Why do I have to use all the tags listed as examples before it will except my Question

I had to submit my question abut 5 times before it would except my question. Why do I have to use all the “tags” listed as examples before it will except my Question

Oh, OK, I have to wait for the drop down box and only pick one from that list. How quaint.

Tags are a means to use filters on questions. Some of them are “official” and mandatory:

  • meta for all questions related to this site

    As a consequence, please, retag your question to replace common with meta. Press Enter twice to exit retag mode.

  • writer, calc, impress, draw, base and math for the corresponding applications

  • common when the problem affects all applications (such as installation issues)

Other tags are “free”. They are added to characterize the question.

Unfortunately, contrary to StackEchange, there is no constraint on these free tags and anybody can create new ones. There is no minimum “reputation” necessary for tag creation. This leads some newbies to reformulate the question in the tags. This also pollutes the tag dictionary with “noise words” (containing no information) like “the”, “a”, “is”, “are” and redundant ones such as plural/singular forms, …

This deeply degrades the tag feature utility.

Many regular contributors use the tag filter feature to select which questions correspond to their skills/tastes. An erroneously tagged question may go unnoticed by them and may remain longer than necessary unanswered.

What you find “non intuitive” is a consequence of this site not being a forum, i.e. a site for a chronologically ordered conversation, but a question & answer site where each page shows a question followed by answers sorted by “relevance” (based on an internal scoring), meaning the order of answers changes when new contributions are added. Thus chronological order is lost.

To show the community your question has been answered, click the ✓ next to the correct answer, and “upvote” by clicking on the ^ arrow of any helpful answers. These are the mechanisms for communicating the quality of the Q&A on this site. Thanks!