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Recently a tag was created on a question where one of the answers referred to the coming ArcGIS Pro 2.0 release.

Do we need to rename the existing to be in order to keep questions about the two different major releases separate?

This is keeping in mind the previous Meta discussion about ArcGIS Pro version tags - Are version tags needed for ArcGIS Pro? which includes an answer introducing the use of the tag.

I am not proposing the introduction of dot release tags for ArcGIS Pro (for v1.x or v2.x). In fact, should we consider making these tags [arcgis-pro-1.x] and [arcgis-pro-2.x] to make it all-inclusive?

Extra note, I just found a comment on Geonet (dated Feb 27, 2017) by Esri staffer Robert LeClair that mentions planned release of ArcGIS Pro 2 for Q2 2017 (not far away!), also with an interesting note about the future of ArcMap:

You are correct that ArcMap 10.5 is fully retired December 2022. With that being said, there will be an ArcMap 10.6, 11, 11.1, etc. so the actual ArcMap product will not be retired for many, many years to come. Customers may continue to use current and future releases of ArcMap if they wish. But with that being said, product development, new functionality, etc. is being invested in ArcGIS Pro. Future ArcMap releases will have some new functionality but will be focused on product stability and bug fixes. The plan is for ArcGIS Pro 2.0 to be at functional equivalency as ArcMap with a release timeframe of Q2 2017.

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    Endorsement was not overwhelming, but new views and votes appeared to be in short supply after more than two weeks, so I've acted on the muted endorsement that I think we have for this. The arcgis-pro tag has been renamed to arcgis-pro-1 (which is technically a merge in the mod tools) with the checkbox ticked to leave arcgis-pro as a synonym of arcgis-pro-1.
    – PolyGeo Mod
    Mar 28, 2017 at 1:52
  • I am posting a comment of protest here, because clearly no consensus was reached. So far, one answer has +2/-1 votes and the other +1/-1 (/cc @PolyGeo).
    – Andre Silva
    Mar 28, 2017 at 2:44
  • @AndreSilva I think the action taken is inline with the guidelines for tagging decisions we discussed at gis.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3820/… The 5 upvotes on the question here do not weigh as heavily as votes on the answers but they do indicate that 5 people agreed with the asker that some action was needed. I also took this decision to the mod room before implementing it.
    – PolyGeo Mod
    Mar 28, 2017 at 3:26
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    At the moment the decision is easily backed out if I have misjudged the muted consensus so if anyone agrees with your comment of protest they should comment, answer or vote here sooner rather than later.
    – PolyGeo Mod
    Mar 28, 2017 at 3:27
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    @AndreSilva I agree with the action taken, and don't feel there is consensus against the move at this stage. As PolyGeo says, it can be reversed if there's an obvious disagreement from the community, but I don't think that's present at the moment.
    – Midavalo Mod
    Mar 28, 2017 at 3:43
  • @PolyGeo, Sorry, I blatantly fail to see how the action taken is inline with that other meta post.
    – Andre Silva
    Mar 28, 2017 at 12:06
  • It would be much more easier and legitimate, for example, if the other mods, who agreed with the decision, could come here and vote; so the community could see GIS Meta actually works and it is driven by the community.
    – Andre Silva
    Mar 28, 2017 at 12:10
  • @AndreSilva "tag decisions may often be made by the moderators more quickly than this in the interests of avoiding log jams and extended voting periods" i.e. if a net +1 is achieved after 18 days then to get to +5 is estimated to take 90 days on a decision which is needed well before ArcGIS Pro reaches general release.
    – PolyGeo Mod
    Mar 28, 2017 at 12:18
  • "...log jams AND extended voting periods". So far there is no "log jam" risk, @PolyGeo.
    – Andre Silva
    Mar 28, 2017 at 12:32
  • @AndreSilva a sentence should not be read as code - I like apples and bananas but there is no requirement for me to have both in order to like them individually - here we are trying to avoid log jams (none yet) and trying to avoid extended voting periods (I would call 90 days extended).
    – PolyGeo Mod
    Mar 28, 2017 at 12:49
  • @PolyGeo, the interpretation of that part is subjective; that is why caution should be taken and some endorsement from non mods is important when using it. Otherwise, a mod could act in any direction (interpretation) anyway and there would be no point having that guideline.
    – Andre Silva
    Mar 28, 2017 at 13:02
  • @AndreSilva we are not trying to write legal agreements between moderator and non-moderator members of the community. Please do not forget that moderators are part of the community and seek to continuously enhance its workings just like I am sure you do.
    – PolyGeo Mod
    Mar 28, 2017 at 13:13
  • I suggest closing this one as a duplicate, so users clicking this post will know what the final/current decision was.
    – Andre Silva
    Nov 3, 2017 at 19:49
  • @AndreSilva Agreed
    – Midavalo Mod
    Nov 4, 2017 at 3:42

2 Answers 2

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Yes.

