Is it time to give up the [ghost]?

Question

There are currently 66 questions tagged with [ghost], and they are really inconsistently used. We have:

• Story identification 30
• Harry Potter 22
• “Force ghosts” in Star Wars 3
• Mythology 2
• Doctor Who 1
• Deadbeat 1
• The Crucible 1
• A creepypasta (story identification?) 1
• Supernatural 1
• Portrayal of ghosts in film 1
• Drag Me to Hell 1
• Combination of the Merlin TV series, Supernatural, and mythology 1
• The 1990 movie Ghost (starring Patrick Swayze) 1

By my count, that's 9 franchises this covers, plus story identification, mythology, and production history. The ghosts in all of these vary wildly in what sort of rules they follow, and I find it hard to imagine someone finding value in grouping together Harry Potter, Deadbeat, and a Patrick Swayze movie. Is it time for this tag to give up the ghost?

Answer 1

NO, let it live!

I disagree with the inconsistent use. The tag is not covering franchises, it is covering a creature. We also have tags for zombie, vampire, and werewolf, which would fall into the same category.

• About half of the tags are used for story-id questions, which when trying to identify a story about ghosts, would be pretty useful.
• The other majority is used by Harry Potter which has a bit of a theme with death and therefore ghosts. It would be proper to use this tag when asking questions inline with the story.
• The remaining 8-10 questions might be a bit random, but if about ghosts are probably using the tag properly.
• The only one that might need a re-tag is the one about the Swayze movie. It could use something like movie-year format.

Answer 2

Yes, delete it

While the tag does seem to be accurately tagging questions about ghosts, it's so overly broad that it is useless. Ghosts in Harry Potter have little in common with ghosts in Doctor Who or Deadbeat, for instance, aside from the fact that they both share the same name. They follow different rules, have different origins, and otherwise are quite different beings. We don't have tags for science or military because they are so broad, and I think that ghost is approaching this too.

Also, I find it hard to imagine that someone would be an expert in ghosts from the 9 franchises currently covered, or want to group all those questions together. At best, this has value as a sub-tag of interest for Harry Potter, but that's not what the tag wiki describes.

What about story identification questions? I think we can live without it, since many such questions don't have a secondary tag, and I'm pretty confident that these ones would have been answerd if they lacked the ghost tag.