i think a better approach might have been to encourage use of the community tag rather than providing a second tag to the submitter. most of the things i post never receive a community tag so i feel like it's underutilized.
It's definitely underutilized, and it's a point well-taken. One thing that I considered is that when the community tag is used, it is often just to apply specificity. That's not a bad thing, but I thought it might be more interesting if that job was already largely done. That is, one tag often created a big vacuum, and the community tag that typically remained was the one that filled it. In addition the what thenewgreen said, I am looking at making the list of previously suggested community tags visible when you opt to change it. That might also make them a bit more interesting. That said, I'm always up for killing something if it looks like it has gone awry. If two tags turns out to be a bad thing, I'll seriously consider an alternate approach. We will see. I think it is worth trying.
We discussed this. I wonder if people even know that the ability exists? We are going to begin sending a notification once a new user gets the ability to give a badge and give community tags. Perhaps this will ramp it up.