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Although I have just created my first new tag as a fairly new user and thus profited from the current liberal approach, I would propose to raise the bar for creating a tag to the same threshold as for editing tag metadata (which might be somewhat lowered in return, but that is a different discussion). I agree with the argument by @matthewsnyder on why the gap is not helpful.

The rationale for _raising_ the bar for creation is that new contributors should, in my opinion, have some time (and I acknowledge that it would be "enforced" on them) to get used to the categorization scheme on a site before changing it, in order to prevent tag proliferation which on Similarly Engineered sites can lead to orphaned tags or synonymous tags (sometimes so close in their names that someone should have noticed much earlier).

If they feel a tag is missing, they can still ask on the corresponding Meta site for a community consensus about the need for a new tag, which can then be implemented by an established user who has gained that ability.