[actors], [cast], and [casting]

Question

Here are three tags that need sorting out:

• actors (32 questions)

  Actors are the cast members that portray the characters that entertain audiences in live action TV, films and stage shows. Voice actors, also refered to as voice over artists, are actors that lend their voices to radio and animated productions. Actors are also used to promote and sell products in commercials, in print, and on billboards.

• cast (6 questions)

  [no tag wiki]

• casting (1 question)

  [no tag wiki]

• as well as a few questions that don't have any of these tags but probably should.

Now the obvious solution is to retag all the cast and casting questions as actors instead. BUT WAIT! There's more than one type of question falling under these headers, and it might be useful to have more than one tag for such questions. I suggest the following.

• Questions about the casting process (choice of actors, auditioning, etc.) should be tagged with casting. Examples:

  • How did Brent Spiner get cast as Data for TNG?
  • Was the casting of Alan Rickman as Snape based on the full knowledge of the future of that character?
  • Is this story about how Michael Dorn became Worf true?

• Questions about the actors themselves (number of roles, their views on films, what they had for breakfast, etc.) should be tagged with actors. Examples:

  • Has anyone played more distinct roles in Star Wars than Warwick Davis?
  • Has one actor ever played two different characters from Marvel?
  • Actors appearing in both Star Trek and Star Wars?

• Usage guidance for both these tags, and when to use which one, should be made clear in the tag wiki excerpts.

• The cast tag, which is ambiguous as it could mean either the noun "cast" (synonymous with actors) or the verb "cast" (synonymous with casting), should be abolished altogether.

Thoughts?

Answer 1

Based on the info you provided, I think:

actors and cast should be synonyms, and casting should be removed.

cast may seem ambiguous, but casting has been used once, and only just recently.

Another usability reason for cast is that it will be typed before casting. If a new user is trying to use it, looking to use the noun definition, they'll get an error if we burninate it. Whereas, if we leave it, and they try typing "casting", they'll see the tag-wiki definition for "cast" and likely see that it's enough.

Per SQB's comment, casting can be ambiguous itself, when referring to the casting of magical spells (or fishing lines!). Yes, cast could be ambiguous the same way, but I believe there's going to be some ambiguity either way. I don't think confusing the noun and verb is terribly relevant, as they're still referring to the general topic of actors.

The tag wiki for actors would be better off not being a dictionary definition of what the word means, but include a little guidance:

Questions about actors/actresses and voice actors, as related to their roles in Science Fiction and Fantasy works, including the casting process, opinions on the work, history of their role, and more.

Answer 2

@rand al'thors suggestion makes sense to me, i.e. remove the ambiguous cast, and retag thusly tagged questions either to actors or casting.

However, I would suggest to only start using casting if it can be applied to at least ten different questions. Else I would just fold everything into actors which with just a bit more than 30 questions isn’t particularly huge anyway.