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The tagging of questions related to the 2019-2020 coronavirus outbreak is a mess. I've seen at least five related tags in use as of 2020-03-06:

The community should probably settle on one or two of those and make the rest aliases.

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  • $\begingroup$ There was no mess there at all, it's perfectly clear from my descriptions of the purpose for each one. There is a history you know. Names for things just doesn't appear out of the blue, and since we have computers today, we can add billions of tags without any confusion. The only one that should have been removed is 2019-coronavirus. But I did not have the power to do so. But removing the others were (ehm) just a very bold and dumb move. $\endgroup$
    – not2qubit
    Commented Mar 12, 2020 at 3:32

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I suggest keeping as well as . COVID-19 is the disease caused by infection with the novel SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. Since we cover both microbiology/virology and some health topics on this site, I can easily imagine on-topic questions where one of the tags is appropriate but not the other. Just my $2e-2.

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  • $\begingroup$ I think this is a good point, but we didn't have any questions tagged COVID-19 that were truly about the disease rather than the virus; probably most of those would be best at MedicalSciences, anyways. There is also no broader pneumonia tag; I would probably recommend making pneumonia first if one was going to ask questions about the disease itself outside of talking about the biology of the virus. $\endgroup$
    – Bryan Krause Mod
    Commented Mar 10, 2020 at 0:42
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    $\begingroup$ And in a couple of years, when the next variation of the corona family comes knocking, there's going to be a mess if everything is called 'corona' now. $\endgroup$
    – Mast
    Commented Mar 11, 2020 at 14:36
  • $\begingroup$ It would be absurd to have covid-19 but not SARS-CoV-2. I put extensive effort into categorizing these correctly just to bu bulldozed over by some taggorist, who thought just removing them was just great. I'm very disappointed in the maintenance of this site. The admins here are constantly working against the community and not with it. $\endgroup$
    – not2qubit
    Commented Mar 12, 2020 at 3:28
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    $\begingroup$ @not2qubit — Please withdraw your remark. The admins of this site are constantly working — period / full stop. Without their work the site would not exist. Abusing them is unacceptable. I disagree with their decisions on occasions, but respecting their good intensions, I accept them. It is understandable that you resent the apparent waste of your effort, but effort is not the criterion for decisions here. You can either accept the rules of a club (and the admins play to the rules) or leave it. The choice is yours. $\endgroup$
    – David
    Commented Mar 13, 2020 at 0:26
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    $\begingroup$ @not2qubit the point of a community is to work with it. You are (or at least were, depending on how seriously one should take your profile comments) a member of this larger community, as are the moderators and everyone else here. The whole point of Meta is for people's voices to be heard when there are decisions to be made and when issues come up. If you feel you are being "bulldozed", bring it up constructively here in a question. However, if you take it upon yourself to do something and find that others don't agree with what you've done, don't resort to name-calling and rage-quitting. $\endgroup$
    – MattDMo
    Commented Mar 13, 2020 at 16:39
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As I have said before, the tag "virus" would be sufficient as we don't have tags for dozens of viruses of biological importance. But yes, throw the others off and just use "coronavirus" for those few questions that are on-topic here.

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  • $\begingroup$ Sounds good to me $\endgroup$
    – AliceD Mod
    Commented Mar 6, 2020 at 14:14
  • $\begingroup$ Would you make it coronavirus, as in your post, or corona-virus? Arguably arbitrary, but if we do it, let's do it right :) $\endgroup$
    – AliceD Mod
    Commented Mar 6, 2020 at 14:15
  • $\begingroup$ @AliceD I've always seen it written "coronavirus". $\endgroup$
    – Bryan Krause Mod
    Commented Mar 6, 2020 at 16:10
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    $\begingroup$ I think coronavirus without hyphenation is standard. $\endgroup$
    – David
    Commented Mar 6, 2020 at 16:40
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    $\begingroup$ @BryanKrause and David - let's go for that than; always better to ask the native speakers, no ? :) $\endgroup$
    – AliceD Mod
    Commented Mar 6, 2020 at 16:44
  • $\begingroup$ I went ahead and completed this. The vast majority of the affected questions had multiple tags from this list already. I think some further reasons to keep these all together, besides the low number of questions, is that tags are mostly a way to organize interests. Someone shouldn't need to follow every coronavirus strain individually if they are interested. $\endgroup$
    – Bryan Krause Mod
    Commented Mar 10, 2020 at 0:39
  • $\begingroup$ This is not a good idea, as it ignores the phylogenetics and taxonomy classifications and ignores the diversity of biology. It's analogous to comparing physical chemistry to alchemy. $\endgroup$
    – not2qubit
    Commented Mar 12, 2020 at 3:24
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    $\begingroup$ @BryanKrause I already deleted some lesser used tags as well a while ago, might have made the job a bit easier for you $\endgroup$
    – AliceD Mod
    Commented Mar 12, 2020 at 9:28
  • $\begingroup$ @not2qubit please be friendly. Your opinion is valuable, the harsh language is not. I have tuned down your comment here. $\endgroup$
    – AliceD Mod
    Commented Mar 12, 2020 at 9:28
  • $\begingroup$ @not2qubit I respect your differing view, but these tags were not being used in any sort of pattern - questions arbitrarily had multiple tags. The purpose of tags is to allow people to follow questions relevant to their interests, not to do taxonomy. Tags are not the only tool for differentiating questions, it is also possible to search for particular keywords. It's best to use tags for broad categories of shared interest, and I don't think our typical users will have differing interest in covid19 vs sars-cov-2; it's more likely they will miss relevant questions by not being exhaustive. $\endgroup$
    – Bryan Krause Mod
    Commented Mar 12, 2020 at 15:13
  • $\begingroup$ @not2qubit — The way meta works usually is that people use answers to give their attitudes to a proposal in a question. It is reasonable to use comments to argue a point raised in an answer, but the only argument I raise is that many viruses of biological interest have no tags, so one is enough here, and you are not responding to that. I suggest you present your point of view in your own answer, which will also make it easier and clearer for others to answer your arguments. Try to play by the rules, accepting that your arguments might not win. $\endgroup$
    – David
    Commented Mar 12, 2020 at 16:49

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