up vote 1 down vote favorite

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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  • Change title to "Future as a synonym for far-future and near-future" since you mention both in the body but not title – FoxElemental Jul 15 at 1:02
  • @FoxElemental, it cannot be a synonym for both. One tag may be a synony for another, no more. I'm recommending far-future. – JBH Jul 15 at 1:23
up vote 8 down vote

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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  • 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. – a4android Jul 15 at 3:32
  • 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. – a4android Jul 15 at 3:36
  • 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. – elemtilas Jul 24 at 15:39

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