Tag Discussion: Solo

The solo tag's wiki is straightforward enough:

Any picture containing only one copyrighted or original character.

So then, that would mean a picture with one character tag would easily get the solo tag added, right? The only time one would deviate from it is in the cases where another character makes an appearance but is extremely minor (such as a tiny cameo, or when a character is almost entirely unseen)

However, I also understand that while not explicitly put into the wiki it can also be useful for images where one character is being highlighted and other "lesser" characters are used as a kind of accessory, such as a picture of Alice Margatroid and her Shanghai dolls.

While that's fine, it should still follow that a picture of an individual, lifeless, non-personified Shanghai doll should still be tagged with solo, correct?

I bring this up due to the fact that I noticed the tag was removed from some of my uploads. After talking about it with the user responsible, ShadowbladeEdge, he suggested a thread to discuss it.

His opinion was that the tag should be reserved for characters like Alice, and not Shanghai dolls or portable monsters. While I can understand that being reasonable for some pictures, I see no reason to exclude it when the "lesser" characters are by themselves, especially considering that might be the character I'm specifically trying to find a solo picture of.

forum #21359

Honestly, this tag should not be removed, but it serves no useful purpose for those two images specifically.

For the most part, it's used to identify posts involving cosplay (which would have two chartags), images of Youmu with myon (also two chartags), etc. In those cases, tagging as solo would be very beneficial. While those pictures here do not explicitly benefit from a "solo" tag, the tags should still apply nevertheless.

Aristocrat said:
For the most part, it's used to identify posts involving cosplay (which would have two chartags), images of Youmu with myon (also two chartags), etc.

I'd say for the most part they're used to identify stuff with no character tags. Either way though, both important.

It's a less literal and more common sense form of chartags:1, and in order for a search using it to be effective and not yield only Youmu and cosplaying it still needs to be used on the average chartags:1 image. That's the nature of tags. They shouldn't be removed from an image that meets its defined criteria just because you think it's really only "worthwhile" on other images.