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We have a tag for some reason. After some debate on Meta, questions that require lawyers are off topic in the FAQ. I admit there are some questions with a slight common law focus that could be understood and answered by non-lawyers, but even that's a grey area.

So what's the Legal tag for? Is it a hint a question should be closed, a tag to be removed, both or neither?

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1 Answer 1

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It's a tag to be removed, legal advice is off topic and even if a question can be answered by non lawyers, it doesn't really benefit from the tag as it's a meta tag:

  1. If the tag can’t work as the only tag on a question, it’s probably a meta-tag. Every tag you use should be able to work, more or less, as the only tag on a question. Meta-tags, like [beginner], [subjective], and [best-practices], are useless by themselves — they tell you nothing at all about the content of the question.
  2. If the tag commonly means different things to different people, it’s probably a meta-tag. In a cruel, ironic twist, the meaning of the tag [subjective] itself … is actually subjective. Ditto for [best-practices] and [beginner]. Best practices to whom? Beginner by what criteria? These tags are impossible to define by anything remotely resembling an objective metric. In comparison, the the meaning of tags like [java], [c#], and [javascript] are crystal clear to all but the nuttiest of nutbags.

Update

There are no more questions. If the tag reappears, we should ask for it to be blacklisted.

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  • Then ethics tags should go too. Since the workplace is no place for questions about ethics just specific ethical issues. Can we bar these tags and give anyone who tries to use them a warning that their question may be off topic? Oct 9, 2012 at 19:55
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    @Chad Ask a separate question about [ethics], when this discussion concludes: meta.workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/453/…
    – yannis
    Oct 9, 2012 at 22:01
  • I actually added that as an answer to that question. Thanks. Oct 10, 2012 at 13:01
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    @Chad What? Why? No, ask a question about it, follow the process... We can't start removing [ethics] based on an answer, ask a question about it, post an answer if you have a strong opinion, and that's about it...
    – yannis
    Oct 10, 2012 at 22:59
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    @Yannis - I was just about to ask why we had the tag myself, so looks like it's reappeared, given it's 2 1/2 years since your answer. Jun 4, 2015 at 17:15
  • @TheWanderingDevManager Same. Was just about to ask, since most of the 18 questions with the tag are closed.
    – user15729
    Jul 15, 2015 at 21:14
  • However, perhaps the tag should remain, but it needs strict guidelines. There's not even an excerpt telling how to use it. What is asking for legal advice?
    – user15729
    Jul 15, 2015 at 21:16
  • The convention seems to be that legal questions that HR should know the answer to are on-topic. Everything else is not. Questions about hiring would be the primary ones. What is "legal advice"?
    – user15729
    Jul 15, 2015 at 21:18
  • @TheWanderingDevManager I think we need a new Meta discussion about this.
    – yannis
    Jul 16, 2015 at 8:05

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