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Close on the heels of resample vs resampling, I've run across similar issues related to both vector and raster tags today. Some of these should definitely be reduced with synonyms. Key for below: (# questions, Wiki excerpt, Wiki full)

Raster

  • (84, "raster conversion for GIS work", "a raster converted from any other format or a raster can be created from any other format. all are included under raster conversion.)
  • (25, none, none)
  • (11, "The process of turning a vector into its raster equivalent", none)
  • (0 - already made synonym of )

Vector

  • (20, none, none)
  • (5, "The conversion of raster data (an array of cell values) to vector data (a series of points, lines, and polygons).", none)
  • (0 - already made synonym of )

3 Answers 3

Reset to default
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The same arguments can apply to either raster or vector. For both cases I think there is sufficient distinction use between the noun and the act of converting to to justify having two tags. I don't think rasterize should have been made synonym for raster. While convert is also a tag, it seems silly to have a question tagged both and when it could just be .

My proposal would be to have , , , and . The tag should be decoupled from and attached to .

English 'z' vs 's' aside, pick whatever. "ize" is shorter than "ization" or "ising". And while I opened a can of worms in resample/resampling with the whole "ing" thing, and suggested there that we might follow whatever majority tag use was, I'm throwing that out the window here in favor of consistency.

I am a little iffy on the fate of since that seems to imply it also encompasses going from one raster format to another. In that case using the two tag approach seems more appropriate rather than a hyphenated tag. But I'll defer to others on leaving it alone as a tag, as PolyGeo's Wiki edit (with a bit of tweaking once the others are determined) goes a long way to improving its usefulness.

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  • I agree that raster-conversion is far too ambiguous: could be R-to-V, V-to-R, or R-to-R.
    – Martin F
    Commented Dec 6, 2014 at 0:11
  • @martinf R-to-V and V-to-R we already cover with whatever variant of rasterize/vectorize. R-to-R just seems like it falls under convert to me, as described by its Wiki at any rate ("from one physical file format to another"). Adding 'format specific conversion' tags seems redundant, but I can see where people would feel the same way about the 'ize' tags. To me there's enough of a difference, though I can't articulate what that is.
    – Chris W
    Commented Dec 6, 2014 at 0:21
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    @martinf If we have R-to-V and V-to-R within raster-conversion then I think they should ideally be disambiguated to vectorizing and rasterizing respectively. I just updated the tag wiki of raster-conversion to try and show how easy that disambiguation is to get underway.
    – PolyGeo Mod
    Commented Dec 6, 2014 at 0:36
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I mostly agree with PolyGeo's suggestions but mainly would just have different master tags. Going along with my own advice in the resample vs. resampling question to think of tags as topics and to check how they are used elsewhere, here is what I suggest:

And leave the rest alone as PolyGeo summarized. I agree that (e.g. raster-to-raster) is a topic unto itself.

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    I'm ok with any ize/ization/izing option. ization does win your two logic checks (Google Fight and Wikipedia redirects). I would say that if raster-conversion remains as a tag/topic unto itself, it would be better or at least more clear as raster-to-raster.
    – Chris W
    Commented Dec 6, 2014 at 0:59
  • Or to be painfully clear, at the expense of brevity, raster-to-raster-conversion. :) I think the recent tag wiki edit clarifies sufficiently, though.
    – blah238
    Commented Dec 6, 2014 at 1:02
  • That's... a long tag. :) I agree with Wiki edit assessment though. I've revised my answer to take the parts of yours and @PolyGeo that I most agree with (you left out rasterize, he currently suggests 'ings').
    – Chris W
    Commented Dec 6, 2014 at 1:17
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    I didn't leave out rasterize though.
    – blah238
    Commented Dec 6, 2014 at 4:50
  • You're right, I missed that. I guess I was looking for explicit mention of pulling it off raster and so my brain just skipped over it.
    – Chris W
    Commented Dec 6, 2014 at 19:27
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I'll leave my proposal below - just so we don't end up with three near identical responses - but I think @ChrisW, @blah238 and I now all seem to have settled on an agreed scheme that I plan to implement tomorrow.

My proposal says and as the masters but I will implement the masters as and as per the other two answers.

I think this is a very useful find and I am going to propose that we should create two new tags to conform with the ing endings and preference for American z instead of s:

I would leave these alone:

  • (84, "raster conversion for GIS work", "a raster converted from any other format or a raster can be created from any other format. all are included under raster conversion.) To me raster conversion is a topic in its own right and that justifies . I think requiring more than one tag to define a concept is the exception and standalone tags are preferred. Tags and can of course standalone too but when used like that they serve different and broader purposes.
  • (0 - already made synonym of ) because I don't think vectors implies vectorizing i.e. it could be about doing things with vectors other than creating them from rasters.
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  • ing, ize, whatever, as long as it's reduced to two tags... and your edit just addressed the breakaway part, though I'm not sure how that actually plays out - somewhere in the system or meta information does that rasterize tag still exist? Meaning if you break it from raster and apply it to rastering, will a bunch of questions automatically take that new tag? Or has that been lost, and everything that's been made raster is now such unless manually edited (which, given 2.4k questions, ain't about to happen to distinguish).
    – Chris W
    Commented Dec 5, 2014 at 22:42
  • I don't like raster-conversion. It's a hyphenated combo tag of two other tags that already exist, not a separate concept, and I thought that was a no-no.
    – Chris W
    Commented Dec 5, 2014 at 22:43
  • rasterize appears to only be a synonym of and not merged with raster so it should be easy to pull them back apart as a moderator. To me raster conversion is a topic in its own right and that justifies raster-conversion. I think requiring more than one tag to define a concept is the exception and standalone tags are preferred. I'll see if I can find something that supports this - which I think will be related to metatag discussions.
    – PolyGeo Mod
    Commented Dec 5, 2014 at 23:12
  • I know that's the way for software/brands/etc (ie, not separate tags, just single hyphenated), but in terms of combining concepts what immediately comes to mind is the Voronoi/Thiessen discussion. Also related would be software, free, and free-software (may be other examples). I agree it's related to meta - a tag is meta if it can't stand on its own. But in this case either side of the hyphen can and does stand on its own. There is support for your argument with "projection" related tags though. Searching on "conver" shows that.
    – Chris W
    Commented Dec 5, 2014 at 23:39
  • I see voronoi-thiessen as a single concept - but the name is a compromise. The things with tags is that at the end of the day they are a classification system that is there to be useful when searching for questions to answer or Q&As to review and no exact science is implied.
    – PolyGeo Mod
    Commented Dec 6, 2014 at 0:34

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