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seems like a bit of a catch-all tag like general-physics (which is now removed from all questions and soon to be blacklisted). Thoughts on burnination and blacklisting?

Note that

  • There's no tag wiki or tag excerpt, making it confusing what it was even intended to be used for in the first place.
  • Most of the questions seem to be pop-science-y (I first noticed the tag when browsing through the questions in the tag).
  • It seems like if it was an ideal tag it would be more of a 'not-quite-experimental but not-quite-theoretical' physics tag - but of course, that's kind of vague, and most questions on the site could be tagged with it, which is generally a bad sign.
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  • $\begingroup$ Generally speaking, tag burninate & blacklist requests should go here. $\endgroup$ – Qmechanic♦ Jul 26 '17 at 15:51
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    $\begingroup$ @Qmechanic That would preclude the kind of detailed analysis and discussion provided in the existing answer. $\endgroup$ – Emilio Pisanty Jul 26 '17 at 15:59
  • $\begingroup$ @Emilio Pisanty: Noted. $\endgroup$ – Qmechanic♦ Jul 26 '17 at 16:19
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    $\begingroup$ en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Applied_physics $\endgroup$ – Kyle Kanos Jul 27 '17 at 1:53
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    $\begingroup$ In line with @KyleKanos's comment, there are actual 'Applied Physics' departments out there. Now, whether those posting questions know what falls under the applies physics banner, that is an entirely separate question... $\endgroup$ – Jon Custer Jul 27 '17 at 11:38
  • $\begingroup$ As another data point of interest, MathOverflow has an applied-mathematics tag, and MSE doesn't. The split between 'pure' and 'applied' mathematics is, I guess, about as fuzzy as the boundary between pure and applied physics. $\endgroup$ – Emilio Pisanty Jul 27 '17 at 12:25
  • $\begingroup$ Other resources for what (people who consider themselves as) applied physicists do in practice: J. Appl. Phys., Appl. Phys. Lett., J. Phys. D: Appl. Phys., Appl. Phys. A, Appl. Phys. B. $\endgroup$ – Emilio Pisanty Jul 27 '17 at 12:28
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Let's be careful with getting rid of tags: We should abolish a tag if it literally serves no purpose, or is actively harmful. As for your specific points:

There's no tag wiki or tag excerpt, making it confusing what it was even intended to be used for in the first place.

This isn't an argument to get rid of any tag, this is an argument to write a tag wiki.

Most of the questions seem to be pop-science-y

Not a reason for deletion either, since nothing about pop science inherently makes a question on- or off-topic at our site.

It seems like if it was an ideal tag it would be more of a 'not-quite-experimental but not-quite-theoretical' physics tag - but of course, that's kind of vague, and most questions on the site could be tagged with it, which is generally a bad sign.

I completely disagree that most questions on the site could be tagged with it. I don't see much "applied" about most of the Newtonian mechanics or quantum mechanics questions we get, for instance. If anything, this tags strikes me as being in the same vein as , which I'm not the biggest fan of, but which certainly conceivably tells you something about the subject of the question. Yes, it's a bit "vague", but so is when you think about all the different kinds and levels of questions it covers.

Contrasting this with , which could literally be applied to every question, or , which is just plainly off-topic nowadays, I think this tag is at least minimally descriptive of a subset of on-topic questions, and therefore should not be eliminated.

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    $\begingroup$ I agree that may well be enough of a need for this one to keep it around, but then there are plenty of questions with that tag that could happily do without it (which may be more of a case to add that to a tag review queue than anything else). But more seriously, though: what is that tag meant to describe? $\endgroup$ – Emilio Pisanty Jul 26 '17 at 15:50
  • $\begingroup$ @EmilioPisanty Yeah, I can see that this tag is probably misapplied (pun probably intended) to lots of questions. But so is mathematical-physics, that a tag is prone to misuse by people who don't understand it is not a reason to get rid of it. looking at the early (and therefore probably intended) applications of the tag, I do think its intended meaning is similar to everyday-life as in being about physical explanations for common phenomena or appliances. $\endgroup$ – ACuriousMind♦ Jul 26 '17 at 15:55
  • $\begingroup$ I agree that misapplications of a tag are reasons to fix the misapplications instead of removing the tag, but the original intent is relatively irrelevant to what we should make it mean now. The boundary between 'pure' and 'applied' physics is notoriously fuzzy, and if that tag is to be useful, it should at least make an attempt to demarcate what does and does not go in there. $\endgroup$ – Emilio Pisanty Jul 26 '17 at 15:59

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