Do we really need to ask about creating tags?

Question

I don't think we need to ask about creating tags all the time.

It has been said several times: tags are one way to add categorization to questions, which should be used when they have value.

Part of the purpose of the private beta period is to define the scope of the site. This to some degree includes what tags we want to use.

So instead of asking "do we want a tag for X?", let's just create tags as we feel the need, assuming that they add some reasonable classification to the questions which they are attached to. Let's also do our best to avoid creating duplicate tags with the same meaning but different names.

Then in a month or two we can revisit the tags list and reconsider those tags which have only a small handful of questions. We can always fix wrong tagging later.

Answer 1

I agree

We appear to have a new "Should we (not) have this tag?" almost every day. We are a new site and we currently don't really know what we want to do with tags.

On numerous answers about tag questions here on meta it has been said that we should not try to create artificial categories via meta discussion and I agree that there will be plenty of time for a tag cull in the future when we have more users, more questions and more tags.

I propose we do the following:

1. Try to avoid talking about the artificial creation or delete of tags on meta until the end of November at the earliest, just make them or don't make them as you see fit. Use the edit system we have if you think a question needs a tag, its part of its use.
2. Fill in the tag wiki entries so that there is better advice on how to use them. Encourage their creators to do so if you can :-)
3. Let them be created naturally until at least the end of November, rather than trying to 'look forward' to see what we might need (aka guessing)
4. At the end of the period raise another meta post with an analysis as a community answer, so that we can see which tags are being paired with each other so much that they need merging. Which ones are underused. Which ones are being misused. Etc.

I realise that we might need to occasionally talk about deleting a tag because it is too broad (such as design).

Answer 2

I agree that early in the beta we should be bold. Think we need a tag? Create it! Use it on new questions! See if it sticks. (Going back and retagging a bunch of old questions is pretty disruptive, though, so please don't do that all at once.)

But I don't think we should ignore the other side of this. Sometimes it's obvious early on that a tag is not quite right somehow -- maybe it should be merged with another very-similar one, or maybe it's really a meta tag, or maybe it's a tag that would apply to almost all questions so it has no real utility. In those cases, fixing them early both (a) is less work and (b) avoids setting a trap for people who see that tag and think it's good (or that they should create more like it). So we should create tags as needed, and we should also cull early when it's fairly obvious that we have a bad fit.

More-nuanced refinement, on the other hand, should come later, as should overhauls that bump lots of questions to the front page.

Answer 3

If you're still seeing this now that Worldbuilding has entered public beta, it might be a workaround for low reputation.

Creating a new tag requires reputation, and if Worldbuilding were to leave beta and get a design tomorrow, I wouldn't have enough.* Public beta sites and graduated sites without a design require 150, most sites with their own design require 300, Meta Stack Exchange requires 500, and Stack Overflow requires a whopping 1,500. This leads to two workarounds mentioned in answers on Stack Overflow's child meta and Meta Stack Exchange.

• Suggest new tags on a site's child meta. This requires only 5 reputation but allows suggesting the tag wiki content at the same time.
• Post using other relevant tags and add a comment to your question requesting creation of the new tag. This requires other relevant tags to exist.

Comments pointed out a third way that requires 20 rep: chat.

_{* I had less than 300 reputation on Worldbuilding when I first posted this answer.}