Is it right to delete the tags which are chosen by the users?

Question

I see a lot of questions have their original tags deleted and then other tags added. I think we should leave the original tags of the questions if they are not offensive or have mistakes. I see massive deletion of tags and usage of other tags instead of them.

Someone have made a tag and decides that his tag is better than new ones and deletes the new to use his tag.

Isn't it better to leave people write what they want and at later stage when a good amount of tags accumulate then the users can decide which tags are synonyms.

Maybe some of the new tags are better but we are not letting them evolve.

By deleting a new tag only the opinion of one person is taken into consideration (the one who edit the question and deletes the tag). If for removing tags we use synonyms then removing a tag is by voting which of the tags is better and it is more democratic.

Answer 1

I think you're missing the point of tags. Tags are not a form of artistic expression. Tags are meant to classify questions. They allow people to search for questions and filter them according to their requests and interests. It is necessary for tags to be consensual, i.e. everybody should use the same tag to mean the same thing and vice versa.

Editing questions to make the usage of tags uniform is to be encouraged.

If you disagree about the choice of name for a tag, or if you think an existing tag should be split because it is used to mean different things, the right thing to do is not to do your own thing with your question, making it tagged differently from others. Raise the issue on meta.

Answer 2

There needs to be organization to tags. I remove tags that are not only duplicate or off-topic, but also those that are too narrow.

Answer 3

Yes, it is right. Having some standardization should not be a problem.