Open Stack

So I've been following the TC work on tags, and have been slightly 
confused by the whole work, so I am wondering if I can get a 
'explainlikeimfive' (borrowing from reddit terminology) edition of it.

I always thought tags were going to be something like:

http://i.imgur.com/rcAnMkX.png

(I'm not a graphic artist, obviously, haha); but the point there was 
that it would allow people to create tags, up or down vote them, and 
maybe even add comments and let the democratic process (the community) 
decide which tags are useful and which aren't (possibly prune tags that 
are garbage or are not useful).

Or something like:

http://i.imgur.com/gy1MGo6.png

That could perhaps use https://wordpress.org/plugins/fl3r-feelbox/ (or 
something like it, doesn't matter)...

I was thinking the whole tag creation, up-vote, down-vote, smiley, 
sad-face, was all going to be community driven, instead of TC driven, 
but maybe someone can explain it to me (like I am five).

Thanks!

-Josh