professionalism is a catch-all tag. Our scope is defined in our FAQ as
The Workplace - Stack Exchange is for members of the workforce navigating the professional setting.
However, "professionalism" is defined as
pro·fes·sion·al·ism /prəˈfeSHənlˌizəm/
Noun: The competence or skill expected of a professional
Thus, it should basically be appicable to all on-topic questions.
Please remove the tag and discontinue its use.
I agree with this.
Since I don't think hypothetical discussion about whether it's an appropriate tag is likely to convince anyone, let's take a "random" sample of the 10 most recent open questions (excluding those with the professionalism tag):
How to best pitch my side project to my boss?
How can I professionally approach my manager about a side project?
How do i politely remind the recruiter about my status
How do I professionally remind a recruiter about my status?
Applying for a job knowing that you will leave after 6 months?
Is it professional to apply for a job knowing you'll leave in 6 months?
How long should you wait before applying for an internal transfer?
How long should I wait before applying for an internal transfer to avoid appearing unprofessional?
OK to send Facebook message to potential employer after not hearing back?
Is it professional to mail a potential employer in this manner? How can I do it professionally?
"Keeping an eye on things" is reducing my productivity
How can I professionally discuss this issue with my manager?
My boss is leaving and his boss is ignoring me
How do I professionally follow up with my boss's boss?
Applied directly to a recruiter but company I applied to before contacts me directly
How do I avoid appearing unprofessional to the recruiter?
How do I professionally get my boss to stop talking?
Team negative feedback being suppressed
"How can I do so professionally?"
Of the 10 arbitrary questions I picked, it applied to all 10 of them (okay, maybe one of those is a stretch, but still). This tells me that it's very likely an overly broad tag.
Do we really want a tag that applies to 90%+ of all our questions? No. No, we do not.
Even if someone can make a good argument for some group of questions requiring some tag resembling this one, it seems like an infinitely better idea to replace / rename this tag with / to something more specific and less open to being applied to the overwhelming majority of the questions on the site.
Professionalism is more about personal expectations and how to act professionally rather than being a professional. It is more narrowly scoped than etiquette and in many cases the "nice" way to handle the situation is not the professional way to handle the situation, at least in the US. Not all questions are about this as such not all questions could or should be tagged that way.
I think you're mistaken as to the meaning of the word professionalism. What you cite is one possible meaning, but it isn't the one that's used here. The dominant meaning is closer to ethics: it's a matter of choices rather than capabilities. The difference between professionalism and ethics is that professionalism may mean to do the right thing by the employer, even if it is not the right thing by your personal moral compass (for example, it is generally unprofessional to disclose a defect in a product that you manufacture, or to complain about work conditions).
However, I agree that the tag is a red flag. Questions that have this tag are likely to be questions of ethics, which might be discussed constructively on Philosophy Stack Exchange, but definitely not here. Such questions are argumentative by definition, they can only be handled in a questions and answers format if the questions are asking for logical argumentation based on references, and not for generalizations based on personal preferences.
