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Currently there are a heap of questions labelled tips-and-tricks, and really, you could apply that tag to just about any question on this site. How can we define exactly which situation we want it in?

My suggestion would be for small things, ideas, and travel 'hacks', rather than questions like 'What should you do if arrested in a foreign country' - that's more of a big legal/safety question, you're not looking to hack your way out of the problem ;)

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As your question shows, doesn't have an unambiguous meaning. It doesn't make sense as the only tag on a question, either. These are strong hints that it's a meta-tag.

Kill it with fire! (This requires mass editing — doable with 27 questions, but don't do it in one go or you'll swamp the front page — or developer intervention.)

Oh, and sometimes on Stack Exchange means “I want to discuss a subject but I don't have a question”. If you realize that your question isn't a question, well, don't post it as a question. If you find a question that isn't a question, don't tag it (or or whatever), vote to close it as “not a real question”.

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  • Look either we accept questions asking for tips and tricks or we don't. Pretending we don't by simply tagging them as something else is just playing make believe with ourselves. If you want to dis the tag you have 27 questions you can use as examples to pick it apart. Maybe you'll want to delete all those questions, maybe you'll see that people really are asking for tricks and we really are accepting them, answering them, and voting them up. So please include examples when ranting.
    – hippietrail
    Commented Oct 21, 2011 at 15:51
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    @hippietrail Looking at the six examples linked in your answer: these are perfectly fine questions, and the tag tips-and-tricks does not characterize them at all: they aren't about “tips and tricks to avoid annoying travelmates”, they're about avoiding annoying travelmates. I've rather a mind to revert your edits, but there are a lot of them, I don't want to unilaterally decide to flood the front page: it would be better to quietly burninate the tag.
    – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
    Commented Oct 21, 2011 at 16:08
  • Well I'm a bit surprised this tag would be controversial. The travelmate question solicits "techniques". I chose "tips and tricks" as a wide synonym to cover that and the "rules" and "excuses" asked for in the Indian beggar and vodka questions respectively. Obviously the travelmate one is characterized by "annoying travelmates" but you can't be suggesting that as a good tag. The question already has two unique tags that have failed to spread to other questions: "travel mate" and "group travel". In fact it has no others so if all three tags are bad it would be tagless!
    – hippietrail
    Commented Oct 21, 2011 at 17:25
  • Anyway I think we need some good pointed meta questions on tagging strategies as we reach the first stage in our growth. One on whether "flooding" the front page is a real worry too and what to do about that vs. whether we should ever do tag maintainance.
    – hippietrail
    Commented Oct 21, 2011 at 17:27
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+1 for this proposal. Not much else to say really.

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Yep I just invented that tag last night thinking there were about half a dozen applicable questions such as dealing with annoying travelmates and beggars, not getting arrested, and drinking vodka with Russians.

But when I went through every single question and applied the tag judiciously there turned out to be lots of such questions. I was really surprised.

I do agree it's important how to word it because it could be overapplied but there is definitely a real class of question we've been accepting. This is why I didn't write a tag wiki yet.

By the way I was going to call it but that is already a synonym of .

Oh and I'm absolutely fine with fine-tuning the scope of the tag so if the arrest one isn't a good idea but the corrupt police one is, that's fine.

Basically anything that included the word "hint" or "tip" or "trick" in the question was considered for the tag. Then I considered questions that seemed similar in spirit to those whether they had such keywords or not.

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  • I'm also intrigued by the international-travel tag - that's going to cover a TON of questions as well. Do we also include domestic-travel and space-travel? ;)
    – Mark Mayo Mod
    Commented Oct 20, 2011 at 9:51
  • The international-travel is an old tag that's been around for months. When I'm retagging I often also apply tags that I know exist especially to questions that don't have many tags. But you're right I also wondered if this tag is as needed as it seemed back when whoever it was created it.
    – hippietrail
    Commented Oct 20, 2011 at 9:53
  • By the way, I may be wrong but I have the feeling the international-travel was important mainly for American contributors who primarily think about travelling in their own country and therefore going overseas seems like a totally different and special case.
    – hippietrail
    Commented Oct 20, 2011 at 9:55
  • Agreed, it's possibly why - but I think we should discourage this Americanism viewpoint, if it is the reason, as it's an international site. Do you have any problem with me removing the tag?
    – Mark Mayo Mod
    Commented Oct 20, 2011 at 11:47
  • Ugh. Please don't create meaningless tags!
    – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
    Commented Oct 20, 2011 at 14:52
  • @Gilles: Ugh! Please don't leave meaningless comments! Mark: Feel free to dump the international tag or have a vote to get rid of it. I'd only been using it because it seemed to have been accepted long ago.
    – hippietrail
    Commented Oct 21, 2011 at 15:47

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