I'm new here so I'm curious if tagging has always existed or if it was added at some point? If it was added I'm curious as to why. Was it a requested feature or addressing some pain point? If it always existed I wonder if it would be interesting to eliminate them altogether leaving only the follow person dynamic. Ontological organizational means such as tagging is a common feature in social sharing sites these days, but it's not always been that way. The precursor may be blogrolls which is a person-to-person only dynamic. There also currently exists high quality social sharing sites without any organizational means (news.ycombinator.com for example). I think a complete lack of tagging may encourage being exposed to new things one wasn't even aware they would find interesting. In a way it makes things feel more personal. I've found tags most useful as a label to prepare me for what sort of submission something is prior to clicking on it. Perhaps non-follow 'labels' is ideal?
That's pretty much been the concensus with tags here: do more, or do less. I know that I don't want to do something as basic as just adding more, and I do prefer that the most compelling means of content discovery be user-focused. I agree that it adds a more personal atmosphere to the site.