Given that we type tags for mecha as characters, I think the character type for these tags is appropriate here.
Posted under General
@Renim: The system isn't perfect so we will have to make do with what we have. If it can be helped in some cases, why not do it?
The gain of making bardiche and raising_heart as characters is that it gets highlight as green in the tag column. People who want to search for these items won't be obstructed by their tag types at all. However, the people who want to find Nanoha and Fate and Hayate etc. have some real problem. I trust that this is not a search only I do.
Chartags: is god-send and is useful for most normal cases, I don't know why you think it should be completely dished out.
Mecha is very dominant in images, visually speaking, people never forget to tag them and they consciously search for those as character, they of course deserve to be characters. Why is mecha brought up here anyway?
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Just browsed through bardiche. After about 20 pages of posts, post #514831 was the only one where the character type tag felt appropriate. I don't see that changing much for the other 12 or so pages.
nobel gundam, on the other hand, immediately strikes me as a character. I think there's a huge difference in applying the logic behind mecha "characters" and other devices with AI that, for the most part, are just drawn in as accessories to the main characters. Conserving chartags functionality is much more useful than identifying these "characters" as characters.
Hopefully danbooru 2 will have character subtype tags to rectify this situation, but until then generalizing these devices seems like the best choice.
rantuyetmai said:
@Renim: The system isn't perfect so we will have to make do with what we have. If it can be helped in some cases, why not do it?
It's because to get that search to work (the way you want it) is no different than breaking everything else in a car just to get the radio to work, it's unnecessary and worthless.
It should be understood that the chartag search will never properly bring up what you're aiming at, it has from the start always been an illusion that it would ever work the way you want it. The fact that people like you fall for this illusion shows just how much of a flaw it is to retain it, because people like you would throw away other information just to make your broken little search function work "properly." From day one it was broken, and the only things we've gained from continuing to use it is the breaking of others things to obtain a greater illusion of working.
The only way to ever have gotten that broken little search to work has always been a all or nothing proposal from the start. By drawing exceptions, such as "mecha should be characters," is no different than drawing the exceptions at bardiche and raising_heart. You consider the information useless, draw your excuses that mecha are different, but in the end there plenty of people who would consider the results of a pilot and his mecha counting as 2 character tags to be just as flawed as Nanoha and Raising Heart together counting as 2 tags. The only way for the chartag to work the way you think it should requires no exceptions. So either we throw out the chartag search as an argument and allow tons of other things to receive the character tag type or we completely remove all the other things from the character tag type. It has and will always been an all or nothing proposal until we receive a new system.
Instead of allowing some people to go on a crusade to make what was flawed and broken "work," we should have recognized from the start how flawed and broken it was and not have relied on it from the beginning or allow it to carry any weight in discussions.
I guess some inanimate objects like gundams, dolls or mimi-chan are of that type because they have character traits->"a face". (mimi-chan mainly because it resembles bullet bill)
In the case of Fate/Nanonha, or quite similar, for the staffs from Shigofumi (kanaka, matoma), the chartags search works exactly like intended. If you just take care of the "consistency" in tagging them, which has never been a problem for Shigofumi at least, you get as many CHARACTERS as you want.
The 2girls, solo, etc. on the other hand, which were changed to work as counting tags (instead of not-so-yuri images of 2 girls), fail to do exactly that. Solo work for every character, and Xgirls works only for girls. 2girls+1boy = ?, 1boy+1girl = ?, 1girl+1"intelligent device" = ?
BUT you can use 2girls to find images which contain 2 girls. 2girls takamachi_nanoha fate_testarossa should show you all the images you want as long as there are exactly 2girls in the image. The number of other non-girl characters shouldn't matter-->2girls 2boys = 4 human(oid) characters.
rantuyetmai said:
Maybe adding 2girls tag in the search will be fine, but it's a fact that not everyone tag solo, 2girls, 3girls in their uploads because it's not instinctive.
You use that argument a lot. The best course of action would be to add missing tags. I know of uploaders who haven't tagged their uploads with a single general tag in their whole life, but all I can do about it is run after their lazy asses and add the tags for them.
post #737699: I haven't watched the series, but where are those "devices"?
S1eth said:
post #737699: I haven't watched the series, but where are those "devices"?
Not in that image. *removes*
When I looked at the image I couldn't really tell myself. The triangle on her hand should be Bardiche, but looking over some other images of Fate she is sometimes depicted with that triangle there while having Bardiche in her hands. Certainly didn't see Raising Heart in there though.
post #126555 displays the various devices.
NWF_Renim said:
post #126555 displays the various devices.
NWF_Renim said:
Visually they're likely to not be distinguishable from a named non-character weapon.
Oh, now what you said makes sense...
which reminds me, there is only 1 post of Shakugan_no_Shana tagged Alastor. The spirit in her pendant also deserves a tag: Alastor_(Shakugan_no_Shana) (with qualifier, because this)
NWF_Renim said:
It's because to get that search to work (the way you want it) is no different than breaking everything else in a car just to get the radio to work, it's unnecessary and worthless.
What we are breaking by turning a green tag to a blue tag? The hearts of bardiche and raising_heart and Nanoha series fans, obviously. "It speaks in the anime! Why is it blue?? It might not look like a character, but isn't the fact it's a character enough??"
I suggest we start tagging all Remi and Flandre with vampire, if fact is the way things are supposed to work around here on this site.
Log said:
We have attempted to explain it to you on no less than 4 occasions I don't think anyone is going to get the point through to you, if you don't like the way we do things around here there are plenty of other boorus you can use.
Don't avoid answering my question, what you're saying is basically "it's fine in Nanoha case but it's not in Touhou".
I don't and won't force anyone to do things the way I propose, and have said in earlier post in this very thread
That said, depend on how everyone see fit.
