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Seems someone changed the [game-recommendations] tag to [game-rec] tag retroactively - i.e. not by manually going over each question.

Why is that? I think [game-rec] is very bad, as it's not clear what "rec" is. Is it short for "recommendation"? For "recreational"? Maybe it's a gaming genre I'm just not familiar with, something like "running empty corridors"?

I thought we reached a conclusion that we should avoid short forms of tags, so I would like to understand what's the reason for shortening here. I'm not familiar with "rec" being a common English slang for "recommendation".

I propose that the tag be changed to [game-recommendation] (minus the final 's' in the previous version, though, that was odd).

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  • 1
    Especially given that tags are auto-completed, what's the problem with extending rec to recommendation?
    – Ivo Flipse
    Commented Jul 16, 2010 at 7:29
  • It is also similar to policy of other SE sites, like webapp-rec for example.
    – user59
    Commented Jul 16, 2010 at 7:46
  • It stands for game records... ... ...
    – BlaXpirit
    Commented Oct 8, 2010 at 21:03

4 Answers 4

Reset to default
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I suggest changing game-rec to recommendation for the time being.

Rationale:

  • I don't see why any tag here should ever have game in it. It's a given it's going to be about games!
  • rec as a prefix could be recommend but also recognise, which makes it confusing (I was about to ask why do we have identify-this-game if we have game-reccomendation... oh wait).
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  • For why we picked [game-recommendations] instead of [recommendation] before, see the comment exchange between myself and Noctrine at meta.gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/217/….
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    Commented Jul 29, 2010 at 18:27
  • Meh, @grace, peripheral recommendations are either still recommendation (but with the joystick/etc. tag) or another tag.
    – badp
    Commented Jul 29, 2010 at 19:28
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From chat:

Ivo Flipse: @Jeff did you change the games-recommendation to games-rec?

Jeff Atwood: yeah I hate "recommendation" as a tag..

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Two things

  1. Recommendation is a poor concept on our sites. "Recommend me a computer to buy! Recommend me a game to play on my VIC-20!" So the presence of this tag is like a big "this question is very likely to suck" sticker slapped on it.

  2. Recommendation is far, far too long as a tag. Recommendation is both "long and wide" -- it is a long word for # of letters and because the individual letters it contains in a proportional font are also wide.

    compare:

    IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
    MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM

    same # of letters.

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    Regarding (1) - that's a topic for a different question. Regarding (2) - I understand where you're coming from, but if I was a new user I'd hesitate before picking game-rec as a tag, simply because I would not understand what it means. And I think this situation is far worse than having a slightly long tag, especially compared with other tags here in gaming, many of which are game names which are anyway long. Maybe we should just go with [recommendation], without the "game-" part. It's shorter and still obvious.
    – Oak
    Commented Jul 16, 2010 at 8:59
  • @oak "I'd hesitate.." good, that is completely intentional, because we don't want these kinds of questions anyway. also note that we already have -rec tags on SU. So you're bucking convention here, and I'm very likely to overrule you: superuser.com/tags
    – Jeff Atwood
    Commented Jul 16, 2010 at 9:36
  • 1. See, that's one of the cases where a fourth place would come in handy...
    – Zommuter
    Commented Jul 16, 2010 at 10:17
  • Well, all my arguments got shot down once you pointed out that SU uses the -rec tags. Well, if this helps reduce the number of recommendation questions, I see it as an overall benefit.
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    Commented Jul 16, 2010 at 11:56
  • Also, as proven in the title, "recommendation" is not easy to type right every time.
    – Gnoupi
    Commented Jul 16, 2010 at 13:18
  • If you're looking for something not as wide, why not game-suggestion?
    – Corey
    Commented Jul 18, 2010 at 2:02
  • I'm not sure people hesitating to put any tag with the question is the right move. It seems to me that this will cause questions to simply come up mis-tagged, rather than not asked at all. "rec" is just not a clear abbreviation at all.
    – Jeffrey
    Commented Jul 29, 2010 at 19:43
  • @Gnoupi, autocompletion ftw :)
    – badp
    Commented Jul 30, 2010 at 11:51
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I know it seems almost asinine, but why not game-recs as a plural form?

  • The questions inherently afford the suggestion of multiple titles / games that someone would like to play.
  • It would reduce some (not all, though) of the ambiguity on what rec means. As Oak mentioned above, rec could be mistaken for recreational. This would deter that line of thought.

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