**Proposed tag**

[tag:software-development], 343 questions.

**Problem**

> Programmers — Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development.

It's possibly the worst _on topic_ tag we have. _Every_ question is (or should be) about software-development, hence redundant. Furthermore the tag is oftenly coupled with other troublesome / ambiguous tags:

- [tag:software-development] + [tag:best-practices] = [21 questions][1]
- [tag:software-development] + [tag:software-engineering] = [17 questions][2]
- [tag:software-development] + [tag:career] = [7 questions][3]
- [tag:software-development] + [tag:productivity] = [8 questions][4]
- [tag:software-development] + [tag:self-improvement] = [16 questions][5]
- [tag:software-development] + [tag:jobs] = [3 questions][6] 

So, ~ 21% of [tag:software-development] questions attracted other clean up worthy tags. Also explicitly mentioned in the "[The Death of Meta Tags][7]" post.

**Solution** 

- Most open questions are perfectly on topic and otherwise appropriately tagged, appropriately retagging would suffice.  
- There are about 30 questions that are only tagged [tag:software-development], those are going to be tricky ones. I went through them and the topics discussed on most of them are clear, so we can easily retag.
- There are 75 closed questions that may or may not be salvageable. The tag may be bad, but it's mostly used on topic questions, so the closed ones are clearly problematic.

When the tag is no longer used, we should ask SE to blacklist it.

---

Cleanup question: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3354/structured-tag-cleanup-software-development

  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/software-development+best-practices
  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/software-development+software-engineering
  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/software-development+career
  [4]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/software-development+productivity
  [5]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/software-development+self-improvement
  [6]: http://%5Bsoftware-development%5D%20%5Bjobs%5D
  [7]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2373/lets-nuke-the-catch-all-tags