"single-word-requests", "word-choice", "vocabulary" and "words" tags

Question

We have these four tags with apparently the same purpose. That's confusing.

I think we should create tag synonyms. But what should be the master tag then?

I suggest "vocabulary". Do you agree?

Answer 1

I don't think they all serve the same purpose. At least they shouldn't. Personally, I interpret these four tags as follows:

• single-word-requests is for word requests, i.e. questions that ask if there's a single word that matches a given definition (“community of experts”, “obsession with publishing”, “compliance with unspoken resistance”, “beautiful and interesting”, “device that provides constant doses of a liquid/dust/substance”, etc.)
  
  
• word-choice is for all those "versus" questions, where the author already has several alternatives at his disposal, but is not sure which one to use, for whatever reasons (effect vs. affect, geek vs. nerd, less vs. fewer, jail vs. prison, “per year” vs. “per annum”, “I believe” vs. “I think” vs. “I reckon”, plaza vs. square, etc.)
  
  
• vocabulary is for more broad questions, e.g. those that ask for lots of words at once, such as Uncommon words that should become more common, Terms for collections of animals, Informal terms for money amounts, or "meta" questions such as Methods for improving your spoken vocabulary. Edit: fast-forward three months, and the latter question type is now actually off-topic as per the FAQ.
  
  
• The words tag, IMHO, serves no purpose beyond being an easy cop-out for new users who don't know what to tag their questions with. However, I'll admit that it is not entirely useless or meta, because at least it tells me that the question is not about, say, punctuation.

Of course, there are some gray areas between these definitions, not everyone will completely agree with them, and some won't know or care about the existence of all these tags to begin with. However, tag synonyms, in my book, are for tags that are completely interchangeable to everyone (word-positioning and word-order, verb and verbs, that kind of things). Right now, I don't see single-word-requests, word-choice, vocabulary, and words being used completely interchangeably.