I'm just pointing out the problem - a real problem of someone who is browsing the site and helping in tagging - encountered. If you don't want to solve it, fine, just say so. I'm not loosing any sleep over that. But explaining lengthy paragraphs just to make things look logical when it's not is what prolonged this discussion.
My point of view is always in the ease of browsing through the site, but it's hard to convince many people to change the ways thing are because it has become the habit. I understand that, but still would like to voice out my thinking. I won't apologize for doing this.
I still see no problem with the character tags.
1. You want to search for 2 humanoid females, you search for 2girls.
2. You want to search for 2 characters, you search for chartags:2.
both require a 1/2 or 1/6 possible tags.
1. works with copyrighted females and unnamed original females.
2. works with all characters (human or not)
Instead of improving usability, changing them (non-humanoid characters such as staffs) to general will make search #2 show wrong results. The query (1 and 2) results overlap even more, reducing the usefulness of both. I think we can agree with this, that a high percentage of overlapping results of to different single tag (non-character, non-copyright) searches is bad. (example: bunny_suit and bunny_girl).
The logic for character tags is simple:
if tag X is a canonical character? ->chartag
else have we made an exception for this tag? ->chartag
else ->gentag
The logic for vampire (all gentags) is just as simple:
if image fits the definition we decided on? ->add tag
This doesn't have anything to do with Touhou or Nanoha.
If there is a problem, it doesn't lie within sentient devices being characters.
EDIT: Have we ever had a discussion about why airplanes are characters? post #783500
Updated
I think we need a fairly clearcut policy on what is a character. The early question of how does this even involve mecha, is simply because this is a matter not limited to these devices in this series. This is a larger issue, and what decisions are made here will influence the results of what happens with similar concepts. Making a decision on a matter like this in a vacuum would result in a conclusion that lacks consideration of the broader image.
The biggest matter at hand is really what constitutes a character. Given that much of what would determine a character as a character of a series is based on knowledge from the series to begin with, it is rather inconsistent to draw a dividing line between humanoid (animal, etc) characters from object characters and say one is based on foreknowledge while the other is based on visuals.
As far as chartags searches are concerned, I do believe we should take a closer look at what we actually gain from that search type. If we look closer at what the chartags search does, what we see is that it is nothing more than bringing up images depicting a given number of represented named characters, but it does not bring up a given number of characters present (actually being there, and not being a picture in a picture or a character doll, etc). What exactly does this really tell us about an image? In an image like post #810350 its telling me that 4 characters are represented, but nothing else. A tag like 4boys gives me more information about the image than the results of a chartags:4 search.
To make the chartags search meaningful, you have to restrict other tags or else the results give us little meaning. You'd need to place restrictions on every single thing like Sailor Moon with Tsukino Usagi, instances of named mecha (with the exception of robots?), tags like Mister Bushido, Shikinami Asuka Langley, named genderswaps, modified versions of character, etc. This is ignoring the fact that we can't put restrictions on things like character dolls or images within images. So even if we did restrict all those other types of tags, you're still going to end up with things that are unavoidable and making that type search unreliable and fairly meaningless in the results it brings up.
If the results are always going to be fairly meaningless, why enforce restrictions then to try and improve something that will remain meaningless while having actually restricted and reduced the value and information of other tags in the process? It would be much better to give up efforts of trying to "fix" things to work better with chartags searches and revert back many of the tags due making them more "chartags" friendly back to character tags.
NWF_Renim said:
I think we need a fairly clearcut policy on what is a character.
This would be lovely to have.
But forget about appearances, just does what S1eth say: going with fact. If canon indicates it's a character, it's a character - doing so require less brain (eye?) power. Although there would be a lot of cases where it's difficult to decide and need discussion.
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My view on the problem:
Fault positives like post #810350 (characters as in photo, posters, figures, dolls) are not the majority and thus will not pollute your search too much. If you're searching for hatsune_miku kagamine_rin kagamine_len megurine_luka chartags:4, how many fault positives pop up? Does that annoy you? For me the answer is no.
However, accessories will be present with their owner a lot. I don't mind Bardiche and Raising Heart being there if I'm searching for fate_testarossa takamachi_nanoha chartags:2, it's not polluting at all. But I'll just shut up and do 3 more searches: (fate + nanoha + bardiche + chartags:3), (fate + nanoha + raising_heart + chartags:3), (fate + nanoha + bardiche + raising_heart + chartags:4). And when some other similar cases coming along, when there are not 2, but 5 or more items present, I'll find my own way.
I love the 2girls tag, but again, unlike character names it's not always naturally there. If just only 1 specific image I need to find back doesn't have that, it's for naught. That is why counting is the most reliable pathway.
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However, I won't purge on the matter of character variant. ex-keine IS kamishirasawa_keine. Similarly magical girls like IS their base character, genderswap version IS their base character. It doesn't gain us anything to turn those into chartags.
I don't have the will to go through all those variants (like kyonko) to propose a change, but I hope I'm not the only one seeing the non-standarization that is going on for characters. I'm glad this didn't happen with the notion of uniformly using Japanese names for all copyright.
Exceptional cases where it is not good to use the base characters to tag (e.g to avoid spoilers) will occur. It's life, of course there are irregularities. But the reasoning "it doesn't f***ing work in ALL cases, let's trash it out altogether" doesn't sit well with me. Kinda like not all human are good, let's destroy the world.
If all advantages you see with character-type tag is because it's easy to recognize on sight when looking at the tag column, then you're wasting a system. We could all very well add _(character) into those tags and not worry about developing a systematic type at all.
Updated
S1eth said:
Have we ever had a discussion about why airplanes are characters? post #783500
I don't know, but as long as everyone is happy with seeing their tags green, I'm happy too. Along with guns or swords or what not in the future.