up vote 9 down vote favorite

If an identification question has an accepted answer, it would make sense to tag it with the authors name. Or should we not tag it and leave it as a sort of trivia question for others?

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5 Answers

up vote 7 down vote

No, I don't think so. Not all story identification questions are resolved unambiguously, and sometimes the asker misremembered details. If you know the name of the author already, the question is often not interesting.

The tags on a question are tags that searchers might use. By definition, someone searching for an identification question does not know the name of the author. To retag the question would be counter-productive.

I would encourage using tags that reflect what themes the asker remembers, e.g. What is the title of a story about a elevator through time and the smallest possible change → obviously, and (I'm not sure about that one — I put it in because it involves changing the timeline, but I can see the case against).

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That is why I specifically wrote that the answer must be accepted. It would be nice to have a mechanism to associate a question like that with the author. Some sort of a hidden tag, perhaps? – Dima Jul 28 '11 at 15:53
@Dima If the user misremembered details (conflating elements of multiple stories seems fairly common in Story ID questions), an accepted answer doesn't mean that the entire question is directly relevant to the author of the work in the answer. There could be two answers, both right, both citing different works, and one could be accepted because it was "more right"... or simply more detailed, better written, etc., in which case the issue Gilles describes is still valid, despite there being an accepted answer. – Beofett Feb 27 at 13:17
I'm voting for this but will suggest a less stringent variation: tagging with the author should not push out another, more descriptive tag. Simply put, if these questions are to be useful they have to be searchable by someone who also doesn't recall enough to find it themselves, which is why tagging with the author is secondary. – dmckee Feb 28 at 1:44
up vote 5 down vote

I'm going to say that yes, providing that the answer is clearly proved to be the correct one (by an answer being accepted, for example). If there is any doubt, the the author's name should be excluded, until all doubt is removed.

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Although this answer is the most upvoted, I must clarify that this is not standard practice on this site. We do not retag story identification questions based on their answers, even if they're accepted. – Gilles Feb 25 at 11:15
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As I said on a comment to Giles' answer the author should be excluded if there is a more descriptive tag that could use that slot instead. – dmckee Feb 28 at 1:45
up vote 2 down vote

I'll say Yes, because it would help in ordering the information after the question has been answered, as Dima pointed out.

Also, it might be an interesting metric later for figuring out what author has the least memorable titles.

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up vote 1 down vote

It's a nice idea, but where there isn't a tag in place for the author remember that (it seems to me that) quite a few of the questions are raised by first-time or relatively new visitors who may not have or indeed ever gain the rep required to create a new tag.

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up vote -1 down vote

Current standard practice or not, yes, I'd like to see this happen. My argument for is that if I subscribe to an author's tag, it's because I am interested in seeing discussion about the author and their works. I'd like to know what others are saying about them, what is sticking out to other readers (what one person remembers might be different from what I remembered; what struck them powerfully might be different from my own interaction with the work). I'm following an author tag because I am a fan, and even though an answer might be accepted, if I am a knowledgeable fan of that author, I might be able to contribute to the question/answer through comments or provide an even better answer :)

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