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We have a firm consensus that religion (Should we exclude religious texts, and which?) and mythology (Should myths be considered religions?) by itself is off-topic here, and that calling religious works fiction is not okay (What's the best way to respectfully discuss stories which fictionalize religious subjects?).

Despite that we still have the , , and tags.

The first two deserve their own discussion as they too seem to be used inconsistently, but this post is about - do we need this tag?

11 questions currently have this tag. One of them is only about mythology, and not SFF, and should be closed; 3 are [story-identification] questions; assorted others include Marvel Cinematic Universe questions; a Tolkien/ASOIAF question, and so forth.

Should this tag remain, or should we initiate a burnination?

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  • 1
    Don't see a reason for downvoting this as it's worth discussing this topic as it extend ms to various other tags.
    – Edlothiad
    Commented Sep 2, 2017 at 11:24
  • I mean, the title alone deserves a +1, and I think it's important to address.
    – Narusan
    Commented Sep 2, 2017 at 13:38
  • @Edlothiad thats not always how votes on meta work. An upvote may mean "Yes, do this" and a downvote may mean "No do not do this" even on the question. It is confusing I know....
    – Skooba
    Commented Sep 2, 2017 at 14:22
  • @Skooba that's not how it works, I was told a vote on a question is whether it's worthy of discussion. The answers are for policies. Questions are meaningless as policy decisions
    – Edlothiad
    Commented Sep 2, 2017 at 15:20
  • 6
    I feel like time is better spent focusing on improving existing or creating new tags. I'm really tired of these burninate suggestions over and over again. There are alternatives, but the onus is on the answer to counter the "burn it" suggestion. None of these questions are ever "What's the best thing we can do about this tag?" it's always just "Can we destroy it?" Seems lazy and destructive, and in recent history the answer has generally been "No" followed by a list of similar reasons.
    – user31178
    Commented Sep 2, 2017 at 18:34

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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This tag is being used entirely correctly and should remain.

There are presently 11 uses of this tag. Excluding those closed for other reasons, almost all of them are asking about the Norse Pantheon in relation to a science fictional setting.

Short story collection about ancient gods in modern times - Norse gods in modern times.
Book with Norse gods and runes - Book set in fantasy world where Norse Gods are a thing
When was Thor first portrayed as an advanced alien, not a god? - Question about whether the Asgardians are aliens rather than literal gods
Did Gaiman make up "Loki Skywalker", or does he have a source for it? - Question about the Norse Gods in relation to Star Wars
How did humans know about Thor and Loki? - Question about the Norse Pantheon on Earth-616.
Short story including aliens who are identified with Loki and Thor (from anthology c. 1970) - Question about aliens who may have provided the inspiration for the Norse Gods.

etc etc.

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  • But do we need this tag? Should we then create tags for any future pantheons?
    – Gallifreyan
    Commented Sep 2, 2017 at 10:46
  • 3
    @Gallifreyan - Yes, we need tags that help people find things that they're interested in. That is the very purpose of tags and their reason for existing.
    – Valorum
    Commented Sep 2, 2017 at 10:54
  • But Norse gods aren't on-topic here; they may be featured in some works of fiction, but that's not grounds enough to have a tag for them.
    – Gallifreyan
    Commented Sep 2, 2017 at 10:57
  • 4
    Questions about the Norse Pantheon aren't on-topic. Questions about the Norse Pantheon in relation to science fiction are perfectly well on topic and worthy of a tag
    – Valorum
    Commented Sep 2, 2017 at 11:19
  • 5
    And, importantly, questions about the Norse pantheon in relation to sci-fi/fantasy may well be answerable by experts in the Norse pantheon itself, who'd like to be able to find a list of such questions using the tag system.
    – Rand al'Thor Mod
    Commented Sep 2, 2017 at 11:34
  • 2
    @Gallifreyan Story identification isn't on-topic here either. We close story identification questions when they're not about sci-fi or fantasy works. What should we do about the story-identification tag?
    – b_jonas
    Commented Sep 2, 2017 at 13:38
  • @Randal'Thor That is the strongest argument for keeping the tag. Pity, I'd almost vote to burninate simply because the Ragnarök of Norse Gods could be a very funny and ironic event.
    – Narusan
    Commented Sep 2, 2017 at 13:40
  • Since your answer was positively received, what do you think the usage guidance for the tag should be? The current excerpt is a definition, not a guidance.
    – Gallifreyan
    Commented Sep 2, 2017 at 18:43
  • @Gallifreyan - Perhaps append something like "within the constraints of a fictional universes such as Marvel and DC Comics"
    – Valorum
    Commented Sep 2, 2017 at 18:44
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    @Valorum Putting specific examples, especially from such popular franchises, might just make people think the only on-topic Norse gods are the ones from those particular franchises. Anyway, don't we already have a thor-marvel tag, or something along those lines?
    – Rand al'Thor Mod
    Commented Sep 2, 2017 at 21:37
  • @Randal'Thor - Perhaps something even more apparent like "for example, those seen in x and y"
    – Valorum
    Commented Sep 2, 2017 at 22:16
  • @Rand Nope. The default thor is about Marvel's. We renamed it because that Thor is by far and away our most popular Thor for questions. We have thor-mythology for when it's about the Norse god.
    – user31178
    Commented Sep 4, 2017 at 13:31
  • How about For questions about modern, fictional representations of traditional Norse gods, or how a work relates to Norse mythology.?
    – user31178
    Commented Sep 4, 2017 at 13:34
  • @CreationEdge Ugh. Screw that. Thor is a Norse god with a >1000 year history, not a character in some random piece of 21st-century popular culture that'll soon be forgotten.
    – Rand al'Thor Mod
    Commented Sep 10, 2017 at 17:33
  • @Randal'Thor We had this discussion at some length during the big retagging effort, and you specifically acquiesced because Marvel's Thor is the most important to this stack, and the thor-mythology is a rarely used tag, not as important to our stack.
    – user31178
    Commented Sep 11, 2017 at 15:23

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