I actually find this quite touching in a small but meaningful way.
When I first started using Discourse, I remember being genuinely confused about where tags were supposed to be created. Having the ability to create them directly from the /tags page would have made things much clearer back then.
Regarding tag synonyms , I do have a suggestion:
I personally hope that merging synonyms doesn’t mean the old tag completely disappears. Instead, it would be great if the relationship could be preserved — so that when someone later uses an old or synonymous tag, it’s automatically replaced by the canonical one.
That way, existing habits aren’t broken, and the system gently guides users toward consistency over time.
Thanks for continuing to improve these small but important usability details.