Tags with "speed", as in "7-speed" seem like a bad choice

Question

We have "7-speed' suggested, which to me says we are likely to get or perhaps should pre-emptively add the matching 18-30ish tags for all the other "N-speeds". The guidance from the proposer specifies that it is specific to cassettes, so I've suggested a description to make that explicit. I have tried to make it easy to edit my addition so that it could instead include rather than exclude the other 7-speed options.

But I don't know that there's a lot of point. The days when "10-speed" was a type of bicycle are gone, and if anything the categories that might make sense are the chain width ones. But then we get tags like "early-campag-10-speed" which is straying a long way from "tag:" and more into i-have-a-question-about-bikes-tag territory.

I note that we have a great number of 8-speed, 9-speed, 10-speed, 11-speed and 12-speed questions, none of which are thus tagged as those tags don't exist (yet). We also have a few 14-speed questions and more 3-speed, 5-speed and even some 18-speed and 63-speed ones.

I suggest removing the tag.

My feeling in general is to reject suggested new tags where there's no effort in the description, someone just thinks "oh, I need at least one tag. Um. bike... no, too general" so they put something random in. I've seen a rash of "X applied to bikes" tags added recently, and I think they're not helpful. At the very least I would prefer a longer description, and a bit more justification than "you can use X in, on, or related to, a bicycle". We have "carbon", "bamboo" and "steel" for example, but not "plywood" or "plastic", and the usage of those tags is extremely erratic (there are at least 5 questions about bamboo bikes that don't use the tag, and only 4 that do).

Answer 1

One reason to maintain these tags as intended by the tag's author, (i.e. that is is specific to the number of cogs on a rear cassette or free wheel) is that this is standard bicycle industry terminology.

One does not refer to a bicycle with 18 gear combinations as an 18 speed. Rather, you should use 9 speed for a 2 x 9 or 6 speed for a 3 x 6.

The reason for this is that component compatibility is often based off of the thickness of the rear cogs and the spacing between them. Your chain, cassette/freewheel, crank, chainrings, shifter, and in some cases brake options may be limited/identified by the number of gears on the rear cassette.

That means that this is a useful tag type, if curated properly.

I would suggest that the tag cloud for this purpose should include:

1. Single-Speed/1 Speed
2. 3 speed
3. 5 speed
4. 6 speed
5. 7 speed
6. 8 speed
7. 9 speed
8. 10 speed
9. 11 speed
10. 14 speed
11. IGH/Internally Geared Hub
12. Gearbox
13. 1x9/10/11 - (Or something else to define a specific single front chainring a la narrow-wide)

14. Belt Drive

    These tags would serve the purpose of separating and identifying the type of drive train on a bicycle, when necessary to answer the OP's question.

In addition, it might be wise to see if the UI for the tagging function when creating a question could be modified to show previously created tags in an organized format, with at least a rudimentary explanation of the tag or group of tag's purpose. That would, of course, require the cooperation of the SE staff and probably some time.

My suggestion would be that we keep and curate these tags, eliminating unnecessary ones (i.e. 18 speed, 21 speed, etc...) and creating the proper list as a preemptive measure.

Answer 2

People can't use a tag they don't know exists, so having many ways to get the same result will help.

The tags for N-speed should all be synonyms for deraileur-gears, which is a distinct tag from IGH-gears.

Also we should remove the tag if the question isn't directly related to gearing.

Finally "ten-speed" (ie with letters) should be a synonym for road-frame.