Tag taxonomy is hard, and no new site I've been part of has gotten it right on the first try. That's normal.

We've now been in beta for a few months and have started to build up a hodge-podge of tags. This question is not about the details of specific tags; it grew out of this question about tag wikis. Instead, in this question I'd like to focus on the overall philosophy that guides our tagging, so that it's easier to understand the tag set as a whole, figure out how to create new tags, and explain it to newcomers.

What types or families of tags do we want? What are the most important things to call out in tags?

(Related: http://meta.communitybuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/116/what-tagging-guidelines-do-we-want-to-establish.)

Tag taxonomy is hard, and no new site I've been part of has gotten it right on the first try. That's normal.

We've now been in beta for a few months and have started to build up a hodge-podge of tags. This question is not about the details of specific tags; it grew out of this question about tag wikis. Instead, in this question I'd like to focus on the overall philosophy that guides our tagging, so that it's easier to understand the tag set as a whole, figure out how to create new tags, and explain it to newcomers.

What types or families of tags do we want? What are the most important things to call out in tags?

(Related: What tagging guidelines do we want to establish?)