<p><em>This Q was mentioned in a recent discussion and I see that it is unanswered, so I thought I would answer.</em></p>

<blockquote>
  <p>What can be done when the tag name represents both a function of a statistical software, but its name also suggests a broader concept of usage?</p>
</blockquote>

<p><strong>In general, this is a suboptimal situation. I would try to de-ambiguate the tag.</strong></p>

<p>If this is not possible then the next best solution is to write a tag excerpt that provides a clear usage guidelines.</p>

<p>In particular, <a href="https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/lme" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;lme&#39;" rel="tag">lme</a> has the following excerpt:</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>lme() is the function for estimating Linear Mixed Effects models in the nlme package for the R project for statistical computing. For general questions about mixed effects models, use the [mixed-effect] tag.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>which sounds reasonable.</p>

<p>Still, it would be even better <a href="https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4296">if we merge <code>[lme]</code> into <code>[lme4-nlme]</code></a> and then the temptation to use this tag for mixed model questions that are not about <code>lme()</code> function would disappear.</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>And beyond that, are software function tags recommended or not?</p>
</blockquote>

<p>The current practice is that we allow tags for "prominent" software packages (such as <a href="https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/lme4" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;lme4&#39;" rel="tag">lme4</a> in R or <a href="https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/scikit-learn" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;scikit-learn&#39;" rel="tag">scikit-learn</a> in Python), but do not generally tolerate tags for specific software functions. I think this works fine.</p>
