Danbooru

The artist alias system

Posted under General

Why are the different names only linked in the artist database, but not in posts?

I added the alias 'milktank' to the artist Gunner-L because it's the name of his site and the one name people recognize most, as it is featured a lot more prominently on his site than his pen-name.

I've always assumed that artist aliases relate to each other in the same way the tags 'breasts' and 'oppai' do, i.e. you get the exact same results when you search for them (actually, now I just noticed that breasts produces slightly more results, but what counts is that the they overlap). But with artist aliases searching for 'milktank' yields nothing, only a link that forwards you to the same search.

So is this like that for a reason? The only one I can think of is that if direct alias linking were allowed, someone could just link tony_taka with gunner-l and mess it all up.

But this brings up another issue, namely: why are aliases artists entries in themselves? I don't know any artists who produce vastly different works under different aliases, so I don't think this serves that purpose, but I can't think of anything else either. Currently they all seem to be empty entries that link to real artist.

Updated by albert

kristallimeri said:
Why are the different names only linked in the artist database, but not in posts?

Initially, I wanted artists and posts to be somewhat decoupled because I wanted the freedom of making sweeping changes to artists without affecting posts. I'm not so sure about that now, though. I could see the advantages in merging the two.

So is this like that for a reason? The only one I can think of is that if direct alias linking were allowed, someone could just link tony_taka with gunner-l and mess it all up.

There's that. Pretty much anyone can edit the artist db because creating/deleting new aliases doesn't affect posts. Linking artists to tags would pose some dangers without some level of authorization from mods. That adds another level of complexity.

But this brings up another issue, namely: why are aliases artists entries in themselves?

This was just an implementation decision to make searching easier. I can see your point about just making the aliases a text field.

On the subject, something I've been meaning to mention: the first two entries that come up on the list are for 100 yen locker, someone I added myself when the artist database was farily new, but there no longer appears to be any link between the two. Has the link been lost at some point (in which case, does this affect other artists also) or am I just looking in the wrong place?

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