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Take a look at this revision for an example: https://webapps.stackexchange.com/posts/50481/revisions

I don't see a reason to remove the more general tags. They make it much easier to find an answer and provide better visibility. Personally I do not follow as specific tags for everything, so I miss some Google related questions that I may be able to answer simply because their less specific tags are being removed.

Superuser Meta had a similar question and it would appear that less specific tags shouldn't be removed.

Take a look at the tags I have favourited. I would miss a question like mine above asking a Google Presentation question, however I would most likely be able to answer it.

tags

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    In the case you linked, I removed "google" because the question isn't about Google. I suppose google-drive could have stayed, but the question was specifically about google-presentations. It seems to me that over-use of "google" for everything having to do with Google will make things harder to find, not easier. I can't tell you how many questions were tagged just with "google". Should "outlook.com" and "bing" questions also be tagged with "microsoft"? I think too-broad tags are usually not useful. However, if the consensus is that they should stay, I'll leave them.
    – ale
    Oct 10, 2013 at 0:13
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    @AlEverett I don't see the problem with having broad tags. If you're looking for something specific you're going to need to be more specific than just searching for "google" anyway. This is a nice way to find any google related questions. I don't think it would be a bad idea to have outlook questions have a microsoft tag. Tags should be used to hint at what subjects the question has. Stating that it is Google helps me narrow it down to subjects I care more about and know more about.
    – ComputerLocus
    Oct 10, 2013 at 1:40

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This also depends on if the general version of the tag relates to the company or to a product.

For example, on a Trello question about using the cards, you would have and maybe .

Here, Trello might seem general, but it's specifically about the product. Hence, in that situation, you wouldn't remove and leave the question with just .

On Google product questions, this is trickier, because now you're dealing with the company, and not the product. For a question on Gmail, the tag suffices because that's the product. Tagging on is unnecessary because that's a company-wide or multiple-product tag.

Logging into a site with Google credentials? Yes, that would fit the use of the tag.

Another example. Say the question was about configuring Flickr sets. is the product, and a general tag that you would have at the least. You wouldn't remove that in favour of because now the "general" product tag is gone when it was perfectly fine being there.

But, it's owned by Yahoo!, though you wouldn't add the tag as that relates to the company, not the product.

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  • Hence, in that situation, you wouldn't remove or would you.... For logging in, we have the google-account tag.
    – Jacob Jan Tuinstra
    Oct 10, 2013 at 10:09
  • We could probably remove [google] as a tag itself, since there are many that are acceptable and less vague
    – Eight Days of Malaise
    Oct 10, 2013 at 20:22
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    Regarding "Logging into a site with Google credentials? Yes, that would fit the use of the google tag". For this case I think that google-account should be used instead of google.
    – Rubén Mod
    Jul 21, 2015 at 16:11
  • Yes, google-account does look like a better tag than just google alone
    – Eight Days of Malaise
    Jul 24, 2015 at 13:33
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I haven't reached a conclusion on what the right course of action is here, though my feeling is that we should keep the more general tags, but in the meantime if you specify your tags with a wildcards:

google*

you should get all tags that start with "google*:

tag:google*

(which I've had to manually include as the auto tag conversion doesn't work with wildcards.)

Though it's only a partial workaround, because in this case it doesn't include the tag as that would take it over the 260ish character limit for URLs

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  • When the maximum tags are not met yet I don't see a reason to not include some more general tags?
    – ComputerLocus
    Oct 9, 2013 at 21:45
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I've been reviewing the tag lately. When I'm done, then most probably the tag will hit third place of most popular tags.

In the excerpt and the info text of the tag, I tell people not use the in combination with the tag, as both will be contaminated.

I would've made the same alterations, Al made.

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