Do we need [youth-services], [young-adult] and [young-people]?

There are currently three tags involving Youth: - Youth services - Young adult - Young people.\ Do we need all three?

Youth services covers what library (or other information industry) services are provided to this demographic.\ Young people could combine all age groups from 5-16 years of age, but I wonder if this is needed.\ Young adult is the demographic.

Are questions going to be about the service aspect, or are this there a need to add in the demographic for each age group/range?

Deborah Mould

• discussion
• tags
• youth-services

Comments

• 1. Alan Thomas II: Suggest edit with "[tag:"tagname"]" like so: [tag:youth-services], [tag:young-adult], [tag:young-people]. This way we can see all the questions under each tag.
• Deborah Mould: Tried to, but not allowed ... yet. Have modified question instead to reflect this.

Answer by Deborah Mould

I think we should make 'young people' a synonym for 'young adult' regardless.

Comments

• Fisher: I agree with Ashley Nunn that young people is superfluous. Also, young people and young adult are not synonyms, both in their common and forum usage. As KatieR says in her comment to Ashley Nunn, Young Adult is a recognized age group. Young people is a non specific term that could encompass any youthful age.
• Deborah Mould: @Fisher, in the question that referred to 'young people' it was used as a synonym for 'young adult', which the questioner went on to refer to specifically. However I do take your point, and it is certainly possible to use 'young people' in a broader sense.
• Fisher: Should the one post using 'young people' be edited to young adult services? It is the only post using that tag and as you point out, in that instance, it refers to the YA demographic.
• Deborah Mould: I think that M. Alan Thomas II is planning to do that (from the above discussion).

Answer by Ashley Nunn

I dont think we need three different tags Young adult tends to refer to a specific category of book and youth services would refer to services for that particular age group, I suppose, but young people seems to be a superfluous tag. There is no real need for it to exist.

Comments

• KatieR: To me, youth services covers birth to 17/18. Young adult services would be specifically for teenagers.

Answer by M. Alan Thomas II

The young-people question was about something that falls into the YA range and is specifically a youth services operation. One of the two young-adult questions appears to have nothing to do with young adults, which is odd, and the other could just as easily be filed under youth-services. I haven't reviewed all of youth-services yet, but it's clearly a large and appropriate tag.

I suggest:

1. retagging the young-people question, which will delete the tag from the database,
2. allowing young-adult to exist along with other age group markers within the broad umbrella of youth-services, and
3. using the tag wiki to explain usage.

Comments

• 1. Alan Thomas II: These can all easily be accomplished by us, since there seems to be a quorum here, and I've got work shortly, so I'll just add this to my to-do list.
• Joe: Two upvotes is a quorum? And no upvotes to your specific suggestion? You have a strange definition of quorum : (a minimum number of members in an assembly, society, board of directors, etc, required to be present before any valid business can be transacted)
• 1. Alan Thomas II: Well, I prefer four people (the minimum number required to implement a tag synonym through the community), but I think at least three people here are in agreement on some first steps that the system leaves within the authority of any member of a few hundred reputation, which Ashley and I certainly are. But you're right, it was probably bad wording because I was in a hurry when I wrote it.