Do we need the (self-learning) tag?

Question

The self-learning tag seems to be used to indicate that the question arose from the OP's own study rather than being assigned as homework.

In the past we had a homework tag, and I imagine self-learning was used in contrast. However, I don't see why we really need the tag now. One of the things we ask questioners to do is provide context for their question. If the fact that the question came from self-study is relevant to the OP's confusion, then that should be explicitly mentioned in the post.

Some may argue that the tag can/should be used for questions about self-studying mathematics. In that case, I think the learning tag is more appropriate as its tag wiki suggests:

Questions about the process of learning mathematics, both inside and outside a formal environment, including learning strategies, recommendations for learning particular subjects, and studying habits.

Answer 1

The main problem with this tag is that the majority of 1643 questions in it are purely mathematical questions that have nothing to do with studying mathematics without formal instruction (quoting the tag excerpt). Just look at the newest questions to see what goes on there.

To make things worse, some of those questions have no other tag; so they are completely uncategorized by subject area. A sample of these:

1. Continuity of a positive preserving operator between C(X) and C(Y)
2. Help in Understanding the Formula for The Lattice Point Counting in Triangles with Rational Coordinates
3. Expected value of function of negative binomial
4. Conditional CDF
5. Simplify the equation $\left | \frac{4-3m_3}{3+4m_3} \right |= \left | \frac{-3-4m_3}{4-3m_3} \right |$

I think the following should be done:

1. retag the questions that have no other tag, either with subject area (if they are mathematical), or with learning
2. delete self-learning
3. In the future, put such questions under learning.

As long as we have both teaching and learning tags, it makes sense for the latter to be used for questions where the focus is on a learner's own work. In fact, learning is already used for self-study questions, e.g., How to get university level Mathematics education on my own?

Answer 2

We have three super-similar tags right now:

1. education
2. learning
3. self-learning

I think that education should be merged with learning, where education is the "parent"/residual tag.

Then, the question becomes "do we think education and self-learning should be merged?" I argue no--we can keep education to be relating to formal education, while self-learning relates to informal education.

Answer 3

I have been thinking that it might be useful to have a "hint and help" tag.

There are two kinds of questions put up on the site - "what is the answer to this mathematical question?" and "can you help me to answer this mathematical question?"

The tags we have don't fit the second kind well - because what is required is a hint or help rather than the most efficient answer. In a way the best response to such a question would be for OP to post an answer they've worked out for themselves.

The idea would be to have a convention of not giving full answers to such questions (and not closing them as duplicates) until [to be defined] OP has had a chance to answer for themselves. Once such an answer is posted it is then open season to post a more efficient answer, or a more general one, or to propose closing as a duplicate of another question because the mathematical content is the same.

The tag description could cover - please explain what you have done and why you are stuck, and the kind of help you think you need. Please also add a tag or tags to reflect the mathematical content of your question.

Adding such a tag to a question, with an appropriate comment about OP finding their own answer with help, would be a potential alternative to closing some of the more marginal PSQs.

Altogether I think some creative restructuring to provide tags with a closer fit to the second kind of question would be of general benefit.