Danbooru

Request for comments: coat and jacket tags (previously "What's the difference between coat and winter_coat?")

Posted under Tags

r0d3n7z

I think OP's concerns are valid -- given that we tag based on things being visually distinct, I'm not convinced that thickness or puffiness are clear, objective visual criteria to distinguish between two tags, as they are visually hard to judge and can be also subjective. Besides clear examples where artists clearly drew in details for padded coats (e.g. post #1922517, post #2227123, post #403822, post #157218) -- these would certainly qualify for a tag -- I'm not sure how you would judge between artwork depicting coats that are "thick enough" vs those that aren't. There are other common visual features of coats in artwork -- e.g. double-breasted, fur_trim -- that would suggest or allude that the coat is thicker, but well, that's why we have tags for those features.

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user 460797

r0d3n7z said:

I think OP's concerns are valid -- given that we tag based on things being visually distinct, I'm not convinced that thickness or puffiness are clear, objective visual criteria to distinguish between two tags, as they are visually hard to judge and can be also subjective. Besides clear examples where artists clearly drew in details for padded coats (e.g. post #1922517, post #2227123, post #403822, post #157218) -- these would certainly qualify for a tag -- I'm not sure how you would judge between artwork depicting coats that are "thick enough" vs those that aren't. There are other common visual features of coats in artwork -- e.g. double-breasted, fur_trim -- that would suggest or allude that the coat is thicker, but well, that's why we have tags for those features.

Yes, I forgot those things (I haven't even heard of double-breasted before.
But in this case it's up the users I think. And if in doubt I'd only tage coat.

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iridescent slime

This discussion fizzled out without any sort of resolution, but I'd like to revisit it due to some recent ridiculousness. Lately there has been a spate of mei (overwatch) art tagged with pretty much every synonym for winter wear the uploader(s) can imagine. At least one of them had a single garment tagged as fur-lined jacket, fur coat, fur trim, parka, and winter coat. If the distinctions between these tags are so trivial that all of them can be applied to the same article of clothing, then I think it's safe to say that some of them should be purged. Thoughts?

Updated

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Super Affection

Maybe we should just get rid of winter coat. The others at least have some formal definition, winter coat has none. I think the purpose would be to distinguish coats worn for warmth from those worn for fashion, rain protection, or whatever else, since the coat tag is pretty broad. However, the winter coat tag in practice is not very useful for this purpose, due to its vagueness and lack of use. There are also coats/jackets designed for warmth that don't really look like "winter coats". So actually, having thought about that, I guess "winter coat" is sort of a feeling thing, not strictly the warmth distinction. But in being that, it's probably too subjective to be an effective tag.

I guess there's also not a clear enough distinction between coat and jacket. This is another place where there isn't really a formal definition as far as I know, and it varies depending on where you live. The only real rule I can think of is that if it goes past your waist, it's a coat, but many waist-length garments could easily be considered either or both. We could make some arbitrary distinction here, but we'd have no real way of making people follow it.

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BrokenEagle98

☆♪ said:

You're right. Didn't notice that. Updated the BUR to do that and also move the winter jacket alias to coat.

Edit: Going to ping @BrokenEagle98 because I remember there's some weirdness with BUR instruction ordering. Will this actually work?

Yeah, the order that lines run in need to be completely independent of each other.

Therefore, the remove implication needs to be done first, otherwise coat might end up implying winter clothes. Also, the remove alias doesn't necessarily need to be done beforehand or at all, since the create alias for winter_coat -> coat will move all aliases that point to winter_coat and have them point to coat instead.

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ion288

☆♪ said:

You're right. Didn't notice that. Updated the BUR to do that and also move the winter jacket alias to coat.

Why do we alias winter jacket to coat? Isnt a jacket distinct from a goat in that it end between the waist and the hips while a coat often goes all the way to the ankles?

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Super Affection

ion288 said:

Why do we alias winter jacket to coat? Isnt a jacket distinct from a goat in that it end between the waist and the hips while a coat often goes all the way to the ankles?

winter jacket is currently aliased to winter coat, so at some point it was decided that those mean the same thing. Personally, "winter jacket" isn't a term I'd ever use, so I'm not really even sure what it's supposed to mean.

Anything that goes significantly past the waist is a coat, but not all coats go past the waist, at least in usage on this site. Whatever the distinction between coat and jacket is, it's not just that (it's probably subjective). We do have a specific long coat tag, though it's underpopulated, which is a shame because I've actually wanted to search for it several times. (There's overcoat too, which has a wiki but is even less populated. They should maybe be combined.)

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ion288

Could someone post an example of a short coat that is not a jacket? I understand from Wikipedia that Americans sometimes use the words coat and jacket interchangeably but for tagging purposes the distinction is quite clear. The wiki even states that a coat is a long garment.

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