Every ArcGIS Pro Q&A on GIS SE today relates to ArcGIS Pro 1.x, and only one of those Q&As incorporates the situation relating to ArcGIS Pro 2.0, so I think we will save a lot of manual re-tagging later by renaming the tag to soon.

Once ArcGIS Pro 2.0 is released (not imminent), being commonly used, and being commonly tagged with , the use of the tag rather than the tag for 1.x Q&As will not only prevent confusion about whether someone is using version 1.x or 2.x on new questions, but it will also indicate the vintage of the ArcGIS Pro version being asked about in old ones.

I am assuming that ArcGIS Pro 2.0 will be sufficiently enhanced from ArcGIS Pro 1.4 to warrant its major release number and our distinction.

I am assuming that the differences between ArcGIS Pro 2.x releases will not warrant us adding dot release version tags so the intention would be that the only ArcGIS Pro tags prior to would be and . I have not included .x on the end of each tag name so that the names are kept as short and clean as possible.

That leaves us with what to do with the tag. When renaming it to (which is technically a merge in the mod tools) I would tick the checkbox to leave as a synonym of . That is because at that time any question that someone tries to tag will be almost certainly about ArcGIS Pro 1.x (probably ArcGIS Pro 1.4).

However, now (four months later) the majority of our community are asking ArcGIS Pro 2.0 rather than 1.x questions (see monthly stats below), so I think it is time to start redirecting to be a synonym of i.e. assume questions are about the latest major release, and place the onus on askers to let us know that they are not using it, if that is the case.

enter image description here

I would not support blacklisting this or any product tags. The only tags blacklisted for GIS SE are bug, gis, spatial, geospatial and arcgis (which is a platform/suite of products easily confused with one of the products from it). My understanding is that SE wishes sites to minimize the addition of tags to their blacklists.

