At the moment we have 853 questions tagged cartography (if you are on the newest tab, or 158 frequently asked questions if you are on the frequent tab) which has a tag wiki excerpt of:
The study and practice of making maps.
Is this tag being applied appropriately, or should more/fewer questions be tagged with it?
Wikipedia provides a more detailed description of Cartography which I am providing a link to for ready reference.
I agree with @Fezter's answer. It looks like many cartography-tagged posts are indeed related to cartography, especially design aesthetics and how to visualize maps in traditional but also revolutionary ways.
This is Britannica's definition:
The art and science of graphically representing a geographical area, usually on a flat surface such as a map or chart. It may involve the superimposition of political, cultural, or other nongeographical divisions onto the representation of a geographical area.
Therefore, I think art and science — projecting maps, graphically representing an area, visualizing data, etc. — are two important elements in cartography and should somehow be included in this tag.
Projections would be related to cartography, yet has its own tag(s). Based on this example, maybe there could be a suggestion for question askers to include more specific tags such as projection. I believe the cartography tag can still be used as-is, but more specific tags should be included as well. On my geography blog (GeoFact of the Day), most but not all posts fit in my large GeoFact of the Day tag category. Each GeoFact of the Day-tagged post also includes at least one specific tag. I think this is an reasonable example of how there can be a large category, which ideally includes more specific categories.
Here's my tag description suggestion:
The study and practice of creating maps (mapmaking) and graphically representing geographic areas with the use of artistic and scientific principles.
It is sort of a mouthful, yet still shows cartography as an overarching concept.
I think we need to either:
The tag definition is very broad and therefore, I think it may appropriately be applied to many of those questions. However, perhaps it is too broad.
How many questions on our site are about the study of making maps? Surely, the majority of the questions on GIS.SE are ultimately about making a map in one way or another, so we could almost apply the tag in it's current form to most questions.
My 2 cents.
I asked this question because I think the cartography tag is being over-used.
To me, it seems like some questions are being tagged with cartography as a term interchangeable with maps or mapping.
For example, I think the recent question below should have the tag cartography removed:
Polygon not drawn in OpenLayers 3?
I suspect that there may be many questions tagged cartography posted here that purist cartographers would be horrified to see labelled in any way as cartography.
I will defer to other answerers on what should be classed as cartography and simply say that, if we are editing questions tagged cartography for any other purpose, we should perhaps re-assess whether they are really about cartography or just about making maps or mapping. If it is either of the latter, then I think neither of those tags need be applied because more specific tags about how you are trying to map are likely to be more useful.
