Q:

Make it harder to create tags

It seems that every fifth question on meta nowadays is a burninate or retag request. In fact, tags is the #1 tag on Meta after the four required tags, even exceeding status-completed. This suggests to me that it is too easy to create bad tags, and then the particularly vague or general tags are widely abused by newer users, creating a tedious task for editors down the road. Bad tags have even been created by accident, and then proliferated. We should put a system in place to help ensure fewer useless tags are created.
A few possible solutions I've thought of, in increasing order of strictness:

Pop up an alert whenever a user would create a new tag, similar to the auto alert whenever burniniate-request is used on meta.
As above, but also require the user to check a box saying they understand what tags belong on the site. It turns out that there is a warning already, and the tag was created by accident in spite of it.
Subject all tag creation to a review queue, where users without "create tags" privilege cannot use the tag until it is approved.

What do you think the best solution is?

A:

Not all tag questions are about removing tags.
The existence of a lot of questions about tagging doesn't mean that it's too easy to create new tags.
Putting more barriers in front of new users wouldn't stop most "bad" tags from being created. There's already a reputation barrier.
There are over 40,000 tags on Stack Overflow, and only 885 questions about tags on Meta SO (and again, not all of those are about removing bad tags). That means that less than 2% of tags are a problem. It's probably not worth putting up more barriers in a system that's working 98% of the time.

