22, 2014 at 12:08
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    The Death of Meta Tags (Blog. 08-06-10 by Jeff Atwood) ... How do I correctly tag my questions? (Meta)
    – hippietrail
    Oct 22, 2014 at 12:09
  • Don't forget we would then need to move costs out from the synonyms of budget.
    – hippietrail
    Oct 22, 2014 at 12:10
  • Dammit....stupid budgets...
    – Mark Mayo
    Oct 22, 2014 at 12:11

2 Answers 2

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How about unifying them all into a single tag: , which also covers and . We'll remove synonym to and make it a synonym together with to instead.

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    I don't think fares-and-prices is ugly but since a fare is one kind of price it's a bit like cars-and-vehicles or dogs-and-animals or hostels-and-accommodation.
    – hippietrail
    Oct 22, 2014 at 20:11
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    @hippietrail: I see what you mean. I guess price should be sufficient, with the remaining listed as synonyms.
    – mindcorrosive
    Oct 22, 2014 at 20:12
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    I strongly vote to keep fares separate.
    – Mark Mayo
    Oct 22, 2014 at 23:01
  • I strongly wonder why. Is it based on "they're different words" or can you point out something in the tagging help, meta posts, or blog?
    – hippietrail
    Oct 23, 2014 at 7:26
  • @mindcorrosive Most people mention train fare, bus fare, and similar. Prices differ from fare by usage. In common usage fare is used to denote the money we are charged while using a service but price is commonly used to denote the cost of something we buy.
    – Kolappan N
    Oct 28, 2014 at 10:24
  • @kolappankols: Your definition of "fare" here is wrong. See my reply under your answer.
    – hippietrail
    Oct 29, 2014 at 12:13
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I suggest that price can be unified with costs keeping fares seperate.

Prices differ from fare by usage. In common usage fare is used to denote the money we are charged while using a transport service but price is commonly used to denote the cost of something we buy.

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    I understand that, but from practical perspective, the distinction doesn't matter. Most of our users (particularly those with maternal language other than English) will use predominantly price when they really mean `fare', since they associate both with "money I pay for X". If you don't believe me, see the questions tagged price. Tagging shouldn't to be semantically perfect, it should first and foremost be useful.
    – mindcorrosive
    Oct 28, 2014 at 10:38
  • @mindcorrosive Yes, you are right about the tagging. Most of the people are using price instead of fares. But using same tag for both purposes may confuse some users.
    – Kolappan N
    Oct 28, 2014 at 10:41
  • This is not true in my experience: "fare is used to denote the money we are charged while using a service". Almost all services would use the generic terms "price", "cost", etc. "Fare" is specifically the price of transportation, which is the same as the price of a ticket to go somewhere. Other kinds of tickets (concert, museum, zoo, etc) would sometimes use "cover" but usually just "price", "cost", etc.
    – hippietrail
    Oct 29, 2014 at 12:12
  • @hippietrail Yes, I found that in wiki "A fare is the fee paid by a passenger for use of a public transport system: rail, bus, taxi, etc. In the case of air transport, the term airfare is often used". However it's easy to dentote it as busfare rather than using cost of bus tickets. I suggest to keep the fare tag seperate.
    – Kolappan N
    Nov 5, 2014 at 3:06

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