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I've been on this stack for a little while and we do not give legal advice (at least based on community consensus). I have seen many questions closed, or severely down-voted because the question they ask is basically regarding legal advice. I am thinking that part of it may be because these tags exist. It almost appears as though legal question would be on topic because we have tags for them.

I also found this previous post on meta where it says [legal] has already been tagged to be removed (roughly 6 years ago). It also says if the [legal] tag reappears we should blacklist it

There was another meta post as well where some people were saying almost all of the questions tagged with [law] were closed as off topic.

I am not saying any question that even refers to the law should be closed, I just that maybe we should burninate these tags because if the question is focusing on the legal system, it will more than likely be close. This is very misleading for anyone new to the stack.

There are only 225 question using [legal] or [law] and at a quick glance, they all seem to have other tags on them. So burninating these tags will not leave many (if any) questions tagless.

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    We do answer some legal like questions. Questions that are common in HR for instance that can be answered by someone with HR experience. I am hoping some of our elders weigh in here.
    – Neo
    Sep 14, 2018 at 12:12
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    Would they require the legal tag though? I agree, those questions are probably not off topic, but do the legal tags cause more harm than good? There may be a good question that still has some legal aspect to it, but I think there would be other tags we could use instead of legal or law
    – SaggingRufus
    Sep 14, 2018 at 12:19
  • For me, tags only matter for location specific questions -- so no the tag doesn't impact whether I would or would not answer a question.
    – Neo
    Sep 14, 2018 at 12:23
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    Not having the tag is not going to stop the questions. It will just be harder to see the pattern of closed questions that are part of the butchers bill for this site.
    – IDrinkandIKnowThings
    Sep 14, 2018 at 13:25
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    @MisterPositive yeah but that it's you... seems that several other users don't think that way
    – DarkCygnus Mod
    Sep 14, 2018 at 16:29
  • @DarkCygnus our tags IMO are such a mess I simply ignore them.
    – Neo
    Sep 14, 2018 at 16:50
  • isn't the correct usage 'burnerate'?
    – Kilisi Mod
    Sep 14, 2018 at 20:04
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    @Kilisi see this post, and also this one. It's basically due to a SE meme :)
    – DarkCygnus Mod
    Sep 14, 2018 at 20:37
  • @IDrinkandIKnowThings it may deter some questions. It's hard to argue a question is off topic when there are tags for it.
    – SaggingRufus
    Sep 17, 2018 at 16:12
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    But... Legal aspects of navigating the workplace are not off topic.
    – IDrinkandIKnowThings
    Sep 17, 2018 at 16:51
  • @IDrinkandIKnowThings typically there is also another tag that would also be relevant as well
    – SaggingRufus
    Sep 17, 2018 at 17:01

2 Answers 2

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Legal aspects of navigating the workplace are not off topic.

Legal and Law tags have their value and this proposal does not have any upside. While it may make finding information about legal and law problems in the workplace harder. This seems counter to the policies and behaviors SE purports to champion.

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There are criteria on what legal questions can and can't be asked. We as a community need to work harder to actually enforce these criteria rather than throwing on close votes the second legality is mentioned.

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