Can you tell who created a tag

Question

I recently created a tag, will anywhere show that it was created by me? Same with other tags, can I see who created them?

Answer 1

While 6005's answer gives a quick-and-dirty way to find the first use of a tag with very high probability, there are a couple of situations where it will not return the correct information.

1. After being created the tag is edited into an older question.
2. After being created the tag is removed from that question.
3. The question where the first use occurred was subsequently deleted.

There is very little that can be done about the last problem, but the SEDE can help with the first two. This query goes through the PostHistory table, and finds the earliest 10 revisions where the specified tag was used. There are a couple of things users should be aware of when using this.

• There may be "false" results in that if userAlice edits tagname into a question, and userBarbara later edits that question's tags but retains tagname, then userBarbara's revision might also appear when looking for tagname in the query, even though userBarbara really didn't add the tag to the question. (It all depends on how many other "tag revisions" with tagname there have been between userAlice's and userBarbara's revisions.) The first line will in all probability be the first use of tagname, excepting some cases noted below.
• The data in the SEDE is only updated every Sunday at about 03:00UTC, so if you are looking for the first use of a very new tag this query will not help: it will return nothing.
• Deleted questions are not included in the PostHistory table, so if the question where the tag was first used was subsequently deleted, this query will not grab that first instance. (I could try to additionally go through the PostsWithDeleted table, but similarly to the Posts table one would only find posts to which the tag was attached at the time of deletion, so the combination of cases (2) and (3) really is insurmountable, as far as I can tell.)

Answer 2

I will add a few comments on manual search for tag creator. (Although the SEDE query in another answers is probably much better way to go.)

• The name of the tag-creator is publicly displayed if they were awarded taxonomist badge. (If this is the case, the tag creator is also displayed in the tag-info.) But this will not work for all tags, since the badge is awarded only if there are 50 questions in the tag and a user cannot get this badge multiple times. Sometime you can guess even the question where the tag was created, although you cannot be absolutely sure, see this example.
• If tag is relatively new and it is still in the list of new tags, then you can see also the exact time and date of creation. So if you find a question created with that tag or edit which adds the tag to that question with exactly the same timestamp, then it is very likely that this is where the tag was created. Example of this can be found here.
• Many tags are discussed in tagging chatroom and on meta Sometimes you can find in such discussion also attempt to identify the tag-creator. Clearly, if the attempt was made soon after the tag was created, it is more likely that the guess is correct. (For example, it is less likely that the question where the tag actually was created had already been deleted.) Of course, it sometimes happens that the guess is incorrect, like here. And sometimes such discussions are even accompanied by list of the questions tagged with the tag at the moment, like here. So if you search chat rooms or meta threads dedicated to tags, in some cases you might find out that the tag-creator (or even the question where the tag was created) is mentioned there.
• Tags also have tag-wikis. And sometimes the same person who created tag also creates the tag-wiki. In the tag-wiki you can see when and by whom it was created by checking revision history, for example like here. If the oldest occurence of the tag was approximately at the same time as the tag-wiki, it is - to some extent - a reasonable guess that the tag and the tag-wiki might have been created by the same user. But often it might be the case that somebody saw the tag, considered it useful and therefore decided to create the tag-info if the tag-creator neglected to do so. (I have already given an example of different tag-creator and tag-wiki-creator. Yet at the time I thought that it is the same person.)

It will probably surprise nobody, that this issue was discussed on main meta. See this question: Can I find out which tags I have created? And there is also a big number of duplicate or related questions. So you can check also what is mentioned there. (But my impression from quickly going through the answers at that post and a few of the linked post is that most of the information given there was also mentioned in the answers here.)

Answer 3

You can usually find who created a tag by searching for questions from that tag and finding the earliest instance in a post, and then looking at the edit history.

By the way, the tag you created, proof-creation, was not a useful and constructive tag. I have removed the tag from existence. Please ask on meta before creating new tags.