Let's improve our top-tag wikis and usage guidance for new users

Question

I just went through our top-tag wikis and see there is not much but still a little bit work to do. If you have time, please lend a hand. One tag a day ...

Priority List

Tags used more than 100 times

These tags should have both a good usage guidance and a well-described tag wiki.

1. contract-development weak usage guidance, missing tag wiki.
2. web3js weak usage guidance, weak tag wiki.
3. mist weak usage guidance, missing tag wiki.
4. contract-design weak usage guidance, missing tag wiki.
5. security missing tag wiki.
6. synchronization missing tag wiki.
7. dapp-development done
8. gas weak usage guidance, missing tag wiki.
9. json-rpc weak usage guidance, missing tag wiki.
10. contract-invocation done
11. private-blockchain weak usage guidance, missing tag wiki.

Tags used more than 25 times

These tags should at least have a good usage guidance.

1. ethereum-wallet-dapp missing usage guidance, missing tag wiki.
2. tokens missing usage guidance, missing tag wiki.
3. events missing usage guidance, missing tag wiki.
4. hardforks missing usage guidance, missing tag wiki.
5. blocks missing usage guidance, missing tag wiki.
6. bug done, see also
7. arrays missing usage guidance, missing tag wiki.
8. compilation missing usage guidance, missing tag wiki.
9. ethminer missing usage guidance, missing tag wiki.
10. gas-price missing usage guidance, missing tag wiki.

How to help

Go through the list of tags above and see if you can help out creating or improving both the usage guidance and the tag wiki.

Usage guidance, also known as a tag wiki excerpt, is a short blurb that describes when and why a tag should be used on this site specifically.

Tag wikis help introduce newcomers to the tag. They contain an overview of the topic defined by the tag, along with guidelines on its usage.

The usage guidance, is in my eyes the most important, as this is the popout a user reads while tagging a question.

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Note, we did a similar challenge in march pretty successful. Here are some more information on the how which I want to quote.

We need to start documenting Ethereum Stack Exchange. Let's start with the tags and create descriptions and wiki entries!

How?

• Start with the excerpt / description. That's the part of the tag wiki that users will see first, and the only part that most users will see at all. The excerpt should define, in a few short sentences, what questions using the tag should be about.
• Sometimes, however, it's easier to start by writing a one or two paragraph description of the tag for the full wiki, without having to worry about length constraints or lack of Markdown, and then condense this down to the excerpt. That's a perfectly fine way to work, too.
• Don't copy content written by others without attribution. Often, it's tempting to just copy a definition of the tag subject from, say, the Wikipedia article on the topic. This can be acceptable, if the material you copy is either licensed under a free license compatible with ours (like Wikipedia is) or short enough to qualify as fair use, but only if you attribute it properly.
• Update the answer below to update the tag documenation status. Feel free to add your name to tags you are working on or tags you finished writing wikis for.
• Discuss malformed tag names, tag merges, tag synonyms, and anything else worth discussing in a separate thread and link it here.

On the Stack Exchange blog, Jeff Atwood writes:

"Here’s a few words of advice on writing tag wiki excerpts:

1. The excerpt is the elevator pitch for the tag. You only have ~500 plain text characters for the excerpt, so don’t feel obligated to cover everything in it! Save that for the 30,000+ character Markdown tag wiki. The excerpt should define the shared quality of questions containing this tag — boiled down to a few short sentences.

2. Avoid generically defining the concept behind a tag, unless it is highly specialized. The “email” tag, for example, does not need to explain what email is. I think we can safely assume most internet users know what email is; there’s no value in a boilerplate explanation of email to anyone.

3. Concentrate on what a tag means to your community. For “email” on Server Fault, mention the server aspects of email including POP3, SMTP, IMAP, and server software. For “email” on Super User, mention desktop email clients and explicitly exclude webmail, as that would be more appropriate for webapps.stackexchange.com.

4. Provide basic guidance on when to use the tag. In other words, what kinds of questions should have this tag? Tags only exist as ways of organizing questions, so if we don’t provide proper guidance on which questions need this tag, they won’t get tagged at all, rendering the tag excerpt moot. Think of it as a sales pitch: in a room full of tags screaming “pick me!”, what would convince a question asker to select your tag?

5. Some tags are common knowledge. Most tags require a bit of explanation in the excerpt, even if it’s only 3 or 4 words. But if the tag is common knowledge — that is, if you walked up to any random person on the street and said the tag word to them, and they would know what you were talking about — then don’t bother explaining the tag at all. Stick to usage of the tag within your community in the excerpt."

See also: Good Tags now save a lot of work later!