Quoting the criteria @rene linked:
There are four preliminary tests that help identifying problematic tags:
- Does it describe the contents of the questions to which it is applied? and is it unambiguous?
- Is the concept described even on-topic for the site?
- Does the tag add any meaningful information to the post?
- Does it mean the same thing in all common contexts?
A tag must fail ALL of those tests in order to be considered for
burnination. In any case, the ultimate criterion for burnination is
whether the tag is actually causing harm
And I don't think the case against backend seems strong enough for burnination. It doesn't pass any of these with flying colors, but I think it minimally passes all four criteria, and for tag in the 4k range that seems sufficient. Keep in mind, per the above post failing just one is not sufficient to qualify for burnination.
My reasoning is as follows:
- Yes, backend is a wide term, but it's not particularly ambiguous, and usefully describes the context in which a question is asked
- Backend/frontend is certainly on-topic for SO
- While by itself it's not a particularly useful tag, it does add some useful information. Using Python for frontend stuff is a very different usecase than using it for backend, for instance.
- Again, "backend" has a pretty common conceptual meaning, even if the specifics of what it means in any given stack vary considerably, and the borders are a little fuzzy sometimes.
It's not the most useful tag, but I don't think it's causing harm, or even undue clutter, and is marginally useful.