A recent edit to the Manufacturer Tags question spotlighted a problem with an old action. Five years ago, the post The msi tag is ambiguous identified that the msi tag was being used for both the Windows installer and hardware from the MSI company. That led to merging or synonymizing msi with windows-installer without people realizing the implications.
It's always a bad idea to combine an ambiguous tag with one specific meaning because people will continue to enter the term in the tag window for the other meanings. That results in an irrelevant or misleading tag on the question. In the case of [msi], people following Windows installer questions waste time checking out questions about MSI brand hardware, plus it generally bloats the tags and dilutes their value.
There are currently 356 windows-installer questions. I just glanced at the first of the eight pages of these, and spotted:
- I had to re-install Windows 10, do I need to re-install the relevant drivers from MSI? posted in May is about an MSI brand laptop.
- Trying to install new video card need assistance posted yesterday is about an MSI brand video card.
- USB doesn't work under Windows 7 and MSI B450M posted in May is about an MSI brand motherboard.
- Keyboard intermittent on MSI GT72VR 6RE posted in December is about an MSI brand notebook.
- msi Notebook with Windows 8.1, can't start or boot is also about an MSI brand notebook.
So the mistagging is actually happening, and the total scope of it appears to be on the order of 10%. We can go through the questions and delete that wrong tag, but it will continue to require cleanup and waste people's time if we don't separate msi. So I'm suggesting that action.
I also suggest replacing windows-installer with msi-windows-installer. That provides two benefits. For users who are actually referring to the Windows installer, this would replace the synonymizing. Without the direct link to msi, this would allow the Windows installer tag to show up when "msi" is typed. windows-installer isn't a great tag, anyway, because msi isn't the only one and that tag doesn't make clear what installer it refers to.
Also, if a new user asking about MSI brand hardware types "msi" in the tag window, and windows-installer appears, there's no obvious connection for someone who doesn't do a lot of installation in Windows. If they're paying attention and notice the tag, they may just assume the system added it automatically for some reason (like many other things about the site that don't make sense to new users). Replacing windows-installer with msi-windows-installer will at least provide a mental connection to help the OP realize that what they typed means something else here.
