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I don't have the required 5 points in the "far-future" tag to subit this as a possible synonym.

Recommendation: The tag become a synonym of the tag.

Synopsis of :

For questions concerning the immediate future, where technology is assumed to have advanced slightly while still recognizable to modern humans. Questions utilizing this tag should focus on a particular technology and may be about a technology itself (how would this work) or the impact of a given technology on a particular topic (Society, Warfare, Economics, etc)

Synopsis of :

For questions of Earth\humans that extrapolate beyond available data: hundreds of years at least, thousands commonly, millions preferably.

(although why "millions" is the preference is a good question...)

Those two tags appear to cover the entirety of "future."

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  • $\begingroup$ Change title to "Future as a synonym for far-future and near-future" since you mention both in the body but not title $\endgroup$ – FoxElemental Jul 15 '18 at 1:02
  • $\begingroup$ @FoxElemental, it cannot be a synonym for both. One tag may be a synony for another, no more. I'm recommending far-future. $\endgroup$ – JBH Jul 15 '18 at 1:23
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Generally speaking, tags that are substrings of other tags make poor synonyms. If didn't exist, then anybody typing "future" into the tags area would be offered and as options.

I think it makes more sense to retag the 7 questions to one of the other two and kill the tag.

I agree with your comment about "millions, preferably"; I don't think that's how we use the tag, but I don't think the tag wiki should express an opinion.

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  • $\begingroup$ This makes sense. While general usage of terms is loose and not precisely codified. Near-future often means years to decades ahead. Far-future usually thousands to millions of years and beyond. Whereas the future can be inclusive of the near-future into centuries ahead, and even millennia. Due to their imprecise & intuitive usages. Both near-future & far-future are usually used to indicate a distinction from the indefinite future. "In the future we will have flying cars." This doesn't specify when. Whereas "In the near-future we will have flying cars" suggests sooner than 10,000 years. $\endgroup$ – a4android Jul 15 '18 at 3:32
  • $\begingroup$ For the purposes of WB SE having the two tags of [Near-future] and [Far-future] probably suffices. Although true Far-future purists would prefer that to be millennia, if not megayears, at least, & not mere centuries. Practicality works. $\endgroup$ – a4android Jul 15 '18 at 3:36
  • $\begingroup$ I agree re deleting the "future" tag and just leaving "near future" and "far future" as relatively nebulous alternatives. I also agree about nixing the "preferably" opinion. $\endgroup$ – elemtilas Jul 24 '18 at 15:39

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