We currently have two tags directly relevant to your question and somewhat differentiating on dust origins: regolith and of course dust that is perhaps really too broad and ambiguous.
For the time being, we only have 3 questions tagged with dust and 2 questions tagged with regolith, so this might imply that breaking these more widely applicable tags further might be a bit premature, not to end up with more tags than we have questions for them, though:
Questions currently tagged with dust:
Questions currently tagged with regolith:
But, there are a few other questions, that could use at least one of the two, or possibly a new dust related tag, and currently include none (granted, some questions have used up all the 5 available slots for tags and those might be better describing the nature of the questions, so think of this as a study into which additional tags we might need):
Questions that could use any dust / micro particles related tag:
This list is not to suggest these question need retagging, but so we get an overview of what possible additional or replacing tags the tag dust could be split into. I suggest we indeed get rid of the dust tag and split it a bit into more descriptive tags, perhaps by the dust origins, and maybe find some other uses for them than merely the above listed questions:
- regolith (We already have. planetary-dust could probably be added as a new tag synonym.)
- exosphere (New tag. Could be used for any micro-density atmospheres where molecules and dust particles don't behave like gas and don't collide with each other so much as their movement being more influenced by inertia, sublimation, static and/or magnetic charge, including lunar exosphere, comet comas and tails, or surrounding any other celestials.)
- space-dust and cosmic-dust (New tags as synonyms. Could be used for any micro particles in outer space, where its origin is not discussed.)
- clean-room (New tag. For any questions regarding spacecraft assembly, foreign objects and mitigation thereof in clean room assembly environments.)
So basically, this is my suggestion for new tags that I believe could be added to already existing questions and as such immediately applicable. Instead of two that we already have, there could be four. Or putting it differently, one goes and three new ones are added.
A few of them could use additional tag synonyms, so posters can find them easier and add them to their questions on their own, but they would describe more or less the same thing. We also already have space-debris (could probably do just as well without space and be as such slightly more widely applicable), that doesn't really imply this debris size. Without space in front of it, it could then also be used instead of your own suggestion to use the tag fod (foreign object debris/damage) that is in my opinion not as intuitive and posters might fail to notice it to include it in their questions.
TL;DR:
dust + ( regolith= planetary-dust) + exosphere + ( space-dust= cosmic-dust) + clean-room
and
space-debris= debris
Edit to add: After a conversation with @JonEricson (our community manager), I'm inclined to rather not delete the dust tag and make it another synonym of the regolith tag. As has Jon pointed out, we might have problems getting rid of the dust tag and it will be continuously added to our tag list by new questions, and if we keep it as a synonym, this way the authors of questions will be reminded of all the tags that have the keyword "dust" in them, as well as any synonyms it has, so also of the regolith tag. So the slightly changed proposal for the tag housekeeping would be:
(dust= regolith= planetary-dust) + exosphere + ( space-dust= cosmic-dust) + clean-room
And the rest remains unchanged.
In view of suggested changes, please review your votes to support this proposal!
