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I am currently doing a little research into some aspects relating to the Sasanian Empire for another project, and I thought it might be useful to see what questions have been asked and answered here.

We didn't have a tag, but it looks like we have something like 20 questions on the subject. However, these can be hard to find because of the variant spellings generally in use ('Sasanian Empire' / 'Sassanian Empire' / 'Sasanid Empire' / 'Sassanid Empire' / 'neo-Persian Empire' etc.).

This strikes me as exactly the kind of situation that tags were invented for, so I have created the and proposed the tag synonym. I'm not sure whether I should also create synonyms for the variant spellings, and would welcome advice.

For what it's worth, searching on Google Scholar for Sasanian Empire currently gets 17k hits; while Sassanian Empire gets 12.2k hits, Sassinid Empire gets 8.2k hits, Sassanid Empire gets 7.5k hits, and Sasanid Empire gets 3.3k hits. Neo-Persian Empire got just 500 hits.

All of which may represent the general usage of the various terms.

I've re-tagged a couple of questions, but in order to avoid swamping the home page with older questions - and so risk drowning out new questions, potentially preventing them from getting the attention they deserve - I intend to re-tag the other questions gradually over a period of time.

I wanted to ask the community's opinion on this approach to re-tagging.

Should re-tagging of existing questions be done gradually as I have suggested, or do people favour a 'big bang' approach where all are re-tagged at once, but where the home page will be (hopefully briefly) swamped with older questions?

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  • Shouldn't the title better reflect that it's more an issue of the effects of the (re-)tagging? That is: include the 'bump' but maybe drop the 'create'? I think the scope is wider as we recently saw such things happen with 'spanish empire' or so. An existing tag producing the same outcome.
    – LаngLаngС
    May 14, 2019 at 11:39
  • @LangLangC Fair point. I've updated the title.
    – sempaiscuba
    May 14, 2019 at 11:48
  • Weird; I always heard it as Sassinid. I guess this is the new accepted name?
    – T.E.D. Mod
    May 14, 2019 at 14:24
  • @T.E.D. I've always used Sassanid up until now, but Sasanian does seem slightly more common in the academic papers I've been reading (which, admittedly, may not be a representative sample), and is also the term chosen by Wikipedia where a lot of people are likely to come across it first. And who are we mere mortals to argue with Wikipedia? ;-)
    – sempaiscuba
    May 14, 2019 at 14:43

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I'm not sure whether I should also create synonyms for the variant spellings, and would welcome advice.

That seems like a sensible thing to do if they don't show up quickly enough with the autocomplete suggestions. Just my $.02.

Should re-tagging of existing questions be done gradually as I have suggested, or do people favour a 'big bang' approach where all are re-tagged at once, but where the home page will be (hopefully briefly) swamped with older questions?

Something in between maybe? Like X at the time, for instance. Basically, leave enough recent questions around -- they'll get bumped back up with new activity. And then rinse and repeat the next day. And so forth.

Edit: My initial suggestion for X was 10. Based on the comments, a lower limit, e.g. 3-5, seems more appropriate.

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    I'd say, 3 a day and most wouldn't notice, 5 and hardly anyone would complain, but more than 6 would make me curious and at ten all from the same topic (re:tags) it might get into 'slightly annoying' territory.
    – LаngLаngС
    May 14, 2019 at 18:24
  • @LangLangC: yeah, but then it's only for 2-3 days in this case, so I sincerely doubt it'll bother that many people in practice
    – Denis de Bernardy
    May 14, 2019 at 18:25
  • Thank you for this, it helps. But I was trying to look at it more generally, so we could point people here in future for guidance in case there's a situation that needs intervention. Personally, I think I agree with @LangLangC about the lower limit. Imagine, at some point in the future, having 10 re-tags bumped to the home-page every day for a month!
    – sempaiscuba
    May 14, 2019 at 19:28

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