Ask Questions

[jalbertbowden]

Why does the ask questions link to the tag for labor? Department of Labor is not the sole source of labor data on the planet, believe it or not. That tag will be modified soon, so your link will 404; Hoping to start a dialogue here of how to correctly use stack exchange with whoever is in charge. But I will be modifying that tag soon, so get back to me.

[MikePulsiferDOL]

We're not claiming to be the sole source of labor data on Earth. However, we chose to use a tag that we thought people would use on their own, even if they did not get to StackExchange via our site.

[neilneyman]

Does the tag itself really need to change? Are you more concerned because the tag description specifies US DoL? I would think DoL could still link to that tag even if you changed the description to cover labor data in general.

[jalbertbowden]

Sorry for the delay...

http://opendata.stackexchange.com/tags/labor/info

The labor tag on the wiki clearly states that Labor is only about DoL. You may not be claiming it...but whoever defined that clearly wasn't thinking about any other source, and more importantly, it is not clear to users, specifically non-US users.
I'm concerned because the tag description specifies US DoL. aside from my thoughts, there's been multiple comments/issues, and some posts in meta regarding this and others similar to it.

I know that first post came off as harsh, so I'll explain:
It's really annoying that government agencies are dumping their support on SO. Everyone is welcome, but you are the canonical owners of the data, moreover relying on a third party that can go down and most likely will not out last the US Government is a bad idea in general.
When I say dumping, I mean just that: someone in the gov thought this was a good idea and its been replicated by multiple agencies....but no word from any of them in meta. So are you a part of the community, or are you just using it to do your work for you? That last sentence is indirect to all involved, not specifically to you.

There have been other instances of tags being created without any questions on the site about the tags, as well as more of the same like this: generic term definition: blue, one of the color's of america.

When users see that they think that questions about blue can and only are about America....which most certainly isn't the case in real life.

If this seems harsh, imagine donating/volunteering much of your free time to something that you care about and having people waltz in and do as they please. We've spent too much time cleaning this stuff up.

I can edit the tag/wiki, but I shouldn't have to. And again, I've spent entirely too much time doing it already, as well as having to respond to emails/messages/issues like this.

Happy to explain more if needed.

Another member wrote you all months ago, and as far as I know, has yet to get a response:
http://meta.opendata.stackexchange.com/questions/351/editing-a-tags-name-wondering-about-us-gov-involvement-just-the-usual

[neilneyman]

I can't speak for DoL or any other agencies really. I know the point of the labor tag was

[neilneyman]

Meh sorry trying to comment on a phone here and sent too early. The labor tag was meant for some of the people hosting DoL data are participating in the open data/stack community and using it to help support public issues.

The idea, as far as I understand it, is to be part of an open source community and also to be able to answer questions in a public forum.

Certainly the us government uses millions of other services and businesses that aren't going to outlast them. Not sure why you think that is a problem?

[neilneyman]

The labor tag is useful to DoL because it enables them to get email alerts when someone posts an issue so they can answer it. Unfortunately, I really don't know anything about a "blue" tag, but I agree that sounds ridiculous. You'll have to talk to whoever created that description.

[jalbertbowden]

the blue tag was just a ridiculous example i made up...but its the same with labor.
i'm not sure who created the labor tag, but assuming it was someone from DoL. We've had similar issues, college scorecard is one I can think of off the top of my head.
Being pinged when people ask questions is great, but this is an international community so let me point out again, that its greater than the US.
The only clear solution I can see to keep users and DoL employees happy would be to specifically create a DoL tag.
I don't recommend it, but perhaps that is the way to go.
Off the top of my head, keeping labor and having them pinged on all of them will offer opportunities for them to be more active/engage in the community, rather than simply in one narrow channel.

I think most third party services the government uses, particularly in IT are a problem. Even this conversation here: at some point GitHub is going to change their model and/or not exist. Then all of this is gone.

Thanks for not taking that too harshly. Appreciate ya.

[jalbertbowden]

just to throw this out there, again, read through my question and the response from Jan. and share it with your team; or at least, I would.
http://meta.opendata.stackexchange.com/questions/351/editing-a-tags-name-wondering-about-us-gov-involvement-just-the-usual