On: Predicting Stack Overflow Tags with Google’s Cloud...

[inglor]

I'm a "heavy" Stack Overflow user https://stackoverflow.com/users/1348195/benjamin-gruenbaum and I use tags all the time.

Otherwise you're just playing "fastest gunslinger in the west" trying to answer generic stuff before anyone rather than sniping questions you genuinely find interesting and can teach you.

[IshKebab → inglor]

I think there are two kinds of SO users - those that ask questions when they have problems, and answer questions when they solve them; and those that find questions to answer (for internet points, kudos, product support etc). Tags mainly help the latter.

[unwind → inglor]

Same here (also a heavy user), monitoring a tag is how I find questions to attempt to answer.

I guess tags and searching (when dupe-closing) are more essential if you primarily use SO to post answers.