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I could understand why -> was the best choice, because it turns something from ambiguous to non-ambiguous. The point here though, is that everyone using the dft tag is talking about density-functional-theory. Claims have been made that "discrete Fourier transform" questions will come up, but I doubt it, and in the rare case when it does, the user may quickly see that "dft" was switched to "density-functional-theory" and if so, they certainly will change the tag to discrete-fourier-transform.

Regarding ab-initio, I was less keen on the synonym being created in the direction towards ab-initio-calculations rather than the other way around. I think "ab-initio" contains enough meaning, and I cannot foresee anyone mis-applying the tag. ab-initio-calculations is something even more specific though, and many question might have to do with ab-initio-methods in general.

In this question today: Can DFT be considered an ab initio method?, the user was talking about the "concept" of ab-initio, not even the calculations or even methods, but just the concept.

As a follower of the ab-initio tag, I would have liked to see this question for sure. However the user didn't tag ab-initio because the available tag was ab-initio-calculations, which didn't quite feel right.

To the followers of the ab-initio tag(s): I wonder if there would be any objection to having an "ab-initio" tag, and having ab-initio-calculations, ab-initio-methods, ab-initio-concepts, ab-initio-theory, or anything anything else related to ab-initio, mapped as synonyms to the base tag ab-initio? If there is an objection, what is it about the ab-initio tag on its own, that is problematic from a practical standpoint?

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If with ab-initio(-calculations) you refer to wavefunction-based methods, then it would probably be better to call the tag like that.

Apparently in the physics community (Is density functional theory an ab initio method?) it is quite common to call DFT an ab-initio method, whereas other places it is a convention to mean wave-function based methods with ab-initio.

I've warned about generating synonyms prematurely, so consider this a second attempt.

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