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I was happily working my way through a tag cleanup where several tags were supposed to be merged into a new tag. The new tag is meant encompass the Activity tab of a user profile. Questions which would not fit this definition were retagged, as normal. This worked perfectly fine up until I hit :

Every user's account profile has a section showing the recent reviews, revisions, comments, badges, posts (questions and answers), and accepts.

Okay, that sort of looks like it's describing the activity tab. What I found, however, is that a significant amount of these questions are using it to mean a specific, since-removed feature: the "Recent Activity" page. I had never heard of this page before. When I asked in chat, I didn't get a definitive answer. Eventually I figured out that this was a real, specific thing that actually existed at some point. Accessibility of the "other" activity page has a pretty good explanation:

The "regular" activity page (https://stackoverflow.com/users/[user_id_here]?tab=activity) is accessible by clicking the Activity tab on one's profile page. When there is activity on one's questions or favorites, etc., the browser shows a banner across the top saying, for example, "You have 1 new response." Clicking that banner opens the "other" activity page, entitled Recent Activity (https://stackoverflow.com/users/recent/[user_id_here]/?tab=responses), which presents similar but different details.

I then asked in chat if I should create a tag for such an outdated feature, but didn't get a definitive answer then either. Thus, I'm taking this to a proper Meta discussion. Should I give these questions their own tag? I see three options, none of which are perfect:

  1. Just remove from these old questions, without providing them a specific tag. This is unsatisfying because, while the feature doesn't exist any more, it did at one point. Long enough to accumulate ~70 questions on Meta.
  2. Remove from these old questions, and give them a new tag. or something like that. This feels somewhat iffy. I'd be giving myself a Taxonomist badge (again, ~70 questions). Plus, the new tag name wouldn't really fit any better.
  3. Remove from the questions about the current activity page, revamping the tag wiki to indicate it's meant for that old feature. The main problem with this is that it would significantly stretch out the tag cleanup. While there are ~70 questions about the Recent Activity page under that tag, there are around double that which use the tag to mean the current activity page. One plus side of this is that I could create in the process. (Also giving myself Taxonomist, I guess.)

Obviously it would've been better for me to realize this extra complexity before I started the tag cleanup, but... that ship has sailed. So, what say you, meta denizens? Which fate shall befall the old Recent Activity page questions?

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Having slept on it, I think I'm leaning towards option #2 here. Creating a new tag would have two main advantages:

  1. Keeps categorized the posts about this old feature.
  2. Removes ambiguity in the tag name. (The tag isn't about asking about recent activity on a specific question, for example.)

Thus, creating a separate tag, albeit one that will likely never be used again, would be best for the current and future tagging organization.

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    Makes sense to me! Commented 2 days ago

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