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I recently cleaned up the “sha-3-competition” tag as it merely hugged 3 questions (1 closed, 1 about Skein but not the competition, and 1 being somewhat related the competition itself). After some back-and-forth in the chat, I reverted my edits… just to find out today that my edits weren’t all that wrong after all. To avoid wasting time and to avoid a reboot of the previous back-and-forth discussion, I’m dropping this into the Meta to see what the community thinks about it…

Long story short: we are now back at two questions… 1 closed and 1 being pretty low quality. The facts that the competition is over and only 1 open question uses that tag, renders the tag is pretty useless from my point of view. Yet, some seem to disagree. So, it’s time to let the community decide.

Does it really make sense to keep the “SHA-3 competition” tag for a single question?
What do you think? Should we keep it or kill it?

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I would say leave it entirely up to the community via the mechanisms already in place. The one closed question will be deleted by the community when it has enough votes (can't remember, but I think it is only 3) or after it has been on hold long enough (can't remember how long it takes). The one that is still open isn't a very good question as you say (though might be salvageable if someone wants to bother). If it is eventually closed and subsequently deleted, the tag should disappear.

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  • $\begingroup$ In fact, I was hoping for some community feedback on this – but noticing the current lack of general Meta feedback, I guess you’re right… let’s leave it as-is. Nevertheless, tnx for hopping by. Always a pleasure! ;) $\endgroup$
    – e-sushi
    Commented May 12, 2014 at 17:41
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There's not much point in having a single-use tag. If we someday receive a flood of new questions about the SHA-3 competition (and not just about specific entries), we could always recreate it, but until and unless that happens, it would probably be best deleted to keep it from needlessly cluttering the tag list.

My personal preference would be to tag this question as . In fact, seems to me like a reasonable tag combination for questions about the SHA-3 selection process, including the SHA-3 competition, in general.

That said, it's also hardly a pressing issue. While I'm all for keeping our tags neat and tidy, there's not much practical cost to keeping a single borderline tag like around for a while longer, just to see if anyone really wants to use it. If you happen across it in a few months or years, and it's still a single-use tag, feel free to edit it out.

(In particular, we might want to wait until the SHA-3 process is fully completed and the final standard is published, as that might (or might not) provoke a bunch of new questions about the competition.)

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I personally would perfer splitting it into "sha3" and some history-related tag. That's just an idea I have that I don't know how to elaborate.

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    $\begingroup$ You are aware this Q&A dates back to 2014, don't you? Anyway, the consensus back then was to keep the tag (currently holding 3 Q&As). Yet, if you think it makes sense to revisit the tag discussion again, you are definitely welcome to do so by simply post a new meta Q&A. $\endgroup$
    – e-sushi Mod
    Commented Jan 30, 2018 at 16:17
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    $\begingroup$ Sorry, I didn't notice the date on the question. I just clicked the link the "related" section, and popped here... Apologies. $\endgroup$
    – DannyNiu
    Commented Jan 31, 2018 at 1:04
  • $\begingroup$ No worries, we've all been there. At least it gives me the chance to give you a +1 for the effort. ;) $\endgroup$
    – e-sushi Mod
    Commented Jan 31, 2018 at 9:05
  • $\begingroup$ There are currently 3 questions relating to it. What you're saying is that we should now execute the idea of Ilmari, and personally I'm all for that. Do we really think that we cannot merge sha3-competition with just sha3? So officially this isn't a separate answer. OTOH, voting for Ilmari's idea wouldn't have given you any attention, so I'm personally OK with it. $\endgroup$
    – Maarten Bodewes Mod
    Commented Feb 2, 2018 at 6:27

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