I ask primarily because it's come up, and I've gotten conflicting advice and requests.

Seeing the bad tag thread (and a lot of the other hideousness from "back when"), plus having a lot of time on my hand this week, I decided to attack the issue with a sense of purpose, and it was suggested that I could do so in batches of 4 or 5, which is how I've been going about it. Do a batch, wait/do something else, and do another batch when next I notice the previous batch no longer being on the front page, as sorted by active.

Given that I've been told this approach is drowning out new posts when it bumps them all to the top of the active list, and I don't see anything here or in the FAQ about the etiquette on editing old posts, it seemed like a good idea to start a discussion about how this should be handled. And since finding one piece of old garbage usually means you're about to find a bunch more (in my experience), it seems like something that applies more broadly than to just tag clean-up.

So... please advise and/or discuss.