I can understand the temptation to make arcmap a synonym of arcgis-desktop on two grounds:
- The ArcMap application represents about 95% of the ArcGIS Desktop GUI so they are not far from being coextensive, if only its GUI is considered.
- Every ArcMap question comes from a user who has installed and would be using ArcGIS Desktop so it could save editors from having to later add the arcgis-desktop tag to a GUI question that has only been tagged arcmap.
However, I do NOT think that arcmap should be made a synonym of arcgis-desktop
To try and explain my reasoning, I will start by saying that tag classification is anything but an exact science, so I try to be pragmatic rather than purist.
When core ArcGIS Desktop (not including its extensions) is installed there are three main components that become available to its users:
- its GUI (mostly ArcMap but also ArcCatalog and the ArcGIS Administrator)
- its Python bindings (ArcPy can interact with ArcMap e.g.
arcpy.RefreshActiveView()) - its COM objects (ArcObjects can drive ArcMap)
The first tag that I use on a question for each of these components, respectively and usually mutually exclusively is:
There are some questions also tagged arcmap from each of these components.
If we were to make arcmap a synonym of arcgis-desktop then these additional questions would be added to the current questions tagged arcgis-desktop:
- 721 ArcMap questions that have an arcmap tag (and no arcpy or arcobjects)
- 230 ArcPy questions that have an arcmap tag
- 288 ArcObjects questions that have an arcmap tag
To do this would I think be "over lumping" because ArcPy, and especially ArcObjects, questions usually attract a different set of answerers to the ArcGIS Desktop GUI user.
I think the primary purpose of tags is to try and help potential answerers find the questions that match their skill sets using favorites, clicking tags, etc.
It would also mean that we no longer have three relatively "clean" self-assembling FAQs:
because some ArcPy and ArcObjects questions would now be mixed in with those currently identified as ArcGIS Desktop GUI questions by virtue of being tagged arcgis-desktop.