How to deal with the tag optical-isomerism?

Question

We currently have a tag optical-isomerism.

The IUPAC Gold book has the following to offer (DOI: 10.1351/goldbook.O04308):

optical isomers [obsolete]
Obsolescent synonym for stereoisomers with different optical properties. They should be described as diastereoisomers or enantiomers. (Usage strongly discouraged).

I know that the term is still very, very popular in some textbooks; however, I think we should follow the IUPAC recommendation and rename the tag. I don't think there is much need for debate, but there is a question remaining: How do we do it?

Please discuss it with an answer.

Answer 1

I'll go ahead and make a suggestion.

Borrowing from Wikipedia's stereoisomerism:

• isomers, isomers ✔
  • constitutional (structural) isomers, constitutional-isomers ✗
  • stereoisomers, stereoisomerism synonym to stereochemistry ✔
    • enantiomers enantiomers ✗
    • diastereomers, diastereomers ✗
      • cis/trans isomers, cis-trans-isomerism ✔
      • conformers, conformers ✔ and rotamers without tag

In my opinion, diastereomers are sufficiently covered by two tags already. Both of them have merit, while the superordinate isn't specific enough.

How often will we actually come across a question which is really only about enantiomers that we need a tag for it? The search works on words, too, so I'd argue we'll never get a critical mass that the tag sustains itself. Most questions will topically be about stereochemistry. Or they could be about the optical properties of these compounds, so optical-properties. Or they might be about selectivity, or stereoselectivity.

The tag in question is only used 9 times, none of these really refer to enantiomers specifically enough to warrant the tag.

Therefore I suggest to silently remove the tag, which would be to merge it without synonym into stereochemistry.