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I think it’s important to differentiate between two cases:

  • looking for software to install on a server (= self-hosted)
  • looking for software installed on a server (= hosted)

Ideally, this difference should be represented in the tags.

(If I understand it correctly, this was also suggested by Gilles in Mysterious [cloud] tag.)

Why?

  • Not the same area of expertise.
  • Browsing by tag should be helpful. If someone is looking for answers recommending self-hosted solutions, having to dig through answers about hosted services is no fun, and vice versa.
  • The current use shows that users often don’t specify in the question if they want/allow a hosted or a self-hosted solution.

That said …

Which tags to use?

  • Currently, is used most of the time, and for both cases.
  • There is also whose description (if I understand it correctly) implies that it’s only for hosted solutions. But why cloud vs. web?
  • The description of seems to imply that it’s about the concept described in the Wikipedia article of the same name, but some questions seem to use it as a synonym to /.
  • (update 2015-10) The tag (no description) is used on a few questions, too.
  • Also to keep in the back of the head:
    • (is this only about hosted APIs, or can it also apply to self-hosted?)
    • (is this a particular kind of cloud service, or is it about the technical meaning, i.e., software to enable cloud storage?)

I don’t have strong feelings about which tags to use, as long as we do use two different tags.

1 Answer 1

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4

It might work to use the tags and .

Advantages:

  • By not including "web" in the tag name, we don’t restrict this tag to web applications, so we can use it for all kind of software that runs on servers (be it typical web applications used locally or in the intranet, or servers/tools that don’t have an HTTP interface).
  • By not including "cloud" in the tag name, we get round the ambiguity of this term (technical definition with characteristics vs. "everything in the Internet").

Disadvantages:

  • As we can’t add as synonym (because it would apply to both, and ) and the new tags don’t have "web" in their name, tag discovery is harder for authors searching for "web" when adding tags.

    But for making tag discovery for question authors easier, maybe we could introduce "fake" synonyms like and ?

  • There would be no tag anymore for authors that accept both, hosted and self-hosted solutions (using both tags is only appropriate if both are required, which would apply only to rare cases).

What to do?

2
  • It seems that the tag self-hosted got created (used on 2 questions currently).
    – unor
    Sep 26, 2015 at 20:24
  • As it got no negative feedback, I created the hosted tag.
    – unor
    Nov 6, 2015 at 8:55

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