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So, we have a tag that currently only has 3 questions.

I feel like it doesn't really add much on top of the tags that those questions already use. It isn't a very frequently used tag and I don't see it particularly helpful with regards to searching for "tone" related questions.

Should we get rid of it?

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    \$\begingroup\$ The Stack's policy is to remove tags when they cause a problem and it's unclear to me what problem you're seeing caused by this tag. Could you please edit your question (or write an answer to your question!) to make it clear what problem will be solved by deleting the tag? \$\endgroup\$
    – BESW
    Commented Sep 12, 2019 at 11:22
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    \$\begingroup\$ Related: When to burninate [a tag?] \$\endgroup\$
    – BESW
    Commented Sep 12, 2019 at 11:27
  • \$\begingroup\$ @BESW Thank you for that meta link. I suppose there isn't really a problem, just that it seems redundant to me, so I don't know what edit or answer I could provide. That my question has at least one upvote means that someone agrees with me, though, so an answer (not necessarily by you, I just mean by anyone who wishes to) explaining why it's not useful to fuss over this tag might be good for others who may find this tag and think what I first thought... \$\endgroup\$
    – NathanS
    Commented Sep 12, 2019 at 11:33
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    \$\begingroup\$ I upvoted it because I think it's good to ask questions. Since the question doesn't say "This should be deleted," it's not a vote in favour of deletion. (I approve of this; I think it's much more elegant to put actual proposals for action in answers so they can be voted on specifically.) \$\endgroup\$
    – BESW
    Commented Sep 12, 2019 at 11:36
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    \$\begingroup\$ It may be worth reviewing the [burninate-request] tag to see which tags were deleted after discussion, and which ones weren't. \$\endgroup\$
    – V2Blast Mod
    Commented Sep 12, 2019 at 18:35
  • \$\begingroup\$ @V2Blast I hadn't thought to do that, but have now done so. I don't think this [tone] tag is really a problem after all, so I'm going to accept the answer. I've also seen other past questions have a red [status...] tag, but can only be applied by moderators. It is time to add a [status-declined] flag to this question? \$\endgroup\$
    – NathanS
    Commented Sep 13, 2019 at 10:21
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    \$\begingroup\$ @NathanS: We only really add those status tags to questions where it's really needed - [status-declined] for feature requests that definitively won't be implemented, or [status-completed] for proposals that were implemented. Generally we don't need to add a status tag to a proposal that the community simply doesn't feel is necessary at this time - it feels like that would imply a sort of formal rejection that doesn't really apply. \$\endgroup\$
    – V2Blast Mod
    Commented Sep 13, 2019 at 10:23
  • \$\begingroup\$ @V2Blast I see, a red tag would be too heavy handed for this scenario, at least for now. Fair enough. Thanks for the response (the red tags are something I've not seen used much, so I don't know much about how and when they're used). \$\endgroup\$
    – NathanS
    Commented Sep 13, 2019 at 10:34
  • \$\begingroup\$ @NathanS: I'm learning how and when to use them myself! ;) Personally, I feel [status-completed] helps mark a proposal that the community has gone ahead an implemented as done already, so that's mostly what I've used it for so far. (And [status-declined], on occasion, for feature requests that never got implemented and now can't get implemented, like one of the ones around Google+.) \$\endgroup\$
    – V2Blast Mod
    Commented Sep 13, 2019 at 10:36

1 Answer 1

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No, the tag isn't preeminently super useful or high traffic, no that doesn't mean we should get rid of it.

Somebody with a good amount of rep thought the tag fit their question better than existing tags enough to warrant creation. That's a feature available to all users with over 1.5K reputation, because the network's system is to encourage users to create lots of tags and there is almost no cost to having additional tags.

Getting rid of tags1 takes community manager (i.e. one step higher than our site moderators) action and generally requires a meta or series of metas on the topic. We only do that when a tag is a problem. Not only is this tag not a problem, but it seems that no one, yourself included, had any reason of or suspicion that the tag is or was causing any problems. Given that, not only do the reasons to get rid of the tag not outweigh the reasons to not do so, but even if there wasn't a significant downside to going through tag deletion in general we still would have no reason to do this.

  1. Actually, we can also get rid of tags by deleting it off of every tagged question. The system then deletes the tag during the next clean up cycle. That's not generally feasible for larger tags that are being actively used, but we have done this before to get rid of smaller tags. This does not prevent the tag from being created again (that requires blacklisting it). We also don't do this unless there's a problem and it's not really to be invoked in cases escalating to community management wouldn't be appropriate, in my opinion. If the system gives somebody the ability to make tags and they think a tag creation is appropriate, we should let them run with that. It's not a big deal to have an extra tag unless there's something else going on (like they're trying to create a 'rules' or 'rpgs' tag or something vulgar, etc)
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  • \$\begingroup\$ I assume you meant to include a footnote after "getting rid of tags". And actually eliminating a tag directly (e.g. if it's on a lot of questions and not feasible to just edit out) takes intervention from the network-wide CM team; otherwise, anyone that can edit questions can manually edit out the tag from the questions it's on, if needed. But as you say, we only really do this when the tag's causing some kind of problem. \$\endgroup\$
    – V2Blast Mod
    Commented Sep 12, 2019 at 18:05
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    \$\begingroup\$ Getting rid of tags is typically accomplished by burnination, i.e. manually editing it off every question it's on one by one, which would be trivially accomplished here. But yep, as you and V2Blast both say, we only really do that when there's a problem anyway. \$\endgroup\$
    – doppelgreener Mod
    Commented Sep 12, 2019 at 18:07
  • \$\begingroup\$ @V2Blast Yep, manual removal was actually what the footnote was supposed to be about >.<; sorry \$\endgroup\$
    – Please stop being evil
    Commented Sep 12, 2019 at 18:15

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