Gameplay tag synonym for game-design

Question

I've just gained the privilege edit synonyms (yipeeh!), this gave me an excuse to browse around the synonyms database to see what was going on in there.

Turns out, I'm very surprised that gameplay is a synonym for game-design.

To me gameplay programming at least should be distinguished from game design. Of course the limit is blurry between the two, but in the industry those are often different professions.

So should we have a gameplay-programming tag, and if yes, should gameplay be a synonym for it?

Or am I just nitpicking?

EDIT

In answer to Tetrad's comment, to illustrate my point, here are some questions that would be more about gameplay-programming, more implementation-oriented:

• How to develop RPG Damage Formulas?
• Profanity filter for an MMO chat
• Have any video game designs used non-uniform random numbers in interesting ways?
• Is there a way to procedurally generate the history of a world?

And some that would be more about game-design, so more creative-process-oriented:

• How do you prevent inflation in a virtual economy?
• What is the purpose of having lives?
• Are there many games involving the manipulation of water?
• How do you come up with ideas for new games?

Answer 1

No, because it's not meaningful. I'll draw on your comment in two parts. First, the more trivial part:

Or more technical: Should gameplay code be programmed preferably in script, or C++?

Gameplay code in script vs C++ is an architecture question.

Good, that's out of the way. Now for the less trivial part:

Well they'll necessary be made up, but it could be job related: What skills are employers waiting from gameplay programmers?

What the heck is a gameplay programmer? Every programmer working on the game is ultimately programming for the gameplay directly or indirectly, unless you hired a guy only to program the main menu. So, better question: what kind of game programmer isn't a gameplay programer?

The only people in the studio who are programming but not programming gameplay are probably the ones programming some custom tools. We've had some people who ask about how to create a level editor for their game, and that typically gets filed under something like engine programming. We generally don't otherwise get asked about that, presumably because whoever's doing that stuff is advanced enough they don't need us. It's just desktop development to a large extent.

That means at the end of the day: basically every programming question we get is gameplay programming, with the exception of a handful. gameplay-programming might as well just be a synonym of programming.