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In my haste in a recent question I accidentally created the w-state tag - I didn't realize that it had not already been created. Apparently there is similarly no ghz-state tag (although there is a bell-basis tag).

A quick search of the site notes that there are a good number (I would guess at least thirty) questions wherein the W-state is fundamental to the question and is not incidental to the answer. Further there are maybe a similar number of such questions about GHZ states. Such questions may be a bit better than, say, faster-than-light (while not disparaging that tag in particular), which has six questions total.

Should there be such tags? If so, what is the best time to touch posts to retag so that they minimize impact to the front page? Would they provide any value - for example, would Google use the tags in any manner?

I've tried to do various global updates for some questions on the weekend (e.g., Josza -> Jozsa and q-bit -> qubit), when the volume appears lowest, but I probably inadvertently move some good questions and answers further down the front page.

Tag creation and management/retagging appears to be high-maintenance activities. I am not sure if there's a way to retag a post that doesn't otherwise touch it to move to the front page.

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  • $\begingroup$ I'm not well-versed in the mechanics of SE so take my comment with an unhealthy pinch of salt. I feel like tags are more useful for users answering questions than those searching for an answer to their own question. So I would replace them both with multipartite entanglement to keep it broad (but not so broad to be meaningless). A user looking for answers related to W-states I assume can still search for W-state and will find those questions because presumably any poster who is diligent enough to tag with W-state would mention W-state in the question text anyway. $\endgroup$
    – Rammus
    Dec 5, 2022 at 22:31
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    $\begingroup$ I would be surprised if there weren't more questions here which would merit the "faster-than-light" tag. Or do those "Hey, I found out how an entangled state allows to signal" questions all end up on PSE? $\endgroup$
    – Norbert Schuch
    Dec 10, 2022 at 17:21

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I tend to believe highly specific tags to be more useful on average than the generic ones. Tags such as quantum-state, quantum-gate or mathematics are borderline useless. On the other hand, very specific tags like the ones you mention can be useful to search among a relatively small group of questions related to a specific subject. So yes, in this case, I don't see any argument against tags about $W$ or $\operatorname{GHZ}$ states. They'd certainly be more useful than many other tags we already have.

It does seem like tags have some impact on google searches, but I don't think we should particularly care about this aspect here. It'd be quite hard, if at all possible, to quantify the magnitude of such impact on the site.

Tag creation and management/retagging appears to be high-maintenance activities. I am not sure if there's a way to retag a post that doesn't otherwise touch it to move to the front page.

Unfortunately, there is no good way to do this. Just retag questions when you think it useful. Yes editing too much in a short span of time is better avoided, but there is no set guideline on what "too much" means here. As long as the retagging is genuinely useful, I wouldn't worry too much about it (just, you know, try to not overdo it).

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