Tag alias - snowing -> snow

snowing -> snow

Ideally wouldn't we want them separated? Snowing for when snow is actually falling and snow for when it's simply on the ground. Or have snowing implicate snow, so there is a tag for actual snowing but both still can be found with the snow tag.

oh I didn't notice they were being used as such, since even images with snow fall were tagged as just snow in general.

Well, presently snowing has no wiki and snow is defined as including both types. If we are to separate falling snow from that on the ground (with or without implication) there would be quite a large amount of posts presently in snow that would require tagging with snowing.

I'm for separating them along NWF's lines and defining as such.

I think we should implicate snowing -> snow.
Though falling snow and snow on the ground are different,
falling snow is also snow.

That is true that falling snow is still snow, but I think it depends on what sort of purpose people are looking for with the snow tag.

Right now with the snow as a specific concept, it is currently possible to find 2 general types of images and 2 specific types of images. The two general types are of course: any image with snow on the ground (snow) and any image with falling snow (snowing). Specifically though you can also find: falling snow and snow on the ground (snowing snow) and falling snow without snow on the ground (snowing -snow).

Making the snow tag an umbrella tag, with current tags, would reduce or destroy the ability of some of these searches. The only search unaffected would be doing a snowing search to find any type of image with falling snow. Performing a search for any image with snow on the ground though would result in either losing all images of snow snowing by narrowing it down with a snow -snowing search or you'd end up with the noise of having all the images of falling snow without snow on the ground in a snow search. Additionally that also removes the ability to search for images of falling snow without snow on the ground, as you'd get no results with a snowing -snow search.

If the snow tag was also made an umbrella tag for any type of snow, then that would also mean that tags like snowball or snowman, as they too are snow, should be implicated to the snow tag. The snow tag under such a broadening of definition could potentially lose usability as a tag, as all it tells you is snow is somewhere in the image, but tells you very little about what kind of snow you'll be finding. Under such conditions specific snow tags would be necessary to find a specific type of snow without wading or perform a lot of negative searches and the primary purpose of the snow tag ends up being that it has a wiki to navigate to specific snow tags to assist in searching.

If the snow tag did become this kind of broad catchall for snow, I would then have questions about it. One, what kind of person would then be using this tag and not the specific types of snow tags under it? Two, given that images under snow can be broken down in to fairly specific differentiable depictions (such as snowballs, snowmen, falling snow, ground snow), what value does an umbrella tag have when it's only real asset is it's wiki links that could instead be included under each individual item without needing an umbrella tag? In other words, if it's only value becomes having a list of links under its wiki to find what you're looking for, what is gained that couldn't be gained instead by just including those links under each individual specific tag without a umbrella tag?

OTOH, if you searched for snow and wanted to see snowing images included, it's not necessarily obvious that you should use two different queries. I'm undecided whether flexibility or intuitiveness is better here.

I had some new thoughts so I had edited in more to my argument, but given that I was slow at doing it you at the last minute got a post in.

I'd like an implication of snowing -> snow specifically, because when one tries to search for snow, he/she wouldn't expected us to have 2 totally separate tags for it.

Snowman and the likes shouldn't have this implication, because they would be the specific query if someone wants to search for them. i.e. you wouldn't type snow when you want to look for posts with a snowman in them.

What if you wanted any images depicting ground snow or images of both falling snow and ground snow? Make a whole new ground snow tag? Defeats the point of combining them.

snow -snowing

And the current state of most images only have snow without snowing demonstrate how normally people would see and use the snow tag.

urg... double post

I guess you didn't bother to read my post then, because snow -snowing then completely nullifies any image of ground snow + falling snow.

If you're not going to have snow be all snow, and narrowly define it as falling snow and ground snow, then you've just argued away a logical reason to combine them, because all you'd be doing is making the need for a new tag to separate them and thus defeats the point of combining them to begin with.

If it's a complaint about how people have been using them, then I'm perfectly willing go through and clean them up.

I did read your post.

And don't agree the advantage of separating those tag just for a search not many people would perform over the tagging effort.

Your thinking is clear and all, but it usually lacks the view point of an actual tagger and uploader. We have to create a system that is easiest for everyone to tag and organize posts together, not a system where everything is based on theory and then have a military of tag gardener to tag things they agree, and not when they disagree.

Nothing is actually gained by combining the two if all the snow tag is going to be is a combination of ground snow and falling snow. By combining them all you gain is a position where someone is going to create a ground snow tag, which completely defeats any point in combining them because now you have a tag that is both and you have two subtags tags all to do the same thing that keeping them separate would accomplish.

The argument on ease of tagging holds no weight, as it comes off as laziness then. By creating a 3 tag system you've just increased the amount of work necessary to tag the images instead of keeping it as a 2 tag system. You just end up with people who are tagging images snow, not bothering to tag it now as either snowing or ground snow. In short, you've created a tag because people are too lazy to bother reading what the definition of the tag is, while increasing the work of "actual taggers."

How come tagging snow in a post that has snow is laziness?

Anyway I had presented my point of view, it's up to final decision.

Because if you implicate snowing into snow, you're just going to have to have another subtag ground_snow to replace what the current snow tag is. The upper umbrella tag then becomes nothing more than a dumping ground tag for people who don't want to bother to further subdivide what type of snow is depicted. So unless the uploader or tagger then tags the image with either ground_snow or snowing, they've then just creating more work for someone else then to have to go and tag the image either snowing or ground_snow.

We've already acknowledged that the appearances in the images are different, which is why they were left separate, and why a ground_snow tag would have to be made if you implicate them.

Lets look at it like this. You don't want snow to be used for all types of snow, which would by like not wanting water to include all types of water (like tears). But you want snow to be a combination of ground_snow and falling_snow, because they're both snow. Now what if there were only two major types of images with water, lakes and rain and I proposed that they should be put under the umbrella tag water, that's fine right? Now what if people were only tagging water for images of lakes or images of rain? Wouldn't you have a problem with that? The effects may be composed of the same substance, but that doesn't always mean they should be put together and only tagged just the umbrella, because now someone else is going to have to come along and tag them with the subtags.

I guess we can agree to disagree, as I doubt we'll ever see eye to eye.

A better example is moon.
Moon is either full_moon or crescent_moon. Nobody should use the moon tag by itself when it is one of the specializations, but they do anyway. -> moon -full_moon -crescent_moon 289 pages.

Looking over the snow tagged images, I'm given the impression that after we made the decisions to keep snowing and snow separate, the snow tag was never cleaned up (I'll blame myself, I should have done it as soon as the definitions were recognized).

I'll hold off from attempting to clean up the tag until a decision is reached though, since I don't want to have to go around changing tags only to find out that we'll have to make a like ground_snow or snow_accumulation (or whatever name we'd like) tag instead.