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You probably thought this question was about . It's not, it's about . Nearly every minicraft question has, or has had minecraft answers, and the author has to add a disclaimer.

Is there any way of making differentiating between the tags easier?

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    Good question. It's almost hard to blame the answerers here for missing the one letter difference, given that the questions themselves might be valid for either game. Maybe ludum-dare-minicraft? Awkward but I'm not sure what else would work.
    – Matthew Read
    Jan 26, 2012 at 16:43
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    What Minecraft problem? ...oh.
    – Brant
    Jan 28, 2012 at 0:21

2 Answers 2

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This is similar to the problem we had with Starcraft versus Starcraft 2. I believe my answer to that one still applies here.

There is a clear distinction - one has an I, the other has an E. Reading comprehension is essential to writing a good answer, so it's not really the tag's fault that people are posting the wrong set of answers.

If someone answers a question about Minicraft with information about Minecraft, they are the ones who are in the wrong. Comment them to inform them of their mishap, even go as far as to downvote them. Their answers are indeed noise to you, and they are unhelpful to solving the problem you have. It'll teach them to actually pay attention and read the question clearly in the future. If this trend works out enough, enough people will learn to stop doing stupid and the problem will be solved.

As for disclaimers, I'll quote myself from the previous question:

While it sometimes will help to add a notice explaining which game you are referring to, this is ultimately redundant noise as the game you're talking about should already be clearly established by your question body and tags.

I think the best solution, thus, is to make sure you're clear in your own writing. As long as you're not saying things about the other game whose name is similar, anyone who answers about the wrong game is making their own mistake. Then, when they do make those mistakes, make it clear, painfully if you must, that they're not reading your question. They'll probably delete their answers over time, or otherwise suffer for it, so the end result is that you'll get rid of those off-topic answers.

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  • +1. We already differentiate between the games: doing anything else ignores the main problem, which is that a) people are not reading the tags or b) people are not using the tags correctly. In either case, we should be directing people to proper use of the tags: in this case, reminding them that question X is a Minicraft question and thus their answer is not helpful.
    – Dave DuPlantis
    Jan 26, 2012 at 17:31
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    DOWNVOTES ARE YOUR FRIEND. USE YOUR DOWNVOTES. LOVE YOUR DOWNVOTES.
    – LessPop_MoreFizz
    Jan 26, 2012 at 18:05
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    @LessPop_MoreFizz totally, we have too many "not an answer" flags and not enough downvotes.
    – juan
    Jan 26, 2012 at 18:52
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    @JuanManuel This is probably better suited for another meta post, but I'm not a huge downvoter. As a user still trying to get to the last rep privilege levels, what incentive do I have for losing a rep downvoting when I can flag instead and get <strike>flag weight</strike> an approved flag?
    – Dave McClelland
    Jan 27, 2012 at 19:29
  • @DaveMcClelland, for starters, if you flag and you should've downvoted, the flag will be declined, not approved. Other than that, the nice fuzzy feeling you get for improving the site should be enough :) -- you get 10 downvotes for every upvote on an answer, if you participate a simple -1 per downvote shouldn't affect you that much.
    – juan
    Jan 27, 2012 at 19:44
  • @JuanManuel Interesting - I've never gotten declined for that, but I'll avoid it in the future. Thanks!
    – Dave McClelland
    Jan 27, 2012 at 19:51
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    @DaveMcClelland you must have flagged correctly (there are "not an answer" posts). But we get a few invalid flags where a downvote would suffice and our intervention isn't needed. You can also flag and downvote, if the post gets deleted you get your rep back via a recalc.
    – juan
    Jan 27, 2012 at 19:53
  • "It'll teach them to actually pay attention and read the question clearly in the future" is a great strategy if we never get any new users. But we will, many, and they won't know what others were taught. "it's not really the tag's fault that people are posting the wrong set of answers" would only be true if we saw questions getting answers for games spelled completely dissimilarly.
    – Matthew Read
    Jan 27, 2012 at 23:26
  • I'm certainly a proponent of reading carefully but the fact is that these tags are quite easily confused even when reading carefully. The brain smooths over things that don't fit expectations, such as a 'i' where there "should be" an 'e'. So essentially I disagree with 90% of the first part of this post. I do agree that being clear in the question is a good idea.
    – Matthew Read
    Jan 27, 2012 at 23:27
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With regards to Grace Note, I agree that users are at fault for not reading the tags... but shouldn't we consider that a lot of people have not even heard of minicraft? What would you do if you saw a question that applied to both minecraft and minicraft, while the tags to the question are barely discernible between each other? As long as there are new Gaming.SE users playing minecraft, this will always be a problem.

I agree with Matthew Read's comment. To avoid disclaimers, can't we change the tag to something that specifies more clearly that the question is about minicraft?

Maybe ludum-dare-minicraft with a tag synonym for minicraft?

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  • "minicraft" should be pretty clear it's about something called Minicraft. If you haven't heard of Minicraft, why must you assume that the tag must be a typo? The answerer is the one who should be giving the benefit of the doubt to the asker. If you think they made an error rather than might be talking about something else, ask them if they did, don't charge in with an answer without knowing what you're up against.
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    Jan 26, 2012 at 18:18
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    I'm not really talking about the user seeing "minicraft" and thinking "oh, must be a typo", I'm thinking about the user seeing something that looks like "minecraft" to the point they glance over it, along with a question that looks very minecraft-related. I dont think its something an answerer should be reprimanded about, especially since it happens so often and can be easily avoided with a tag synonym. Besides, if you noticed minicraft, and were a fan of minecraft, wouldn't you want to know what it was about? I noticed it and went straight to google.
    – PileOfDuty
    Jan 26, 2012 at 18:48
  • One possible solution for answerers to consider is that if you like Minecraft, and want to answer questions in it, then you should mark it as a Favorite tag. This not only gives you easy access to the tag, but also highlights questions about it (but not those with minicraft). Otherwise, I don't see why this is so different from starcraft vs. starcraft-2 (people skim over the lack of a 2 very easily, it's been demonstrated), and I don't think setting a precedent for putting excess bulk in the tag name is right to do for this.
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    Jan 26, 2012 at 19:20
  • Tags are a very important part of Stack Exchange sites: they are not something to simply glance over, and I don't think it benefits the site to make allowances for people who do not read tags carefully.
    – Dave DuPlantis
    Jan 26, 2012 at 20:11
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    Downvoting the heck out of someone to "teach them a lesson to read better" might work on that one particular tag instance, since once they get burned by it, they'll probably watch out (for that one) in the future, but let's be honest... it's a really, really easy tag to misread. And once they're aware of the mistakes, downvotes or not, they probably won't make that mistake again. I don't think changing the tag is the answer, but the idea that being punitive is going to teach them some sort of lesson seems off-base to me.
    – Sterno
    Jan 27, 2012 at 19:46
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    @Sterno If they delete their answer, they suffer no reputation loss after a recalc - only a lesson learnt to make sure they read what is written. I don't think we need to be over-punitive, but I don't think that this is an entirely strong punishment.
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    Jan 27, 2012 at 20:19

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