What exactly is supposed to be the usage of [elements]?

Question

elements has 208 questions, of which 41 are currently closed (a whopping 20%!). The tag was created on Oct 2'14, and has no tag usage as of yet.

This has resulted in a varied application of the tag. Of the 167 open questions, many could use alternate and well-defined tags:

• this could use rare-earth-elements instead
• this could use ions instead
• this and this could use nomenclature instead
• this could use transition-elements instead
• this could use pnictogen instead

and there's many, many more.

Though, there are some ambiguous cases, that wouldn't make sense if elements was removed.

• this question wouldn't make sense if only tagged color
• this question wouldn't make sense if only tagged density
• this simply doesn't seem to fit in any tags

So, definitely, the elements is being misused. And this meta post aims to find a solution for this tag.

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^{Side-note: this meta post is supposed to reach a decision regarding elements, and in no way intends to be a call-to-action to start retagging all questions within the next 24 hours. This to decide the what and the why part, not the when part.}

Answer 1

A proposed solution is going through all the questions and reevaluating their quality, whilst retagging them (do remove the elements)

Questions that don't make much sense without the elements tag - like the three "ambiguous cases" above - are definitely in a minority and deserve a small community-wiki. We might find a pattern among them, that may require retagging them with another tag (new or old), or closure if they are bad quality, or decision on a case-by-case basis.

Only defining the tag usage for elements wouldn't be a proper solution, because, while it may help tag future questions correcly, it wouldn't solve the current pile of questions tagged incorrectly.