Posted under General
Dark skin is rather ambiguous as it goes from slight tan to black skin. Would it be a good idea to split it into several tags? Can we draw a line on what is dark?
A few examples that I dont think is dark skin
post #872265
post #872222
post #860776
post #874213
Updated by SystemXS
Part of the problem is that true dark skin is rare in Japan, and characters with canonically dark skin often get re-interpreted as having tans, or otherwise running the gamut between quite dark and rather pale. Even in canonical contexts.
Nadia for example (who is implied to have some degree of African roots) is portrayed officially as either unambiguously dark skinned (post #242992) or unambiguously light skinned (post #1473). With such characters and such variation, it becomes difficult to determine exactly where to draw the line sometimes.
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Shinjidude said:
Part of the problem is that true dark skin is rare in Japan, and characters with canonically dark skin often get re-interpreted as having tans, or otherwise running the gambit between quite dark and rather pale. Even in canonical contexts.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambit
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamut
I'm not sure where we drawn a line, but I agree that the examples aren't dark_skin. I don't think it has to be straight up "black" but a light chocolate brown, I suppose, is where I'd start. Certainly no lighter than post #875026.
It is definitely a "tag what you see" tag. Nadia does not always have to be dark_skin so I agree that it fits on post #242992 but not post #1473.
jxh2154 said:
It is definitely a "tag what you see" tag. Nadia does not always have to be dark_skin so I agree that it fits on post #242992 but not post #1473.
Agreed. I only mentioned Nadia because canonical depictions usually color people's tagging decisions especially when it comes to borderline cases, and there are a lot of borderline cases when it comes to dark skin.
Shinjidude said:
Agreed. I only mentioned Nadia because canonical depictions usually color people's tagging decisions especially when it comes to borderline cases, and there are a lot of borderline cases when it comes to dark skin.
*bah-dum-tish!*
Seriously now, isn't this better resolved by checking the pictures to find a kind of objective threshold? Then update dark_skin with the threshold posts and let people use them as guidelines.
need just to consult if the post #758722 is "dark" enough to be tagged as dark_skin? i observed the girl in the image is lighter than nadia and yoruichi. but considering she's from continental africa too and an egyptian nonetheless. add to the fact the brown_skin alias. the skintone appears to be darker than the average european/japanese. thanks.
I think I just prefer looking for signs of dark_skin first, then failing that, just tagging it tan. As much as making searching for posts easier additional differentiated tags can make, it could also make tagging that much more complicated and also make finding an image harder if there are further categories it can fall under.
For example, take adjusting_hair. The wiki asks the tagger to avoid using the tag if a more appropriate one can be found, but I generally find another user adding adjusting_hair to, say, the hair_tussle that I tagged, or adding a different form of hair adjusting tag based on what they believed the action to be.
I know I've missed many an image and been forced to iqdb it because someone tagged the hair a different color than I thought it was, et cetera, or sometimes rarely, failed to tag or tagged wrongly. I think while being too simplified can be a problem, further expansion/complication can also bring problems.
True, people might say that's where the tag gardener comes in, but I don't think gardeners can catch every needed post, much less focus as well when going through hundreds of images. I may be in the minority (I wouldn't know) of people that like to tag almost everything themselves, but there are many that either don't or can't, whether they don't know the multitude of tags that should've been there or simply can't find the necessary tag.
Ultimately, though, despite my ten pence, I'll defer to the Mods and Janitors.
CodeKyuubi said:
For example, take adjusting_hair. The wiki asks the tagger to avoid using the tag if a more appropriate one can be found, but I generally find another user adding adjusting_hair to, say, the hair_tussle that I tagged, or adding a different form of hair adjusting tag based on what they believed the action to be.
The thing is that most people just slap adjusting_hair regardless of the action because it's the oldest and biggest tag. Come to think of it, it'd probably be worth to make it an umbrella for the smaller ones.
The same could be done for skin tone too with the new tag being a subset of dark_skin (I'll pass for the name).
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it's hard to think for a new tag name because the brown_skin is already aliased to dark_skin and considering there are many different shades of brown - from creamy light (coffee) brown to golden brown to dark chocolate brown.
we could also use brunet/brunette. but i'm unaware of the accepted degree of being how 'dark' and how often it's use for skintone (outside of hair color).
we could also divide the existing dark_skin into dark_brown_skin and light_brown_skin. but there are 8000+ posts already. so this might be very difficult to do.
I don't see how this new tag will be any different to tan -tanline.
Why couldn't we just move most of the images under tan to whatever this new "light_brown_skin" or whatever tag is ? The definition of tan could be changed to be only used in cases where the skin color is tanned on a character whose skin color is already known, making it like the bespectacled tag and acknowledging a state of the character that is not the norm. I don't think there would be any issues of having both then tan and this new skin color tag on the same character, as it'd be the same as tagging bespectacled and glasses on the same image.
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