Related (I'll be glad if it's considered a dupe, but the other Q did not specifically ask for blacklisting): Do we need the {technology} tag?
Counted 47 questions with the tag: https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/technology
Rationale: a large part of space exploration is based on technology. The other part is based on pen and paper.
I made a compelling case against the technology tag in my previous attempt to irreversibly dissect it into see-through thin slices, didn't I? Well, I wish I could take that back, because things have changed around here since then;
Since the last time we discussed this (early days of public beta), we've extended our scope to also include planetary-science, orbital-mechanics, we also received many more questions about procedure, human experience, health, and it appears we even embraced celestial-mechanics, as long as it relates to spacecraft. All but the latter, and I didn't include many more (atmosphere, medical, interstellar-medium, terminology, history, life,...), are not necessarily directly related to technology and most of them could even be featured at the opposite or only slightly intersecting groups in some Venn diagram, with many example questions that use them fitting in between or even excluding technology.
Putting it differently, I now think that even as broadly scoped as tag technology is, it now serves a purpose as a distinct tag in its own right. Let's consider a few example questions:
Emergency plan for Soyuz missions
Does Star Trek's adherence to naval tradition have roots in NASA or earlier real organizations?
How are accidents involving rockets and space vessels investigated?
Why do they say "go" and "no go"
What is involved in clearing air space for an orbital launch?
Why are three cosmonauts required to move a Soyuz?
How are multiple launches handled?
What are the procedures aboard the ISS in the eventuality of a loss of a crew member?
Yes, I just copied a few questions listed under procedure, nothing too fancy, but I can imagine how some of these questions don't ask about technology at all. Similar could be done for other non-technological tags, some of which I listed before.
So I'm now against abolisment of the technology tag, because with our site's now broader scope, it helps us clarify what questions are focusing on better, and it isn't necessarily already implied and thus obsolete any more.
I've pondered the list of questions tagged with technology, looking for patterns where what the OP was trying to say could be better covered with a term that is at least somewhat narrower.
The tag development didn't have a wiki. I gave it a definition of
'Relating to creating, testing, and refining technology used in space exploration.'
Some of the questions tagged with technology I think meant that by it, like these:
I think a distinction can be made there compared to engine-design and mission-design.
If system design was created I think it would apply to others:
There are several that are wondering about the viability of an idea. I can't think of a good term for that that wouldn't potentially be more trouble than it's worth - proposed designs, hypothetical tech... I've asked a couple of questions like that, but maybe it wouldn't be a good idea to encourage people to come here looking for evaluations of their concepts. Those kinds of questions can be really neat, and can also create opportunities for great illustrations of how things work by placing focus on common misconceptions of the physics involved. So maybe it is cynical to think they could become tiresome and a distraction. Just enforce the research standard, I guess. Technology-concepts? Probably too long but shortening technology to tech is common enough to get around that. So tech-concepts.
Which could also be used as a tidying device to give a lot of the remaining questions a more descriptive tag - tech-limits, tech-barriers,tech-application.
Getting rid of the tag would require a range of options to replace it, preferably ones someone tagging will find (which makes the suggestions that start with tech nice). There are a lot of things that are hard to say briefly that it covers, I've used it several times for lack of any better word coming to mind.
