Danbooru

Emoticon tags discussion & cleanup

Posted under Tags

BrokenEagle98 said:

What about an alias from >: to v-shaped_eyebrows? V-shaped eyebrows is a bit of a mouthful, and it isn't like we don't have shorthand aliases for other tags. Such an alias would also clue people into the new tag use through autocomplete.

Do you mean an alias for all >:* tags, or just for ">:"? If the first, I think that'd be pretty useful, though I didn't suggest this at first because I didn't want to slow down this thread.

BrokenEagle98 said:

What about an alias from >: to v-shaped_eyebrows? V-shaped eyebrows is a bit of a mouthful, and it isn't like we don't have shorthand aliases for other tags. Such an alias would also clue people into the new tag use through autocomplete.

I support this, there are probably people out there that still use the old tags by typing instead of auto-complete since they are quick to do.

nonamethanks said:

Do you mean an alias for all >:* tags, or just for ">:"? If the first, I think that'd be pretty useful, though I didn't suggest this at first because I didn't want to slow down this thread.

Unbreakable said:

I support this, there are probably people out there that still use the old tags by typing instead of auto-complete since they are quick to do.

TBH I was thinking the former for v-shaped eyebrows, and then aliasing their full counterparts to their uneyebrowed counterparts.

alias >: -> v-shaped_eyebrows
alias >:3 -> :3
alias >:c -> :c
alias >:p -> :p
alias >:d -> :d
alias >:q -> :q
alias >:t -> :t
alias >:| -> :|
alias >:< -> :<

The above list isn't all inclusive, but it gives the general idea.

Would it be a good idea to open up the discussion to include how to use other face and emoticon tags? The tag group:face tags page would need to be cleaned up and reformatted anyway after these most recent changes, and it might be a good idea to decide on good example posts for each of the tags. (Besides, half of the time these tags don't even show up properly when trying to format them...)

\ / - Mainly used for characters with slanted closed eyes (think fox characters) but I believe on posts such as post #2774813 it is referring to the hand gestures.

<|>_<|> and <o>_<o> - Tend to cross over quite a bit and could possibly be too obscure to warrant two separate tags.

+_- - Used for characters with symbol-shaped_pupils (one plus shape, one minus shape) and both eyes open such as post #1407098, one_eye_closed + +_+ (or maybe even star_in_eye) such as post #2629674, and one_eye_closed + symbol-shaped_pupils (plus, in this case) as in post #2464525.

|w| - Seems to be used for at least three uses: the facial expression as in the tag name, something similar to the hand gesture \m/ in post #2059722, and the facial expression [[<|> <|>]] in post #2360843.

>3< - Seems to be used both for the mouth in the shape of "3" (chibi kissy face) or in the shape of "ω" as in the X3 tag.

>o< - Instead of an "o" shape, the mouth is often in the shape of the mouth as in the :D tag. Also, should the formatting of the tag be changed to "XO" to match similar tags (X3, XD)?

|3, |D and |o - All tags for faces with closed eyes (even though it doesn't seem apparent at first from the tag names). Should these be changed to something like :3 + eyes closed? Besides being underpopulated and seemingly unheard of they are difficult to search for, plus just look awkward.

Possibly pointless/useless tags:
8 - Just wide-eyed or expressionless with :|?
<_> - A variation of cross eyed?
x_< - Possibly a typo of > <.
>q< - Possibly a typo of >w< (so X3).
:} - Just :3 + smile?
:{ - Just :3 + frown?

忍猫 said:

...

"|w| - Seems to be used for at least three uses: the facial expression as in the tag name, something similar to the hand gesture \m/ in post #2059722, and the facial expression [[<|> <|>]] in post #2360843."

The second of those is obviously a mistagging.

">3< - Seems to be used both for the mouth in the shape of "3" (chibi kissy face) or in the shape of "ω" as in the X3 tag."

I assume the first one is intentional (as with o3o, (-3-) and ^3^) and the cases of the second are mistags.

">o< - Instead of an "o" shape, the mouth is often in the shape of the mouth as in the :D tag. Also, should the formatting of the tag be changed to "XO" to match similar tags (X3, XD)?"

xo is already a tag for this exact purpose.

"x_< - Possibly a typo of > <."

No - a typo of x<

">q< - Possibly a typo of >w< (so X3)."
>q< would theoretically be a viable tag (xq is an artist tag), but in this case looks like a typo, yes.

":} - Just :3 + smile?
:{ - Just :3 + frown?"

