We currently have 4 questions tagged shedding and 1 tagged molt.
Shedding is the process of losing hair, when the hair follicle dies, the hair falls out of the animal's skin.
Molting is the process of running out of room to grow, whether it's because old skin has become too tight, an exoskeleton too small, or feathers have become damaged.
To be clear, there is more to the process of molting than the end part where the old skin, shell, or feathers are left behind. For animals that can regrow limbs, they do it through the process of molting, and I think it would be extremely confusing why a question asking about whether or not a tarantula will regrow a fang in their next molt would be tagged with shedding.
I know people tend to call it shedding when talking about reptiles (I do too sometimes), but the process is molting, and I don't think it's fair to people who own invertebrates or birds to suddenly lump their molting questions into the shedding tag just because it sometimes gets called shedding for reptiles.
I also think it's more valuable to be technically correct when it comes to tags than simply using what terms people call things. That's why fish-tank will send people to aquarium and cavy will send people to guinea-pigs.
Since we can't really create a synonym either way, I think it's best if we manually fix the tags as questions come in (mammals with shedding others with molting). There aren't too many questions on either subject, and it will keep away any confusion as to why we're saying that invertebrates and birds shed.
If anything, I think it makes more sense to have shedding as a synonym of molting, since animals shedding fur as the season change is technically a form of molting.
From @Spidercat's answer:
I know people tend to call it shedding when talking about reptiles (I do too sometimes), but the process is molting, and I don't think it's fair to people who own invertebrates or birds to suddenly lump their molting questions into the shedding tag just because it sometimes gets called shedding for reptiles.
Whilst this is technically true (the best kind of true), it is really impractical. Nobody I know refers to reptiles changing their skin as molting, only as shedding. So currently we have a tag for reptilian shedding molt which would not be found by users, seeing as they find shedding first.
I think the distinction between shedding/molting for different classes of animals is more important (in terms of classifying questions and areas of expertise) than the technicality of whether it is molting or shedding.
I suggest dividing shedding up into shedding-mammal, shedding-reptile, molting-bird and molting-arachnid (in arachnids it is commonly referred to as molting).
We can then create synonyms for each replacing shedding for molting and vice versa.
I think first of all we should retag the single question that is tagged molt to molting for consistency with other tags.
Then I suggest we map from molting to shedding.
There are more questions tagged shedding, so it makes sense for the mapping to be in that direction.
Plus, I'm active in a number of gecko and reptile groups and I've never heard anyone talk about reptiles moulting, only shedding, whereas furry-pet owners are obviously happy with either term judging by the tags they've used.
I think that at the same time a synonym should be created from moulting (alternative spelling, and the one Wikipedia uses; also the only one correct in UK English) to shedding, since if you type "mou", molting won't come up.
On further reflection, I'm not sure how much value there is in lumping moulting cats in with snakes shedding their skin, birds moulting feathers and spiders regrowing fangs. There's not really that much overlap between the different types of moulting.
The help centre guidelines say that tags are for helping you identify questions that will be useful to you, and a way of connecting experts with questions they want to answer. Who is going to want to browse all categories of moulting questions at once? Or who will be an expert on them? Far fewer people than those who will be an expert in (or interested about) one particular category.
There is, however, overlap between cats and dogs dropping fur, or between leopard geckos and bearded dragons with stuck shed. It makes much more sense to group the questions this way than lumping them all in together.
I propose separate tags for fur-shedding animals, skin-shedding animals and feather-shedding animals. (Any other moulting animals, like invertebrates, could be dealt with in future if questions arise.)
Let's find out first if the community likes the idea of separating those categories (by seeing if this answer gets upvoted), and if they do we can talk (via a new question) about whether to call them molting and shedding, shedding-fur and shedding-skin, moulting-reptiles and moulting-mammals, or something else entirely.
