My UI brothers and sisters, I posted a request at Meta.StackExchange about clarifying what (s)
means when adding tags on StackExchange.
I think amongst us UI designers, we can agree that this is poorly designed. The (s)
does nothing to signify that "saute" is a synonym of "sauteing". And it does nothing to help the user decide whether to choose "sauteing" or "saute". The folk at Meta.StackExchange do not agree. They believe that by making this feature hard to use, StackExchange can weed out the stupid people.
User comment (+5)
If "synonym" is a hard word I think people are going to have trouble functioning on this site. We can always change the (s) that appears in the tag auto-complete, but the concept of "tag synonyms" is all over the place – Michael Mrozek
Moderator Comment (+1)
Stack Exchange is for experts (who are all smart and literate enough to know what "synonym" means) and inquisitive people (who are perfectly willing to grab a dictionary if they are confused). We're not here to conform for the lowest common denominator, we are building something a lot better than that. – HedgeMage♦
In the school of thought of Krug and Nielsen, I counter with:
- Don't make users read a FAQ / dictionary to figure out what this
(s)
does. - Redesigning it so novices can understand would benefit not only the novices, but also the experts. It would be a better UI for all.
My proposal is that we UI designers come up with a solution here. Once we have an accepted solution, we can post it back on Meta. It has not been productive discussing on Meta because those folk do not have UI experience.