What is the "shia-sunni" tag for? Do we even need it?

Question

Currently, we have a shia-sunni tag (16th most popular on the site), but it's not very clear what this tag is for, or why we would need it. The tag wiki simply explains what the Shi'a and the Sunni are, but it doesn't explain anything about the use-case of such a tag.

We already have tags for shia-islam and sunni, for those questions pertaining to those two predominant sects of Islam. From perusing the existing questions, the shia-sunni tag appears to be used mainly for Sunnis asking for a Shi'a perspective, or vice-versa (which often carries the necessary shia-islam or sunni anyway)

To me, this feels like little more than a meta-tag, which just adds noise to the tagging system. As described in Jeff's blog post The Death of Meta Tags:

How can you tell you’re using a meta-tag? It’s easier than you might think.

1. If the tag can’t work as the only tag on a question, it’s probably a meta-tag. Every tag you use should be able to work, more or less, as the only tag on a question. Meta-tags, like [beginner], [subjective], and [best-practices], are useless by themselves — they tell you nothing at all about the content of the question.
2. If the tag commonly means different things to different people, it’s probably a meta-tag. In a cruel, ironic twist, the meaning of the tag [subjective] itself … is actually subjective. Ditto for [best-practices] and [beginner]. Best practices to whom? Beginner by what criteria? These tags are impossible to define by anything remotely resembling an objective metric. In comparison, the the meaning of tags like [java], [c#], and [javascript] are crystal clear to all but the nuttiest of nutbags.

In light of the above, shia-sunni doesn't really describe the content of the question, and I have difficulty imagining anyone needing to filter or search by shia-sunni for any constructive manner.

So the question lies: Do we even need this tag? If so, what should we be using it for?

Answer 1

I personally use it for (and see other people using it for) asking about differences between Sunni vs. Shi'a Islam. Usually, the precursor is "I know Shi'a Islam has X, what about Sunni Islam?" or vice-versa.

Such questions could, and arguably, should, be retagged as Sunni or Shia (respectively). That brings more clarity.

Answer 2

Let's get rid of it. I.e., let's replace questions tagged shia-sunni with the two tags shiism and sunni. (And, ideally, replace the shiism tag with shia: Is the tag shiism suitable for referring to Shia Islam?)

Every question that pertains to shia-sunni also pertains to both Shiism and Sunnism, and therefore should also be tagged shiism and sunni.

We don't need to convey that the question is about "differences" in tags; this will be explained in a properly formatted question title. Some examples:

• Why is there a difference of opinion on sex changes for transsexuals?

• What is the difference between "Mubtalat-of-Wudu" of Shia and Sunni?

• Marriage between a Shia boy and a Sunni girl

• Is Sunni versus Shia the main division in Islam?

• According to Shi'ites, are 'Sunni' hadith collections reliable?

This way sunni has all the questions pertaining to Sunni Islam. And searching for [sunni] [shia] gives questions pertaining to both Sunni and Shia.

I also don't like the possibility of the word order being misinterpreted as favouritism. And I don't like the word "conflict" in the tag wiki:

Questions pertaining to the conflict between Sh'ites and Sunni, and explicit differences of opinion between the two.

(This was mentioned back in 2012 by Manishearth.)

To highlight the confusion:

• 71 are tagged shia-sunni, and of these:

  • 11 questions have both tags shia-sunni and shiism;

  • 8 questions have both tags shia-sunni and sunni;

  • 4 questions are tagged shia-sunni, shiism, and sunni.

• And 20 questions have tags shiism and sunni.

These questions have five tags, so will have to be resolved separately: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7.

Answer 3

I see it in this manner:

A person is programming in php and the code that is supposed to iterate over apples is somehow iterating over oranges. So the person asks the question and tags it php-iterate-apple.

Which isn't right. Tags should granular and atomic ideas/phenomenon. Bringing them together is defeating its purpose.

Now there could be one utility of having this around, i.e. what ashes999 mentioned. Questions which involves explanation on differences in some particular practices among Shiites and Sunnis etc, when tagged with shia-sunni would make them much easier to find. But that doesn't justify its presence because it's like allowing php-iterator to easily find php iterator related questions. One could use the difference tag in that case.

Multiple tags search using braces[] is can be used for that. E.g.:

[islamic-rules] [salat]

Answer 4

It is useful for when some user needs to know the view of both side in order to compare them.

Also it is useful about the topics which are controversial among Shia and Sunni scholars and there is disagreement in Shia and Sunni about them.

Many of users are not aware that Shia and Sunni have disagreement about a topic and this tag can be useful for knowing such topics.