They aren't :3.
:} is mostly used for a specific mouth shape which is similar to :3 but with the mouth pointing down in the middle rather than up.
All bar one of the uses for :{ would be more fitting as wavy mouth, to the point where I wonder why :{ was even considered (there are a few in :} like this as well). The one exception is basically a mouth shaped like that of a dog, which is indeed similar in shape to a :{ but isn't really an expression.

I'll tidy up some of the mistaggings in there tomorrow unless someone else does it before or objects for some reason.

edit: done

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I had no idea this was happening and I do not support this at all. Each of the the v-shaped eyebrow emoticon tags are a single tag, which is important for standard users, and it makes tagging new posts a fucking nightmare because nothing's been aliased or implicated yet. That's one thing the emoticon tags made SUPER convenient. What's more, I'm already running into problems.

I feel like if this is supposed to solve tag bloat and make things less complicated, it's doing the opposite. It's making things more complicated, increasing the number of tags needed to properly search, and it's making tagging posts needlessly annoying.

Let me further explain why this is a bad idea. Say I'm searching for >:3 right? So my only option now is to use the search terms ":3 v-shaped_eyebrows". That finds me every single picture with both v-shaped eybrows and :3 in it. That means if there are multiple characters, one of them is doing a D:< and the other does a :3, that fulfills the search criteria. It also finds every >:D and every >:) and every >:( and every 3:< and every >:P and so on, as long as it also has some form of :3.

"Just exclude those others" you might say. Well first off, not everyone is allowed more than just the two, so free users already can't search for a character and >:3 at the same time, but... what if I don't WANT to exclude those terms, I just want to find >:3 regardless of whether there are other faces in it? That's now impossible.

I rarely come to the forums unless there's a problem with functionality. There was not one here before. There is now. Those tags served a purpose that can't be replaced.

Well it's not like this is an unique case, there are a bunch of other aliases/tag changes that, as a side effect, have made searches less precise but they were deemed better because it cuts down on the number of tags.

Either way, the 2-tag limit is never an excuse to have existing tags stay or new ones being made, it all comes down to if they are useful enough and I doubt this one will change back.

Also, aliases should probably be made to prevent people from using those old tags again.

Unbreakable said:

Well it's not like this is an unique case, there are a bunch of other aliases/tag changes that, as a side effect, have made searches less precise but they were deemed better because it cuts down on the number of tags.

Either way, the 2-tag limit is never an excuse to have existing tags stay or new ones being made, it all comes down to if they are useful enough and I doubt this one will change back.

Also, aliases should probably be made to prevent people from using those old tags again.

The 2-tag limit is far from being the only problem, or even the worst problem. These tags were absolutely useful because what I outlined in my second post, and what's more, the V-shaped_eyebrows tag is so broad that it's nearly useless as a search term because of just how much trash results it brings back. It's like what the eyebrows tag used to be. It got implicated to every type of eyebrows, including Thick Eyebrows and Eyebrows Visible Through Hair, and at some point, it became a garbage tag that never found anything you were looking for. That's the path I see V-shaped Eyebrows taking. It covers so many emoticons with so much overlap that there's not just a decrease in precision, there's a total loss of precision.

Sometimes consolidation doesn't have a better result. What's the point of having a tag if it's useless for searching and replaces tags that served a purpose?

Vid-szhite said:

Let me further explain why this is a bad idea. Say I'm searching for >:3 right? So my only option now is to use the search terms ":3 v-shaped_eyebrows". That finds me every single picture with both v-shaped eybrows and :3 in it. That means if there are multiple characters, one of them is doing a D:< and the other does a :3, that fulfills the search criteria. It also finds every >:D and every >:) and every >:( and every 3:< and every >:P and so on, as long as it also has some form of :3.

You can say the same thing about any combo tag. It's not possible to search for long hair and blonde hair and twintails all on the same person either. That doesn't mean we need a long blonde twintails tag. It would obviously be ridiculous to have a tag for every possible combination of hair length, color, and style. But that's what we had in these tags.

Many combinations never had tags to begin with. There was no single tag for ^_^ plus V-shaped eyebrows plus grin (post #2782851). Nor was there for =_= plus V-shaped eyebrows (post #2795378), or o_o (post #2618056), or +_+ (post #2815535), or other similar emoticons. Not to mention non-emoticon tags: rectangular mouth, solid circle eyes, doyagao, etc. Those are obviously impossible to combine.

Yet we did have a tag for >X3. The tags we had were arbitrary. They weren't driven by need, they were driven by the fact that some things happen to be combinable into a single emoticon and some can't. Searching shouldn't be limited by what things can be written as emoticons.

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