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    If the tag is renamed, whats is the plan for the former name [arcgis-pro], so to avoid it being the new openlayers tag. Should [arcgis-pro] be blacklisted, so to enforce either [arcgis-pro-1] or [arcgis-pro-2]? cc/ @Midavalo.
    – Andre Silva
    Mar 11, 2017 at 1:18
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    @AndreSilva I've addressed what to do about arcgis-pro in my answer now. Thanks for raising that because it was an oversight not to have included it originally.
    – PolyGeo Mod
    Mar 11, 2017 at 2:58
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    @AndreSilva Yes, good catch, and PolyGeo I think your suggestion for the switching synonymy around release time is good but we will definitely need to monitor the situation at the time with respect to which version the questions are coming in for. For dot releases I think upgrading quick is OK, but many (many) organisations hold back on updating to major releases and I would be surprised if ArcGIS Pro is treated any different when 2.0 is released. The delays aren't due only to the actual having to upgrade, but also wariness of bugs and other undocumented software features.
    – Midavalo Mod
    Mar 11, 2017 at 3:14
  • @Midavalo You're right, the tipping point will likely come more than a few days after the release of 2.0, perhaps a few months. I think it will come surprisingly quickly because I suspect many organisations are holding off putting ArcGIS Pro into general circulation until it is feature complete against ArcGIS Desktop (which I think is what 2.0 is meant to signify).
    – PolyGeo Mod
    Mar 11, 2017 at 3:20
  • Should we also consider making the tag [arcgis-pro-1.x] and [arcgis-pro-2.x] to make it all-inclusive?
    – Midavalo Mod
    Mar 17, 2017 at 13:50
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    @Midavalo In keeping with tags like arcgis-javascript-api-3, etc, I am much more inclined to leave off the .x.
    – PolyGeo Mod
    Mar 21, 2017 at 23:15
  • @AndreSilva the proposal is that tag arcgis-pro gets renamed (via merge) to tag arcgis-pro-1
    – PolyGeo Mod
    Mar 22, 2017 at 13:15
  • Besides disagreeing with you about the use of version tags, 1 flaw I see in your answer is that the [arcgis-pro] tag will mess things around (imo). Users will type [arcgis-pro] and it will be remapped to [arcgis-pro-1] or [arcgis-pro-2] depending on the moment (which is subjective), but it might happen (very likely) that is not the version OP is using, because you know many users just step in, ask, and leave. So the main problem with your answer is this: assume Qs are about the latest major release, and place the onus on askers to let us know that they are not using it, if that is the case..
    – Andre Silva
    Mar 22, 2017 at 13:22
  • I'd support your answer (even being different than mine, and from the approach I think that works best) if [arcgis-pro] were blacklisted. But you already mentioned you do not support the idea because you don't want to blacklist a tag that is a product, right? I understand your pov in this, but think it would be necessary to do it, if we were carrying out the version tag only approach (I know you like to be pragmatic, and I think blacklisting the tag (after renaming it to arcgis-pro-1), would be the most pragmatic action we could take in this situation).
    – Andre Silva
    Mar 22, 2017 at 13:29
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    @AndreSilva Are you proposing a blacklist of arcgis-pro instead of synonymizing to arcgis-pro-1? I think I can see the benefit of blacklisting over synonymizing as it would force the selection of the correct version, rather than just our assumption through tag synonym.
    – Midavalo Mod
    Mar 22, 2017 at 23:05
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    @Midavalo I'm against blacklisting, except in extreme circumstances like those that necessitated the four blacklisted tags that we have. See meta.stackexchange.com/a/242661/215590
    – PolyGeo Mod
    Mar 22, 2017 at 23:20
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    @AndreSilva "many users just step in, ask, and leave" <= these are the driveby users that create most of the least satisfying work for our volunteers (and the 17,000+ backlog), and the reason we try hard to encourage well written, titled and tagged questions (through upvoting) and discourage hastily written, titled and tagged questions (through down and close voting). Users getting an ArcGIS Pro 2 answer to an ArcGIS Pro 1 question will usually get an answer that works for both, and when they occasionally don't, the need to specify their version should become quickly apparent and learned.
    – PolyGeo Mod
    Mar 22, 2017 at 23:27
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    @Midavalo I think it is either time for the arcgis-pro => arcgis-pro-2 cutover - see picture in my answer above) - or to be reviewing the way forward - see gis.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4646/….
    – PolyGeo Mod
    Aug 5, 2017 at 4:40
  • @PolyGeo agreed
    – Midavalo Mod
    Aug 8, 2017 at 4:30
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Update:

As the linked duplicate shows, the final resolution was to keep only one tag (, without enforcing versions) which was originally suggested here.

Reviewing ArcGIS Pro tagging post-release of version 2.0?

Original answer:

Do we need to rename the existing to be in order to keep questions about the two different major releases separate?

No I believe we don't, because many questions relating to will be version agnostic.

Hence, I'd rather keep the use of version tags only when the question is specific to such versions (and not just because a user is using it), such as stated in Using version tags? which is inline with the general SE guideline in What are the guidelines for using version-specific tags?.

The main issues I see with trying to make a user obligatorily picking a version tag (which is what will happen when becomes a floating-time synonym of , , etc) are:

Not making a version tag obrigatory is consistent to what we have for , for example. Out of 14462 questions tagged , there are 8051 questions (~56%) which are not tagged with any version tag (from 9.3 to 10.5).

I am fine creating , but I don't think should be a synonym of , and I don't think it should be remapped later to when that version 'supposedly' begins to be used more frequently.

It is not like the will be dropped quickly; for example, nowadays we still get many questions with and .

Also, I think guidance about using version tags could be given through tag excerpts:

... Use a version tag if question is specific to it, on the contrary specify version in the body, so to use more relevant tags.

If we decide going with PolyGeo's answer, I'd rather blacklist so to make sure users will pick up a correct version. This will help avoiding minor edits when the synonym automatically maps the version incorrectly.

