text: Merry Go Round Situation - Meta Stack Overflow
  Merry Go Round Situation
  After previous changes, up until Jul 3 the excel Usage guidance was:
  Only for questions on complex formula development or VBA programming. Show your data together with the expected results and your current effort to resolve the problem. General help regarding MS Excel for single worksheet functions is available at Super User. Combine the Excel tag with r, VSTO, C#, VB.NET, PowerShell, OLE automation, and other programming related tags and questions.
  and on that day it was edited to:
  Only for questions on complex formula development. Show your data together with the expected results and your current effort to resolve the problem. For VBA programming, you should rather use excel-vba or vba. General help regarding MS Excel for single worksheet functions is available at Super User. Combine the Excel tag with r, VSTO, C#, VB.NET, PowerShell, OLE automation, and other programming related tags and questions.
  With review by three users whose combined score on excel, excel-vba, vba, excel-formula is presently 0.
  The change is quite radical for several reasons:
  • There is already excel-formula whose Usage guidance is (presently):
  This tag is for Microsoft Excel questions where the question or answers involve Excel formula, as opposed to VBA or other code mechanism.
  • More importantly: you should rather use excel-vba or vba conflicts with other advice to apply BOTH (in most circumstances) rather than one OR other of the two.
  • And most importantly: or VBA programming has been edited out.
  One ramification of which has been that a user has removed excel from around 200 – 400 questions (users own very approximate estimate) tagged excel-vba or vba, as a start on updating actual usage to comply with Usage guidance. There are at present 22,214 questions tagged with excelexcel-vba and 10,568 tagged with excelvba but not with excel-vba.
  Tomorrow if someone else suggests that excel tag should handle VBA and some random people approve it, does it mean that this user has to go back and edit all question once again?
  What is the best way to handle this scenario?
  asked Sep 8, 2015 at 6:54
  The user has about 11 pages of tag edits in the last 2 days... I don't recall seeing a burnination request or something like that for these tags. That many edits shouldn't have been made without discussion.
  Sep 8, 2015 at 7:51
  I sort of do not blame this guy as he is just following what the tag wiki says... Today it is this guy. Tomorrow there will be others. My question is about unjustifiable approvals...
  Sep 8, 2015 at 8:04
  Some kind of related rep criteria to review those edit suggestions seems like an option.
  I was exactly thinking that. Such kind of edits should be approved by say 5-10 experts in that particular field... Don't know how practical/feasible would that be though.. Hence My question in Meta :)
  Sep 8, 2015 at 8:07
  10 seems like quite a lot, especially for smaller tags. I'd keep it at 3, but require those to have at least a bronze tag badge, or a answer in that tag is it's a smaller tag.
  Sep 8, 2015 at 8:20
  I agree and hence suggested a minimum of 5. But these 5 people should be experts in that field (this part is more important)
  Sep 8, 2015 at 8:22
  but require those to have at least a bronze tag badge, or a answer in that tag is it's a smaller tag. I like that! :)
  Why don't you suggest that as an answer?
  Sep 8, 2015 at 8:23
  Sep 8, 2015 at 18:25
  Related issues have been happening for at least five years now
  Sep 8, 2015 at 19:52
  "Only for questions on complex formula development. Show your data together with the expected results and your current effort to resolve the problem." - in other words, "Get off my lawn!".
  Sep 9, 2015 at 1:52
  This question till now has 851 views but only two answers [45 upvotes (if I combine the upvotes of the answers) and few comments (Not even a single mod comment)]? I am not sure what to make of this...
  Sep 9, 2015 at 6:29
  Still No Mod Comment? This is simply amazing :)
  Sep 15, 2015 at 4:58
  @SiddharthRout - I don't know what you expect us to say. Moderators are janitors, not presidents. We have opinions, but it's up to the community to decide what's appropriate for things like this. I've never written any VBA, so I have no opinion on this whatsoever. I'd say it's up to experts in this tag to figure out what's appropriate.
  Sep 16, 2015 at 17:50
  @BradLarson: This question is not about VBA. This question is about illogical approvals by people. We need a better system as suggested by Cerbrus or Deduplicator. Today it is VBA. Tomorrow it can be any tag.
  Sep 16, 2015 at 17:54
  An option to validate those suggested edits, would be to only allow users familiar with the edited tag, to review the suggestion.
  I'd stick to the minimum of 3 "approve" votes, but only allow users with at least a bronze tag badge to review the suggestion.
  On smaller tags, the requirement could be something like having at least one (or more) upvoted answer(s) in the tag.
  edited Sep 8, 2015 at 9:50
  answered Sep 8, 2015 at 8:30
  I like your suggestion. Would love to hear what the community thinks about this.
  Sep 8, 2015 at 8:31
  There's a serious flaw for most tag-wikis and tag-excerpts with that idea: Most tags are strictly too small for ever getting done without mod-intervention under that regime, and many more are effectively too small. So you really need to work on the criteria some more.
  Sep 8, 2015 at 8:58
  @Deduplicator: I think that can be taken care of by what Cerbrus mentioned in the last line? On smaller tags, the requirement could be something like having at least one (or more) answer(s) in the tag.
  Sep 8, 2015 at 9:02
  Even that is likely too much.
