Third party publishers themselves are awesome, so their existence isn't in question.
Rather, I'm wondering about the 3pp tag. Ostensibly it's meant to indicate the question's referencing third party material, but
- it barely gets used (6 questions since its creation in February this year).
- we haven't generally needed it for discussing third-party stuff, and I don't see what it adds.
- I get the feeling it might be a meta tag: it doesn't even mean much on its own, it just means "not by whoever made this game". dreamscarred-press et al. would be more meaningful. This means the tag describes what it isn't about (first-party material) better than what it is about (any specific third-party publisher).
Tagging's a folksonomy and all that, so we tend to go with whatever people feel should be tagged, but this is a tag I feel we don't need and would be better off removing.
Should we get rid of this tag? Is it beneficial to have or are we better off without it?
I've removed the tag from these questions:
- Are psionic powers considered extraordinary, supernatural , spell-like abilities or spells?
- How does a Witch Hunter's Spellbane ability work?
- Can a PC apply a template to a construct gained as a class feature?
- Can I jump while flying?
- In Pathfinder, does Shank (and its Minor/Major variant) stack with Improved Critical/Keen?
- Is an Inveigler's failed Charming Falsehood obvious?
I will note expressly this was regarding 3pp's use to indicate "I am asking about material which happens to be from a third party publisher in this circumstance".
This doesn't preclude ever having a tag that is for questions specifically about the third party publishing process.