<p><a href="https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/lme4" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;lme4&#39;" rel="tag">lme4</a> (402) is an R package that has <a href="https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/lmer" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;lmer&#39;" rel="tag">lmer</a> (498), <a href="https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/glmer" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;glmer&#39;" rel="tag">glmer</a> (168), and <a href="https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/nlmer" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;nlmer&#39;" rel="tag">nlmer</a> (10) functions.</p>

<p><a href="https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/nlme" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;nlme&#39;" rel="tag">nlme</a> (119) is an R package that has <a href="https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/lme" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;lme&#39;" rel="tag">lme</a> (196) as a function.</p>

<p>Both packages fit [generalized] linear (and nonlinear) mixed models. Many questions deal with both packages. </p>

<p><strong>Is it useful to have all these separate tags?</strong></p>

<p>The problem is that it seems that, e.g., <code>[lme4]</code> and <code>[lmer]</code> are often used almost interchangeably. And in general, such a deep tag nesting is a bit annoying; e.g., every Q with <code>[lmer]</code> could/should also be tagged with <code>[lme4]+[mixed-models]+[r]</code>, i.e., this <em>automatically</em> eats up 4 out of 5 possible tags.</p>

<p>So one could consider mapping all functions to the respective packages. This would end up with <code>[lme4]</code> with 906 Qs and <code>[nlme]</code> with 294 Qs. Or perhaps even map everything together to <code>[nlme-lme4]</code> (or something like that) with 1138 Qs.</p>

<p>Or is it a bad idea?</p>
