What is the justification for censoring my tags?

Question

Why is it important to insist that nobody sees my tags? It's bad enough that you insist on telling me what I'm allowed to write. What's the intention behind removing my categories?

Answer 1

The way that you've been using higher-order-thinking makes it look like a meta tag.

The reason meta-tags are a problem is that they do not describe the content of the question. They describe some other aspect of the question, like the author’s skill level, or the author’s motivation for asking it, or generally what “kind” of question it is (poll, how-to, etc.).

Higher Order Thinking is not a sub-field of philosophy. In fact it's not even specific to philosophy at all. While Higher Order Thinking would be an appropriate tag for questions about pedagogical theory and for comparing various teaching methods (perhaps on sites like Mathematics Educators), it is against Stack Exchange best practices to use it on questions because you want the answers to be engaging in HOT. A higher-order-thinking tag would then be a meta tag, because it's about how people approach the question, not the content of the question itself. And after all, don't we want people to be thinking well for all questions? Anything you could legitimately add to every question probably doesn't belong.

Answer 2

Short answer: The justification is that there is no such thing as "your" tag

StackExchange is based on the self-government of the community. Everything you do here can be evaluated by other community members and may also be rejected because everything should be done for the betterment of and in agreement with the community. Nothing here is "your" content, it is a contribution to a joint effort to create a Q & A database that is as concise and objective as possible.

Therefore, if you disagree you have to discuss and offer arguments for your point, which includes an openness to dissenting arguments. Otherwise, the result is not a discourse but a mere exchange of standpoints. You may want to consult Habermas' Theory of Communicative Action about this difference.

Long answer

1. Every privilege comes with duties.

Yes, you gained the privilege to create tags. Privileges are not the same as a right to do as one likes, there are rules for using them. These state, among other things (bolded in quotes mine):

When should I create new tags?

Most common tags already exist on a mature site. You should always favor existing tags; only create new tags when you feel you can make a strong case that your question does cover a new topic that nobody else has asked about before on this site.

This makes clear that tags should always be topic-related. This is made even more clear in another point:

However, note that:

• on some sites, new tags will be automatically culled and removed from the system if they are not used by at least 1 other question in a 6 month period.
• meta tags, tags that cannot stand alone as the only tag on a question, are not allowed.

Please create new tags responsibly!

In other words: It is a critical and justified response to the creation of this tag to ask whether it can stand on its own here. Is HOT a philosophical topic that can solicit a number of on-topic questions on this site? Or is it rather a meta-tag that may stand in relation to many topics, but is not a philosophical topic itself?

2. Accordingly, it is your duty to make a strong case for your tag

Instead of simply doing something and wondering why people disagree, you will have to seriously consider the rules and arguments of the community. Ideally, you should do this first, here on meta:

If you think that the community can benefit from the use of this tag, offer arguments. Educate others how and in which contexts it is a philosophical topic and when to properly apply this tag. Answer to the objection that it cannot stand on its own as the topic of an on-topic question.

Answer 3

If the authority or authorities here claim that a topic isn't a topic then it's not a topic.

The omnipotent Oz has spoken; my perspectives on bias and pretension have been squashed. Oz is also omniscient. Of course it's impermissible to peek behind the curtain!

It's (almost) lovely how bias and authority combine so beautifully to overpower reason.

The notion of normativity is appreciated by relatively few people, and it's a very complex philosophical matter. People who don't understand it very well (who does?) seem to believe that rules should apply strictly to people's actions according to the perspectives of expert authorities. They might not recognise that being an expert on what the rules are is different from being an expert at considering how they ought to be interpreted, applied or developed!

"'Normativity' may have at least two senses: first, a nomophoric sense, if one refers to implicit or explicit rules (of various kinds); second, an axiological sense, if one refers to values." L. G. Faroldi

"Yet a third kind of engagement with normativity concerns the very sources of normativity itself. An attempt to vindicate or debunk the implicit normativity of some specific ethical claim will ultimately face the question of what could support claims to normativity in general. Here we find a fertile debate between Humeans, who seek to ground practical normativity in instrumental rationality, and Kantians, who argue that practical reason necessarily includes formal constraints that extend beyond means/end coherence...Philosophical discussion of normativity is by no means restricted to ethics, however. Epistemology has an irreducibly normative aspect, in so far as it is concerned with norms for belief. And the idea that meaning is implicitly normative has sparked some of the most exciting discussions in recent philosophy of language." REP

"Primitive normativity thus is what distinguishes the behaviour of the speaker who uses her terms with understanding from that of the parrot, or automaton. Using a term with understanding requires more than just being disposed to use it a certain way, Ginsborg argues; it requires understanding that it has a certain meaning. If a speaker for instance uses ‘slab’ to mean slab, she needs to grasp or recognize that it means slab (2012, 135). Ginsborg’s ambition is precisely to provide necessary and sufficient conditions for what it is to have this understanding." SEP

"John Rawls (1971) has argued that toleration—even of intolerance—is a constitutive part of justice (derivable from what Rawls calls the “liberty principle” of justice), such that failure to be tolerant would entail failure to satisfy one of the requirements of justice. Rawls emphasizes, however, that genuine toleration need not lead to utopia or agreement, and that it is substantially different from a mere modus vivendi, that is, simply putting up with one another because we are powerless to do otherwise. According to Rawls, true toleration requires that we seek to bring our differences into an 'overlapping consensus,' which he claims will be possible due to an inherent incompleteness and 'looseness in our comprehensive views' (2001: 193)." IEP

I haven't asked anyone to change any rules and I won't. My job is to inquire and to learn, and to support others in doing those things. You've made it clear that inquiry here must be about objective discourses (as if interpretation is irrelevant) rather than about understanding how philosophical discourses apply in practice to our actions. That's simply a series of meaningless debates. What people think or understand is irrelevant. Imo that process defeats the purpose, and drastically degrades the value, of the project 'philosophy.'

Naturally, my considerations have been ruled irrelevant by the Q&A experts. Not wrong, merely irrelevant! My inference is that people who want to learn should use other methods. Discussion is allowed in the chat rooms, so that opportunity hasn't been stamped out right? If my job can be enacted there, and if anyone is deeply committed to learning by inquiring into open questions which are relevant to human activities other than academic self-stimulation, I'll be open to discussing complex questions in the fields of philosophy, psychology and education. I’ll visit other rooms to see if anyone is openly inquiring and learning useful stuff. I'll be happy to focus on other priorities...

Best wishes