Should we make country tags visually distinct?

Question

Country tags have a bit of a history on this site but the general consensus seems to be that they serve a useful purpose. Unfortunately, even when they are added to a question, they often end up ignored because many people don't check the tags before answering or commenting.

I thought that experienced users wouldn't fall for that but I just noticed that I've personally failed to notice a tag on a question I recently answered. I even guessed at the location based on the OP's name but never thought to check the tags.

So my suggestion is that these tags should receive some CSS love to make them visually distinct from the other tags. Our current site style is very clean and subtly emphasised tags shouldn't clutter it too much and would be a valuable visual aid.

Note: I've created this topic to see if there's enough interest in the general idea to explore this in further detail. Whether we can and how the tags should look is not relevant unless we've establish a consensus that's in favour of this change. Based on previous discussions on this topic, it should be possible. Monica mentions tag flags here¹ and this meta already uses visually different tag types which means that it's technically possible.

Previous discussions on the topic:

• Is there anything we can do to highlight the country/culture specific tags? - No suggestions, only point raised is to include the location in the actual question (which is a good remark but skirts around the problem)
• Should we have country specific tags? - Consensus: yes, but only when they are actually relevant

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^{1 - Monica expanded on this in her answer below. She was referring to using country flags as tag icons. Icons are in use as a form of sponsorship on StackOverflow tags}

Answer 1

Making the country tags visually distinct in some way would be helpful. I, too, often miss these, and it matters.

I don't think we should just make them a different color/shade like for the four mandatory tags on meta sites, because that kind of color encoding already means "mandatory tag set" and that's not what we're doing with countries.¹ (We should not require a country tag on every question; we should use it only where it is relevant.) Instead, I'd like to explore the flag-icon idea.

Stack Overflow, alone among SE sites (as far as I know), has sponsored tags, where somebody pays to add an icon to a tag (usually a company or product logo). The wiring for that exists everywhere, but it's not worthwhile for SE to sell advertising on sites other than SO.

We could ask to use the same machinery to display icons on country tags only. While arbitrary icons would cause confusion for people who've seen this on SO, thinking our icons are corporate sponsors too, I think a single, unambiguous icon -- such as a globe -- that's used on all the location tags would avoid that problem. An earlier version of this answer proposed using flags (so the tags would have different icons), but, on reflection, a single icon that signals "hey, there's a location tag here (so pay attention to it)" would be sufficient. I hope it would also be easier to manage.

¹ I've rethought this since writing this answer; see this other answer for a way that colors could work.

Answer 2

I think this looks quite all right:

Only limited number of countries is included. I don't know how to automatically populate list of countries. I used google search to get tag names for commonly used countries here:

// ==UserScript==
// @name        Country tags
// @namespace   util
// @description Adds CSS love to country flags on Workplace.SE
// @include     http://workplace.stackexchange.com/*
// @version     1
// @grant       none
// ==/UserScript==
var country = {
  "italy": "it",
  "netherlands": "nl",
  "egypt": "eg",
  "india": "in",
  "ireland": "ie",
  "canada": "ca",
  "switzerland": "ch",
  "france": "fr",
  "united-states": "us",
  "united-kingdom": "uk",
  "germany": "de"
};
var countryNames = Object.keys(country);

var style = document.createElement('style');
style.type = 'text/css';
style.innerHTML = ".country-tag {"+
"  background-size: 2em auto;  "+
"  background-position: 0.5em center;"+
"  padding-left: 3em;"+
"  background-repeat: no-repeat;"+
"  background-repeat: no-repeat;"+
"}";
document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0].appendChild(style);


$("a.post-tag").each(function() {
  if(countryNames.indexOf(this.innerHTML)!=-1) {
    this.style.backgroundImage = "url('//www.geonames.org/flags/m/"+country[this.innerHTML]+".png')";
    this.className +=" country-tag";
  }
});

Answer 3

Given the huge legal, social and cultural differences from country to country, I think it's an excellent idea.

A simple question such as "Is it appropriate to ask about a coworker's sick family member" can have Widely different answers based on the culture and country.

In The USA, it can get you in trouble. In India, it's expected, and in other nations it varies between the extremes. Clear, distinct country tags would help greatly to disambiguate questions like this and others

The country is a tag that could change what a relevant answer is entirely, as in the example above. Since no other tag I can think of would effect what a correct or incorrect answer would be, I am of the position that the country tag should stand out much more than it does now.

Answer 4

In another answer I argued against tag coloring and suggested a (single) icon. But now I have what I think is a better proposal.

We should support a request for a more-general mechanism for distinguishing tags in an important set. I originally opposed using a different color because the gray tags on meta say "required tag" and country tags aren't required (and shouldn't be). However, the MSE post pointed out that the moderator-only red tags (faq, for example) are also distinguished by color and aren't part of a mandatory set. So I agree that color could work, so long as it's not a color already in use.

But, as I said in my answer there, the styling could be color or a bold outline or bold text or anything else the design team comes up with. One styling change would apply to all tags in a set.

This proposal could benefit other sites, making it more likely to gain traction -- country tags for us (and Travel and maybe Expats), OS tags for Unix & Linux, denomination tags for Christianity, movie tags on Movies & TV, and others.

Answer 5

I would personally very much like to see distinct and prominent country tags on the site, as I think it would help people to see differences between different countries' employment practices and might be useful for anyone interested in the manner in which different geographic locations conduct themselves with regard to employment, probably largely driven by governmental and cultural factors.

I would even go to far as to suggest a search function for different tags and title/body keywords in concert with different country tags, and even an option to perform analytics on them, though this might be more something of interest to people using the Stack Exchange API than general users? Still, just being able to access tables of stats broken down by country definitely might prove interesting, particularly to people thinking of moving to different parts of the world to work...

Answer 6

Yes, this would be extremely useful. As the question you've linked points out, it would be great if we could even require users to tag a country before they can post a question, as that piece of information is sometimes critical to answer the question.

A while back I asked about this feature in Meta SE, but unfortunately it didn't garner much attention.

Custom recommended tags list for individual SE sites

Answer 7

Country tags have a bit of a history on this site but the general consensus seems to be that they serve a useful purpose. Unfortunately, even when they are added to a question, they often end up ignored because many people don't check the tags before answering or commenting.

I thought that experienced users wouldn't fall for that but I just noticed that I've personally failed to notice a tag on a question I recently answered. I even guessed at the location based on the OP's name but never thought to check the tags.

So my suggestion is that these tags should receive some CSS love to make them visually distinct from the other tags.

I agree that country tags are very important for properly answering some questions.

But I don't believe making such tags visually distinct is going to matter - particularly for experienced users.

Once our eyes become accustomed to the new CSS, we'll ignore it to the same extent that we ignore it now. The familiar becomes ignored, even if the familiar is distinct from other tags.

If you want country tags to have special meaning, don't mingle them in with other tags. Instead, put them on a line of their own, perhaps with a distinct label. Even then, only folks who care will find them and take them into account in their answer.

Answer 8

I am of the opinion that tags are meta-information. They exist to categorize the question; they are not part of the question. The question should stand alone, with just title and body. As such, anything pertinent should be mentioned in the question body itself.

Tags should be ignorable. Decorating them further, and drawing more attention to them, is potentially counterproductive.

Answer 9

No need to add bells and whistles, just read the tags like I do. You got no business answering a question without actually reading it, and the tags are part of it.