I accidentally created a tag. How do I delete it? [duplicate]

Question

I attempted to ask a question regarding "object-role-modeling" (it's a design methodology that doesn't get nearly as much attention as it should).

Unfortunately, when I wrote the question, I made a spelling error and assigned it to a non-existent tag "object-role-modelling". I realised my mistake, and changed the tag on my question. But the mis-spelt tag is still there.

I do not want this tag to be in stackoverflow. I really want there to be more object-role-modeling questions on the site, and having two near-identical tags is just going to add confusion.

So, here we have the situation where:

• There isn't a single question against this tag
• The person who added the tag wants to remove it

Is there some way I can do this? If not, should there be?

Answer 1

As waiwai said, there is a script that runs daily to hide (soft-delete) tags that don't have any associated questions. All you need to do is remove the tag from your question, and the script will pick it up automatically.

In the case of a less popular tag such as the one you created, it isn't a big deal to wait the < 24 hours. However, when we deal with very popular tags, this kind of a wait is long enough that more questions pop up with the undesired tag.

Fortunately, in either case, we already have a solution: tag synonyms. This allows us to automatically map an apparently erroneous tag to the proper tag without removing the erroneous one from the system.

That being said, tag synonyms should be used where there is a high likelihood of a user entering an erroneous tag -- for example colour is a synonym of color. Where this shouldn't be used is if you made a legitimate mistake, maybe something like oclor, which you'd just want to remove from the system (in which case the only option is to wait for the script to run).

So, no, there's no manual way to do this, but there is a semi-automatic way, and we already have a system in place to take care of the situations when that is insufficient.

Answer 2

Tags with no questions are deleted at midnight UTC daily.