I just noticed that we have a tag authors. This seems fairly useless: it's impossible for someone to be an expert in "authors" generally; we already allow tags for specific authors, and what does it even mean for a question to be "about authors" in general?
There are currently 38 questions with this tag, which can be categorised as follows:
About a specific author
- Is there a backup of Ray Aldridge's site with his stories?
- Was there really an author called Allen Sharp?
- Any details on Dannie Plachta's bio and name pronunciation?
- Did Paul Richards (author of "The Unblessed") write anything else?
- Is there a way to get in touch with Barry Hughart? [closed]
- Who was Gavin Hyde and what happened to him?
- Pronunciation of Van Vogt
- Looking for any biographical info on Terence Haile, author of Space Train
- Why did Gene Roddenberry write a letter together with three Harvard-Smithsonian astronomers about the planet Vulcan?
- Has Max Brooks ever discussed the possibility of writing more zombie books?
- Has anyone else written about Terry Pratchett's other worlds? [closed]
- Bio of Donald A. Wollheim
- Why did Iain M. Banks use his middle initial for his science fiction writing, but go by 'Iain Banks' in other works?
- What influence did H.P. Lovecraft have on science fiction?
- Doc Savage’s fighting style
Author identification
- Author of "military squad" SF podcast
- Successful author who began writing while completely disabled
- Who said, "The only way to model an infinitely complex system is with the system, itself"?
- Who is the author "DT in Oakland"?
- What author joked that his writing skill came from a magical amulet
Basically bog-standard story-ID
- What book(s) reference dates A.S. (After Shannon) and what is the in-universe explanation for its origin?
- Author of a short story in a compilation or high school textbook for a Sci-Fi extra credit course
- Looking for a novel (or author of it) where the world is a seemlingly endless vertical cliff [duplicate]
- Vintage short story of school kids studying a lethal alien design [duplicate]
- Looking for an author's anthology of short surreal/absurdist fiction (80s-90s)
- A paperback collection of letters between Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke
- Identify the author of an anthology, which included a story about an alien working in City Lights bookshop
Other
- Best way to stay informed on an author without much of a web presence?
- Can the creator of a fictional universe get their own lore wrong? [closed]
- Authorship of Forgotten Realms novels
- Who wrote "The Monsters" short story published by Purnell?
- What is the "About the Author" blurb in Shadows of the Empire supposed to say?
- Who was the first Science Fiction author to have a celestial body named after them?
- Old site with the religious affiliations of most science fiction writers
- Parody names of SF writers in Damon Knight story
- Who *really* wrote the Rama sequels?
- How closely did When Worlds Collide authors pursue the physics of the catastrophic damage and planet trajectories?
- Do authors ever create conflicting canon to irk fussy fans? [closed]
Certainly some of these don't need to have an authors tag, but do any of them? Should we keep the authors tag - and, if so, what usage guidance should it have - or is it too vague to be useful?
Relevant reading: What to do with the [author-identification] tag? Apparently we had an author-identification tag before and got rid of it (and apparently I was part of that process, but I don't remember it). My feeling now is to reintroduce it, as a useful way of identifying a half-remembered author without reference to a single specific story, but let's see what other people think.
