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It looks like a new tag has been created for end-game, and it has been added to a bunch of existing questions about a variety of games. Is this a tag we want? In general I think we avoid these "meta-tags" that can't stand on their own, and I can't imagine anyone wanting to see all questions about end games regardless of the game involved. We do have an openings tag as well, but it hasn't been used in a year.

Related:

Meta tags 'R Us!

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    I've actually been rejecting the end-game tag edits I've seen going through. In my opinion, this is not really helpful in organizing the site. In most cases, the title and question should be enough to tell what phase of the game the question is asking about.
    – SocioMatt
    Mar 3, 2016 at 18:20
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    @SocioMatt: That the title and question suffice to tell us the phase of the game is not of itself sufficient reason to reject a tag. The question should be if the tag improves our chances of finding questions that concern us. That scarcely anyone wants to know about end games in many different games sounds eminently plausible, but [end-game] together with a game-specific tag is an easy way round that.
    – PJTraill
    Mar 14, 2016 at 10:17
  • @SocioMatt: P.S. This answer to a sub-tags question also advocates the use of pairs of tags.
    – PJTraill
    Mar 14, 2016 at 13:37
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    @PJTraill That question was posed more than four years ago, and I think tagging on this site has evolved since then. Truthfully, I'm more on Jeff Atwood's side of this argument; one tag should be sufficient for each question. I see tags as having two main purposes: (1) to organize the site for querying, and (2) to flag question on the home page so users know what the question is referring to. I don't think the end-game tag helps with either of these things. In my view, it adds a partially ambiguous tag that moderators need to ensure is being used appropriately.
    – SocioMatt
    Mar 16, 2016 at 16:45

2 Answers 2

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Feels like a meta-tag to me. From The Death of Meta-tags:

How can you tell you're using a meta-tag? It's easier than you might think.

  1. If the tag can't work as the only tag on a question, it's probably a meta-tag.
  2. If the tag commonly means different things to different people, it's probably a meta-tag.

can't be the only tag on a question. It's useless as a differentiator on its own. And it means different things in different contexts.

Let's zap it.

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    Could the tag stand alone if the question involves end-game strategy not tied to one particular game? The question that inspired me to ask this is When is it ok to king-make?. Out of the 10-15 questions with the end-game tag, that one is the only one that feels appropriate to me.
    – Rainbolt
    Mar 16, 2016 at 16:37
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As a Go player, I want to be able to drill down to a specific aspect of the game, so tagging a question as "life and death" or "endgame" (rather than end-game) is definitely useful.

If we don't want a meta-tag, we could use go-specific jargon, and talk about fuseki, tsumego or yose. The issue here is that it creates a barrier for beginners, who are not yet aware of these terms.

Another practice is to allow tag hierarchies. For example have opening and endgame as sub-tags of the Go tag. AFAIK stackexchange doesn't have this capabilitty. So in my opinion having an "endgame" tag is the next best thing, as a workaround if not as a best practice.

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  • It might make more sense for go questions to include their temporal jargon in the question rather than relying on tags
    – Wolfkin
    Apr 30, 2016 at 20:32
  • @Wolfkin: I take it that by “temporal jargon” you mean terminology referring to the phase of play? Currently the tag-pair usage (game + phase) seems popular and effective. I think that such tags make it easier to find duplicate questions / questions with the answer one wants / questions of interest. And searching for pairs works fine.
    – PJTraill
    Jan 22, 2018 at 22:09

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