Would a consistently used "general-linguistics" tag (for example, for questions not targeting a single specific language) work for you equivalently? Could you please edit the question to provide examples of where you'd like the line to be drawn? For example, would this question belong to the "Q/A" part (because it's about Japanese), or to the "linguistics" part (because it's a little bit more theoretical than a typical question about Japanese)?

@Jirka I don't think general-linguistics would be a useful tag, especially if the site has a question tag limit. I'd consider my question to mostly be on the linguistics side because I wanted to know from the perspective of lingustic typology whether Japanese has pronouns, not from the perspective of past Japanese language pedagogy.

@curiousdannii - For me personally, linguistics is defined as the study of language. So there's not much of a difference between "a question about a language" and "a question involving linguistics". So more examples would perhaps help me see where the line could be drawn. My first idea of "particular language" versus "languages at large" doesn't seem to be aligned with your suggestion.

@Jirka I'd modify your definition to say that it's about the study of language systems. So most etymology questions, when they're focused on arbitrary single words, are arguably not really in the linguistics box and are the domain of the philologist instead of the linguist, and are only linguistics questions when they're shown to be part of a system of change or borrowings. The meanings of individual words is the domain of the lexicographer, whereas semantics is more the meaning of systems.

Of course it's tricky because questions may use single languages and single words as examples. The answers will be different though. If it's a linguistics question then the answer will contextualise the single word and show how it fits into a larger part of knowledge.

I would be quite lost on a strictly "linguistics" site, but I'm interested in language "mechanics". If not for your sake, for ours: cultivate a tolerance --even an interest!-- in etymology and the simply beautiful side of human language. You'll have a healthy influence on the artists, and I think the benefit may be mutual.

@Conrado I'm uncertain what you mean by that. Questions on etymology are accepted here.

@Moshi Sorry it wasn't clear. I meant to address myself to OP, who has an admittedly narrowly-focused interest. I'm not saying that's wrong, just that I'd be glad to see that expertise mixed in and interacting with the rest of the questions from time to time. I'm sorry if I've over-run the boundaries; I didn't mean to be troublesome, and I really don't have the technical competence to even properly argue about the issue in question. Cheers!

@Conrado It's fine, you're not being troublesome at all. On the other hand, therein lies the heart of the issue - dannii has a sole interest in "linguistics", but there is no well-defined boundary between linguistics and related fields.

Supposing we can agree where to draw the line between linguistics and philology (so that it works for everybody), we'd still have to evaluate a tag based approach versus a category based approach. I think that a new category makes sense if "linguistics" and "philology" would have entirely separate tag hierarchies (like Q&A vs. meta currently have). It would be extraordinarily clumsy to maintain separate "english" (etc.) or "pronoun" tags in both trees, with not-always-aligned definitions.

Tags won't help me avoid seeing etymology, usage, or translation questions. And I doubt I'll be able to cultivate an interest for them when so many of them are so poorly presented/researched/etc. The real answer to a lot of these questions (at least the ones from Stack Exchange) is "It's an arbitrary quirk of history."

I'm still learning the ropes. But it seems that there's currently a functional parity between the ability to search for posts by a tag versus by category. And contributors plus moderators are able to gradually fix any inaccurate tagging, but category is essentially permanent, i.e., in the hands of the OP. So categories should be designed to be really, really simple and intuitive for even every newcomer.

@JirkaHanika actually, we can share tags between categories, it's not a big deal (and we already share tags between Resources and Q&A).

@Moshi - Great, that equalizes things. I was going to write an answer today suggesting to go with a consistently applied tag "general-linguistics". But it was mainly because I couldn't see how to share the tags. My remaining concern with the original proposal is naming. Would the two categories really be named "Q&A" and "Linguistics"? Such naming would probably cause a new user to post their first question into a random category.

@JirkaHanika I'm still opposed to splitting them. We still haven't decided on a meaningful definition of 'linguistics' yet (i.e. one where we can confidently say "This question goes here, this question goes there?)

I'm entertaining a plan of (someone, could be myself) writing up the best possible tag-based and category-based solution as two respective answers and see how they get voted. Anyone could add a third or fourth, for example negative answer (if they have specific concerns), too.

@curiousdannii - Are you aware that you can already click on "Tags", tag name, and suddenly you only see questions tagged with that particular tag, and no other questions?

@Jirka Yes I am aware of that, but that only works when people have tagged things correctly, and it would only help me if there was one tag that was applied to all linguistics questions, and I don't think there should be.

@curiousdannii - We can retag incorrect tagging, which is an advantage of tags over categories. Would the hypothetical two categories really be named "Q&A" and "Linguistics"? Such naming would probably cause a new user to post their first question into a random category, and a moderator to be unable to fix it. All questions currently existing under the Q&A category are linguistic questions (in my understanding of the term "linguistic").

I'd call the two categories "Languages Q&A" and "Linguistics Q&A".

@JirkaHanika We can move posts between categories.

Pinned this so that more people will see it; we still haven't come to a consensus yet

@curiousdannii‭ Why don't you propose Linguistics separately?