socvr burnination FAQ proposed

socvr-burn-qa.md

Question

What happens, or what should I expect, when I ask the community to remove ("burninate") a tag from the system? Is there an established process for the community to follow?

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Answer

There are four criteria for burnination - if the tag doesn't meet all of them, or if it is clear that removing it will do more harm than good, the request will be declined. It would have been preferable to run this process purely on voting, but... That would inevitably lead to trouble. Your distaste for a frustrating game shouldn't result in the destruction of otherwise-valid tags.

Once you have confirmation that the tag meets all of the criteria for burnination you can:

1. Start the burnination when a small number of questions need to processed and you can handle that on your own, or with little help.
2. Follow the burnination process.

Burnination Process

1. When a burninate-request is posted, it will be marked [meta-tag:status-review] until/unless it scores at least 20. If it never achieves this score, then it should not be acted on; don't interpret apathy as a sign of support.

2. After reaching the threshold score, the request will modified by a moderator:

• The post will be [meta-tag:featured] for one day, exposing it to as much attention on Stack Overflow as possible.
• Any punny titles will be replaced with, "Should we burninate [name of tag]?"
• The following hidden warning and public notice will be added to the top of the post:

  <!--
    MODERATOR NOTE TO EDITORS:
    Please don't edit post title while it has featured tag.
    If you ignore this note, it will be considered as abuse and handled accordingly.
  --> 
  
      *This tag is in phase 2 of the burnination process described [here](https://github.com/SO-Close-Vote-Reviewers/SOCVR-RoomInformation/blob/master/burnination.md). 
  

The question and comments have been cleaned to allow for on-topic discussion on this tag, please keep it that way. If you want to discuss the process itself, post a new question on Meta or visit the SOCVR*

• The question will get a post notice: Featured Burninate Request

  This will be a chance for folks to show their support and a chance for folks who thought it was too silly to be worth talking about to step up and explain why the request should be denied.

3. After its day in the spotlight, a moderator, or someone else on the Community Team will review the request and any arguments against it. A high influx of down votes or fresh comments during it's featured phase is a signal to hold back on burnination.

4. If the tag can be cleanly removed at this point, the moderator skips directly to step #6. If it requires further disambiguation, the request will be tagged [meta-tag:status-planned] signalling that it is time for widespread review and revision of the questions in the tag. This is the time to clean up the edges. During this time, the tag will be blacklisted with a message that links back to the request meta post.
   The team that takes the burnination on can be:

• the OP;
• a couple of interested commenters;
• a topic specific chatroom;
• the SOCVR room.

To keep the progress visible and have a single point of contact for comments related to the effort, whoever is in charge posts a new answer along these lines:

Progress

You can help out by reviewing the questions and answers in these tags and:

• flag or close questions that are duplicate/off-topic/unclear/too broad/opinion based;
• filter on these tags in the Close Vote Queue and review;
• vote on the questions and its answers;
• delete vote the question or answer(s) if there is nothing of value;
• editing to add value (re-tag), or;
• flag obsolete comments.

Here are some easy links to get you started: [tag:priority]

• Open 425
• Closed 15
• No answers 59
• No accepted answer 195

Review in the Close vote Queue

Remember that we don't want to destroy value so let salvaging a post be your first priority! If you have specific questions feel free to drop in the wherever they can contact you, for example in SOCVR, or leave a comment under this post.

5. When Step #4 is completed, whoever is spearheading this request will flag it for moderator attention and the moderator proceed to Step #6.

6. A moderator will ping a CM to delete any closed, downvoted questions in the tag and remove it from the system entirely. This assumes the tag wasn't already removed during review in Step #4.

Examples of finalized burninate requests

Here are a couple of Meta posts that were processed following the above process:

• once (burninated)
• corners (burninated)
• close (burninated)
• guidelines (burninated)
• priority (burninated)

Here is an example that didn't follow this process:

• custom