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When tagging questions related to Python-based packages — such as , , , — tag is sometimes included and sometimes not. It would be nice to have a policy on this.

In my humble opinion, if there is room for an extra tag, then the "mother tag" should always be included, though not everyone agrees. Imagine that someone who is fond of Python visits Operations Research SE for the first time. That someone can click on tag , take a look at the related tags and find about, say, CVXPY and PuLP. If there is room for tag , why would one want to deprive neophytes and outsiders of the opportunity to quickly learn about the tools of the trade? If the cost is zero and the payoff is nonnegative, why object to it?

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    $\begingroup$ Although I get your argument about those who are fond of the language and can learn new things by looking at a tag like python, I found using python with cvxpy (in your example) redundant. cvxpy or pulp are python packages. With that argument, we can keep generalizing tags. e.g. maybe we should then start tagging all cplex, gurobi and such with a solver tag as well, in hope someone can learn what are the solvers. That's my opinion but I'm curious to see what others think and hopefully, we can have some standards around it. And thanks for the question. $\endgroup$
    – EhsanK Mod
    May 20, 2021 at 12:49
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    $\begingroup$ @EhsanK And why is redundancy bad? By embracing redundancy when tagging a question related to, say, CVXPY, perhaps other Python-related questions will show up in the Related column. Also, perhaps search engines will direct more people to OR SE, which should produce more good than harm. Ideally, SE would have tag hierarchies with "mother tags" and "children tags" — like Quora — and one would be able to search not only within a tag, but also within its children, but we have no such luck. $\endgroup$
    – Rodrigo de Azevedo
    May 20, 2021 at 13:19
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    $\begingroup$ @EhsanK, in your example, python isn't redundant. I might search for python because it's the language I'm comfortable using, but if I've never heard of cvxpy I'd never think of searching for it and I'd never find that perfect answer to my problem. $\endgroup$
    – Ray Butterworth
    May 20, 2021 at 13:40
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    $\begingroup$ I'm with Rodrigo on this. Using the python tag, whether redundant or not, costs nothing and might assist some users. $\endgroup$
    – prubin Mod
    May 20, 2021 at 15:45
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    $\begingroup$ I agree that redundancy is not a problem. To take an example from another site, on tex.SE, I frequently tag questions with tikz-pgf (a LaTeX graphics package) plus edge or some other object within the tikz-pgf package. $\endgroup$
    – LarrySnyder610
    May 21, 2021 at 12:14
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    $\begingroup$ Fair enough @RayButterworth and everyone else. I actually looked at SO and saw questions with numpy are also tagged with python. I am a convert. $\endgroup$
    – EhsanK Mod
    May 21, 2021 at 12:29

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I generally agree with this proposal, and it goes to show that tag curation is often somewhat inconsistent.

In particular to your question, retagging questions related to Python-based modelling packages is a very doable case. A quick advanced search brings up 51 potential questions to be retagged with the addition of . These are potential questions because

It is important to avoid mass retagging as it would flood the main page with questions pertaining to one topic only and would deprive new questions of attention. Advice from related sites suggests no more than five instances per day, but due to our site being smaller I would go for a maximum of three of these retagging edits per day.

On a wider note, it may be helpful to form guidelines on the limits of these encompassing tags, or whether there should be limits at all. For example, how far do we want to go with (as raised in the comments), or ?

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