Genre tags are tags describing the genre of a movie, like horror,comedy or thriller.
Currently there is no consistent usage of these genre tags on the site. While they are mainly being used for identify-this questions, they are also used here and there for "normal" questions, but not consistently. Example: Are the events in Black Gold based on fact?Are the events in Black Gold based on fact?
This raises the question: How do we want genre tags to be used?
To answer this we have to think about what we want to achieve with those tags.
From my knowledge the main purpose of tags is to describe a question. For genre tags this actually is true for identify-this questions, because they describe the movie that is being searched for. (Example: [Mid 70's Sci Fi horror, please identify](httphttps://movies.stackexchange.com/questions/1792/mid-70s-sci-fi-horror-please-identify))
For normal questions about a movie however it can be argued if the genre tag really is describing the question. In most cases it is describing the movie that the question is asked about. Just look at the Black Gold example above. The question has nothing to do with action at all. That just happens to be one of the movies genres.
This might also influence the filtering function of the tags. If I click the action tag, am I expecting questions regarding action aspects or am I expecting questions about action movies? I'm on the fence here.
Another problem with those tags is, if we want to use them consistently, that there usually is more than one genre for a movie, often a whole dozen of them. And sometimes it is not even that clear, which genre a movie belongs to.
So what options do we have for use of the genre tags?
I can think of three possibilities:
- Use them consistently on both identify and normal questions.
- Use them only on identify questions.
- Use them only where the genre is really important to the question. (which might be arguable)
How can we bring some consistency in genre tags? What do we want to be their purpose?
