The scope of the [windows] tag

Question

[windows] tag currently applies to all versions of Windows:

For questions not specific to a single version of Microsoft Windows. Otherwise, use a more specific tag such as [windows-7] or [windows-10].

This general tag includes, but is not limited to, issues that happen across:
Consumer Windows versions:

• [...]

Technically answers should cover every Windows OS starting from Windows 1.0 to Windows 10. According to Super User moderator DavidPostill questions about Windows versions older than XP are rarely asked. The tag is constantly misused and often used as a "companion piece" for other [windows-*] tags.
How to approach this issue? The [windows] tag could be limited to the Windows releases that are supported by Microsoft (Retrocomputing Stack Exchange probably caters support for versions older than XP), but this would naturally do disservice to older [windows] questions and I don't know if the site policy allows tag info overhauls.

Answer 1

I think the tag is still accurate. The generic Windows tag doesn't actually imply that solutions should work with every version of Windows from the dawn of time to the distant future.

Bear in mind that the tag is associated with the question rather than the answers. The answers should be responsive to the question but beyond that, answers can address other versions. The OP often doesn't know the universality of the issue. So generally, tagging goes like this:

• If the problem known to be specific to a particular version, use just that version tag.
• If the problem is known to be limited to a couple of versions (say an issue started with Win8 and continued in Win10), use those two tags.
• If the OP is having a problem with an old version, especially if that version is substantively different from recent versions, use just that tag. XP and older would be in this category, but maybe anything prior to Win7 could be a candidate.
• If an issue is generic and expected to be associated with at least the recent technology versions that are actively supported (say Win7 forward), use just the generic Windows tag.
• If the OP doesn't know how universal the problem is, they can tag with either just the version they're using, or that version plus the generic Windows tag. They could also use just the generic Windows tag and list their actual version within the question.

In cases where other users know that the question is more restrictive or less restrictive than the OP's tags suggest, we can, and do, use editing. We can modify the tags. We can also adjust the title or body of the question to more accurately reflect the true scope. Comments can also be added to share information about version applicability. On old questions, we often take these actions to update the question to reflect more recent versions when it becomes known that it is applicable to the recent versions.

People also post answers unique to more recent versions (containing proper version identification). For example the question might be about XP or Win7, and the issue still persists in Win10, but the solution is different for Win10. Someone will update the thread with a Win10 answer.