I know everyone likes to hate people who complain of unfair treatement, but in this case there really was unfair treatment. - The user created a plausibly valid tag (on another user's question). - By that time **it was clear from all the released material** that Kylo Ren is a major character. I shall avoid posting 3-page-long bullet list of why, to avoid spoiling people. - While there may be valid arguments made on the side of the tag not being valid<sup>\[3\]</sup>, there are very valid arguments on the side of it being valid, and therefore NOT unanimously and unchallengingly worth-deleting without debate and discussion. This Q&A is not the correct place to settle that argument, but what's important to what happened is the fact that **it's a meaningful disagreement on merits, not a unanimous and obvious "junk" tag conclusion**. - The tag was challenged **without knowing this and without checking this fact (e.g. on main site or Meta)**, and deleted **without seeking the site consensus on Meta, as is appropriate for tag deletion** - As per the challenger, the basis of the challenge was 2-fold: (#1) he considered the tag invalid (<sub>as per above, I greatly disagree with him on merits of that judgement call, but it's his right to make that judgement call</sub>); and (#2) considered it inapplicable to THAT specific question (<sub>another judgement call, that I am ambivalent about, I can see valid reasoning to either support or oppose that call on merits, and think it was far more correct than #1</sub>). - As per comments from moderator, the FORMER basis of the challenge (validity of the tag itself) was the basis for fulfilling the flag. As such, I believe it necessitated a Meta discussion prior to deletion and should have been rejected until such Meta discussion was resolved. (<sub>For hypothetical completeness - I may have arrived at the opposite conclusion regarding moderator's action if the reason for the deletion was the second basis of the flag - question content, including tags, is definitely within moderator purview and ordinarily wouldn't need to be Meta-discussed. I may have disagreed with moderator's judgement but NOT his procedure then.</sub>) - Regardless of the intentions of the action, the **practical - if unintended - effect** of this action was that the user was deprived of an official, SE-promoted, activity (creating new good tag) - and as a consequence of that: - ##**user lost a chance to earn a rare badge awarded for creating a tag that is used by 50+ questions<sup>\[1\]</sup>** - Then, to add insult to injury, someone else created that tag and will get the badge that the OP was deprived of. --- The only correct way to make things right is to: - Apologize to the OP for the rash action of deleting a tag without ANY community debate (which would have resulted in people - myself included - being able to present evidence that it's a major character and worth its own tag). A brief comments thread doesn't count, as few people likely saw it. **UPDATE: @Null apologized in his answer, which I deeply appreciate and would like to urge the OP to accept that apology, as no damage to OP was intended and it was all done in good faith by @Null, with negative outcome being unanticipated and unforeseen**. This does not change the poor action of other people, both the moderator (who should have seeked community consensus before acting on that flag, and some users on this Meta thread who behaved in a hugely unconstructive<sup>\[2\]</sup> manner - and no, the fact that OP's wording wasn't anywhere near 100% constructive **is NOT A GOOD EXCUSE**). - Restore the opportunity to get the badge to the user. While a bit drastic edit-wise, it's doable: 1. delete the current tag, from all quetsions, and let the OP re-create it once it's gone from the database. 2. As an alternative, ask SE team to change the tag's creator in the back-end database to the OP. ----- <sub>\[1\] - I know 10 people piled on a bandwagon and upvoted a snarky "nobody owns a tag" comment to the OP (**where were the moderators enforcing "civility" then?)**, but that badge indicates that the tag creator IS treated differently by the site, and is rewarded. That's not "ownership", but it is user-specific. My strong opinion is that this is what the OP meant but they chose an incorrect term to express it which had unfortunately negative context</sub> <sub>\[2\] - One of the comments on the question explicitly called the user "nuts". **IT WAS UPVOTED**. Not flagged and deleted, upvoted.</sub> <sub>\[3\] - Obviously, I'm on the "tag is valid" side of the disagreement, but I acknowledge that arguments against it have validity despite my considering those arguments incorrect</sub>