MediaWiki talk:Tags-intro

Edit request
I was quite disappointed to see this poorly-written note at the top of Special:Tags. Please could an admin replace it with this edited version?

 This page lists the tags that the software may mark an edit or logged action with, and their meaning. See Tags. Note to administrators: You are now able to delete certain tags. There is no clear policy, so caution is advisable, but it is presumed that deleting tags that have not been used for several years or have few hits should be uncontroversial. You should check the edit filter that added the tag to clarify its purpose and for an overview of the edits it was applied to. If you do not see any delete links, then all of the deletable tags have already been deleted. Do not forget to delete the accompanying MediaWiki pages! You are also able to create and activate tags in preparation to bot tagging of edits, but tags cannot be added to revisions yet, so this functionality is currently no use. See the related bug request, T20670. — This, that and the other (talk) 08:51, 13 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes check.svg Done — Mr. Stradivarius  ♪ talk ♪ 09:26, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

A little more clean-up on the lede at Special:Tags?
[Copying over what I wrote at Village_pump_(technical)]

The lede currently reads: This page lists the tags that the software may mark an edit or logged action with, and their meaning. See Tags. Administrators are able to perform different actions in respect to tags, including deleting some of them; please refer to the section on tag management in the documentation for indications.

Bringing over text from Tags and inserting links makes this more understandable to the uninitiated: This page lists tags automatically placed by the MediaWiki software to mark certain edits (or logged actions), together with their meaning.

Administrators are able to perform different actions with respect to tags, including deleting some of them; please refer to the section on tag management in the documentation for indications. Thoughts? Humanengr (talk) 00:29, 11 September 2018 (UTC)
 * while tags may be placed automatically, they are not exclusively placed automatically (i.e. they may be placed or edited manually). — xaosflux  Talk 01:00, 11 September 2018 (UTC)
 * I take it you meant "they are -not- exclusively placed automatically …". I was relying on the wording from Tags "For the purpose of Wikipedia maintenance and administration, tags are brief messages that MediaWiki automatically places next to certain edits (or logged action)." Maybe both need to be fixed to accord with your description?Humanengr (talk) 01:06, 11 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes, I meant not exclusive! — xaosflux  Talk 03:58, 11 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Is anyone other than an admin allowed to manually insert any of the tags? Humanengr (talk) 04:09, 11 September 2018 (UTC)
 * According to Special:UserGroupRights, admins, bots and EFMs have the changetags permission. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:17, 11 September 2018 (UTC)
 * "Users" have "applychangetags" which allow editors to add an existing tag with an edit. — xaosflux  Talk 16:24, 11 September 2018 (UTC)

Unsurprisingly, one thing leads to another; I'll give this one more shot at clarification. It looks like Tags's lede (which I take as the governing description) doesn't capture the automatic and manual issue, which is perhaps better expressed as: "…tags are metadata placed automatically by MediaWiki software or manually by editors with admin privileges …". In that, I also changed 'brief messages' to 'metadata' per Tag (metadata). Does that read properly to you? (Perhaps to be even more accurate: "by MediaWiki software and Wikipedia bots or manually by editors"; but I omitted that for brevity.) Anyway, that's my last shot at making this lede more readable; if it doesn't take, s'ok. Humanengr (talk) 17:18, 11 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Tags is just a local description, the more "authoritative" guide to tags is mw:Manual:Tags. — xaosflux  Talk 04:21, 12 September 2018 (UTC)

I believe that tags can only be applied by users through the use of an extension, like visual editor or the edit filter. Humanengr specifically asked who could manually insert tags, which is what I was trying to answer. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:06, 12 September 2018 (UTC)
 * while the webui doesn't have an interface for it, users editing with the webapi can apply existing tags to edits, for example see Special:Diff/859194616 where I used a non-admin account to "manually" use an existing tag. — xaosflux  Talk 11:15, 12 September 2018 (UTC)
 * And reviewing Special:Tags shows there are 2 classifications of tags, one specifically called "Applied manually by users and bots" (from MediaWiki:tags-source-manual). — xaosflux  Talk 12:30, 12 September 2018 (UTC)
 * thx, will consider. (Aside: "Applied manually … by bots" --> "Applied by bots or manually by users"; also the "Defined by the software" text provided by MediaWiki is obscure when it appears on a WP page --> "Defined by MediaWiki software".) Humanengr (talk) 22:25, 13 September 2018 (UTC)

So … iiuc, tags can be placed by a variety of mechanisms: MediaWiki software, bots, (also scripts?), etc., some which have been set to run automatically; some when initiated by users granted appropriate permissions; some manually, again by users with appropriate permissions. Assuming that's correct, Special:Tags can be simplified to "This page lists tags used to mark edits or logged actions, their meaning, and usage. See Tags." (The text "the software may mark" misleads as some tags can be applied manually.)

That same level of detail can be removed from the Tags lede sentence: "For the purpose of Wikipedia maintenance and administration, tags are metadata used to mark edits or logged actions." The rest of the lede there seems a bit muddled/disordered and perhaps should include something about 'mechanisms' as I wrote above, but at least the first sentence can be simplified for readability. hth, Humanengr (talk) 23:37, 15 September 2018 (UTC)