Considering that not all vehicles are cars, I went ahead and tagged a number of questions with cars, a topic I'd argue is important enough to warrant its own tag, as opposed to the more generic vehicle, which would include bicycles, motorcycles, boats, aircraft, which would probably be more suited for vehicle intercomparisons.
3 Answers
I think Nate's suggestion to change the 'vehicle' tag to 'automotive' is good but I'm not sure if automotive is a term that is commonly known to non-native English speakers so I'd rather change it to motor-vehicle.
I've posted this as an answer so people can vote on and we can see which tag people prefer.
Vote for this answer if you want to change vehicle to motor-vehicle
Vote for Nate's answer if you want to change vehicle to automotive
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Wasn't it Nate's suggestion to change "cars" to "automotive"? While it may make more sense, I would be confused if I wouldn't find the tag "car" in here (as a non native speaker). Commented Jun 13, 2013 at 23:07
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@boo2060 I don't think so. Nate's 3rd sentence contains a link to questions tagged 'vehicle' and he then continues that he thinks it should be migrated to 'automotive'.– THelperCommented Jun 14, 2013 at 8:04
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Oh, alright. My bad then :) .. thanks for clarification. Commented Jun 14, 2013 at 8:44
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Sorry for not being clear (edited). Yes, THelper's reading was correct ... I was suggesting replacing
vehiclewithautomotive. Not because those two are equivalent, but because I thoughtautomotivewas useful, whilevehiclewas not. I thinkcarshould stay. In my locale,motor-vehicleactually refers to boats, too, which I think won't share much in common with car/truck questions. But, I think whatever term is most familiar to the widest number of people is fine.– NateCommented Jun 15, 2013 at 7:55
I'd support keeping the tags separate. This pedal powered car is neither a motor car nor an automotive, yet it is clearly still a vehicle.
From the perspective of a user who might search the site, tags like electric-vehicle or renewable-transportation may help distinguish between different types of questions. Depending on the question, one of these may be better than vehicle.
It's a shame actually that we don't have a tree structure of tags, as that would greatly help provide logical links between similar subjects...
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1I like the idea of a tag ontology, but I just found out something like this has already been discussed on meta stackoverflow 2 years ago and a similar proposal has been declined.– THelperCommented Jun 13, 2013 at 7:56
I personally would consider automotive to be a better term, for the types of questions that concern both cars and trucks (fuel efficiency, alternative fuels, engine technologies, etc.)
I have a hard time seeing how vehicle is really a very meaningful tag, as there isn't that much that boats, trains, planes, cars and trucks have in common.
As I think there's only 5 questions in the vehicle tag, it might make more sense to migrate this to automotive sooner rather than later, before site traffic increases much.
Disclaimer: I'm a speaker of American English, so if that term isn't equally as applicable in other English speaking countries, I'll gladly retract my suggestion.
