Purpose of [prisoner]

Question

Please note that voting has moved here:

Tag for prisoner puzzles?

A new tag has sprung up, namely the prisoner tag. At the moment, it contains one question, but a suggested edit to add that tag was declined.

Though it does class a particular type of puzzles, the setting is rather restricted (since similar puzzles can be set without prisoners and still be equivalent). My concern is that with the current name the tag doesn't mean more than could be achieved by searching for "warden" or "prisoner".

Regarding that point, maybe something like limited-information proposed by @Deusovi on the aforementioned question might work as a better general tag.

What would the purpose and the scope of the prisoner tag be, and why do we need it?
Should we keep the tag, and if so should the tag be named something else?

As an offside, most of our tags are plurals. Should this tag be renamed prisoners if community decides it is fine anyway?

Answer 1

I don't think we need this tag.

Although I'm willing to be convinced if you can elaborate on this:

it does class a particular type of puzzles

What type of puzzles? As far as I can see, it describes a particular context in which puzzles can be set, which doesn't equate to a type of puzzle. Flavour text is most often irrelevant, and puzzles about prisoners could be logical-deduction (e.g. Four prisoners wearing black and white hats) or lateral-thinking (e.g. The Honest Guard) or riddle ("you are a prisoner and must solve this riddle to escape") or visual (e.g. Stargate escape) or ... well, almost any type of puzzle. The fact that the puzzle is about prisoners doesn't really seem to be useful information.

Or, to put it another way:

This [tag does] not help to define the topic of the question. Tags should help to describe what the question is about, not just what it contains.

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_{As an aside, it's not true that most of our tags have plural names. See logic-puzzle, cipher, enigmatic-puzzle, pattern, rhyme, calculation-puzzle, story, number-sequence, rebus, computer-puzzle, etc. etc. and also the previous meta post Renaming the "crosswords" tag to "crossword", and other such tag pluralizations, especially the new answer from @Alconja.)}

Answer 2

Besides from limited-information I could imagine that a cooperation-game tag would describe that class of puzzles quite well. It would be

strategy $\supset$ cooperation-game $\supset$ hat-guessing.

A possible description for that tag is:
A puzzle about finding a strategy involving several individuals cooperating to achieve a common aim. Examples are prisoners trying to avoid an execution, a group of people trying to guess the colors of their hats, or a magician and his assistants.

Answer 3

Well well ...

I commented (as a joke) under the only question that is with the tag now that "It is time to add a tag 'prisoner', or 'warden'."

I didn't expect that someone really added such a tag.

I mistakenly thought that since the tag is added, it is deemed appropriate and I suggested the edit mentioned by OP because I think the question is no less irrelevant than the one already with the tag ...

Well, so much for history. Here are some of my ideas. It does not have to exist in the first place, and if it does, I expect the description to be (besides what is already mentioned in A.P.'s answer).

A puzzle that involves making decision in a dilemma that would normally be deemed inhumane.

(Give the wrong answer and you have to die? Probably doesn't make much sense outside the context of puzzling)

Anyway, I appreciate many of the suggestions in the linked question and have upvoted them.