What should we do about the [small-drones] tag?

Question

As it is right now, the small-drones tag has some really serious problems, which we need to solve before public beta.

The overarching problem is that it doesn't really represent anything.

In the tag wiki the tag is defined as relating to drones that are lighter than 250 grams. However, neither does the tag name itself represent this, nor do most of the questions tagged with it necessarily relate to sub-250 drones. Some of them actually specifically relate to non-sub250 drones.

Finally, for a large percentage of questions that have this tag it's the only one, and these questions themselves tend to be rather low-quality. This suggests to me that the tag is (or was) being used to sidetrack the "you must tag your question" requirement as a kind of catch-all category. (probably because it was the suggested tag in the tag box in the first few days of this site).

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There are several ways I see that we can go about this.

The first is to make the tag match its description: Sub-250 grams, that is. This requires removing the tag from all questions that don't match it and likely renaming it as well, as the current name alone does not in any way suggest this definition. What we do with the tag itself after that if we go this route (make it a synonym of the new name, remove it entirely, repurpose it, or something else) is also something we'll have to decide.

The second is to broaden the definition of the tag somewhat to make it fit both more of the existing questions and its own name. This begs the question, however, of whether we need such a broad category at all, since almost all questions will be about such drones. Also, the category itself has to be defined somehow.

Third, we can turn this into a whole range of size-based tags. Besides singling out the sub-250g category, we can, for example, define a nano category (less than 50g maybe), a mid-size range that would cover 250g to a couple kilos or something, and one or two heavier categories, say 3 to 15kg and 15+. If we go this way, we'll have to decide on the number of these categories, their boundaries, the naming system for the corresponding tags, etc. To conclude, we'll have to decide which of these new size ranges the original tag name should correspond to if we decide to keep it.

Finally, there's the option of getting rid of the tag entirely and adopting a policy of not tagging based on size.

Probably there are other options I did not consider; feel free to suggest those as well.

Also, I'd like to point out that regardless of what we do with the tag itself, we'll have to retag most of the questions using it, and especially those that have it as the only tag.

Answer 1

I'm not sure you need this tag... I've gone through the 20 questions that currently use it and I don't know that I've found one that absolutely needs it. I'm going to pick out some of what I see in the questions with this tag to try to help illustrate a point...

Nothing in the question indicates size of the drone

These questions have nothing in them about the size of the drone, other than the tag. The information about the drone size should be included in the question and defined by it, without relying on the tag. Tags should never give information that isn't in the question already.

You could say that this doesn't mean the tag isn't needed - and that'd be true, but it also seems to be somewhat used as a crutch - you want people to rely on question content, not tags. It's better to know the type of drone or the exact size than a subjective term like "small".

The question is about a specific drone

The asker has a certain drone in mind - either they own it or they're considering purchasing it. Sometimes there are even comments asking for more specifics about the drone on these questions. Terminology may differ by brand; solutions may also differ by brand.

As with the above, it's much better to rely on the content to give the information than a tag.

Another classification may be better

small-drones, depending on how narrowly it's defined and carefully it's tended, could make up a huge percentage of your questions. Sometimes a more specific tag is better... for example quadcopters or the specific model of drone.

There's a quadcopter tag... and most of the small-drones questions are about quadcopters... that seems like a more appropriate tag.

Classification clash

What's a micro-copter vs a small-drone vs a nano drone? How easily will it be for someone coming in off the street to pick the correct tag? Yes, you could choose more precise size ranges, but I'm pretty sure that someone off the street isn't going to attempt to add the tag "sub-250-drones" - and, unless drones are always weighed in grams around the world, you're going to have issues in places that use imperial measurements... where 250 grams is about 0.55 pounds.

You don't always need a tag

Is someone going to use this as a search term or going to follow it? Or are they going to follow more specific, less subjective tags like quadcopter? Or are they going to specialize in the drone they actually have and have experience with?

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I understand that size is important to regulations in many (if not all) jurisdictions - but I'd also say that each jurisdiction is going to have a different definition for these groups - for example, a "small" drone on this site is one that weighs under 20 pounds. This Australian Government site classifies "Small" as 2.01-25 kg.

Anyway, what I'm getting at is that one of the options you didn't include in the question was "just get rid of it entirely". Are the charging or maintenance needs of a <250 g drone that different than a >250 g but <500 g drone?

Answer 2

I think the same applies to the drone tag - not least as the vast majority of questions on this site are expected to relate to some form of drone!

If drone is being used to mean multirotor or quadcopter, visitors should be encouraged to use the more specific tags instead.

Answer 3

I agree with the fact that drone and small-drones should be burninated, for my suggestion see (discussion should be carried out on the new question):

• Burninate the [drone] and [small-drones] tags

In my opinion, we don't need these tags, the reasons why they are being used now:

• The question is very low quality
• This is the first tag the asker could find
• A tag did not exist for the asker's question

These tags are incredibly broad and should be burninated before the start of the public beta (most likely on 28th April) to avoid mass-retagging afterwards.

Suggested burnination procedure to be carried out before public beta to avoid a massive influx of questions with these tags:

1. Go through every question with the drone and small-drones tag

2. Consider the following options:

   • Tag with the correct tags (creating them if need-be)
   • If very low quality, try and salvage the question
   • If it's very hard to salvage the question, deletion can be considered

After this process has happened, we can talk about an alternative small-drones tag for drones weighing less than 250 grams.