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I was looking at some questions relating to methods of organic oxidation and reduction and I wasn't sure whether to use the tag. The tag wiki doesn't specify where it should be used but I have a feeling that it isn't quite the right tag. Maybe organic reduction/organic oxidation or perhaps oxidising agent/reducing agent would be useful tags to have or should we just use .

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  • $\begingroup$ Personally, I'm meh about this. I'll let better people decide on it and I don't have any strong arguments for either the pro side or the con side. But imagine when this is done and we have a, say, organic reduction and it gets 100 questions. Outta that 100, 20 are gonna be mistags, as not everyone knows what the tag is supposed to be conveying, and 70 will have both redox and organic reduction. So someone would pay a visit to meta.chem.SE and writes in big capitalized letters: "ORGANIC REDUCTION TAG RESIDUAL - LET'S BURN IT DOWN" So I say this might bring more troubles than not. $\endgroup$
    – M.A.R.
    Jun 3 '15 at 21:55
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    $\begingroup$ Over the last year I have occasionally removed the tag oxidation or reduction and applied reaction-mechanism if the question was about the how. Sometimes the redox tag will still work, as it is still technically a reduction-oxidation reaction. Admittedly this is not ideal, but the tags should not summarise a question, but merely categorise them. I believe the proposed tags would not make finding questions any easier. $\endgroup$
    – Martin - マーチン Mod
    Jun 4 '15 at 2:30
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As an organic chemist, I am perfectly comfortable with describing a reaction involving the oxidation of a compound as a redox reaction. In fact, I teach these reactions using the familiar terms of general chemistry. More importantly, tags like organic reduction are unnecessary because we have two tags that appropriate cover this subcategory: and . The new tags would not help users find other redox questions or other organic chemistry questions. There are 24 questions using both tags (currently) and probably more organic chemistry questions that could be tagged with redoxalso.

I do not think there would be many cases where a proposed tag like oxidizing agent would not also qualify for the redox tag. Oxidizing agents are only oxidizing agents when they react in redox reactions. They may have other behavior in other reactions.

$\ce{HCl}$ is an oxidizing agent in this reaction:

$$\ce{2HCl + Mg -> MgCl2 + H2}$$

$\ce{HCl}$ is not an oxidizing agent in this reaction:

$$\ce{HCl + NaOH -> NaCl + H2O}$$

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