• How to change the mouse pointer colour?
  mouse captures what it's about, plus perhaps themes. colors is correct but not really relevant.
• How do I set the fringe colors to whatever is the background color?
  fringe is what it's about. colors is marginally relevant.
• Green lines are invisible in diff output for some files in *shell*
  colors is somewhat relevant (the question is about git diff --color) but it's a symptom, not the root cause.
• Different results using color-theme-select versus color-theme-<theme-name>
  themes is the most important part, but colors is relevant too.
• Are there color pickers for Emacs?
  colors is what this is all about.
• How to change helm's highlight color
  faces or text-properties is what the question is fundamentally about. A new user might not know that colors are configured through faces though.
• Ways to unobtrusively vary text rendering?
  This is about text-properties but colors is pretty relevant too.
• Show colors in mode-line for minor modes
  This is about text-properties, really, but here again a new user might not know that colors are a particular case of text properties. colors is correct but not very relevant.
• Color-code a new generic character combination
  This is about font-lock, colors isn't relevant. Again font-lock isn't obvious for new users.
• How to make the custom font lock keywords not override the default major mode font lock?
  Same as the previous question.

Conclusion: 4/10 definite misuse of colors instead of [tags:text-properties], [tags:faces] or [tags:font-lock]. 4/10 where colors is marginal. 2/10 where colors is important, including one where it's legitimately the sole tag.

I don't think we can get rid of colors, though we should discourage its use when the question is really about text-properties, faces, font-lock or themes.

I propose to keep the tag, and write a tag wiki that explains when to use other tags instead. (I'm putting it on my to-do list; if someone wants to do it, they're welcome.) I think we can live with that, and retag mistagged questions as they come in. Let's see how it goes, if we're overwhelmed by misuse we can consider retagging legitimate uses to color-something with a name that discourages misuse.

• How to change the mouse pointer colour?
  mouse captures what it's about, plus perhaps themes. colors is correct but not really relevant.
• How do I set the fringe colors to whatever is the background color?
  fringe is what it's about. colors is marginally relevant.
• Green lines are invisible in diff output for some files in *shell*
  colors is somewhat relevant (the question is about git diff --color) but it's a symptom, not the root cause.
• Different results using color-theme-select versus color-theme-<theme-name>
  themes is the most important part, but colors is relevant too.
• Are there color pickers for Emacs?
  colors is what this is all about.
• How to change helm's highlight color
  faces or text-properties is what the question is fundamentally about. A new user might not know that colors are configured through faces though.
• Ways to unobtrusively vary text rendering?
  This is about text-properties but colors is pretty relevant too.
• Show colors in mode-line for minor modes
  This is about text-properties, really, but here again a new user might not know that colors are a particular case of text properties. colors is correct but not very relevant.
• Color-code a new generic character combination
  This is about font-lock, colors isn't relevant. Again font-lock isn't obvious for new users.
• How to make the custom font lock keywords not override the default major mode font lock?
  Same as the previous question.

Conclusion: 4/10 definite misuse of colors instead of [tags:text-properties], [tags:faces] or [tags:font-lock]. 4/10 where colors is marginal. 2/10 where colors is important, including one where it's legitimately the sole tag.

I don't think we can get rid of colors, though we should discourage its use when the question is really about text-properties, faces, font-lock or themes.

I propose to keep the tag, and write a tag wiki that explains when to use other tags instead. (I'm putting it on my to-do list; if someone wants to do it, they're welcome.) I think we can live with that, and retag mistagged questions as they come in. Let's see how it goes, if we're overwhelmed by misuse we can consider retagging legitimate uses to color-something with a name that discourages misuse.