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An edit to this question suggests that we have a tag for Poland. Is it a good idea to have location-specific tags? I'm guessing that most of the content on here is based in the US, should we have a "United States" tag, which would then (potentially) run rampant? UK is also very popular, I surmise. Poland kind of makes sense, but only in that it's a "destination" for most of the user-based; would Polish users asking questions about an American beer then tag "United States"?

(I could ask about the granularity as well -- country vs. state / province, etc, but I suspect that's a good enough sub-question once this is resolved.)

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  • I don't think they are necessarily a bad idea. What if the question were "What bar in Poland has the most distinct beers on tap?" A Poland tag there would make sense and it is a valid question (though I imagine the authoritative answer would change over time so it's tricky).
    – Bill Rawlinson
    Jan 22 '14 at 21:20
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I think regional granularity makes sense in cases where there may be a regional beer style. Specificity would really depend on a case-by-case basis. Some countries may have common beer styles while other countries vary more internally and have states or subregions. I could see , , and all making sense.

With regards to , that may make sense when talking about law, drinking culture, more universal preferences. Whereas we may see or talking about styles or preferences.

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    It just feels like having tags such as irish and bavarian, while adding to specificity, creates an implicit centralism. If we are talking about IPAs, they are different between the US and England, but if we start tagging england and not us, that creates an artificial delineation or "us vs them" feel. I could get more behind it if location tags were encouraged across the board. Or maybe it's just not a big thing; I'd like to hear more opinions...
    – object88
    Jan 23 '14 at 0:04
  • They would only create centrism if used as such. If someone talks about IPAs without mentioning England, I'm not sure why they would use the england tag. If they are talking about english-style IPAs (is that a thing?) or IPA producers in England it makes sense. We'd have to see if it gets abused. We may also be putting to much weight on the significance of tags. They help categorize and search. I've never read it as "England only, fools!"
    – Brian Nickel
    Jan 23 '14 at 16:50
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    Plus, if tags aren't used appropriately on a large exchange, they are often edited in or out with comments like "Adding england because this is england-specific" or "Removing england as it doesn't apply."
    – Brian Nickel
    Jan 23 '14 at 16:53
  • Marking this as the accepted answer; it is the most upvoted, and I see where its coming from. I think that we should be judicious about the application of regional tags, still, but I understand the usefulness.
    – object88
    Jan 28 '14 at 1:02
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Unless the question is specifically about Poland (which doesn't seem likely), I would suggest this is not a good use for tags. If the location is relevant, that information should be include in the body of the question. But if I like to drink beer on my back porch on a hot day, I wouldn't need a tag for [summer] and [outdoors]. A bit of an exaggeration, but you don't really need a tag every keyword you just happened to mention in your post. That doesn't make tags more useful. Location-based tags are typically just a crutch for asking a complete and well-qualified question.

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  • If the location is relevant, that information should be include in the body of the question Eeeeh... I don't know how true this is in this particular case; certainly for the vast majority of questions, it's probably true, but there's a lot of regionalism involved in this particular subject, thanks to jurisdictional issues regarding import and export and availability, to say nothing of varying cultural customs and norms that will mean we should have a fair number of questions where the location is integral to the question and answer, and represents a real area of expertise.
    – LessPop_MoreFizz
    Jan 23 '14 at 0:55
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    For example, with respect to the cited suggested edit: The question is specifically asking how the local nomenclature in poland correlates to standardized style guides; I think the regional tag is appropriate there - one would need to be knowledgable about polish beer and customs to properly answer the question.
    – LessPop_MoreFizz
    Jan 23 '14 at 0:56
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Tags are used for categorization, but more important are their filter capabilities. You can filter by tag or filter out tag.

Would someone like to observe tag? For sure! If someone is living there, he/she will be interested in answering questions about Polish beers and the specific of beer consumption there.

So yes, we need such tags!

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