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Currently, contra its intention the "tag-removed" tag has more than $300$ associated questions, many of which are upvoted and have actually contentful tags. This seems like a situation ripe for mass tag removal; however, doing that via the normal process would result in bumping many questions to the front page for no purpose.

Is there a way to address this - say, remove this tag from all positive-net-score questions with at least one additional tag - without bumping questions so modified to the front page?

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    $\begingroup$ It's not unlike the untagged tag on other Stack Exchange sites. Short of synonymizing/merging with another tag (which I don't think is appropriate), there is no way to avoid mass bumping. $\endgroup$
    – Glorfindel
    Mar 8 '21 at 20:41
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    $\begingroup$ Please feel free to bring to attention (however you wish) misapplied tags. $\endgroup$
    – Todd Trimble Mod
    Mar 8 '21 at 21:29
  • $\begingroup$ As @Glorfindel pointed out, there is no easy way to do that. SE could do this but only with extreme reluctance (which is justified but they might be convinced if they happen to have an overabundance of database-fu). In any case, the original use of "tag-removed", from way back in the baby years of MO, was that users would remove or replace that placeholder whenever questions got bumped to the front page. Considering I personally remember adding "tag-removed" to many thousand questions, I guess that worked quite well overall... $\endgroup$
    – François G. Dorais Mod
    Mar 8 '21 at 21:46
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    $\begingroup$ @FrançoisG.Dorais Ah well. To be honest I'm happy enough to be able to write the title of this question, so I'll count this as a win :P. $\endgroup$
    – Noah Schweber
    Mar 8 '21 at 21:50
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    $\begingroup$ As far as I can tell, the way to remove a tag without bumping is called burnination, see the "dictionary" in this post. However, I suppose that before that, the questions which have only that tag would need manual retagging. Somewhat related post on Meta Stack Exchange: Burnination vs. merging into a specific tag $\endgroup$
    – Martin Sleziak
    Mar 8 '21 at 21:51
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    $\begingroup$ It seems that also Mathematics used to have (tag-removed) tag - but it was a long time ago. See: What is the role of the '[tag-removed]' tag? and Could having (tag-removed) tag be useful? $\endgroup$
    – Martin Sleziak
    Mar 8 '21 at 21:52
  • $\begingroup$ @MartinSleziak I think that's ancient history when they were trying to bring over parts of the MO template instead of rethinking the platform their own way. $\endgroup$
    – François G. Dorais Mod
    Mar 8 '21 at 22:00
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Please remove or replace whenever you see it! This is the intended use of this non-tag!

Per comments by Glorfindel and François above, it looks like this is impossible. (I'll accept this answer once I can to move this off the unanswered queue, and of course unaccept it if evidence to the contrary emerges.)

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  • $\begingroup$ I hope you don't mind the edits. $\endgroup$
    – François G. Dorais Mod
    Mar 8 '21 at 21:57
  • $\begingroup$ @FrançoisG.Dorais Not at all! $\endgroup$
    – Noah Schweber
    Mar 8 '21 at 22:01
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    $\begingroup$ FWIW tag-removed has been both my best friend and my worst enemy for over a decade... $\endgroup$
    – François G. Dorais Mod
    Mar 8 '21 at 22:05
  • $\begingroup$ -1 from me since the current wording of this answer is not correct. It is not true that removal of a tag without bumping is impossible - as explained in several comments, it is possible but it has to be done by Stack Exchange staff. Some instances when this was actually done can be found on Mathematics Meta. (I will just add that this is only about whether or not this is technically possible - whether or not removal of this tag would be a good idea is a separate question.) $\endgroup$
    – Martin Sleziak
    Mar 9 '21 at 12:49
  • $\begingroup$ Maybe my previous comment was a bit harsh. (And I have now removed my downvote.) I will just repeat that burnination (complete removal of a tag is possible). But when this answer says "this is impossible" the word this probably refers to the second paragraph of the questions (i.e. "remove this tag from all positive-net-score questions with at least one additional tag") which is slightly different. (Probably I should have read the question a bit more carefully before voting and commenting.) $\endgroup$
    – Martin Sleziak
    Mar 9 '21 at 15:42

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