The Support and Help forum needs a new tag, “Networking”.
I have twice created a post asking for help with networking, but the nearest relevant tag was networking_wireless. My posts weren’t specifically about wireless networking.
The system doesn’t allow me to use a tag that’s not on the predefined list.
The ‘Support and Help’ category’s networking_wireless tag is appropriate for all forms of networking.
Go ahead and use it.
would an “and” fit in there or would networking_and_wireless be to long ? (that would make it easier to identify it for all kind of networking issues)
@ian-weisser —
Thanks. That isn’t intuitive. It looks like “Networking: Wireless”, rather than “Networking including wireless.” I’ll use it from now on.
That doesn’t seem right to me, because wireless is a subset of networking.
Fully agree. One of those little papercuts from the Forums transition. We can easily rename the tag. It’s just a question of the updated name.
The “start here” page phrases it this way to avoid confusion…
…so it’s confusing mostly to folks who skip that page.
Reviewing the last two months of questions with the tag:
13 wireless
6 wired
1 bluetooth
My own opinion is that 10 questions/month is too few to bother with two tags (that’s GOOD news). My preference is to use simply #networking, but that might confuse more folks than it helps. It’s a rich tapestry.
Thanks for the reply.
That’s fine, but for a newcomer to Discourse (which includes me), it’s not obvious that this applies to the tag “networking_wireless”. I have seen the page, but as you would realise, I wouldn’t have associated that with the tag. I didn’t even know about tags until I created my first post, and was asked to add a tag.
It’s quite possible that a number of people avoided using the tag because they weren’t asking about wireless. That’s exactly what I did. Hence, the number is likely to be an underestimation.
In what way do you think that “networking” would confuse people? Do you suspect that newcomers wouldn’t associate “networking” with their wired or wireless connections?
Maybe the Start Here page needs to have a specific entry talking about tags?
Great questions.
Here’s our experience…
I’m NOT saying there are “bad” suggestions. I think they are good suggestions. I looked into many of these myself a few months ago.
I AM saying that you’re right: There is room for improvement. Finding an improvement that doesn’t cause further problems for somebody else is the challenge.
That is precisely the experience that UbuntuForums had. It’s why their category was titled “Network and Wireless.”
UbuntuForums folks involved with the transition to Discourse recommended the current tag…and we listened to them.
Hmmmm. The “start here” page is intended to avoid involving first-timers with the bureaucracy of tags and categories. Hence the links that lead to appropriate troubleshooting, or to forms with the category and tag pre-filled. Folks who encounter category/tag confusion usually skipped that page.
Our #1 source of complaints is from people who skipped the “start here” page and got confused …and then frustrated… by categories/tags/posting. Not sure what we can do about that.
My opinion is the “start here” page has far too much already to be welcoming: Remember to tell us XYZ. Did you read DEF? Review this list of 22 items and pick closest one. I resist adding more to that pile. I would prefer to find ways to remove some of it.
I think there’s a lot more we can do with the network troubleshooting page to solve a lot of the network/wireless tag confusion. That is a matter of a volunteer stepping up to edit that page.
Ah, OK.
Can tags contain characters other than the underscore? If so, what about “networking&wireless” (to go with @ogra’s suggestion, but without increasing the length)?
Clever, subtle, clearer.
I like it.
We will look into it…
I would suggest adding a tag called networking-general.
Here is the logic:
In library science terms, networking_wireless would be consider as a narrower term to the broader term networking.
However, networking might be too broad here and be incorrectly assigned.
A term like networking-general would be considered as a related term and could cover the gaps for users who want to ask something networking related but not specific to wireless.
For example, networking-general could be applied to both desktop and server questions.
I also think networking_wireless needs to be edited to networking-wireless in line with many other tags on the platform and the general practice on Discourse (I believe), which is lowercase separated by a hyphen.
Just throwing out some ideas 
That’s another alternative to look into.
Thanks.
I believe it’s better to have a tag just for servers like we had a sub-category on the forum for servers because it is less confusing when offering help if it’s properly tag.
I want to add yes we can change the tag to networking & wireless also, the reason I like to keep servers separate is when I answer wireless questions it is more organized if the server questions are not mixed with the other network and wireless questions we could break it down and have networking and wireless separate as suggested already to add more clarity , either option is alright with me.
@Wild_Man What I would suggest is to have totally separate support areas for Servers, user desktops, user Laptops and raspberry/mini pc boxes etc.
People who have servers are usually far more au-fait with linux than everybody else, and should have their own dedicated area.
Desktops and laptops should have their own dedicated areas as most queries will not apply to the other, the same for raspberries and mini pc boxes.
I personally think this makes far more sense than the present set up which I personally find extremely confusing, as the differentials are mostly concentrated on Ubuntu flavours.
Tony