Can we create the tag "Americas"

Question

Plagues in Pre-European Americas? got me thinking. It has the tags south-america, central-america, and north-america. My thinking was that it would be much more efficient to have one consolidating tag for questions that require it. The obvious choice is americas. However, the tag america already exists, albeit it means something entirely different. I've proposed it be a synonym of united-states, but it has not yet been approved. I tried to create the tag americas, but the system obviously wouldn't let me do it because it thought it was just a synonym of america.

Is there any way a mod can override that, or must we delete the tag america?

Answer 1

Frankly, the use of "America" as a tag for the United States of America has the potential to be rather misleading (not to mention mildly offensive to non-USA countries in the Americas).

On a hunch I looked at the tag, and it was only used three times. Two of the three were also tagged united-states already, and the other was a very low-quality (negatively moderated) question.

So I've already taken the liberty of retagging all three of those questions as simply united-states. As of right now, there should be no questions using the tag "America". I propose it simply be deleted.

That done, all that would remain would be to create the "Americas" tag, and then the problem would be solved for all time, because our software would prevent anyone from ever recreating "america".

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Sometime yesterday somehow the tag americas got created. I wonder how that happened. Surely Luke didn't (ironicly) do it by putting it in his question?

Anyway, I guess that renders a large part of this question moot. All that would remain to decide is what to do about the old "america" tag. I'd still prefer to see it deleted.

Answer 2

If a tag is really needed, I propose the-americas. The Americas is the customary way in English to refer to the combined continental landmass of the Western hemisphere, and the definite article would prevent any confusion with other uses of Americas.

new-world is potentially problematic because some encompass Australia and the Pacific within it (in that the Old World is invariably Europe, Asia, and Africa) while others find it politically incorrect. I have no problem with western-hemisphere— if referring to the whole Western Hemisphere in contrast to the whole Eastern Hemisphere. It is not, however, an obvious counterpart for the continents of the Eastern Hemisphere, or concepts like eurasia or oceania.