We already have quite a few nice tags for classifying questions to make them better searchable.
But not all of them have a tag wiki, and some existing tag wikis are not really good. There is still some work to be done and 2 reputation to be earned for users who have not yet gained the Trusted User privilege.
What format do we want the tag wikis to be in? Which information should be displayed when hovering over the tag or selecting a tag on creating a question?
As from the following meta discussion we had consent that tags should be in English but synonymized to the German counterpart if applicable.
Therefore we may also want to write the tag wikis in English. However it would be nice to have the German translation appearing first in the wiki when hovering over it. As examples see
grammar formality pronouns swabian
This would ease choosing the appropriate tag for people who are not sure on the English counterpart of a German expression. Ideally this could further be eased by combining with a German tag synonym pointing to the English master tag.
For suggesting a tag synonym in case we have not yet gained the reputation needed to do so we may add an answer to the following post:
The tag wiki excerpt appearing when hovering over a tag should stay short to make it quickly readable. In the following formatted wiki we may give longer explanations or links to relevant web pages.
People are also interested in reading the full info tag, i.e. the about field.
We should provide more information in this field. Currently we have a mixed-up content. Some of them provide example questions, other provide alternatives tags. Sometimes the info box is in English and German, sometimes only English. We need to improve these information.
(Note: If this answer gets a lot of upvotes we should decide in a second step which content needs to be provided.)
It would be good if Takkat and @Em1 and anyone else interested could have a look at mnemonics that I just created:
Mnemotechnik nennt man einen Merkspruch, eine Eselsbrücke oder Merkhilfe, die das Einprägen von Fakten erleichtern sollen. Quelle: Wikipedia A mnemonic or mnemonic device is any learning technique that aids information retention. Source: Wikipedia
As per the discussion above, I made it bilingual but with German appearing first in both the tag wiki and the tag wiki excerpt. Please let me know if this is an acceptable template. I may want to do a bunch of them this weekend, got my eyes set on that Research Assistant badge ;)
In addition to Takkat’s answer, I want to remark that we should focus on helping users to understand what a tag is about, not on explaining the word behind the tag.
The purpose of tag wikis is to explain the usage of a tag. Thus focus on such things as:
In most cases we do not need to educate the user what the word behind a tag means. For example most users know what a verb is and in the rare case that they don’t, there are better places to explain it to them, in particular Wikipedia. The exception are highly technical terms such as expletiva, but even here a short description usually suffices.
Finally, remember that the excerpt usually suffices to store all the information required for most purposes and you only need the actual wiki if the usage of a tag needs extensive information or if you want to give guidance on how to ask a good question in a given tag or list good example questions.
