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It's early, but we already have both "apple" and "apple2" tags. My thought is we should use "apple2" for anything related to Apple II, as the old 128K Macs are very much retro.

I'm not convinced we need to subdivide into separate tags for Apple ][+ vs. Apple //e, but the Apple IIgs was a very different system. Since that's generally written with "II" rather than "][" or "//", I think "appleiigs" makes sense as a tag.

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4 Answers 4

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The way tags have been traditionally used on other sites (including this meta) is to have a hyphen:

for questions about the Apple II

for questions about the Apple IIgs

for questions about Apple, the company (not sure if on-topic)

This allows searching for tags in a clear manner, with wildcards. For example this search for [apple-*] looks for all apple products. If we used , as suggested in another answer, the corresponding search would be for [apple*] which would include but also , , etc.

See also , , etc. for more examples on this standard.

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  • 1
    I'm leaning this way now too. Thanks for the search tip.
    – Nick Westgate
    Commented Apr 20, 2016 at 22:22
  • Hmm, iigs passes the Google test.
    – Nick Westgate
    Commented Apr 20, 2016 at 22:36
  • 1
    Should also be [apple-macintosh] rather than [macintosh]. I've updated a couple of questions, but arguably the Macintosh line is broad enough that [macintosh] is worthwhile as a root. I've also seen [emac] (educational Mac), but I wasn't sure if we want to go hierarchical (apple-macintosh-emac) or keep it brief (apple-emac) or use [macintosh] as the root (macintosh-emac) for ease of search.
    – fadden
    Commented Apr 22, 2016 at 17:24
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Because of the convention for lower-case tags, i or ii or iigs doesn't look great and isn't intuitive.

The most concise and readable tags are: apple1, apple2, apple3 and apple2gs.

Besides, there is a precedent for apple2gs.

UPDATE: Here are sample tags.

(used now)

(my original preference)

(with hyphens)

(these are more consistent - vote here)

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  • I think [apple2] is widely used in the Apple II community (e.g. the venerable comp.sys.apple2), and I would very much prefer that. I happen to like [appleiigs] more than [apple2gs], but I would bow to the hobgoblins of consistency.
    – fadden
    Commented Apr 20, 2016 at 0:32
  • 1
    The normal convention for multi-word tags is with a hyphen: apple-1, apple-2gs, etc. With just a number, the hyphen can be omitted, but something like appleiigs isreallynotreadable.
    – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
    Commented Apr 20, 2016 at 0:32
  • @Gilles So should it be [c64] or [c-64]? Does hyphenation only kick on on full words, e.g. [commodore-64]? I think stranding the poor numeral after a hyphen, as in [apple-2], looks a bit funny. With respect to non-readability, I will note that appleiigs.com is a perfectly nice domain, which I may or may not be the owner of. :-) I will concede that [apple2gs] is more readable than [appleiigs], especially for anyone Not Of The Body.
    – fadden
    Commented Apr 20, 2016 at 0:43
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    @fadden I think it should be commodore-64. Avoid abbreviations in tags.
    – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
    Commented Apr 20, 2016 at 0:47
  • Some great points here. We should aim for consistency. I notice SO has c64 but also commodore. It would be nice to get an opinion from a C64 fan.
    – Nick Westgate
    Commented Apr 20, 2016 at 0:55
  • With a view to the future, A3000 will mean different things to Commodore Amiga and Acorn Archimedes users. ; - )
    – Nick Westgate
    Commented Apr 20, 2016 at 1:11
  • I would very much prefer apple2, apple2gs, and such, with apple reserved for talk about the company itself (and therefore probably largely off-topic for this area).
    – Eric Shepherd
    Commented Apr 20, 2016 at 20:34
  • Looking at the other tags in use now (e.g. apple-lisa) I think consistency is going to be better with hyphens. Leaning that way now just leaves the problem of apple-ii vs apple-2, with the former being closer to the way it's actually written despite the wrong case.
    – Nick Westgate
    Commented Apr 20, 2016 at 22:18
  • Don't forget the Apple ///!
    – Mike
    Commented Apr 21, 2016 at 1:23
  • My personal preference is apple-ii, apple-digs, apple-iii. This matched the logo and usage in Apple's literature a lot better.
    – Mike
    Commented Apr 21, 2016 at 1:24
-5

The tag "apple" should be reserved for the (very rare) questions about the original Apple I.

Computers in the Apple II series are largely interchangeable, so a single "appleii" tag (with "apple2" as a synonym) will cover things.

The Apple IIGS was a very different creature, so giving it a dedicated "appleiigs" tag makes sense.

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-5

We should use the for questions relating to Apple machines and use the printed, production spelling of the product for each individual product.

Whether II means 2 or not, they chose to print it as Apple II, and we should stick with that.

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    Are you suggesting that Apple II questions should have both [apple] and [appleii]? That seems redundant. I'm not sure a generic [apple] tag is useful.
    – fadden
    Commented Apr 20, 2016 at 0:16
  • A generic apple tag is not useful. What do the Apple Netwon and the Apple II have in common?
    – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
    Commented Apr 20, 2016 at 0:31

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