Tag rename: hisashi_(nekoman) - > hisasi

I can see that I'd probably have an easier time climbing Everest in a snowstorm than convincing you to change this tag, so I'll just make one final appeal.

suemitsu dicca is another prominent artist whose official romanization differs from Danbooru's rule set. Yet his name is romanized as the artist writes it. The letter "C" in dicca, like the "si" sound in Hisasi, does not exist in Japanese. I can only conclude that its spelled this way because of how the artist intended it to be spelled and because the majority of people looking for the artist's work on your site will recognize that name.

I get that romanization for artists who have no officially romanized name is necessary. Heck, I've done it myself with character names quite often. But to pigeonhole official romanizations into your own system for the sake of consistency makes no sense to me, especially when the system itself is inconsistent. One size does not fit all.

Dude, it just doesn't matter this much.

The Horo vs Holo debate was similarly overblown. The most important thing is that the character is unambiguously tagged so that characters don't pollute each other's tags. After that, the debate of consistent policy vs author loyalty is secondary, and even then the tag can be aliased to allow you to use the tag in searches and tagging however you want.

Hisasi is the name used by the author in his commercially published books & magazines so I think it's more legit. It's good that it does not even require any translation or romanization to confuse with the commonly used hisashi. And there is no other author using this name so far.

True, it's minor anyway. But if other boards are using Hisasi more, then it may be good to change it to eliminate the confusion. Then associate the less commonly used aliases to this.

dolphinjet said:
Hisasi is the name used by the author in his commercially published books & magazines so I think it's more legit. It's good that it does not even require any translation or romanization to confuse with the commonly used hisashi. And there is no other author using this name so far.

True, it's minor anyway. But if other boards are using Hisasi more, then it may be good to change it to eliminate the confusion. Then associate the less commonly used aliases to this.

My points exactly dolphinjet. Other image boards label him as either hisashi_(nekoman) alone (which they most likely derived from Danbooru) or hisashi_(nekoman), hisashi, and hisasi, meaning that people visiting those other boards, which do not have aliases, will miss out on swaths of Hisasi's work.

Tagging them all as 'hisasi' is unambiguous. Most people's first exposure to Hisasi's work is through his doujins, which most sites I've visited, g.e-hentai, Doujin-Moe, Fakku, (and even translation sites like Littlewhitebutterflies) have labeled his work under 'Hisasi'.

It's been pointed out to me multiple times that consistency in romanization on this site is a paramount concern, but what about consistency with the rest of the internet?

goldoa said:
Other image boards label him as either hisashi_(nekoman) alone (which they most likely derived from Danbooru) or hisashi_(nekoman), hisashi, and hisasi, meaning that people visiting those other boards, which do not have aliases, will miss out on swaths of Hisasi's work.

Danbooru is not responsible for other imageboards tagging policy. Nobody is forcing them to copy and use danbooru tags. If you're so worried about people missing out this artist works on some other boards, perhaps you should go there first and try to correct their problem.

goldoa said:
but what about consistency with the rest of the internet?

imho, this is simply impractical, if not downright impossible. albert will not police the world because the dumps taken from danbooru were not consistent in his present database. other doorus are run independently by other competent people. 'consistency' aka an autocratic/centralistic model will not work in the internet.

anyways, if you are so concerned locating posts that might be missed, there are tools (or other ways) available. one is http://iqdb.org . try uploading the file there you found here. check the similar results in other sites. then check their tag lists. look for the red tag or artist tag they're using locally each. compare posts which you might have missed before. it's tedious work but nothing can stop a zealous fan scavenging the internet for his own fix.

You still haven't raised a point that aliasing doesn't deal with, either perfectly or well enough to make hisashi vs hasasi an unimportant issue.

Wiki pages automatically display what tags are aliased to/from that tag, which covers other people trying to find what they know a danbooru artist by, and tags copied over from other 'boorus.

