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A significant number of questions are tagged as or . However, it is an incorrect use of the tag for specific stories as explained in the tag wiki:

Used for questions on the science fiction genre itself, including its tropes and conventions. Should not be used to categorize questions about specific works of science fiction.

This problem has been discussed before on meta.

Often these tags are incorrectly used by new users who don't know better and are simply trying to distinguish between works of science fiction vs. fantasy.

I noticed that we do not have tags for and which could be used to distinguish science fiction vs. fantasy works as these users are trying to do. Should we add these tags and start using them? I would think that most users who attempt to tag their question as science fiction vs. fantasy would correctly choose the new and tags instead of and since they should better match what the user is already typing to add tags.

I found some very old discussions about adding and on meta here and here. However, these discussions appear to predate the creation of the genre tags and they do not address the problem with the genre tags. I agree with the meta discussions that these are very broad tags, but the purpose of these tags would mainly be to drive users away from incorrectly using the genre tags.

Should and be created to address the problem with the genre tags?

EDIT: to avoid tags which are so broad as and , maybe use something like ? Or rename the genre tags to something like to better reflect the purpose of the tag?

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    I get your point, but it would be like adding a 'programming' tag on StackOverflow
    – Shevliaskovic
    Dec 14, 2014 at 7:19

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We don't have these tags because every post on the site would have one, the other, or both tags on them. Pretty much every Stack Exchange site has a similar black list of things that it's pointless to tag with.

People who are asking questions shouldn't be using these tags, and users who see their misuse should edit them off existing questions (just don't do it en masse, as that'll flood the /questions page).

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    Yeah, such broad tags would be a problem. I'm just trying to figure out a way to guide users away from the genre tags. The system isn't working well when tags are so consistently misused and require manual editing. To avoid the problem of overly broad tags maybe use 'science-fiction-story-id' or something instead? Or rename the genre tags to 'science-fiction-tropes' or something?
    – Null Mod
    Dec 13, 2014 at 2:54
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    An additional reason is that everybody would quickly end up having gold tag badges in them, meaning that everybody would have instant dupe-hammer powers on every question. Which would be highly undesirable.
    – user8719
    Jan 22, 2015 at 12:32

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