# tags for off-topic questions: what to do?

I've just been doing a bit of tags clean-up (a bit of retagging to the correct subject tag, and a bit of merging and deleting). (Incidentally, it'd be great if more people keep an eye on the newly created tag list. You can see it by going to https://math.stackexchange.com/tags and clicking on the tab for 'New'. Some of the ones I just dealt with were pretty far off.)

A request and a question:

1. There are a few tags dealing with subjects that I am not expert in (various things related to abstract-algebra, graph-theory, and such), it'd be great if someone more expert can check to see if the tags are applied correctly and if those tags are actually necessary. (Tags that are too specific and tags that almost surely will duplicate key-phrases in the text/title of the questions are generally unnecessary.) (You can post suggestions for mergers at Tag merging and synonyms .)
2. What should we do with tags for questions that are very off-topic? For example, there is one question currently tagged , which really better belongs on the TeX StackExchange (my question is not about this particular question specifically, but about a general scenario that I will outline in a minute). But the tag is a reasonable description of what the question concerns. So:

Suppose a question sports an accurate but off-topic tag, and the question was closed/migrated. What should we do with the tag?

If the tag is accurate, there's no problem.

edit: As Asaf suggests: $$\text{tagging problem}\Leftrightarrow\text{tags are inaccurate}$$

• This seems like a complete characterization of all tagging problems: There is a problem if and only if the tagging is inaccurate. :-) – Asaf Karagila Jul 5 '11 at 16:01
• @Asaf: Exactly. – Isaac Jul 5 '11 at 16:33
• Neat! Do you think we can get a paper out of this? :-D – Asaf Karagila Jul 5 '11 at 17:08
• @Asaf: Perhaps... Is there a "journal of StackExchange paradigms"? – Isaac Jul 5 '11 at 18:20
• I'm guessing Jeff might know. ;-) – Asaf Karagila Jul 5 '11 at 18:49

Regarding 2: isn't this what is for? I thought I had used this tag before, but someone seems, funnily enough, to have removed it...

• I think for prevention of abuse, the tag-removed tag has been removed. I vaguely remember a comment of Jeff to that effect.. but maybe not on this meta per se. – Willie Wong Jul 5 '11 at 14:33
• Can't we simply re-create it, or something similar like "tag-deleted" or "intentionally-untagged"? – Carl Mummert Jul 6 '11 at 2:29