General Tag Discussion

Some people are creating character tags. Should these be removed and converted to just “oc:name” tags, if they already aren’t? I don’t see what those tags do that OC name tags don’t.

@JP  
Those aren’t ocs. They’re canon characters with common words for names that could easily get mistaken for the object, or phenomenon for which they are named. Adding (character) to the end of their name is to help disambiguate them.
 
If you think you’re seeing someone do that in for their oc, you’re going to need to be more specific. A quick glance through those and I couldn’t find anything too out of the ordinary.

@Background Pony #C34B  
The only example I can give right now is >>2234369. That OC had both oc: tag and a character: tags, so I removed the character tag and then posted the question, because I wasn’t sure what the tag’s purpose was. I assumed them to be like those weird “owner” tags.

@JP
 
Hmm. Looks like asterisks don’t parse when trying to link to a tag search. Odd.
 
Anyway. I looked up “character:*” tags instead of the search for “character:” that the link’s syntax ended up leading to – I can’t link directly because, again, the site doesn’t seem to be aware that the asterisk is supposed to be part of the link – and I think I see what you mean. There don’t seem to be many of these tags, but they should probably be replaced with the usual “oc:*” ones because they seem to mean the same thing.

@Frustration in Excelsis  
Go to your settings and turn on the new experimental Textile parser (it’s on the Local tab), then you can link to tag searches.

@JP  
Ah, that’d do it.
 
In any case, I’ll have a look at the tags sometimes tomorrow unless someone beats to it.

@Background Pony #8B47  

The anthro with ponies tag is just as the tag says. Anthros with ponies. Not sure if there was some initial alternative reason.  
The “anthropomorphic pony” you mention, however, is actually supposed to be tagged semi-anthro.

@JP  
The parser only processes things on view. It will look fine for you, but other people… not so much.

@Damaged  
Wait, so the link I posted does not actually work for anyone except me?

@JP  
It will work for anyone who has the experimental parser on.

@Damaged  
Oh… right.
 
Here’s the raw URL, copy-paste and open it yourself: https://derpibooru.org/tags?tq=character%3A*

@JP  
The problem is that : is a special token that makes it treat the thing to the left as a column in the table.
 
You need to search for https://derpibooru.org/tags?tq=%22character%3A*%22

@Damaged  
In times like this, I wish Derpi would optionally support BBCode.
 
But we’re getting slightly off-topic here. Let’s talk about character tags. Are they actually useful or not?

@JP  
Markdown is more preferred to bbcode.

@Damaged  
@JP  
Another way to search for those would be namespace:character, since finding all character: tags is exactly what we want here.
 
To answer the question: I’d say character: tags are useless. All of these are either mistagged oc: tags or should be regular tags, maybe with (character) or (<insert series here>) behind them if there’s any ambiguity.

How long have alternate names (e.g. “Stormwalker” for Cloudchaser) been aliases rather than implications?

@Brokedownandmadeone  
@Background Pony #8B47  
Alright. So the correct action would be to request aliases to “pony” and “anthro” for it, right?

@Background Pony #FDC0  
No. There are multiple “form” tags that work a little like species, but are more related to drawing style:
 
Pony - MLP styled, quadrupedal ponies  
Semi-Anthro - Ponies, but with a bipedal stance. Usually exemplified by more human-like shoulders, but have no other human-like features than most ponies.  
Anthro - Human structural features, but covered in fur/scales/whathaveyou.  
Human - Human structural features, but with skin. Can have wings and horns (they have their own specialized tags to be added)  
Equestria Girls - Covers both characters drawn in the Equestria Girls style, as well as scenes from the Equestria Girls franchise. *
 
 
*: this is not a good hill to die on, don’t get in arguments about it >.>

@Damaged  
Don’t forget “quadrupedal”, the bodyshape tag for all non-pony quadrupeds such as zebras, yaks, etc; created because staff refused to allow “pony” to be used for those.  
Three times. The fourth resulted in getting some sense into said staff so they stopped dog-on-haying both tags and wiping “quadruped(al)”.

@Damaged  
I’m still annoyed that EqG Humans don’t get tagged as human.

@TexasUberAlles  
It’s clearly written on both human and Equestria Girls tags that EQG characters should not be tagged human.

@Panko Pai  
Yes, and that annoys me.

@Panko Pai  
Why even? Adagio Dazzle clearly states about “humans” in Sunset’s Backstage Pass”.

@Markiz93  
Human as a tag has been around for much longer and is distinctly used for human colored and shaped humans.  
Generally I’d assume someone filtering human would also filter EQG if they wanted it gone too, but may just not want humans.  
Same applies to searching.

@Barhandar  
I never knew we even had a quadrupedal tag; thanks!