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I'm pretty sure the Tag Syonyms is not working as intended.

Take the following example, for the tag counter-strike-go.

tag synonym http://puu.sh/a5ofM/7be5e35b7b.png

Looks fine right? "global offensive" is listed as a synonym. Not so, when finding a tag:

tag synonym

So even though the fact is that cs-global-offensive is a synonym of the counter-strike-go tag, the global in cs-global-offensive isn't being recognized at all; it seems that the tag system doesn't actually look up synonyms; only their main counterparts.

Or how RavenDreamer put it:

I believe his point is that global-agenda and pokemon-global link show up, but cs-global-offensive does not (despite the latter being an extant tag synonym)

Tag synonyms not working as intended

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  • I'm not sure how that's not working as intended. How is any system supposed to know what is and isn't a valid synonym without an exact match?
    – Frank
    Commented Jul 10, 2014 at 18:34
  • 2
    Just like how when you enter a question title, it doesn't search for related questions by an exact string, but by extracting bits of the question that are similar to other questions. Tags should do the same.
    – childe
    Commented Jul 10, 2014 at 18:44
  • Tags have a ton less context to go off of then what is required for titles and the body of a question. You have, at most 25 characters. I'm still not seeing a viable method beyond exact matches. Or how this current functionality isn't intended. Perhaps it might be better to just propose one or two more synonyms for CS:GO, rather than attempting to change the entire tagging system.
    – Frank
    Commented Jul 10, 2014 at 19:05
  • 6
    @Frank I believe his point is that **global** agenda and pokemon **global** link show up, but cs **global** offensive does not (despite the latter being an extant tag synonym).
    – Raven Dreamer
    Commented Jul 10, 2014 at 19:37
  • That's a good thing to describe, as nowhere in this does it describe that at all.
    – Frank
    Commented Jul 10, 2014 at 21:48
  • The problem seems to be common to all SE sites (tested on RPG and SciFi). Partial matches of synonyms don't make the Master tag show up. This problem should be addressed on the Main Meta, since it would be core functionality, I guess.
    – MrLemon
    Commented Jul 16, 2014 at 11:44

1 Answer 1

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I did some digging around on different sites and Metas, and found that this problem is extremely weird, and the behavior completely undefined.

First of all, here's a list of similar topics:

I used the tag list and the tag box on a new question on

  • Arqade using "cs-global-offensive" = "counter-strike-go"
  • META SE using "on-topic-definition" = "scope"
  • RPG SE using "scenario-authoring" = "adventure-writing"

To see what shows up and what does not. I will mention only synonyms for the Master tag, even if they differ from the one I tried.

Arqade

  • "cs-": List shows "cs-global-offensive" and "csgo", Question shows nothing
  • "cs-g": List shows "csgo", Question shows nothing
  • "global": List shows "global-offensive", Question shows nothing
  • "cs-global-offensive": List shows "cs-global-offensive", Questions shows Master

RPG

  • "scenario-": List shows "scenario-authoring", Question shows nothing
  • "scenario-a": List shows nothing, Question shows nothing
  • "authoring": List shows nothing, Question shows nothing
  • "scenario-authoring": List shows "scenario-authoring", Questions shows Master

META

  • "on-": List shows many different ones, Question shows 6 different ones
  • "on-t": List shows nothing, Question shows Master
  • "topic": List shows nothing, Question shows Master
  • "on-topic-discussion": List shows nothing, Question shows Master

Analyzing this, Arqade and RPG behave the same, partials matching the beginning of the synonym show the synonym in the tag list, the Question tag box needs the fully correct synonym to display anything at all. Other sides (Judaism and Math) seem to share this behavior as far as I can tell from the topics I linked.

META seems to not show synonyms in their tag-list at all, and any partial match seems to show the master, though only 6 matches are shown at any time.

IMO, any partial match of a synonym should show the master in both the tag list and the question tag box. There's no need to show something to a user that is discouraged to use/will be automatically replaced anyway.

None of the sites I looked at have that behavior, but partial synonym-matching works for the question tag box on META SE, so we know it can be done.

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