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There are 14 questions mentioning EAS, 82 questions mentioning "electrophilic substitution", and 48 questions mentioning "electrophilic aromatic substitution", adding up to nearly 150 questions, approximately as many as or .

Currently, many of these are tagged "o-chem+reaction mech" or "o-chem+aromatic compounds". I think both of these are rather broad categories as "o-chem+reaction mech" can refer to hydroboration oxidation reaction of alkenes, which is not electrophilic aromatic substitution. Also, "o-chem+aromatic compounds" can simply refer to usual properties of phenol/aniline/etc. and not specifically about electrophilic aromatic substitution.

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Seeing as I was the person who drafted the division of organic chemistry tags that Martin linked, I figure I should say a few words on why EAS isn't one of those tags. It's simply too specific and has almost no mechanistic diversity. To me it is almost akin to having one tag for SN1, one tag for SN2, one for E1, and one for E2.

That retagging project is however not one to be tackled head-on in the near future. We are trying to introduce new tags very slowly... there is not enough manpower to do it seriously, not at the present moment, at least.

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  • $\begingroup$ Alright. That'll do. $\endgroup$
    – Gaurang Tandon
    Feb 18, 2018 at 2:10
  • $\begingroup$ This is meta, you are free to disagree... this is not a rule. I proposed that system, and now I write this answer, as a regular user and not as a moderator. We're just saying that this was discussed a while back and (at that time) nobody raised any objections. $\endgroup$
    – orthocresol
    Feb 18, 2018 at 2:12
  • $\begingroup$ Well, I only know enough chemistry from high school, so I am not sure which categories are too specific and which one's too broad :P That said, from a high schooler perspective, I find aromatic-chemistry really broad. I mean, we literally spent months in o-chem class covering entire aromatic rings! Perhaps, if you would edit its tag wiki to add some variety examples of what all range of aromatic reactions come under that tag, it would be really helpful to further discuss this proposal, and hence identify if there even exists a scope for splitting up that tag. Thanks! $\endgroup$
    – Gaurang Tandon
    Feb 18, 2018 at 2:21
  • $\begingroup$ docs.google.com/document/d/… $\endgroup$
    – orthocresol
    Feb 18, 2018 at 2:27
  • $\begingroup$ "It's simply too specific and has almost no mechanistic diversity" But what about the fact that "electrophilic substitution" already has nearly 150 questions, almost as many as metallurgy? (see my original post search queries) $\endgroup$
    – Gaurang Tandon
    Feb 18, 2018 at 2:53
  • $\begingroup$ At the end of the day it is a question of how specific one wants to be with the tags. You can either have overly broad tags which isn't helpful (e.g. if we only tag with organic/inorganic/physical), or overly specific tags which isn't helpful either. If you want to break up aromatic-chemistry into smaller sections then it logically follows that you need to make tags for all the other typical reactions of aromatic compounds. $\endgroup$
    – orthocresol
    Feb 18, 2018 at 13:33
  • $\begingroup$ "it logically follows that you need to make tags for all the other typical reactions of aromatic compounds" alright, that makes sense. I'll take that as an answer! ^_^ $\endgroup$
    – Gaurang Tandon
    Feb 18, 2018 at 13:39
  • $\begingroup$ I don't doubt that aromatic chemistry is broad, but so are many of the other tags on this site. You might think that aldol-reaction is fairly narrow, but entire books have been written on it, and it could easily take a graduate student years - if ever - to learn everything inside there. So... it's just about finding that balance, where do you draw the line. Of course, this is a bit of a theoretical argument, less of a pragmatic one, because I'm not looking at question numbers. That's what I prefer to go on, though. $\endgroup$
    – orthocresol
    Feb 18, 2018 at 13:42
  • $\begingroup$ Not sure if you can read my mind though, but honestly, I did actually always think aldol-reaction is quite a narrow tag xD $\endgroup$
    – Gaurang Tandon
    Feb 18, 2018 at 13:46
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Yes, in general, no in particular.

We have already talked about it Tag Review 2017. I. Functional group tagging - revisited and therein we find:

I think those last two tags would do a better job in categorising than .

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  • $\begingroup$ I was going to see a few samples questions for the last two tags you mentioned and try to understand the categorization better, but turns out no questions have been tagged with these tags till date :( Why? $\endgroup$
    – Gaurang Tandon
    Feb 17, 2018 at 9:29
  • $\begingroup$ Because I’m busy with real life. $\endgroup$
    – orthocresol
    Feb 17, 2018 at 9:52
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    $\begingroup$ Your answers' first lines have become too cryptic to summarize your opinion. You've watched a confusing movie lately, I presume? $\endgroup$
    – M.A.R.
    Feb 17, 2018 at 12:32
  • $\begingroup$ @M.A.R. Tl;dr: mayhaps. $\endgroup$
    – Martin - マーチン Mod
    Feb 17, 2018 at 12:45

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