Too broad tags like science and pseudo-science

Question

I just removed the science and pseudo-science tags from one question. Those tags apply to nearly all questions and are therefore pretty much useless.

I think we should remove them from any question if they appear again. Can we get a consensus here about those tags and other similar ones that appear?

It is much easier to clean up the tags early than to do it retroactively.

Edit: I have also removed quackery and evidence. Quackery already contains a judgement on the validity of the claims and it is extremely broad, I don't think that makes a useful tag. Evidence is also a meta-tag and not useful.

Answer 1

Yes, certainly. Remove these types of tags.

There are two types of tags which are explicitly discouraged: meta-tags and redundant tags.

Meta-tags are a problem because they do not tell you what the question is about. They describe something like:

• The author's motivation for asking the question (stupid, funny, quackery, etc)
• What kind of question is being asked (subjective, poll, request, etc)

Each tag should be able to stand on its own to tell you what the question is about. For example: the tag "subjective", taken alone, doesn't tell you anything about what the question is about. If it cannot pass that acid test, remove it.

Redundant tags are those that are already implied by the site topic. There's simply no value to tags like [skeptic], [science], [pseudo-science], [woo], [debunk], [proof], [argue], [question], [discussion], … You can see where I'm going.

We accumulated these types of tags for years before we figured out how harmful were in organizing the site. There’s no reason to repeat those mistakes. Each community can benefit from those mistakes and do it better the next time around. This is one of those cases.

See: The Death of Meta Tags

Answer 2

Pseudoscience isn't a useless tag, as not all crackpot ideas are pseudoscience. Pseudohistory, conspiracy theories and the like are on-topic.