Tagging with brand-names

Question

I've been looking at how we've been using tags for things that are brand-specific. In my mind the vast majority of our tags should be generic, with specific brand names only used where specified in the question. I've, for example, re-tagged this and this question so they are no longer tagged [dx] [fx] and [ef] [ef-s] but [cropped-sensor] and [full-frame] as the answers given discuss the differences between full frame and cropped sensor lens mounts, and are not specific to one particular brands mount or the other. This also means that searching for either of the tags reveals a list of similar answers, that are not brand specific. Obviously there will be questions that are specific to one brand or the other, but I feel we need to use the most general tag we can, so that questions are related across brands.

I don't think we need to include a list of brand names when we tag a question. Examples of this are these questions (1, 2) about raw file formats that list tags for all the main formats. What do we do when a new raw format comes along? I suggest a re-tag to just [raw] and [dng] in the cases I've just linked to.

Answer 1

Agreed. Tags should cover generic ideas. Search already takes care about specific terms.

Answer 2

I think this can be helpful, but needs to be done quite carefully.

For example, questions about EF/EF-S mount lenses can't necessarily be made generic to full/crop-sensor questions. The EF-S mount has physical differences to the EF mount that make them incompatible in one direction: EF-S lenses may damage EF-mount cameras. In contrast, the only difference in Nikon FX/DX lenses is the size of the image circle; physically, the lenses are compatible. Giving a "genericised" answer from one brand to a user of the other brand is unhelpful at best, and might break someone's camera at worst!

A further (hypothetical) example would be an "LTM" tag for Leica Thread Mount lenses; this seems highly brand-specific at first glance, but in practice covers decades of lenses and cameras from a number of manufacturers, and is a widely-accepted generic term in the community.