Can we add a way to allow tags to be marked as dependent upon other tags?

Question

I know this has been discussed before, however, the discussion seems to be primarily focused on how it would pertain to Stack Overflow, with the apparent conclusion being that this is a sign of things being tagged incorrectly, rather than a need for something useful.

On other Stack Exchange sites, though, there are cases where this would most definitely not indicate incorrect tag usage.

For example, on scifi.se, there are many tags used to refine specific franchise tags. Some examples:

• harry-potter has many sub-tags such as aldus-dumbledore (48 questions), hogwarts (55 questions), voldemort (149 questions), etc., as well as tags specific to individual books/movies.
• star-wars also has sub-tags including specific movie titles as well as the-clone-wars, character tags (darth-vader: 45 questions; luke-skywalker: 27 questions, etc.), and franchise-specific tags like the-force (46 questions), jedi (66 questions) and sith (34 questions)
• Author specific tags are frequently forgotten. An excellent example is george-r-r-martin, which should be used for every question related to one of his works (including Game of Thrones TV show, A Song of Ice and Fire books, and various short stories and novels unrelated to those titles). However, we have 181 questions tagged with the author, but 372 tagged with a-song-of-ice-and-fire and 398 tagged game-of-thrones.

I have seen similar issues on other sites, such as Arqade.com, which has some instances of class-specific questions that fall under more general title tags.

I know we have several users who make an effort to fix these when they can, but it is a difficult task, particularly since these examples are all very popular titles, especially for new users who aren't very familiar with the tagging system.

It would be really helpful if we could have the larger franchise and author tags listed as mandatory, or even implied, whenever the tags that are clearly always sub-tags are used.

It would be up to the individual community to very carefully evaluate which, if any tags would be set up this way, but it would make cleanup for those communities that have clearly-defined subset tags much easier.

Answer 1

Why does a question tagged game-of-thrones have to be tagged with george-r-r-martin? Surely this relies on the author of the question knowing that Mr Martin is the author of the books upon which the TV series is based. Something you can't assume. But from the meta post where you define this rule it states:

Do not use more precise tags

So, this would imply that it's not that you need tags to be linked, just that people are using inappropriate "precise" tags when the more general ones are what they should be using.

The important thing to remember is that you should be able to apply a single tag to a question and have it make sense.

Users can favourite multiple tags and include multiple tags in searches so there are tools to ensure that you don't miss a question.

If anything it sounds like your george-r-r-martin and star-wars type tags are redundant and you should be using the more specific tags for a given character or film/book.