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A new edition of Warhammer 40K came out over the weekend. We should probably re-tag most of the old questions as 5th edition to distinguish them from newer 6th edition questions.

Thoughts?

Edit:

I'd like to add that edition changes in games like 40K are non-trivial. Many questions would be greatly superseded by a new edition. For example this question is valid in 5th edition, but not 6th.

While we don't currently have many 40K questions, questions that specifically apply to the older editions need to be marked as such to avoid confusion.

The RPG SE uses edition specific tagging, because of the great differences you find in between things like 2nd, 3rd and 4th edition D&D. This is a similar situation. Most miniature game edition changes follow similar patterns of large scale changes.

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I'll refer you to the most relevant general meta question I was able to find:

How to use version-specific tags?

Jeff Atwood's answer there is unambiguous:

In general, you should strongly avoid creating version tags.

I would only use version tags when the question content is irrevocably tied to a specific version of something and can never be relevant to earlier versions or later versions.

Whatever you think of that particular edict, I will note that on StackOverflow, the Java tag has 265,172 questions. The highest versioned Java tag, Java-ee-6, "for questions relating specifically to Java Enterprise Edition 6", has 834. That's 0.3% of the total. A single tag would seem to be working fine over there.

Given that we currently have 21 questions total, I think retagging would be an over-engineered solution, even if it were encouraged (which it's not). Assuming 6th edition is a reasonable default; the questioner is free to clarify in text if he is referring to something older.

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  • I won't argue the point too much, but the edition changes in games like 40K are non-trivial. Very similar to changes in D&D editions. The rpg SE does break tags down into editions for games like that.
    – CaulynDarr
    Jul 3, 2012 at 14:01
  • @CaulynDarr - I'm a long-time 40K player myself, and I'm well aware of how radically the rules change between editions. Interesting point about the versions on the RPG site. It may be that we are eventually forced to go down this route. Understand though that opening up versioned tags adds its own problems, and also adds significant extra complexity to everything. It certainly doesn't come free. I've been discussing this and other tagging issues with Shog9. I believe his intention is to write something up clarifying some of the tradeoffs.
    – ire_and_curses
    Jul 3, 2012 at 15:43
  • Many 40k questions will still be appropriate to multiple editions; the ideal solution in general is surely for the answer to be edited to cover both cases. In the many questions where this is impossible, my instinct is to retag as and when we see enough questions that edition-confusion becomes a problem, not before. (RPG.SE uses the different version tags because D&D questions are very common and the different versions are extremely different, much more so than Wargammer 40k.)
    – Tynam
    Jul 10, 2012 at 20:57
  • I thought it might be worth mentioning that on stack overflow developers will frequently update their answers to reflect changes in functionality between versions of frameworks. So this might be a situation where edits could be suggested for questions just to add details specific to a new edition.
    – Max Young
    Jan 2, 2017 at 17:44

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