Why do we add status tags to support questions?

Question

A status tag was recently added to My support question (more specifically, status-bydesign). And from my current knowledge, status tags (e.g status-completed, status-norepro, etc.) are used for bugs and feature-requests. So to make sure my question was unusual, I searched for support questions with status tags. My results:

For all the support questions:

• 109 support questions have the status-bydesign tag
• 8 support questions have the status-review tag
• 542 support questions have the status-completed tag
• 13 support questions have the status-declined tag
• 3 support questions have the status-deferred tag
• 34 support questions have the status-norepro tag

In total, there are 700+ support questions with status tags. So, is my knowledge incorrect? Or do moderators like to add status tags to support questions? Or is there a post in the meta that I haven't seen that says that status tags are also added to support questions?

Answer 1

TLDR: We also misuse MSE as a ticketing system.

In a sense - both traditionally and currently MSO/MSE has acted almost like a ticketing system, While the mechanisms vary - from folks keeping an eye on meta(s) actively to the status review tag being linked to the actual ticketing system SE uses internally. Where possible we align it with the roadmap though we sometimes tag posts of broader community interests as well. We also may use these tags, especially on per site meta, to indicate the mod team is reviewing something, or the status of a request, depending on mod culture.

The other status tags allows the community visibility over the status of these posts. Ideally staff would update them, but moderators sometimes retag posts that are obviously talking about resolved issues. With a support tag - completed would indicate that the request made in the question was fulfilled in some way, planned meant they were looking at it and so on.

As such the tags reflect that something has been pushed into the company's radar, and what the decision on said matter is.

Answer 2

Your question How is the Sandbox archive off-topic? is tagged support, but it's also possible to read it as a bug report. The question "Is this situation normal?" implies that if it's not, it should be (bug)fixed. Hence I decided to tag it as status-bydesign. It's the shortest way to indicate 'everything is working correctly' and sometimes, that's all future readers want to know. The alternative is having to read the answers, which takes more time. If you're really bothered by it, we can remove it, but I hope this explanation (and JourneymanGeek's) make a bit of sense.

I see now that the tag info says it should only be used on bugs, but as you discovered, that's just the theory and in practice those guidelines aren't followed.