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Whenever I see the tag best-practices, I wonder what it is good for.

No one is ever asking for a mediocre or even worst practice. We expect all answers to show the best way to solve an issue.

It also doesn't tell anyone about the type of problems that are grouped under this tag.

All questions titled "Best practices to do X" can simply be written as: "How to do X?". Same meaning, same answers, doesn't need a tag.

So my suggestion is that we drop this tag and merge it into our trash bin customization.

Any objections?

Update 2018.12.17

Today I merged the tag into customization. RIP.

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  • 3
    This tag is the textbook example of meta tags.
    – Andrew T.
    Commented Dec 10, 2018 at 4:51
  • I feel the use of this tag could almost be what the code review site is for. The purpose of the question being best practice to achieve something (with performance/code readability etc) that can be achieved in various ways. With that being said, you would pretty much expect all answer to be "best practice", so I see no reason not to add this tag to all of my questions, meaning, it is pointless to have it there. Also, today I learned that Gutenberg was not named after Gothenburg, the city. Completely unrelated. I am disappointed though.
    – Christine Cooper Mod
    Commented Dec 10, 2018 at 14:46
  • I'm not sure I agree - because someone may know how do do something, but it may not be best practice to do it that way, so they are asking not really how to accomplish it, they may be asking for a better way or unsure what best practice is around something they did.
    – Brett
    Commented Dec 10, 2018 at 19:20
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    That's Code Review, @Brett, there is a separate SE site for that.
    – fuxia Mod
    Commented Dec 10, 2018 at 19:22
  • @fuxia I'm aware of that - but this is WordPress specific and people on codereview may not necessarily know WordPress's best practices.
    – Brett
    Commented Dec 10, 2018 at 19:25
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    @Brett The basic problem with this type of questions is that our site would soon be flooded with working code, while we are here to solve problems with code that doesn't work. It would mean a significant shift in our scope.
    – fuxia Mod
    Commented Dec 10, 2018 at 19:57
  • @fuxia Fair enough - was just giving my thoughts, but I can see why that would be a problem; but I don't think it'd happen that much.
    – Brett
    Commented Dec 10, 2018 at 20:08

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I'm new to Wordpress, and therefore new to this site, but there are plenty of other SE sites where a question asking for the best way to do something is closed as Primarily Opinion Based.

While "Best practice" isn't exactly the same as "The best way", it is close enough. The best practice can depend on the goal.

So, yes, drop the tag.

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Tag is unnecessary

I'm also voting to remove the best-practices tag as all answers should adhere to the WordPress Coding Standards and/or best practices in general.

It's silly that some people still give bad advice and/or bad answers (with bad practices) like for example this debate: How to add crossorigin and integrity to wp_register_style? (Font Awesome 5)

Luckily they get downvoted and the answers with adhering to WordPress Coding Standards and/or best practices will always stand out and voted up.

That's a short example of why we don't need this tag, as people expect answers with best practices.

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    Note that the tag we are discussing here has nothing to do with code style. You can write terrible code and still adhere to the WP standards.
    – fuxia Mod
    Commented Dec 11, 2018 at 15:37
  • @fuxia not to mention WP standards feels like a terrible code style/bad practice - but that's my personal opinion - which adds more evidence to your OP suggesting best-practices should be removed. I prefer camelCase and it seems a good majority of frameworks prefer that.. does it make it the best practice ... probably not. It's all a matter of opinion.
    – treyBake
    Commented Dec 11, 2018 at 16:56
  • @fuxia Okay, I didn't know that. I thought WP standards was made to show devs best practices.
    – Remzi Cavdar
    Commented Dec 11, 2018 at 18:43
  • @treyBake That's why it's opinion based. I, for instance, prefer to use underscore without using capital letters.
    – Remzi Cavdar
    Commented Dec 11, 2018 at 18:46
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    @RemziCavdar No, they are just rules describing how code should be styled. And at least for PHP, the WP standards are completely isolated from the rest of the PHP world and not seen as something good.
    – fuxia Mod
    Commented Dec 11, 2018 at 19:40
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The "best practices" tag can be quite helpful in pointing out shared standards in web development or programming, workflow techniques that have become industry standards in enterprise IT, and canonical approaches from computer science academia. There is usually more than one method to accomplish any task in programming, so the "best practices" tag acknowledges the diversity of opinions on the subject but points out the established consensus based on the process of peer review among specialists.

Because of diversity of opinions & techniques, it can be argued that "best practices" emerge naturally or organically, evolving from fields of specialized knowledge in industry/academics rather than being imposed in a top-down manner by bureaucratic authorities, religious or secular institutions. It makes no sense to ban specific terminology based on aesthetic preferences, equal to promoting totalitarian logic or censorship of valid self-expression in a public forum, i.e. a form of abuse of power.

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  • Also, let's avoid the use of violent or murderous vocabulary when discussing free speech issues.
    – scriptbox
    Commented Dec 14, 2018 at 4:04
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    You can have all that without a tag. Just write good answers to every question.
    – fuxia Mod
    Commented Dec 14, 2018 at 8:45
  • @scriptbox It's just a tag. Nobody is banning anything, calm down. We're discussing if it's necessary to have a tag for it. Everybody expects good answers, so it's pointless to have a tag like that.
    – Remzi Cavdar
    Commented Dec 15, 2018 at 11:49

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