Merge Tags: professionalism and unprofessional-behavior

Question

Proposal: merge unprofessional-behavior into professionalism

The former currently has 81 questions while the latter is up to 1360.

---

This was originally brought up by Monica in her answer here:

I do not understand why unprofessional-behavior exists, and had not previously noticed it. The 58 questions with this tag cover a wide range of behaviors, many not involving harassment. Many of them are also tagged professionalism. The unprofessional-behavior tag should be merged into professionalism.

I originally disagreed with her assesment in the comments, but now find that I actually agree with the suggested merge, ironically after posting a question with both tags.

My follow-up comment was probably the result of a mismatch between my idea about how tags should be used versus how they are actually used. While in an ideal world, both tags should have different questions and be useful on their own, in the interest of clarity I suggest that these tags should be merged.

Answer 1

I am sort of behind this. However quite a few of the questions with the Unprofessional-Behavior tag should just have that tag removed. They are not about professionalism at all. So before the tag is merge someone should probably go through and remove the tag from those questions where it does not belong in the first place.

Edit It appears most of the ones I had problems with have been cleaned up and I am in support of the merge.

Answer 2

It makes sense. "unprofessional behavior" is basically the anti-tag to "professionalism". There's no need to have both.

IMHO, fewer tags is better.

Answer 3

I don't think they should be merged. They overlap, but unprofessional-behavior is mostly about dealing with unprofessional behavior. Implicitly, presumably the OP would like to deal with the unprofessional behavior in a professional way, but that's vacuous as any poster wants to handle any problem in the workplace in a professional way.

Professionalism is a good tag but barely, for exactly the above reason: it's an implicit issue in so many questions. I would definitely not expunge a specific tag in favor of a general one that may even get too big.

The unprofessional-behavior seems to be used correctly (at least by way of my understanding) for most questions. Some questions of varying quality to which the tag is applied:

• Inappropriate comments by coworkers about new hire
• Under what circumstances is it permissable to stay overnight in the office?
• Dealing with a co-worker with a farting problem

The first and third are about behavior that is definitely unprofessional and has occurred. This is a good use of the tag.

The second was closed because it's actually a legal question, but let's go with it for now. The question is about behavior that the OP feels is probably unprofessional but they have questions about it anyway. If the tag were replaced with a hypothetical transporation-issues the question, based on title and tags, would actually be different: perhaps the OP feels sleeping in the office is perfectly professional but wonders if other logistical issues will arise.

The tag adds meaning and value. The title itself could use some work, but that only makes good tagging for novice title-writers all the more valuable.

So the tag makes sense and is adding value. It is used correctly often enough, IMO not too differently from other tags or for the relative question quality within the tag. The tag is more specific than the rather large professionalism tag. I think this is a strong case for keeping it.