What to do with the [author-identification] tag?

Question

The author-identification tag is a mess.

Most of the questions under them are apparently just asking to identify a work (or series or collection) of sci-fi or fantasy. Most of them are also tagged story-identification, some aren't. IMO those should be tagged with story-identification and don't need this extra tag.

• A book maybe called Prison Planet, thought author was Alex Jones ? Not sure
• Looking for a sci-fi / fantasy book about a boy named Flea
• Name of the author who wrote "Killer"
• Which story includes huge, neutral-buoyancy Jovian life forms, and a sinking earth ship?
• An astronaut drops candy wrapper on planet surface - "slime" seeking phosphorus almost gets it
• Galactics trade with Native Americans, unknown to rest of humanity
• Short story from 60's or before about building infinite energy source from rubbish pile
• Trying to find out the title of a sci-fi book where characters filter sensations through animals
• Looking for Author of a book I cannot find I believe was called "X/Y"
• Looking for story about how reflection in mirror is a parallel society that has to mimic us because they "lost a war ages ago" - this is an unusual one, it wants to identify a story mentioned in what seems like a non-fiction radio show or something.
• Movie where written messages are transmitted to someone's vision to help them avoid capture
• Short poignant 1960's era sci-fi story about space shuttle crewman's infatuation with captain
• Science fiction book based on a Jupiter-sized wandering/rogue planet?
• Title and Author of a novel regarding 'A Common Enemy'
• Fantasy Novel, with review blurb by Ursula Le Guin
• Looking for more data on a vampire novel named *Fourteen* including author
• What is the tilte of Fantasy Genre Novel with 2 brothers (the sons of satan), female author?
• Who wrote a story called "Rule Golden"
• Books similar to The Lord of the Rings: dark elves, different gods, Thommas, red-haired woman
• Possibly 80's scifi/fantasy book about tattooed courtesans and a memory potion
• Short sci-fi story of PLAN devised by marooned spaceship pilot to save paradise world from development
• Forgotten YA female sci-fi author 80s/90s
• Does anyone know the book "The Eagle Flies Over England"?
• Name of author who wrote books for pre-teens and teens about "classic" sci-fi and horror movies
• Who wrote "Pate de Fois Gras"?
• Alien surface transport that walks, not rolls
• Who wrote "How Much for Just the Planet"?
• Which British author wrote about Shellworlds before Iain M. Banks?
• Fantasy book where a young prince becomes a mage
• Fantasy book where main protagonists are brothers. One a warrior, the other a mage.
• Gilgamesh and Lilith, 2 different books by the same female author
• Former slave girl repeats a message subliminally implanted by a former soldier and eventually joins the army
• Who is the author of the following stories?
• Looking for a series of short stories about soldiers who had prescient abilities
• https://scifi.stackexchange.com/q/82172/4918
• Looking for a movie about a contaminated spaceship travelling to an 'Earth like' planet
• Looking for patronage era European scifi scientist/inventor male author?
• Juvenile SF series, 1970s, white covers with thin Futura text, female author?
• Trying to find author of short story called Man Alone
• Please help me ID this SciFi story - a group of people captured and absorbed by a goo-like creature on an alien planet
• Sci Fi Book about a sick weak wife cloned and gradually replaced by a robot maid
• Story identification: Singer somehow ends up in a fantasy realm with elves (and stuff)
• Books read in 80s, English mythology with modern twist, male writer

Three of the questions are concerning an already identified work, and are asking for the identity of a contributor, eg. the writer or illustrator or translator or whatever thousand roles people have in the film industry. We already have a tag that collects such questions, actor-identification. That one might be the wrong tag to use from the signpost viewpoint, because if someone asks a question about identifying artists in print comic strips, then that needs comic experts, not movie experts.

• Seeking name credits for pulp SF artists
• Who wrote "The Monsters" short story published by Purnell
• Who created the version of Kilgrave in the Jessica Jones TV series?

Then there are three questions that are on topic, but in neither of the above two categories. You'll have to make individual decisions about these.

• Which author commented that "we all got it wrong" about walking on the moon being televised? CreationEdge suggests history-of for this, and I like that suggestion.
• Quotation about the future of technology being paper - it turns out the answer for this one is a non-fiction essay by Isaac Asimov, but I couldn't have guessed that from the question
• Whose definition of "science fiction" is this?

(I hope I didn't miss any question from the above, but it's possible.)

What tags should all these questions get?