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  • You say "I'd rather keep the use of version tags only when the question is specific to such versions (and not just because a user is using it). This is consistent to what we have for [tag:arcgis-desktop] for example" but what you describe for arcgis-desktop is not what we have for arcgis-desktop, nor do I think it should be, because users (including the top users) rarely know whether a question is only applicable to one version, but askers almost always know, and we want to know, what version they are using (without always opening the question to see its body).
    – PolyGeo Mod
    Mar 22, 2017 at 23:56
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    As described in my comment on another answer I think any inconvenience at the cutover will be minor because "Users getting an ArcGIS Pro 2 answer to an ArcGIS Pro 1 question will usually get an answer that works for both [anyway], and when they occasionally don't, the need to specify their version should become quickly apparent and learned."
    – PolyGeo Mod
    Mar 28, 2017 at 22:04
  • My understanding is that SE wishes sites to minimize the addition of tags to their blacklists.
    – PolyGeo Mod
    Mar 29, 2017 at 2:19
  • The "SE policy of minimizing the use of such tags" that you speak of is a guideline offered by Jeff Atwood 6 years ago. The only policies that I have seen issued by SE are Privacy and Be Nice. I am in awe of Jeff Atwood's vision for focussed Q&A, and I think this single post on version tagging is the only one where I can recall thinking that he may have written in haste.
    – PolyGeo Mod
    Mar 29, 2017 at 23:59
  • I am not seeing any evidence that version tagging the way that we do "generates lots of superfluous edits to apply version tags". Personally, if I add one to an ArcGIS Desktop question it will be when I am editing that question for multiple purposes. I consider version tags on ArcGIS Desktop questions to be desirable but optional.
    – PolyGeo Mod
    Mar 30, 2017 at 0:04
  • I am not seeing any evidence that version tagging the way that we do "unnecessarily splits duplicate content across the site". In fact the undesirability of that is explicitly addressed at gis.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4436/…
    – PolyGeo Mod
    Mar 30, 2017 at 0:06
  • I'm wondering where your understanding of the "main purpose of tags which is to help filtering questions per subject" comes from? It is a reasonable one but in my case a subject that I sometimes want to filter on is the latest version of ArcGIS and a tag like arcgis-10.5 currently does that.
    – PolyGeo Mod
    Mar 30, 2017 at 0:13
  • In our help it says "A tag is a keyword or label that categorizes your question with other, similar questions". I would suggest that when we have a lot of questions about a product (e.g. ArcGIS Desktop) one very useful way to categorize questions within that product is by qualifying them using a version tag.
    – PolyGeo Mod
    Mar 30, 2017 at 0:14
  • "We are not a formal GIS Software Support Site" so why would we be wanting to filter Q&As that apply only to a single version? When I was a Technical Support Manager for a commercial GIS company, knowing when there was an issue in a particular version was important to me, but we are not a formal GIS Software Support Site, and so what I think we are much more interested in is the versions that our users are using.
    – PolyGeo Mod
    Mar 30, 2017 at 0:19
  • That "there are 8051 questions (~56%) which are not tagged with any version tag (from 9.3 to 10.5)" seems like something that would be expected when tagging for version has been written up in the guidelines for tagging ArcGIS questions as recommended only. I think I may need to make it clearer there that by recommended I very much mean suggested/optional.
    – PolyGeo Mod
    Mar 30, 2017 at 0:25
  • gis.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4515/…; you personally have already edit nearly 39k times which is almost the amount of half questions we have in GIS. This of course is a milestone; for example, if we were SO you would be top 4. But a closer look in them suggests perhaps you should be editing less posts and spending a little more time to really catch everything that could be improved. continues... @PolyGeo
    – Andre Silva
    Mar 30, 2017 at 15:13
  • For example; I assume you are a native English speaker, right (but if not, consider the spellchecker context)? See those edits of yours: 1, 2, 3, they all left typos behind. Please, take this as a constructive comment for reflection; I know among those 39k edits there are also many good edits, and I appreciate them. @PolyGeo
    – Andre Silva
    Mar 30, 2017 at 15:13
  • gis.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4515/…; exactly, and that question illustrates this quite well. You know that finding duplicates is a difficult task and is target of many feature requests in Meta SE; version tags contribute to increasing number of duplicate posts. continues.. @PolyGeo
    – Andre Silva
    Mar 30, 2017 at 15:14
  • Moreover, your answer there suggests a set of activities to handling the situation in which I think you would be the only mod here which invest enough time to try handle in that way (this is a compliment) (hence, I consider your suggestion there impractical, because if you leave GIS SE, it would certainly fail --> (bus factor of 1). @PolyGeo
    – Andre Silva
    Mar 30, 2017 at 15:14
  • You have provided evidence that I edit a lot but that is not evidence that version tagging the way that we do "generates lots of superfluous edits to apply version tags". The main purposes of my edits is to fix cumbersome titles (to make them more concise for SEO and duplicate matching), remove chit chat, and apply missing product tags. While those questions are being edited, I sometimes add a version tag (which I consider to be very much optional), because I think they can be valuable.
    – PolyGeo Mod
    Mar 31, 2017 at 2:26

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