What's the etiquette for retag-requests and synonym-requests?

Question

Lately there have been requests from several users for retags and its entirely unclear to me why they are asking for them. I also don't know if these questions are ok or not because I don't have the answers to the following.

1. When asking for a retag on synonym request is a justification required? Or is the request on its own enough?

2. Is there a minimum number of questions effected on the combined tags to make the request?

3. Is a synonym-request implicitly implied in a retag-request? If not should the OP be made aware of this.

4. Is it ok that users without the retag privilege use Meta as proxy for this?

Answer 1

1. State the retag/synonym request. Use real tags, so we can click to get to the tagged questions.

2. Provide some reasoning why the retag request is a good thing and should be done.

3. Wait for some discussion and consensus.

4. Allow time for the moderator to process your request.

5. Profit!

There's no minimum. It's easier to service the retag request if the number of affected questions is smaller.

Most synonym requests are also merge requests, but there are some exceptions, particularly if the tag was used in an ambiguous way on existing questions and a manual retagging is needed.

Anyone can post a request here, but it helps if you understand the tagging system and are aware of the tradeoffs involved.

Answer 2

1. Justification is helpful if you have reasons. However, sometimes people can post "suspicious" tags that look like they belong together but aren't sure. In that case, you'd likely use the discussion tag and ask others if they should be merged (or whatever).

2. Usually the cut-off is around 100 questions. Below 100, it's fairly easy for you and maybe one or two other people to simply retag all the questions under the suspect tag to the new one. I've been known to do this on occasion.

3. There are arguments for and against it. See Synonymize [retag-request] and [synonym-request]

4. Yes, but only to an extent. You're probably asking this because of the massive number of requests that have popped up recently. I don't condone a massive bucket of requests all in separate questions like has happened. Singular requests here and there are alright, but if you have a bunch of them, it's better to combine them all into a single question.

The bottom line is if you can't do something yourself, you'd go get help so others can do it. If you can do it yourself, then leave it alone. Oftentimes basic synonym requests are brought here as well just to get them pushed through, simply because the current synonym suggestion system isn't very reliable and can take a long time.