Should tag description be required when creating a tag?

Question

I was recently browsing tags when I entered "protect" in the tag search field. It came back with three results:

1. password-protection

2. protected-apps

3. screen-protector

Not a single one of them has a wiki description. To me, this makes correct use of the tag more difficult, and will likely relegate the tag to never having many questions attached to it.

Is this useful? Shouldn't a wiki description be required when creating a tag? Mind you, I can't remember if I've ever created a tag, so I don't know how difficult adding such a requirement would be. But I think the requirement would improve the tagging system. Only the original creator of the tag can say exactly what he means it to be used for.

Answer 1

I'm not totally against this idea, but it would often require the user to research something they may not have been prepared to. Any barrier to posting has to be carefully considered so quality is balanced with ease of use, since the longer it takes the more likely the user is to go somewhere else. It's also definitely not up to just the user to define how a tag will be used on the site, and we do have some guidelines and particular formats for types of tags.