The tag limit is a trade off. If you allow many tags, you have more freedom when tagging, but also you must work harder to clean up unnecessary tags from people who don't know better. That last one assumes too many tags is a problem. Steam, for example, has no limits on tags for a game, and functions just fine (partly because users are allowed to vote on tags and their search systems are sophisticated). However, I can see how some people on a Q&A site like this would get frustrated at seeing new users add unnecessary tags.

With fewer tags, you have less freedom, but there is also less work for mods to do to clean up tags. When you have few tags, you're more likely to think about what tags you are adding.

As for where the cap should be, I think the Pareto principle applies here. If you add 10 tags, probably only 2-3 are most meaningful, and the other 7 are basically noise. So why not skip the noise, and only add the 3?

Compounding the issue is "service tags". These are tags that are not necessarily about describing the subject matter, but to help categorize the type of question. They are most useful for active moderators, not regular users. These compete with subject matter tags that are useful to ordinary users for limited tag space.

Perhaps a solution could be that the number of tags you can add depends on your score? New user would start out being able to add 3 tags, and after the initial "onboarding" period this would increase to 5. Long time active users can add up to 10. I'm not sure what should happen if say a 3 tag user tries to edit a question that had 7 tags added to it by a 10 tag user, though.

posted over 1 year ago

CC BY-SA 4.0

matthewsnyder‭

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