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For my recent question about cupboard sizes (https://boardgames.stackexchange.com/posts/2383/revisions) I added the tags boxes and furniture, which were both removed. The other tags board-games and storage, were left.

  • Storage has six other posts, all about storing games/pieces in boxes. This question is about storing boxes in cupboards, so it's not a perfect fit here.

  • Board-games has lots of questions, half of which seem to be generic board game questions, and half of which seem to be questions about a specific board game. Personally I think the tag should be used for general questions about board-games.

  • Boxes seems to me to be a reasonable topic for board game questions, I could imagine questions about box sizes or cover art that might be grouped under a "boxes" tag. Maybe they would fit better under "storage" and (something like) "artwork" tags though?

  • Furniture is hopefully not going to be a common topic, but I think there is value in a furniture tag. As an example, this question might also be a candidate: What's a good table-topping material for tile-based games?

I guess the reason I'm starting this topic is because I've had several tags removed from questions now, and I don't understand the logic behind the removals. I have added tags that I thought might be useful classifications of my questions, and they've not been removed in the most constructive of manners.

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My thoughts on your questions:

  • - A tag's current usage does not always set the parameters for all future usage. The tag should probably be renamed game-storage to better set boundaries and be less generic.
  • - I dislike this tag, along with . I have a hard time imaging folks only caring about one of the two groups. Those tags are contained within the name of the site, we already know we are here to discuss them :)
  • Boxes - There isn't any reason to create a tag to anticipate potential future usage. A question about artwork and a question about how best to store game boxes does not have any overlap of interest necessitating a tag.
  • Furniture - I don't think we are going to have too many subject matter experts on furniture here. Why would a grouping of the two questions noted be beneficial to a SME? The on site search is useful to find questions for anyone who needs to find them.

In general, I'm pessimistic about new tags. It doesn't mean that all new tags are bad, however the majority of tags that I think we need probably need to be hashed out on meta first. A better set of game classification tags would be great, for an example.

If a tag is created with an anticipated usage of 1-2 questions, and that tag doesn't stand on its own then I don't think there is value in that tag. An argument can be made that the value is negative in that someone may later choose to only use that new tag on a question thereby limiting the audience for that question.

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  • bear in mind that extremly low use (only ever seen 1 question) tags are auto-culled after about 4 months, under the assumption that they are not really useful.
    – Jeff Atwood
    Feb 3, 2011 at 9:14
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I agree with you that in general I feel tag control on this site is a little heavy-handed. It is particularly annoying when someone else removes a tag you thought through and decided was positive. I think there is a general question of etiquette there which has not been addressed on any stack exchange site I am aware of.

While I understand the desire to avoid useless tags, I think that attempting to predict tag usage in advance is essentially a waste of time, and contrary to the natural evolution of a folksonomy.

I explained my opinion about specific tags in detail on a different site meta, some time ago. Please have a read and see what you think.

https://gaming.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/119/game-specific-tags/

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