I'd like some guidance on creating tags

Question

I was thinking of creating a 'diversity' and 'tokenism' tag, but unsure if this is a good idea and seek feedback.

How to balance respecting diversity and avoiding tokenism at the same time

Answer 1

Here is a little general list I use to gauge the usefulness of a tag:

1. Ask yourself how many questions you have about this topic: is this probably the only one or is this a topic you want to ask about more regularly?
2. Look through the existing questions: how many already use the word or similar words and might profit from the tag?
3. Look through the existing tags: is one of them already encompassing what you are trying to convey?
4. Look through Meta: have there been similar requests or precedent cases where something similar has been created/denied?
5. Think about the sites scope: do you think that a lot of people will profit from these tags when they are asking questions about the specific topic of the site you are on?
6. Think about the tag's scope: is it well-defined and obvious to users coming to the site?

Having an idea for a tag wiki excerpt is also helpful to show others what you think the new tag should be used like and to make it easier to understand for other users in the future. And a tag wiki might prevent some confusion.

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In your case:

1. Only you can answer that
   -> neutral
2. diversity is:q yields 6 results, but they seem to be talking about different topics: diversity of the people, diversity in the tech industry, diverse actions, diverse perspectives, ... and tokenism is:q yields 3 results with one question being about tokens in scrivener and one having the word in a quote
   -> At first glance there are only a few questions with wildly different understandings/ contexts; minus point for creation
3. I am not sure; maybe character-development would help with the diversity, but I have no idea about the tokenism
   -> plus point for creation
4. Can't find any similar discussions; there have been some about specific tags, but nothing that seems to go in this direction
   -> creating a Meta question was the right thing to do to see what the community thinks; neutral
5. Diversity and Tokenism in writing are probably on-topic to denote certain types of questions that deal mainly with these aspects; for example they could help narrow down what a non-fiction or fiction question is about
   -> plus point
6. Not really sure - it would help to have at least a proposed tag wiki excerpt
   -> neutral

I am counting 3 neutral, two plus and one minus. If you:

• find other questions that would profit from these tags
• provide a useful tag wiki excerpt for both of them
• think that you might have questions with similar topics in the future

I would say creating the tags is okay.

They would help to narrow down the scope of questions that only have vague tags like fiction or non-fiction and some users may very well pride themselves in being experts about these topics in writing. They are coming up quite often in different genres of writing so they are not too localized to be useful.