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In the process of suggesting an edit to this question I noticed we have both a and tags.

Both have fairly substantial use (94 and 21 questions respectively). From what I can see, the majority of questions on both tags have to do with reducing, avoiding or minimising waste.

Is there a topic distinction I'm missing? Should all usages of be converted/merged into the more specific tag ?

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Definitely don't make a tag synonym.

If you take a look at my map of related tags you will see that there are many tags about waste that aren't about waste minimization. At the same time, there is quite a depth of questions that are about minimizing waste.

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As a general rule, questions should use the most specific tags available. So if this question is tagged with then it really doesn't need to be tagged with . So it might make sense to add more specific tags to some of those questions.

As background reading, I've also written down my thoughts about handling tag trees on Stack Exchange.

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  • I actually meant to mention in the question: I'd rather use the more specific [waste-minimisation] - and thus merging [waste] into [waste-minimisation] to remove the broad 'waste' tag (+removing the synonym afterward)
    – Robotnik Mod
    Mar 9, 2020 at 22:36
  • If I'm understanding correctly, it sounds like you're asking "should we remove [waste] from questions that already have [waste-minimization]?" Is that a fair summary?
    – Nic
    Mar 9, 2020 at 22:43
  • Kinda. I'm proposing to tag-merge [waste] into [waste-minimisation], which will automatically convert all usages of [waste] to [waste-minimisation] and add a synonym. Afterward, we then remove the synonym, thus deleting [waste] without editing 90-something questions :)
    – Robotnik Mod
    Mar 9, 2020 at 22:45
  • How would you tag this question? Or this one? Or this?
    – Nic
    Mar 9, 2020 at 22:49
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    [biodegradable-waste]?
    – Robotnik Mod
    Mar 9, 2020 at 22:50
  • @Robotnik I think biodegradable-waste is a great tag for those questions. But that isn't what you have proposed -- your proposal would tag them as [waste-minimization] and I would disagree with that.
    – Nic
    Mar 9, 2020 at 22:53
  • That's fair. Do you agree though, that [waste] as a tag is overly broad and could eventually be replaced with more specific tagging? To me, it would make sense to edit the exception cases manually (like the questions you linked), then merge to the primary topic area that is left over - that would result in less edits than manually editing them all.
    – Robotnik Mod
    Mar 9, 2020 at 22:58
  • @Robotnik I agree that more specific tags should be added, but I'm not sure I agree that [waste] should be removed just for being broad. If we are going to burn [waste] then should we burn other trunk tags to be consistent?
    – Nic
    Mar 9, 2020 at 23:09
  • Let us continue this discussion in chat.
    – Robotnik Mod
    Mar 9, 2020 at 23:32

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