Number of questions in "genus" and "gender" tags - bug?

Question

There seem to be two tags for questions related to gender: genus and gender. They are also tag synonymous. However, then one is typing "genus" as a tag, it states 15 questions have that tag. When you type "gender" as tag, it states 6 questions have that tag. And yet, if you click on one of the tags above, you will get to this page, which shows 21 questions (15+6=21).

This is odd. In my view, since the tags are synonymous, both should show 21 questions. Otherwise, it is misleading to the user who wants to judge the popularity of tags. Even more oddly, this seems to be a problem only of these tags. I've checked other synonymous in this site (and in others) and they work fine. Is this a bug?

Answer 1

Some tags are merged in addition to synonymization, some are not. These two were not merged when the question was asked, but they are merged now. I assume merging has an effect on counting. Did you check other non-merged synonym pairs? They can be seen in the tab "merge" under tag synonyms. (I'm not sure what you can see at your privilege level. The mod interface tells more than the usual synonym main page, but the "merge" page should be visible to all.)

Merging is irreversible, synonymization is reversible. It's been left undone when we might want to separate the tags at some later point. With the remaining synonymization and no complaints or confusions so far, I believe these two clear enough to be merged. I wonder if we should have a meta thread where one could suggest merging, renaming, or synonymizing tags. That would help keep tag management in order.