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I just reviewed a tag wiki written for the tag and it seemed like it would have been more suited to a tag named . Nevertheless, in the absence of a better classification/definition, I approved it.

A quick review of a few of the 128 or so Questions tagged suggests to me that this tag is often being used in in the same way I would use the tag e.g. What is the FME Equivalent to the ArcGIS Union tool?.

Should and the not yet used tags simply be made synonyms of as a "quick fix", or should the tag be disambiguated in a way that will take considerably more effort along the lines of what was done here for ?

Personally, I am hoping for a A real solution to ambiguous tags to be implemented.

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  • Isn't geoprocessing broader than spatial-analysis? Also, not all processing that is done with geographical data can be considered an analysis. For example: changing a projection or a color of a map. I believe they should not be synonyms, but +1 for bringing up this subject.
    – Andre Silva
    Commented Dec 11, 2013 at 16:21
  • I believe that "geoprocessing" is also, like "analysis", too broad a tag to useful on this site.
    – Martin F
    Commented Dec 12, 2013 at 23:11
  • 1
    @martinf I think that depends on how the geoprocessing tag is written - it could exclusively refer to the Geoprocessing Framework of the ArcGIS Platform and have some value but I do not know if the term is used widely outside of ArcGIS.
    – PolyGeo Mod
    Commented Dec 13, 2013 at 0:08
  • @martif I agree with @PolyGeo on this. If you look at the questions tagged geoprocessing there are only a handful which do not deal with the esri geoprocessing framework. Maybe the community (after discussion) can look into changing the tag wiki to represent this general understanding.
    – Devdatta Tengshe
    Commented Dec 13, 2013 at 2:51
  • 1
    Ah! I've known of the term "geoprocessing" since the late 1970s: it was the name of an academic journal, edited by Tom Poiker (formerly Peucker), on any aspect of digital geographic ("geospatial" had not been proposed then) data processing. I did not even know it had been co-opted by Esri. However, given that Esri is the Microsoft of GIS, it doesn't surprise me...
    – Martin F
    Commented Dec 13, 2013 at 3:44
  • So, is it safe to assume that what we decide for "analysis", needing disambiguation, also applies to "geoproessing"? Or do we need a separate "vote"?
    – Martin F
    Commented Dec 13, 2013 at 3:48
  • @martinf I'm inclined to see whether we can work on disambiguating geoprocessing first, as a separate Question to see what consensus there is, and then come back to analysis and spatial analysis.
    – PolyGeo Mod
    Commented Dec 13, 2013 at 4:06
  • @PolyGeo - I hear you -- even if you got it the wrong way round. :-)
    – Martin F
    Commented Dec 13, 2013 at 4:50
  • See here for geoprocessing tag discussion.
    – PolyGeo Mod
    Commented Dec 13, 2013 at 4:54

2 Answers 2

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I feel that the tag is far too generic and ambiguous.

While GIS deals with a Spatial analysis to a great extent, it's not the only analysis that we do. We also do Temporal analysis, Statistical analysis, and some even do Business/Commercial analysis.

If you look at the questions tagged analysis, I feel that most of them are using the tag in a generic sense, not just limited to Spatial Analysis.

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  • 2
    I suggest people vote for this Answer if they favour disambiguation over simple synonymizing.
    – PolyGeo Mod
    Commented Dec 10, 2013 at 3:17
  • 3
    Rather than down voting this Answer, or possibly as well as, I would suggest someone who favours synonymizing should write another Answer proposing that as the best way forward.
    – PolyGeo Mod
    Commented Dec 13, 2013 at 0:01
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Both and tags should be burninated (eliminated), because they are acting like meta tags within our site, i.e., they are not helping to identify and search content.

On the other hand, tags (for ArcGIS) and are useful because they identify a particular subset of questions specific to internal tools/framework on both software.

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    I think burninating the analysis tag is the easier and higher priority of the two, but that geoprocessing should be disambiguated to geoprocessing-framework and qgis-processing, and then burninated soon after that. I think we may already have enough consensus to commence burninating (removing/replacing) the analysis tag from questions.
    – PolyGeo Mod
    Commented Sep 12, 2016 at 22:18
  • Perhaps, a first action would be to edit the tag excerpts as an attempt to avoid new questions with them. But I think we would need more votes on this answer to carry on (at least regarding "geoprocessing"). @PolyGeo.
    – Andre Silva
    Commented Sep 12, 2016 at 22:28

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