Should people reject edits on a thing, because they don't like the thing?

Question

Recently, I've noticed that some (higher rep) users did some 'silent removal edits' and some tag usage rejections.

When I asked for the motivation for the tag excerpt edit, it was that the reviewer was of the opinion ('personal opinion', i.e. this may be more than 1 person, but not community consensus) that the tag shouldn't exist! IMO, the tag usage was essential and explained why it should exist!

Also, some people like to edit (and have the rep to bypass review), simply to remove a tag, no questions (on meta) asked!

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Although @blue's requested a list of the behaviour I mean, these examples are not my main point and only detract the message. I removed them. Look at the edit history if you'd like to see them.

So, should this behaviour be allowed? Should people just read this and stop, or should we flag this behaviour? In particular Do we have to remove so many tags?

Answer 1

Okay, so here are my thoughts. In particular, I did an edit like this, removing the tag quantum-mythology, so I'll explain my perspective.

1. Tags like these aren't good tags. I already wrote an answer on this, so I won't elaborate.
2. If a (relatively) high-rep user believes the tag unnecessary, they can delete quite easily. If it becomes controversial, it is taken to meta, like was done with quantum-mythology, and that issue is already on its way to being resolved. As long as the edit is not obviously harmful, and was done in good faith, there is no real problem. Edits can be rollbacked.
3. Relatively high-rep users are relatively high-rep for a reason - they have more experience with the way the site works (hopefully, anyway). If they believe something should be done a certain way, there's a higher likelihood of them being right, which is why privileges are staggered the way they are. If there's a problem, again, things are taken to meta.
4. As for the specific "removal of a tag" issue, as far as I can tell, there's been only two tags. That's not that many. People aren't trying to mass delete tags, but curate to help users in finding the right questions.

Also, singling Blue out, whatever its intended purpose, is easily perceived as unfriendly. Your post, as a whole, comes across as rather derogative towards Blue, and I'd suggest adding in more examples from other users. I'd also point out that Blue's reasoning on the subject is very well thought out (I'd like to pull it out of the mess of comments here):

Yes, I had rejected the tag usage guidance you wrote for quantum-mythology, for obvious reasons which I mentioned in the other meta post regarding that particular tag. I removed the python tag, because we don't want people to be asking pure python questions here.

I'd also like to point out

I can't humanly go about asking all(or even a majority) the members of this site to give their consent, before I edit out an useless tag or make some formatting changes in new posts, which I have the privilege to edit.

Again, there's a reason users have higher rep. They are accorded more responsibility.

I believe you asked this question in good faith, but you are coming across very poorly, especially in the comments above, as you don't seem to be fully reading other comments and posts in the discussion. Please don't take this negatively, but as something to be improved upon.

Hope this helps!

Answer 2

Ok, I think this discussion is over, but let me make a closing statement.

First of all, I'm sorry. This whole discussion was a mess and I have at least a shared responsibility on this.

Second, while I do think that I had something important to discuss, it really wasn't. This only concerned 10 questions max. Of course, I though this potentially dangerous activity could spread, but it is better to have complicated discussions after it is clear there is a problem. Premature discussion is pointless, as it may be the case that there is no problem after all and the discussion has been a waste of time (like here).

Also, I do hope I haven't created too much animosity here, this was not my intention and I again apologize if you thought I have attacked you.

I think I have learned something here. On what not to do, at least. If you want to read further into the details, keep in mind that I've learned from this and that you should do the same if you're going to dive into the mess.