A crash-course in burnination

How does the burnination process work?

A tag can be burned on the spot by yourself if all holds true:

1. You have at least a bronze badge in the tag or one of the related tags.
2. You conferred with at least one other trusted user.
3. There are less than 50 questions with the tag.

Otherwise, you must follow the burnination process.

First, make sure the tag fails all of the criteria for burnination:

1. Does it describe the contents of the questions to which it is applied? and is it unambiguous?
2. Is the concept described even on-topic for the site?
3. Does the tag add any meaningful information to the post?
4. Does it mean the same thing in all common contexts?

If it passes at least one, do not proceed and consider other options, if it is:

• ambiguous, create a tag-disambiguation request.

• poorly named, make a retag-request request.

• too similar to another tag, write up a synonym-request request.

If all fail, create a meta post tagged burninate-request with arguments for each of the burnination criteria.

Here is a helpful template to get you started:

I believe the tag [tag:tagname] should be burninated.

It fails all the preliminary checks before burnination:

> Does it describe the contents of the questions to which it is applied? and is it unambiguous?

**No**, <!-- reasons why it is ambiguous or is a "meta" tag -->

> Is the concept described even on-topic for the site?

**No**, <!-- TODO: reasons why it is used on off-topic posts -->

> Does the tag add any meaningful information to the post?

**No**, <!-- TODO: reasons why it adds no meaningful information -->

> Does it mean the same thing in all common contexts?

**No**, <!-- TODO: reasons why it means different things -->

It is also problematic because:

<!-- TODO: custom requester reasons -->

The guidelines state that proposals have to reach a score of 20 before it can be featured by a moderator, and that failure to reach the threshold in 6 months may result in status-declined. Note, however, that in both cases, discretion is applied. Also note that a post reaching a score of 20 is NOT immediately featured; it's merely the minimum requirement to be eligible for featuring.

In most cases, failure to reach the threshold is not an issue. Burninations usually get declined if the proposal is met with resistance, either in the form of an overweight of downvotes, or comments and/or answers showing opposition to the idea. In either case, it'll take some time before stage two starts, provided it isn't declinable in phase one.

Stage two starts when a moderator features the question. It exists to gather feedback from wider community, including those not frequenting Meta Stack Overflow. The following happens in this stage:

A featured tag is added to the proposal post for at least 36–48 hours.

Punny titles common for the stage 1 are replaced with "Should we burninate the [tag name] tag?".

After giving the proposal time to be featured, a moderator will review the post, votes, answers, and comments.

If there is a strong indication the community does not support the request, it will be status-declined.

If the tag can be cleanly removed immediately, the proposal is moved directly to stage 5 after the moderator deals with the tag.

Otherwise, the proposal is advanced to stage 4.

A status-planned tag is added to the proposal post.

The title of the post is replaced with "The [tagname] tag is in the process of being burninated".

The tag's tag wiki is replaced with "DO NOT USE! This tag is being burninated. See: <link to Meta question>".

A "community wiki" answer is posted providing specific guidance on burnination.

After that, the tag is fair game for anyone to participate, including:

• editing
• flagging to close (users without the CV/RV privilege)

• retagging (users with the edit privilege)

• voting to close (users with the CV/RV privilege)

• voting to delete (users with the 10K tools privilege)

After the tag is burninated, questions that are closed and have a score less than 0 will be deleted, and the tag will be removed. Once that is done:

A status-completed tag is added to the proposal post.

The title of the post is replaced with "The [name of tag] tag has been burninated" or reverted to the punny one.

How do I participate in the removal phase?