Answer 1

Let’s get rid of it

• The vast majority of the questions listed are standard story-identification questions. Sure, the querents don’t know who wrote the story, but that’s because they don’t know the story. As long as we have this tag, it seems, people will continue putting in on such questions.
• A few of these are questions where someone remembers the title (or thinks they do), but does not remember the author. I submit that story-identification is still the right tag for these. There’s a reason it’s not title-identification. If they’re asking about a story even though they remember the title, it almost certainly means they can’t find the specific story that they’re after. A story is more than its title: it’s whatever one needs to uniquely identify it, including the author name if there’s more than one by different authors, the publication date if an author published two versions, and so on.
• Some of the questions that don’t fit either of these categories probably don’t need the tag. For example, Who created the version of Kilgrave in the Jessica Jones TV series? could just be tagged jessica-jones. For the three questions about quotations, let’s just use the quotes tag, which already exists and is pretty widely used.
• The main difficulties are Who wrote "The Monsters" short story published by Purnell and Seeking name credits for pulp SF artists. These are perhaps the rare questions for which author-identification might make sense: the questioner knows exactly what the story is, and might even possess a physical copy, but for some reason the author’s name is not listed. On the other hand, there are two of these questions on the whole site. We could just tag these with authors.

The best course of action would be to merge author-identification into story-identification, and tag the few questions for which this is not appropriate with jessica-jones, quotes, and authors.

Answer 2

I'm also for merging author-identification into story-identification, but I'd suggest an alternative for handling some of those outlier questions, which is simply to let them stay as story-identification.

authors was suggested, but at the moment it's a fairly useless tag. It's used inconsistently and barely. If it were a good tag, I posit that it would have been much more broadly used.

So, with merging everything into story-identification, I suggest updating the tag guidance from:

Questions asking for help identifying a TV series, comic-book issue/story arc, movie, book, or other story. For help identifying an episode of a TV series, use the [episode-identification] tag instead.

To:

Use for help identifying a story and/or its creator(s), including novels, movies, comic books, entire TV series, etc. Use with another tag to specify which type of media, eg. [short-stories]. For identifying a single episode of a known TV series, use [episode-identification].

Allowing story-id to include creators gets rid of the "need" to have a tag to specify that you're looking for the author. And, it also allows us to include other types of creators, such as those included in "story by:" credits, sources of quotes, etc. without having a bunch of meta tags that are rarely used and barely useful.

In short, a new usage for the tag will:

• Reduce clutter
• Reduce redundancy
• Be more useful
• Reduce the work needed to implement and maintain it

Answer 3

Judging from the other answers here, there appears to be a consensus in favour of getting rid of the author-identification tag and retagging most of its questions with story-identification. The easiest and least disruptive way to do this will be to merge the author-identification tag into story-identification, which can be done by a moderator without bumping any questions to the front page of the site.

EDIT: this has now been done. The author-identification tag is no more.

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Here is a list of all the questions which were tagged author-identification but NOT story-identification (I've assumed that all those which had the story-identification tag already should have it), and the action I took for each one. Feel free to re-edit if you disagree with any of my decisions (especially #1 or #11); the point of having a list here is precisely so that we can find these questions again even after the merge.

1. Looking for patronage era European scifi scientist/inventor male author? This is a difficult case, since it's asking about an author rather than any specific one of his works, but it could still be solved by finding a story, so I think it's OK to use story-ID tag.

2. Trying to find author of short story called Man Alone Use story-ID tag.

3. Who is the author of the following stories? This is basically a story ID question, even though it's asking about several different stories by the same author. Use story-ID tag.

4. Which British author wrote about Shellworlds before Iain M. Banks? Again a story ID question, with some elements of history-of. Use story-ID tag.

5. Who wrote "Pate de Fois Gras"? Use story-ID tag.

6. Which author commented that "we all got it wrong" about walking on the moon being televised? This is asking for a quote from a sci-fi author, not a sci-fi story. Use quotes tag.

7. Does anyone know the book "The Eagle Flies Over England"? Use story-ID tag.

8. Forgotten YA female sci-fi author 80s/90s This focuses more on the author than the stories, but it's still hoping to identify her from her works. Use story-ID tag.

9. Whose definition of "science fiction" is this? This is asking for a quote from a sci-fi author, not a sci-fi story. Use quotes tag.

10. Who created the version of Kilgrave in the Jessica Jones TV series?

    I don't think this one really needs an ID tag at all: it's a question about a specific, known show. Remove ID tag.

11. Seeking name credits for pulp SF artists I'm still not entirely sure what tag would be appropriate here, but I removed the author-ID tag so that the merge doesn't affect this question.

12. Who wrote "The Monsters" short story published by Purnell Use story-ID tag.

13. Quotation about the future of technology being paper This is asking for a quote from a sci-fi author, not a sci-fi story. Use quotes tag.

14. Name of the author who wrote "Killer" Use story-ID tag.

15. Quote by Science Fiction writer: peace and prosperity are the exception, not the norm This is asking for a quote from a sci-fi author, not a sci-fi story. Use quotes tag.