Do we need an [authors] tag? (And if so, can [writers] be a synonym?)

Question

We already have a meta discussion about tags for individual authors, of which we now have plenty, but I just noticed that there's also an authors tag with 6 questions. The tag wiki excerpt says:

For questions which are *explicitly* about the author of the work.

Well ... for questions which are explicitly about a particular author, we have the tag for that author. So the tag wiki excerpt definitely isn't what we want; however, do we want the tag itself to exist at all? (I know I could just go and edit it out of those 6 questions, but I figured we should discuss this, otherwise someone will just create it again at some point.)

Do we want an authors tag? If so, what sort of questions should we use it for?

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On a side note (this is technically a separate request, but so closely related that I think it's justified to include it in the same meta post), we also have a writers tag. Just in case we decide that it is useful to have a tag for authors in general as well as individual author tags, can we please merge and synonymise writers with authors?

Answer 1

I'd say we give authors the axe. It serves no purpose because as you stated in the question, individual author-specific tags exist to categorize questions by the author of the work being discussed. The other use for these author-specific tags is in questions that ask about the literary aspects of an author's life. Either way, I'd say we delete both authors and writers from the 7 questions that currently have either of those tags.

Answer 2

I'd say use behind-the-scenes it fits everything that's (properly) tagged with authors and writers. Retag all the fitting questions to that and expand that tag wiki accordingly.

I'm opposed to blindly making stuff synonyms so early. Maybe we will find a useful definition of authors or writers. We won't have that many questions now that we can't have an eye on it manually for a while.