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I wonder whether it's worth tagging questions as (the evidence supports the notable claim doubted), (the evidence supports the negation of the claim), (the evidence supports part of the claim), (the evidence supports part of the negation of the claim), or none of the above (insufficient evidence). (Or both and .)

These would serve two purposes: First, they'd serve as a "tl;dr" synopsis of the answers for someone reading the question, that he might know what to expect from the answers. Second (and IMO more usefully), they'd allow statistics to be drawn (e.g., what percentage of claims about were rebutted?).

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Nah, we need [busted].

Seriously though, while I potentially like the idea, I’m not sure it works because – even with things like “partially busted” etc. – it’s not nearly nuanced enough to capture reality, which is complex, and this is what Skeptics is all about.

Furthermore, that’s not really what tags are for … they’re an aid for searching and organising, and those tags would fall into the category of pseudo-tags which are much abhorred on Stack Exchange. But that’s not automatically a valid reason against this proposal.

Eventually I suspect that their use wouldn’t be that great, especially since accepting an answer actually conveys the same information, and much more. Having these tags might encourage people not to actually read the accepted answer, and this is something we surely don’t want.

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  • So we add [Its Complicated] tag... but I suspect most of the answered questions would qualify.
    – Chad
    Commented Jun 14, 2012 at 12:38
  • @Chad and [undecided] and [needs further research] and [we have no way of knowing] and [depends on how you define X]. It doesn't add anything except for a raft of problems and maintenance.
    – John Lyon
    Commented Jul 9, 2012 at 6:13
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I think this may be creating a gateway to tag edit wars that would be better to just avoid, in addition to the other reasons meta tags are discouraged.

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No.

This would be a meta tag and the consensus around StackExchange is they are generally a bad thing.

A few more reasons why this is a bad idea:

  • There are sometimes too many caveats that need to be explained to say if the question is confirmed or not. For example the worm question.
  • Answers are generally encouraged to have a tl;dr at the top anyway, which is more flexible, especially when the answer is "yes... but"
  • The way the question is worded would change the tag. For example compare "Does astrology work?" (No) to "Is astrology a pseudo-science?" (Yes). So I am not sure it will provide anything meaningful outside of the question/answer itself.
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  • +1. But re your last point, "The way the question is worded would change the tag. For example compare 'Does astrology work?' (No) to 'Is astrology a pseudo-science?' (Yes)", note that that depends on which notable claim is being doubted by the asker.
    – msh210
    Commented Jun 14, 2012 at 0:11
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I think tags belong to the question alone. The tags suggested here would be changing depending on answers, which I do not think is desirable. Who would be responsible to keep tags in sync with answers? While unlikely, it might even happen the accepted answer says No and the most voted answer says Yes, or that the most voted answer Yes will become obsolete due to a new research and will be replaced by No.

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