Proposal: delete tags "meaning" and "word-meaning"

Question

This is the description of the tag meaning:

This tag is for questions which a dictionary cannot answer about what a word means. If the question is about the meaning of a word that can't be understood outside its phrase or sentence, the "meaning-in-context" tag should be also used; for the meaning of a phrase, use the "phrase-meaning" tag instead.

And this is the description of the tag word-meaning:

For questions which a dictionary cannot answer about the meaning of a single word. It is best to include details about where you found the word, and any definitions that you have found that don't make sense, or don't fully answer your question.

There is little difference between these two tags, and they should be synonymized at the very least. Both tags are rarely useful as standalone tags, and meaning-in-context serves their purpose when they are. I suggest we delete these two tags entirely.

Answer 1

These tags are members of the pool of tags that no one really likes very much, but we also don't quite know how to replace them. I've never been fond of meaning; I think meaning-in-context is valid when needed, and that meaning is redundant most of the time. Also, meaning and word-meaning are often used as the only tag on a question, which isn't something we encourage.

I'd be happy to merge word-meaning into meaning, but I'd be happier eliminating them both. If we can 1) get community consensus and 2) undertake the project of going through all the meaning and word-meaning questions and adding other appropriate tags (so they don't land in the "untagged" bin), I'd love to knock these two out.

Answer 2

So, it turns out these meaning tags have a bunch of questions associated with them and a number of followers.

I would like to start by merging meaning into meaning-in-context. I think we only need one general "meaning" tag and I think meaning-in-context makes more sense than meaning. If the question is not about the word or phrase in a particular context, and it's not idiom-meaning, it would almost certainly be something that could be answered with the dictionary.

This merge is going to affect about 2800 posts, and the 34 followers of meaning if I make the tag a synonym of meaning-in-context. I would like to do one last double-check with everyone before I undertake such a drastic change that is not easily reversible.

Are we OK with merging meaning and meaning-in-context?

Are we OK with meaning being made a synonym of meaning-in-context?

Answer 3

What I would do is retagging those questions that could use another tag instead of meaning or word-meaning; then, merge word-meaning with meaning and make the first synonym of the second one, to have a single tag to deal with.