  Sep 8, 2015 at 9:04
  @Deduplicator: I understand. Do you have any suggestions?
  Well, perhaps a graduated lowering of requirements: Start with *needs gold badge" for reviewing, drop that to silver then bronze then upvoted answer than any post than current criteria, staying at each maybe 10 hours if there are at least 10x the number of active users (1 month window) neccessary to approve. And of course serve them preferentially.
  Sep 8, 2015 at 9:09
  @Deduplicator: Makes sense. Feel free to post that as an answer once you have thought it through?
  Sep 8, 2015 at 9:11
  Well, the goal seems to be making sure that the experts, as much as there are experts in the affected tag, don't get scooped by those not knowing what the hell they are doing.
  Thus, how about a graduated system which doesn't threaten to starve any tag-edit out.
  Start with the first one where there are at least 8x as many 5K users active in the last 30 days neccessary to approve, and lower requirements for serving it in the queue every few hours:
  With gold-badge
  With silver-badge
  With bronze-badge
  With positive answer-score
  With any post
  Naturally serve tag-wikis preferentially.
  And consider users one bracket better recipients for every doubling of reputation (they should know better how to review properly, at least), though only after determining where to start (never freeze out those knowledgeable, even in miniscule tags).
  This should not change the requirements for reviewing any specific edit, only for who automatically gets chosen to review what in the queue.
  edited Nov 29, 2015 at 10:23
  43.4k55 gold badges132132 silver badges171171 bronze badges
  For a new tag-wiki, no-one except the first asker will have any posts.
  Sep 8, 2015 at 10:58
  Well, I don't understand it. As you say, not a problem.
  Sep 8, 2015 at 11:30
  @BillWoodger: Cases like that can easily be considered in the requirements. New tags > No-one has any posts in it > anyone with tag wiki rights can (suggest / ) edit it.
  Sep 8, 2015 at 11:39
  You could also entirely ban tags above a certain size to bronze tag badge holders or above.
  Over the last 12 months (rounded up) I have arrived at the conclusion that the primary mission statement that drives SO is not so much about specifically answering the OP's question or providing an avenue for acquiring Internet 'street cred' for the many volunteers. It is about building 'a library of detailed answers to every question about programming' that acts as a readily available repository for future viewers to expediently locate answers to their own problems. Providing an viable answer that will resolve the OP's stated problem is secondary and the answerers' Internet 'street cred' (aka rep) is a very distant third.
  This latest restructuring of the Excel forum completely undermines that goal.
  While we each have our own OCD-inspired visions of how the forums should be layered and structured into a utopian hierarchy that fits our experienced sensibilities, the title and technical categorization chosen by the original question positor should be given more credence than is currently allotted by those that 'know better'. The OP of any question is in the unique position of experiencing the problem first-hand at their own level of expertise and experience and that is something that is very often difficult to relate to when viewed from an apex that comes from years of experience. Yes, by and large we DO know better but that does not mean that the OP was wrong.
  Example: An OP wants a [excel-vba] routine that highlights rows when a certain column does not meet a certain condition. An answer is proposed that Conditional Formatting would make a better choice as a methodology and details are provided. The OP responds with something like 'Wow! Didn't know I could do that!' and accepts the essentially off-topic answer as the solution. Should the VBA-related title and technical tag be adjusted to more accurately reflect [conditional-formatting]? NO! The next person in a similar situation that follows the same path that the OP took will find the alternative solution that they had not considered either. Besides, it isn't like there isn't already a wealth of questions/answers about how to highlight rows based on criteria from a coding perspective and this hypothetical question would likely receive additional [excel-vba] responses that can be upvoted as on-topic alternatives to the accepted answer. The point is that the original title and technical categorization should not be significantly altered due to an alternate methodology being accepted as an answer. What the OP missed in his/her efforts to resolve the problem was the correlation between how they viewed the problem and alternative methods and this should be maintained.
  Yes, there are going to be times when a title and/or technical tag is just plain wrong or too vague and these should be improved. Note 'improved' and not 'rewritten'. As much of the original perspective as possible should be maintained if the idea to assist future viewers of the situation is to be the foremost consideration.
  It is somewhat ironic that this large restructuring of a working system comes just as SO celebrates their 10,000,000th question with a claimed 7.5B 'times a developer found your solutions'. If these figures are to be accepted that means that a 750:1 ratio (or 375:1 if the conservative half-of estimate is used) of developers 'helped' over questions asked. It also means that the system works. I cannot find any lamentation on this page that bemoans the fact that it isn't or even that it needs improvement. Quite the contrary in fact and the numbers provided are impressive.
  If anyone thinks that that people are not finding the answers to their problems due to any forum's current organizational paradigm, then make an effort to re-categorize new questions as they come in. Restructuring old questions is breaking a working system.
  It's not like there has actually been a question asked in the Excel forum in the last year that could not to some degree be termed a duplicate of some earlier question. The duplication is a good thing because the same principle is being categorized from different angles. If anyone wants to help build a wider net under which to catch future inquiries on the same subject matter then do so with new questions. Don't cut out part of the existing net in order to shore up new avenues of information distribution. You will just be leaving a hole.