Tag editing is back, and not a moment too soon.
I'm able to tolerate a high level of clutter and mess in the real world but for some reason the messiness in the tags is driving me moonbat crazy.
As an self-appointed member of the tag police I have been dying to (have someone) clean up some of the unintentional duplications:
--> tags that exist in singular and plural--election and elections; 2006 election, 2006 elections, Election 2006 and Elections 2006; , Republican and Republicans, Democrat and Democrats, whistleblower and whistleblowers; frame and frames; gay and gays, Senator and Senators; Christian and Christians; soldier and soldiers; 2008, 2008 election and 2008 elections; rant and rants; newspaper and newspapers; wingnut and wingnuts;
--> conceptually identical tags with slightly different wording/spacing--activist and activism; vote fraud and voter fraud; gay marriage and same-sex marriage; Daily Kos, DailyKos and dKos; health care and healthcare; Daily Show and The Daily Show; uid and userid; neocon, neo-con, neoconservative, (and their plurals); midterms and midterm elections; meta and metadiaries; whistleblower and whistleblowing; WaPo and Washington Post, Medicare Part D and Medicare D; Walmart and Wal-Mart; New Orleans and NOLA; Election 2006 and Campaign 2006; House 2006 and House Elections 2006; Exxon and ExxonMobil; Chris Matthews and Tweety; C&J and Cheers and Jeers; Fox News and Faux News; WYFP and What's Your F#cking Problem; Oscars and Academy Awards; WSJ and Wall Street Journal; NYT and New York Times; PTSD and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder; shia and shiite and shiites; YearlyKos and Yearly Kos;
--> various iterations of names: George W. Bush, George Bush, President Bush, Bush and Dubya; kos, markos and Markos Moulitsas; Kerry and John Kerry; Cheney and Dick Cheney; Dean and Howard Dean; Feingold, Russ Feingold and Senator Russ Feingold; Rumsfeld and Donald Rumsfeld; Olbermann and Keith Olbermann; Cunningham and Duke Cunningham; Samuel Alito, Alito and Scalito; Condoleezza Rice and Condi; Santorum and Rick Santorum; Drudge and Matt Drudge; DeWine and Mike DeWine; Chertoff and Michael Chertoff; Murtha and John Murtha; Pelosi and Nancy Pelosi; Gore and Al Gore; McCain and John McCain; Frist and Bill Frist; Limbaugh and Rush Limbaugh; Joe Wilson, Joseph Wilson and Wilson; Hackett and Paul Hackett; Plame and Valerie Plame; Tookie and Tookie Williams; Lieberman and Joe Lieberman; Bill O'Reilly and O'Reilly; Osama and Osama bin Laden;
--> ambiguous tags: does "redstate" mean the same as "redstate.org" or is it a reference to someone who lives in a "red state" or "redstates" (all four tags exist). Does "judiciary committee" mean Senate or House? is "Novak" about Robert Novak or Viveca Novak? is "outing" about Valerie Plame or revealing which famous people are gay?
--> misspelled tags: propoganda, facism
--> tags so broad as to be meaningless (I know there is a difference of opinion about this): blog, blogging, politics, writing
I don't know how many people read the tagging tips but perhaps a new one needs to be written to address the name duplication issue and the singular/plural issue. Once those rules are standardized. a handful of self-appointed tag police will make sure diaries conform, and someone with time on their hands might even decide to make current diaries conform (the lists above are not exhaustive--there are many more duplications of names).
I know this seems like meta timewasting on the one hand, and I assure you, I do have a life and a lot of other valuable things to do today. OTOH, as the midterms heat up, we want our activist allies, the press and other interested people to be able to find relevant diaries and stories on the site. it would be a shame if a great diary missed a shot at wider attention because it was tagged George Bush and the person searching only looked for diaries tagged George W. Bush, or it was tagged WaPo and the person searching only looked for diaries tagged Washington Post.
Last word: it's great that tag edits can now be tracked by user. Tag spammers will be banned without warning--good! The freepi and trolls who never read these things closely won't even know why they got banned!