@richie: Intentionally or not, Danbooru's policies affect other boards. My hope is that a change here will catalyze change elsewhere.

goldoa said:
For us to treat a phonetic pronunciation as superior over the actual label by which the overwhelming majority of people recognize it is endlessly puzzling to me. It'd be like tagging one_piece as 'wan_pisu', or bleach as 'burichi'.

suemitsu dicca is another prominent artist whose official romanization differs from Danbooru's rule set. Yet his name is romanized as the artist writes it. The letter "C" in dicca, like the "si" sound in Hisasi, does not exist in Japanese. I can only conclude that its spelled this way because of how the artist intended it to be spelled and because the majority of people looking for the artist's work on your site will recognize that name.

Tagging them all as 'hisasi' is unambiguous. Most people's first exposure to Hisasi's work is through his doujins, which most sites I've visited, g.e-hentai, Doujin-Moe, Fakku, (and even translation sites like Littlewhitebutterflies) have labeled his work under 'Hisasi'.

And can someone address these for me? I know I probably seem like a dog with a bone here, but I'm really just trying to understand the policies here so I don't go on another fruitless crusade when another of your romanizations I disagree with spreads to a board I frequent more often.

goldoa said:
And can someone address these for me? I know I probably seem like a dog with a bone here, but I'm really just trying to understand the policies here so I don't go on another fruitless crusade when another of your romanizations I disagree with spreads to a board I frequent more often.

This has already been explained to you pretty extensively. Posting about it even more isn't going to make you right or make the tag change.

Hinacle said:
This has already been explained to you pretty extensively. Posting about it even more isn't going to make you right or make the tag change.

I feel like the specific points I brought up in the quote I put in my last post had been glossed over, or ignored. And right is relative, especially on the internet.

goldoa said:
Intentionally or not, Danbooru's policies affect other boards. My hope is that a change here will catalyze change elsewhere.

Danbooru is only really responsible for the management and operations of Danbooru, we're not responsible for the management and operations of other sites. We already have established a large and ever growing system of aliases and wikis to help direct users familiar with external naming schemes to search for content on and import content to Danbooru. This is our responsibility as it affects the usage of our site. It is up to the operators and users of other sites to establish systems that maintain the consistency of their own naming schemes for their own websites. If they're importing content from Danbooru to their site, it is their responsibility to make sure that differences between our tags and their tags are resolved. An example is how we use Ryuu_(street_fighter) instead of Ryu, but the Ryu wiki guides users to the appropriate tag. Sankaku Channel imports content from Danbooru, because we have a difference in naming for the character they have a Ryuu_(street_fighter) -> Ryu alias to convert the danbooru tag to their own appropriate tag. They take responsibility in maintaining their own naming consistency.

goldoa said:
For us to treat a phonetic pronunciation as superior over the actual label by which the overwhelming majority of people recognize it is endlessly puzzling to me. It'd be like tagging one_piece as 'wan_pisu', or bleach as 'burichi'.

Just to point out, your examples aren't very good from my understanding. Both One Piece and Bleach have their titles in Katakana of which my understanding of the matter is that those are used when spelling out foreign words. Our system is applied to Japanese names and words, not non-Japanese names and words that are in Japanese. Maybe you might have better luck making that argument using Tamako_Market, since it is たまこまーけっと instead of たまこマーケット? *shrug*

goldoa said:
suemitsu dicca is another prominent artist whose official romanization differs from Danbooru's rule set. Yet his name is romanized as the artist writes it. The letter "C" in dicca, like the "si" sound in Hisasi, does not exist in Japanese. I can only conclude that its spelled this way because of how the artist intended it to be spelled and because the majority of people looking for the artist's work on your site will recognize that name.

There might be a reason for this (I'm currently ignorant of it if there is), but then again this could certainly just be more of the issue that we're not "all seeing" and it takes someone to bring up something like that so that we can be aware of it. Perhaps now that you've brought up this example, it'll end up being aliased. There are quite a lot of names out there and there are only so many people keeping an eye out for things like that.

goldoa said:
Tagging them all as 'hisasi' is unambiguous. Most people's first exposure to Hisasi's work is through his doujins, which most sites I've visited, g.e-hentai, Doujin-Moe, Fakku, (and even translation sites like Littlewhitebutterflies) have labeled his work under 'Hisasi'.

