Lowercase all tags

[dd32]

It's been pointed out that some plugins have uppercase tags (ABC) or proper cased (Name).

The majority (82%) of tags are however lowercase: abc, name.

Given these are tags, they should be consistently lower-case IMHO.

[dd32]

Additionally, we should consider whether a tag of register widgets for use on your site is a valid tag, I don't think it is, I personally think we should limit tags to maximum of 2 words.

Looking at existing tags, for a data-driven decision..

Word count	# of tags	Percent of tags (running count)	Largest Install count plugin
1 word	265,398	69.34% (69.34%)	5m+
2 words	87,393	22.83% (92.18%)	5m+
3 words	23,460	6.13% (98.31%)	5m+
4 words	4,685	1.22% (99.53%)	800k+
5 words	1,180	0.31% (99.84%)	100k+
6 words	381	0.1% (99.94%)	40k+
7 words	115	0.03% (99.97%)	30k+
8 words	43	0.01% (99.98%)	40k+
9 words	22	0.01% (99.99%)	300+
10+ words	49	0.01% (100%)	70+

Based on the data, anything 4+ words in a tag is the edge-case in length.

But the install count suggests that 5 words in a tag is reasonable, which seems weird.
Here's one of the affected tags: ​https://wordpress.org/plugins/tags/contact-form-7-invisible-recaptcha/ - IMHO that's not a "tag" that's two tags: contact-form-7 and invisible-recaptcha.

Example of a 4-word tag: ​https://wordpress.org/plugins/tags/contact-form-7-db/ ​https://wordpress.org/plugins/tags/increase-file-size-limit/

I suspect the reason we're seeing lots of plugins with multiple-word tags is SEO of the index, as we include tags as a search keyword, and we limit plugins to 5 tags.

[anonymized_14808221]

I’ve never even considered a tag could be more than one word, but that probably stems from:

• html (or else) tag is a one-word thing
• (hash) tags on social media won’t work with spaces
• “a” tag for me is a single thing - even if I’ve to tag a post as “computer programming” I’ll add a dash just because it feels more “tag-like”
• for some reason (probably again due to above first two points) they are all lower case in my mind

So I can’t but agree tags should be single worded lowercase search tags, not long tail SEO honeypots.

[knutsp]

Tags are words of natural language, and should be allowed to be capatialized as such, as from the input.

I can see the need for a quite strict word limit, even length, and only one or two uppercase letter(s) per word.

As a programmer I can sometimes view tags as similar to array keys, but only as long as I am in that mode.

[dd32]

Replying to dd32:

Looking at existing tags, for a data-driven decision..

I was asked for the data-source, and after talking through it, realised I queried data that might not be representative of the plugin directory today.

The data I queried was all tags, where as lots of closed plugins would've had more spammy tags.
(edit: And tags that might not have been in use today)

Here's that data again, but this time, only for currently published plugins where the tag is used by more than 1 plugin (because we hide tags used only by a singular plugin)

Word count	# of tags	Percent of tags (running count)	Largest Install count plugin
1	157,142	74.5% (74.5%)	10m+
2	44,511	21.1% (95.6%)	10m+
3	8,236	3.9% (99.5%)	6m+
4	875	0.41% (99.92%)	600k+
5	138	0.07% (99.98%)	100k+
6	34	0.02% (100%)	30k+
7	4	0% (100%)	700+
8	2	0% (100%)	60+

It's not a huge difference, but does confirm that once you pass 2 words you're into the long-tail, and that 3 words is 99.5% of tags (where as before that was 4 words was 99.5%).

[JavierCasares]

+1 to lowercase everything (tags are used for search / filter, so there is no need to have them in other way).

And, about the use of more than 1 word, I use for example “site health”. I understand that maybe we can replace “ ” with “-” (so it may be “site-health” to be consistent.