There is an automatic job that deletes single-use tags after 6 months. No attempt is made at determining whether the tags are good and should remain, or whether the tags are a variant name of another tag and should be renamed or made synonyms. There is no way to explicitly declare a tag as good. Even beta sites, where it is expected that the tag system is still evolving, are not exempt.. This job is not subject to any review, not even after the fact: one day the tags are there, the next day they're gone.
This has already been shown to cause harm on French Language & Usage: we currently have one untagged question because of it (what was it tagged as? Stack Exchange isn't saying.), and we might have lost more tags but there's no way to know.
Please either:
- turn off the job that deletes single-use tag, and provide a log of past deleted tags so that we can add them back where appropriate; or
- provide evidence that the deletions were beneficial to the site (I don't know what form the evidence could take other than a log of past deleted tags so that we can ascertain that the tags were indeed useless in a vast majority of cases).
P.S. There is now a way to protect single-use tags: write a tag wiki. (I don't know if an excerpt is enough.)
Résumé : il y a un procédé automatique qui efface les étiquettes qui ne sont présentes sur aucune question au bout de 6 mois. Il n'y a aucun moyen d'être prévenu ou même de constater l'étendue des dégâts après coup. Je demande à ce que ce procédé soit désactivé, ou à avoir une trace démontrant qu'il fait plus de bien que de mal.
P.S. Il y a désormais un moyen de protéger une étiquette : si elle dispose d'un wiki, elle ne sera pas effacée. Donc si vous voyez une étiquette raisonnable qui n'a pas de wiki, merci d'en écrire un !
