I don't see any reason why we need separate tags for lan-party and lan.
lan Should mean gaming over a lan connection, which may or may not be local anymore these days (see Hamachi).
lan-party should refer to the actual venue of hosting a party that involves PC gaming, which may not even be over a lan connection (see The Internet). However, lan party retains its name due to the original technology it was founded on.
Although I don't see many questions about lan parties, I do believe they are in scope and should not be merged. I request undoing the tag merge.
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I disagree - "lan party" has a very specific meaning, referring to gaming together with multiple people in one physical location. Whether those joined people are playing on a server on the internet is irrelevant: whether the problem relates to their internal network (lan) or it relates to their connection (multiplayer), lan-party is redundant – Dave McClelland Feb 27 '12 at 23:29
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@DaveMcClelland I don't understand how your disagreeing. Lan is clearly a technology and Lan-party is clearly a social medium. – Resorath Feb 27 '12 at 23:34
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1I agree with you the two are distinct. I'm not sure "lan party" deserves a tag, though. It is better addressed by either "lan" - if asking a technical question about the technology involved - or "multiplayer" for other issues relating to lan parties. – Oak Feb 28 '12 at 0:14
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@Oak I'm okay with that, perhaps instead lan-party should be merged into multiplayer. – Resorath Feb 28 '12 at 0:20
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@Resorath Anyone questions tagged with lan-party will almost certainly refer to problems with the local (physical) network. If not, it's mistagged. If it is related to a local network issue, then lan covers it – Dave McClelland Feb 28 '12 at 0:26