Should we get rid of [3pp]?

Question

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?

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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.

Answer 1

I noticed 3pp when it was first created and was quite dubious about it then,¹ but didn't go out of my way to interact with it, preferring to let the community's folksonomy process chew on it a bit.

My sense now is that it hasn't had much uptake, hasn't turned out to categorise anything one can be expert in or want to search for, and so it isn't needed or useful.

I think we should get rid of 3pp.

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1. _{Not only because it should have been 3rd-party-publishers, but that's definitely an additional flaw.}

Answer 2

I was all set to agree with d7 on this, but something caught my attention and I figure is worth bringing up:

That whole "can't be an expert in this" thing makes sense of why it feels like such a problem that the tag defines itself by what it isn't. One can be an expert on specific publishers (who may sometimes be third-party, like Paizo was for D&D, or sometimes first-party, like Paizo is for Pathfinder), and an expert on publishing, but one cannot be an expert on "third party publishers". – doppelgreener♦

I would actually disagree here—publishing as a third-party is something one could have specific expertise in that someone who is an expert in publishing in general would not necessarily be. Being a third-party publisher means dealing with the licensing framework offered by the first-party publisher. And someone who published as a third-party to a lot of different first-party publishers would perhaps have expertise in how to understand and work within these licensing frameworks.

All that said, I’m not really trying to save the tag here. The above clearly isn’t how the tag is being used, and even if it were that does seem exceedingly narrow (or, conversely, not narrow enough; questions about specific licensing frameworks seem far more useful, commonplace, and likely to have real experts). But just food for thought.

Answer 3

The alternative Point of View

It's been useful six times, does no harm, causes no controversy, and may be helpful a seventh (or more) time(s) on a future questoin.

Recommendation: don't fix what isn't actually broken.