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I just noticed there were 4 questions with . I think it's a worthless tag, so I removed it from those four questions. Assuming that's a sensible thing to have done, what needs to happen to get rid of the tag itself?

Incidentally, How to obtain "diligence" from crossword clue "horse-drawn vehicle industry"only had , so I replaced it with . I'm still trying to figure out if seeking help with a cryptic crossword clue is a valid reason for posting a question, and would be interested to know what others think.

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Now that there are no questions in that tag, it will disappear on its own in about 24 hours.

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  • I'm not sure this is true, or at least there's something else going on somewhere. I squashed a few [word] tags a couple of weeks ago, and that tag is still listed. It has no questions attached, thankfully, but it's still in the list.
    – Marthaª
    Mar 15, 2012 at 21:29
  • @Marthaª That's odd. Although the Info pages for those tags 404 now which suggests they were indeed removed.
    – Adam Lear StaffMod
    Mar 15, 2012 at 23:56
  • I've noticed the same thing @Marthaª mentioned, but on another SE site. I'll check their info pages though, as that's a good idea.
    – Ellie Kesselman
    Mar 17, 2012 at 22:30
  • @Marthaª A tag that is not used from any question is deleted within 24 hours. That doesn't mean the tag is re-created once a user adds it to an existing question. Only black-listed tags are not created, as users are not allowed to use them in any question.
    – apaderno
    Mar 19, 2012 at 20:15
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A tag that is not used from any question is deleted within 24 hours.
This doesn't stop users from adding to existing questions, including the ones they ask, if they have the privilege of creating tags. If we want that a tag is never created again, there are just two things that can be done:

  • If there is a tag that can replace , and it is a synonym of , then should be made a synonym of that tag.
  • If there isn't any tag for which can be a synonym, and is a really bad tag, then we can ask to black-list it; in this way, nobody could create that tag again. Of course, black-listing a tag should be asked in very specific circumstances; in any cases, the list of black-listed tags should contain too much tags, and those tags are surely tags that are not welcome on EL&U, not tags that are wrongly used in some of the questions.
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  • I don't think it's really worth blacklisting a tag like [puzzle], because it's not likely to be recreated at all, let alone often enough to be troublesome. The ones that need to be blacklisted are things like [word], [english], [language], etc.
    – FumbleFingers
    Mar 19, 2012 at 22:40
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    The question title is "Delete [puzzle] tag." As it is, the tag is temporary deleted, until somebody with the privilege of creating new tags doesn't use puzzle again. Permanent deleting a tag is only possible when the tag is black-listed.
    – apaderno
    Mar 20, 2012 at 14:43
  • That's just semantics. The [puzzle] tag doesn't exist right now, so as far as I'm concerned, it's deleted.
    – FumbleFingers
    Mar 20, 2012 at 14:49

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