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There's 3 synomyms to the tag which are :

but when I look at the newest, and older ones too, tagged questions for , I don't see many games that fits any of those 3 tags.

I don't think those 3 should be synomyms of .

When you search for any of those tags, I don't expect to see anything younger than the ps2 era... maybe because I'm old.

As I re-read myself, I'm wondering why they even exist. None of them are useful tags as they are opinion based. When is a game considered classic? Old? Retro? Those are very subjective. The youngest here might feel anything ps3 is old while the older ones might not. Also, as time goes, are we to retag questions for games that become old, retro, classic???

I don't like that and I don't feel they add any value to the questions. We don't need to know a game is retro, classic or old, that's useless as the game's tag should already give us the information on when the game was released or we can easily search that.

So this is a request for burnination!

Let's burn those 3!

3 Answers 3

Reset to default
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I want to make a case of keeping the tags as a synonym:

If someone visits the site to ask how to play an old, retro, classic game then they may just use that tag. It gets re-directed to .

Without those tags, a new user may struggle to come up with the correct tag for their problem perhaps? Maybe the specific game does not exist (it is very old, and has no existing questions).

Playing an older game could be a generic problem (e.g. using dosbox for old dos games, various Nintendo emulators or even ScummVM for LucasArts + others). Does "How can I play obscure game from 1985 on my PC"? need a game-specific tag?

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    If anyone is looking for old games on Arqade, that person is not looking at the right place. We're a Q&A site, qualifying games by their age, or if there's "classic" is not something useful for us. These tags do not provide us with any useful information on a game.
    – Jonathan Drapeau
    Commented Dec 4, 2015 at 17:59
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    @JonathanDrapeau - But I am talking about the usefulness of the current situation for people asking how to run old games. Backwards compatibility is about running older games on new hardware. I don't know why else people would use these tags.
    – user101016
    Commented Dec 4, 2015 at 18:34
  • @CamelCase the idea that someone would tag "old-games" meaning backwards compatibility is laughable.
    – Dallium
    Commented Dec 9, 2015 at 1:08
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    @Dallium - Question = "How do I run this old game?" - uses old-games tag, becomes backwards-compatibility tag. Hardly a knock-knock joke.
    – user101016
    Commented Dec 9, 2015 at 10:02
  • @CamelCase Question = "How do I play as Dale in Chip and Dale's Rescue Rangers for NES?" Tags old-games because there isn't a game specific tag and gets backwards compatibility. Patently absurd.
    – Dallium
    Commented Dec 9, 2015 at 13:15
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    @Dallium - that needs a game-specific tag, and not about "retro"/"old" games in general
    – user101016
    Commented Dec 9, 2015 at 13:20
  • @CamelCase which you can't create unless you have 300 rep.
    – Dallium
    Commented Dec 9, 2015 at 13:32
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    @Dallium - which is same limitation if low rep user asks about a game no one has asked about previously. I would say close to 100% of questions get reviewed, so fixing tags etc will be done on such questions.
    – user101016
    Commented Dec 9, 2015 at 13:59
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Keep them

Keeping them has some value

I agree with both Jonathan and with CamelCase's answer. While these three tags are indeed quite useless, bad, and not really synonymous in meaning, keeping those three tags to redirect people to is of value, and actually a lot.

The main reason for this is that is a hard tag to find, unless you already know it in the first place. Don't get me wrong here, the tag itself is fine for tagging/grouping questions.

It's just not intuitive to use. I know I'd never start typing "backwards" in the tag box when asking a question about trying to run an old game on a new machine. Maybe I'd try "compat..." and find the tag, but that's a stretch as well.

With the synonyms in place, pops up in the tag box when typing "old", "retro", and "classic", all of which are much more likely to be tried by a new user trying to tag his question correctly.

Burnination causes nothing but trouble

Burnination of these synonyms will remove these options while providing nothing of benefit. What will happen instead is that is a valid tag again, and some 300+ reputation user might actually tag something .

But since these tags are bad and useless, as Jonathan established in the question, we don't actually want anyone to do that.

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Burn 'em.

These tags are worthless. When does a game become old? How to we differentiate between classic and retro? Not only do the tags have no meaning, but they aren't synonymous with their synonym.

Backwards compatibility has a distinct definition. Its a concept that may be utilized to play older games, but it isn't intrinsically part of those games. It's like making multiplayer synonymous with networking, because some multiplayer requires networking.

So if someone has a question about the NES version of an obscure 3rd generation game, for which they have a physical console and cartridge, they tag old-games because they don't have the rep to create a silent-service tag, and it's redirected to backwards-comparability? Does that really make any sense to anyone?

So burn retro and classic because they are completely subjective, give old a distinct definition (two console generations or older? 8 years or older? We'll come up with something.) to aid the bizarre corner case, and remove this patently ridiculous synonym.

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