We have a war tag and a warfare tag, that I think should be merged, in the context of the site they mean exactly the same.
I'd prefer warfare to be the master tag, but that's not really important.
1 Answer
My initial response would be no. war is used for questions about specific wars. Why did Operation Market Garden go ahead when the allies knew German armor was in the area? How did Israel win the Six-Day War? warfare is used for more general questions. Did World War II-era bombs actually whistle? How frequently were homing pigeons used in the World Wars? More general questions about how war is waged. I can't say this rule is always followed or that the tags have clear wikis, but that is how I see it as a general rule.
I would rather establish firmly the distinction than to synonymize (is that a word?) them. A similar confliction of tags is https://history.meta.stackexchange.com/q/171/961, which was declined. Although they were not being used correctly at the time, they are now clearly separated. In fact, after writing up this answer, I believe warfare and military should be synonyms. Writing another meta discussion...
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I think we should be using specific tags for specific wars (for example: cold-war, american-civil-war, napoleonic-wars) instead of the catch-all [war].– yannisDec 3, 2012 at 22:58
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My answer is based more on how things are now. However, the [war] tag seems to serve no purpose, so, if more of the community agrees, I think we should burninate it.– Luke_0Dec 3, 2012 at 23:00
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Yes, we probably should. Will go around its questions and do some retagging later tonight.– yannisDec 3, 2012 at 23:05
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My initial response was the other way, but there are only three instances of the tags being used together, so perhaps you are right. So does this mean you are volunteering to write the tag wikis for those two tags to make this clear? :-)– T.E.D. ModDec 6, 2012 at 21:02
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I think war is the timeframe and warfare is more of the weaponry and tactics.– Neo1009Jan 9, 2020 at 17:30