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There is a tag called . This tag has empty tag-info/usage guidance.

Without any usage guidance it is quite likely to be used incorrectly. The fact that there are many deleted questions having this tag can be considered a supporting evidence of this fact. (According to SEDE there are 26 such questions - although this list also includes a few migration stubs. In fact, I was a bit surprised that I did not see this tag mentioned in this previous discussion: Tags that encourage off-topic questions.)

Perhaps it is also worth mentioning that on Mathematics site the proof(s) tag was blacklisted, see here and here.

At the moment there are 8 question in this tag - they are listed here.

So I would like to ask:

  • Should MO keep the (proofs) tag or should it be removed?
  • If the tag is going to stay, would it be possible to make at least basic tag-info to clarify the usage of the tag?

I understand that this tag is a bit vague, so it might be difficult to give a good description. But perhaps at least some cases when the tag should not be used could be mentioned. (For example, that the tag should not be used if the question is about one specific proof or if the asker posts question about verification of their own proof.)

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    $\begingroup$ As 'proofs' is kind of a meta tag which is not used so frequently that its removal would be impractical, I'd suggest to remove that tag. $\endgroup$
    – Stefan Kohl Mod
    Commented Aug 7, 2018 at 13:39

2 Answers 2

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I don't know what the original point of this tag was, but based on the current questions with this tag and infrequent recent usage (9 total, used 5 times in 2013 and and 4 times from 2016-2018) and the existence of numerous other "proof tags" (proof-theory, elementary-proofs, ..., even the slick-proofs tag has more questions), I second Stefan Kohl's suggestion of removing this tag.

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    $\begingroup$ BTW it is possible to make tags "clickable" using the syntax [tag:tagname]. For example, [tag:slick-proof] gives a link to slick-proof. (This might be possibly useful if other users want to check the tags you mention in your post - they are just one click away.) $\endgroup$
    – Martin Sleziak
    Commented Aug 16, 2018 at 16:08
  • $\begingroup$ I have accepted your answer. (The question is two weeks old - so I do not expect much more input on this question to come. And the voting suggests that users who decided to vote here agree with your proposal.) The question is what to do next: Whether simply to start manual retagging or whether to ask the moderators first what to do next. (Or we could simply wait a bit longer?) $\endgroup$
    – Martin Sleziak
    Commented Aug 21, 2018 at 10:18
  • $\begingroup$ @MartinSleziak Since there weren't that many, and there seemed to be no objections, I just manually removed the proofs tags from those 8 questions. I presume this falls in the spirit of community moderation, but if there are complaints (e.g., from moderators) I can undo this. $\endgroup$
    – Kimball
    Commented Aug 21, 2018 at 14:29
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It's not exactly about the original question, but now has been duly removed. There are still the tags and (47 and 17 questions respectively at this date 2020/Feb/06). While in practice they have close meanings, the second one is unpleasantly non-neutral, and I'd like it to be removed, practically making it a synonym of would sound fine. Or manually (I'll understand upvotes/downvotes of this answer as for/against replacement of with ).

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  • $\begingroup$ There having been a positive response, but no apparent activity on this post, perhaps it's worth posting this as a separate MMO question? $\endgroup$
    – LSpice
    Commented Mar 10, 2021 at 18:20

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