The art of tagging: should findability take precedence over accuracy?

Question

For example, questions referenced from the tag wiki of "formal-noun", as of rev. 2:

Examples of questions wrongly tagged as particle-no

• Does ところ mean the exact same thing as こと in this sentence?
• This instance of のに is opposite from my expectations

If these questions should not be tagged with particle-no, then it should be removed, not showcased in a tag wiki.

The question is, is it wrong to tag these questions with particle-no? I think there are two lines of thinking here:

1. (accuracy) Tags should reflect the exact language construct in question. If the correct structure turned out to be other than what the OP thought, the question should be retagged.
2. (findability) Tags should maximize findability. If people are likely to search with particle-no for the kind of sentence in question, the tag should be left alone even if the particle isn't actually used.

What do you think? Are there other factors to consider?

Answer 1

Well, just because something isn't technically right doesn't mean other people won't make the same mistake while searching for the answer.

For example, one of the best features in the Kodansha Kanji Learner's Dictionary is that you look up kanji by stroke number, but if a kanji is particularly tricky to count the strokes to correctly, then that kanji is placed where is would be if it was counted incorrectly and the user is directed to the appropriate page.

I hope I explained that properly...the point is the editors anticipated a lot of their readers to make certain honest and understandable mistakes, and if someone does make that mistake they can still find what they're looking for and they realize how they did it wrong, all in one simple move.

So, what I'm trying to say is that even if the tags are technically incorrect, they still direct us to the answers where (hopefully) the student will realize the mistake :)

Answer 2

If the accuracy of tags and the discoverability of questions contradict, I think that there is something fundamentally wrong with tags, and I do not think that it is the matter of choosing one or the other. However, in this particular example, this word “の” is sometimes classified as a formal noun and sometimes as 準体助詞. As long as “particle” means “助詞,” I find nothing wrong with tagging these questions as particle-no.