This particular monster gets a tag, but does that mean every monster gets one? And then do we need to worry about editions/RPGs having different uses?
When do we allow system wide monster/spell/ability tags and do we not? What's the decision making process here?
Seems like we shouldn't have tags for these things, especially system-wide tags.
With regard to mimic, there are only 4 tagged questions, and two are from today.
Should we burninate the mimic tag?
I don't think it's useful, and usefulness is the alpha and omega of whether a tag should exist. Yes, we have other tags that are more specific than monsters, but that doesn't logically mean that all specific monsters deserve tags. We need to be more choosy than that to serve site usefulness of tags.
Yes, we have dragons, but we don't have blue-dragons and wouldn't consider that useful.
Yes, we have wish, but the problems of wishes in general, not just wish-spell-within-a-specific-game, are general interest enough to deserve a tag. It describes a common type of problem: handling the extreme power of wishes within roleplaying games.
Yes, we have undead, but that's a big category of things that often have questions about them. We might even consider at some point having zombies or * vampires† considering how central they each are to their respective RPG subgenres and how common questions about the latter come up here, but I don't ever see us thinking that having musk-zombie is useful.
Yes, we have wizard, but we don't have necromancer. The right tag there is necromancy — the activity itself is where we see questions come up. The actual D&D subclass is not usually a focus enough by itself to transcend wizard and doesn't need its own tag.
We don't need mimic, and won't ever need it. It should be synonymed to monsters.
* Correction: We already do have zombies. Huh, how about that. It seems underused… Then again, the zombie RPG subgenre has always been a weird combination of popular yet niche.
† The only reason I haven't taken the initiative to create vampires already — and I've been tempted many times — is imagining it suddenly showing up as a thoughtless tag tax on every single question about the various Vampire: the Adjective RPGs. Then I back away from the tag edit box cautiously.
"This particular [X] gets a tag, but does that mean every [X] gets one?" is not is not (IMHO) a valid reason to burn a tag alone. We do, in fact have other specific monster tags (eg dragons with 142 questions) and I think it is fine to have them if they are add something useful to the tagging system.
Just because we allow one out of a category to be created does not mean we have to allow the creation of new ones. Each tag should be judged on its individual merit. If it is useful, keep it. If it isn't get rid of it.
For example, we have tags covering several specific spells (eg wish), but that doesn't mean there is any need for, nor would we allow someone to create a tag for random spells without good reason.
If it was trying to be created today, I wouldn't be in favor of allowing it. but since it already exists I really don't see an issue emerging from it. (To be clear, I also don't see any huge issues emerging from burning it). Though it isn't causing an issue, it also isn't useful. It also doesn't seem to add anything over simply searching for the word mimic. In the end, it is a useless tag and it should be burned (or synonymed to monster).
It should get the same treatment as tiny-hut (which now redirects to spells) and just redirect to monsters.
I believe the process is called "synonym".
Just like with this meta, we do not need specific tags for specific monsters.
