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I think they are good thing to have, but as for their prominence they seem way on outskirts of the site.

How important (visited, useful) they are to the site? How much effort should be spend on writing and maintaining them?

I would like to find some time and start working on wikis (there are next to none so far), but I have doubts if they matter much and if my time might be better spent on other things on site.

Edit I am talking about full tag wiki pages, not small excerpts that are used as tag descriptions.

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  • Perhaps you should clarify that you are talking about the complete wiki pages, not just the excerpts.
    – Jan Fabry
    Commented Apr 8, 2011 at 9:53
  • (Should I ask this as a stand-alone Meta Question? It is related, but definitely orthogonal.) I stumbled upon your question when exploring the wordpress-3 tag, and wondering why this tag was named the way it was (there is no such thing as "WordPress 3"), and if it could be edited somehow appropriately. There is no Wiki for this tag, so I was unable to determine the original rationale for its creation/naming.
    – Chip Bennett
    Commented Apr 11, 2011 at 11:57
  • @Chip Bennett search the meta, we discussed version tags couple times already but (I think) never finalized actions to be taken. As for me that tag is plain harmful and wordpress-X tags should be banned altogether.
    – Rarst Mod
    Commented Apr 11, 2011 at 15:52
  • Aye, thanks, Rarst! I found the related questions, and will add to those discussions.
    – Chip Bennett
    Commented Apr 11, 2011 at 17:00

3 Answers 3

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They get more and more attention. Via the hover popups, but now also in the redesigned tag pages that show summaries of the excerpts.

The hovers also work when you are (re-)tagging a question. I assume the next logical extension would be to display the summaries by default under the tag without a mouseover, to guide new users to the right tags.

I think we can also use the tag wikis to solve this old request for a curated list of good questions per topic.

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It would be very helpful to new users and improve the quality of this site.

Ask Different, the stack exchange Apple question and answer site does a really good job of maintaining tag wikis. I think ours could be just as good if not better.

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Quite important!

http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/03/redesigned-tags-page/

It is my strong belief that the tags page is an essential map of what your community is, and is not, about.

Thus, putting the tag wiki excerpts front and center on the tag page is an opportunity to educate your community about the tags you’ve selected and what they are for. Tags are the de-facto map of allowed (and implicitly disallowed by omission) topics on your site. Reliable tag cartography is essential to navigation and exploration in any expert Q&A community.

I also find it helps immensely to sit down and try to explain each tag -- should this tag exist? who would follow this tag? what questions should have this tag.

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  • Yes, but while excerpts are quite visible wikis themselves are buried under weakly named links like info or about the plugins tag. Site doesn't make a bit of effort (that I see) to guide users to those pages and urge them to learn from them. Thus I have my doubts that many people actually explore deep enough to get there.
    – Rarst Mod
    Commented Apr 8, 2011 at 8:06

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