How to know who created a tag?

Question

Taxonomist badge description states:

Create a tag used by 50 questions

and I was wondering if there's a way to know which tags were created by me.

So I searched on Stack Exchange Data Explorer and I found this query, but it clearly does not work well because it says that I created mario-kart-8 and wrath-of-the-lamb tags, and as you can see in their relative info page Mario Kart 8 and Wrath of the lamb have different creators.

I've noticed that not every tag has a creator in the Tag info page, how does this work? Does it appear only after Taxonomist badge is awarded to the creator?

EDIT:
My theory seems incorrect, binding-of-isaac-rebirth is tagged by 132 questions (so eligible to Taxonomist badge) but it does not have a creator.

Answer 1

Here's some stuff I've figured out:

• The person who first uses the tag is the person who 'created' it - either by asking a question with it, or by editing it onto a question (with some caveats to do with deletion, merging and renaming tags).
• There is a difference between creating a tag (i.e. using it on a question for the first time), and creating the tag wiki/excerpt (the informational pieces of the tag).
  • For the purposes of the Taxonomist badge (and the "created by" text on the tag info page) we care about the former.

Now, let's take a look at the Taxonomist badge:

So wait, why is there only 162 badges awarded if we have over 260 tags with >= 50 questions? Well that's because you can only earn Taxonomist once, and those other tags have been created by members who have already earned Taxonomist on another tag.

You can click on the Taxonomist badge on the Badge page to see a list of all users who have been awarded the badge thus far and for which tag it was awarded. Going to that tag's info page will then show that the tag was created by that user.

For example: I was awarded the badge for creating pokemon-oras but not pokemon-go, the former lists me as a creator but the latter doesn't. Likewise, in your example of Binding of Issac: Rebirth: 3ventic was awarded the badge for creating banished and his name appears on that tag's info page, but not the binding-of-isaac-rebirth tag page, despite asking the initial question.

Thus the tag info page only shows the 'creator' if they've actually earned Taxonomist for 'creating' that tag.

---

To directly answer your question: How to know who created a tag?

• View the tag's info page and look for the creator, or
• Search for it in the Taxonomist awards page by clicking on the Badge on the Badge page and browsing the awards.

If it isn't in one of those places and the 50 question threshold has been met, it's either created by someone who already has the badge (either by asking a question or by editing it in to someone else's), or created by someone who has left the site, and you will need to manually search for it:

1. Navigate to the first question asked in that tag (by using the 'newest' tab and going to the last page)
   • A lot of the time, this will the be tag 'creator', but may not be if the tag has been added after-the-fact or if the initial question was deleted.
   • Check any edits to see if the tag was added at a later date. If it has, there's no easy way to determine which was 'first' save for cross referencing edit dates.
2. If the OP (or editor) still exists on the site, visit their profile badge list and look for Taxonomist.
   • If they have it awarded, clicking on the badge will show which tag they got it for.
   • If the OP doesn't exist anymore (is anonymous or had their account removed, then the Taxonomist badge is 'lost' for this tag - it can never be awarded).
   • If the OP doesn't have the badge, and there are no edits to their initial question that add the tag, then it's likely the actual 'first question' has been deleted, and - contrary to what I thought earlier - only mods can search for deleted questions to determine this.

This is the only general way I can think of to manually determine who 'created' a tag. There are probably some SEDE queries to help with the majority of this searching (except for deleted questions which aren't available on SEDE)

Answer 2

So I don't know the full internal workings of the tag system, but I know that if a tag is renamed or merged the creator of the new tag will be the person who performed the merge. However, I know that this is taken into account in the taxonomist logic, so if you create a tag and it's renamed you still get the badge.

Answer 3

I couldn't see a straight forward way of pulling this out of the data.

The following query will list all the tags you changed via your edits:

select text, creationdate from posthistory where userid = 87579 and text like '%<%>%'

You will need to manually check the tags. I guess that once you are okay with them you can update the query's where clause to include a creationdate after your last manual check. Note that the results will also show entries if you used "<" and ">" characters.

However, for questions it seems a lot trickier. You can use this query:

select tags, creationdate from posts where owneruserid = 87579 and posttypeid = 1 and lasteditdate is null

This will give you tags used for all your questions where there have been no future edits. If there was an edit, and it was by you, the previous query should show tag changes.

I didn't manage to write a query that allowed you to see all the original tags in edited questions. For example, if you create a new question that has since been edited to remove tags. You will need to join a modified version of the 2 previous queries to check for tag changes on your questions.

Finally, I haven't looked at tag merging.

---

I've noticed that not every tag has a creator in the Tag info page, how does this work? Does it appear only after Taxonomist badge is awarded to the creator?

I think you are correct. Oddly, none of these tags have a listed owner:

select * from tags where count = 50

But these do:

select * from tags where count = 51