As I stated at the start, we already have an ever growing system of aliases and wikis to help guide users familiar with external naming conventions to find the appropriate internal naming convention tags on Danbooru. We're taking responsibility in allowing users to make this transition when searching for content and uploading content to Danbooru. It doesn't matter what the outside naming is, so long as we have taken the appropriate steps (alias, wiki, etc) to guide users to the right place on the site, which we're already doing. Thus we do not need to follow the others, as we already make accommodations for those not familiar with our naming convention to find what they're looking for.

I think that answers your issues, which I believe were already mostly answered to begin with, and so now I believe you're done, yes? The trek up Mt. Everest may take up to several weeks, should make sure to pack up plenty of rations and air tanks. No need to send us a postcard of your trek.

If I made any mistakes, others please feel free to correct me. I feel like I've walked out into a minefield here (or perhaps I'm a duck out of water), so I don't really feel like wanting to come back into this debate.

@NWF:
Size 2 pants for everyone, got it.

I'll be sure to spell my sherpa's name how I want to spell it when I write his check. It's not like he won't be able to get it cashed under the wrong name! Wait... -_-

IMO if the artist always writes their name in roman letters or if they only provide kana version of their name as a pronunciation guide, then the roman letters should be considered the "original name" and used as the tag.

jjj14 said:
IMO if the artist always writes their name in roman letters or if they only provide kana version of their name as a pronunciation guide, then the roman letters should be considered the "original name" and used as the tag.

Obviously if they don't write their name in Japanese at any point we have no choice but to use their romanization. That's how it is for several tags already. Selectively ignoring our romanization rules when they do provide kana just defeats the purpose though.

if the artist wrote a pronunciation guide with katakana as Hisasi (ヒサスィ), would that make sense or at least acceptable as a valid argument? i'm unaware if this transcription is in widespread use though.

ghostrigger said:
if the artist wrote a pronunciation guide with katakana as Hisasi (ヒサスィ), would that make sense or at least acceptable as a valid argument?

Yes, in that case correct romanization would be Hisasi indeed. With ひさすぃ written in hiragana likewise.

NWF_Renim said:

Danbooru is only really responsible for the management and operations of Danbooru, we're not responsible for the management and operations of other sites. We already have established a large and ever growing system of aliases and wikis to help direct users familiar with external naming schemes to search for content on and import content to Danbooru. This is our responsibility as it affects the usage of our site. It is up to the operators and users of other sites to establish systems that maintain the consistency of their own naming schemes for their own websites. If they're importing content from Danbooru to their site, it is their responsibility to make sure that differences between our tags and their tags are resolved. An example is how we use Ryuu_(street_fighter) instead of Ryu, but the Ryu wiki guides users to the appropriate tag. Sankaku Channel imports content from Danbooru, because we have a difference in naming for the character they have a Ryuu_(street_fighter) -> Ryu alias to convert the danbooru tag to their own appropriate tag. They take responsibility in maintaining their own naming consistency. [...]

2 years on and I still hate this fucking tag.
Mainly because it goes against 25 years of reality.

Except for the act that リュウ (as it is spelled in your link) is name equivalent to an established Japanese word meaning "dragon", which is pronounced with a long "u" sound and thus properly gets transliterated with a long "u", hence "Ryuu". The extra "u" is spelled directly in the katakana, and has been for the same 25 years.

I can just see some of you rolling your eyes that I'm posting about this topic again.

But think how you would feel if one of your favorite artists or characters or bands spelled their name one way and someone insisted on spelling it in a way other than the way they intended and are overwhelmingly recognized by.

Take the Youtube sensation PSY for instance. I'm relatively sure that Korean has no silent "p". Should it then be translated as "sai", because that's how it's pronounced? And "psy", while a suffix in English, is not a proper word in and of itself.

Or how about the character Dracule Mihawk from One Piece? Neither his family name or first name exist in Japanese or English and were completely made up by Eiichiro Oda, despite having sounds in common with English words (much like how Hisasi is spelled similar to the Japanese word "hisashi"). Yet you have it spelled here on Danbooru, not as Jurakyuuru Mihooku, but as Dracule Mihawk, despite the Japanese pronunciation being completely different than the way the author has romanized it. Probably because people wouldn't know who the hell Jurakyuuru Mihooku is and it would be misrepresentating the character.

Finally, while yes, it's been made perfectly clear to me that "Danbooru stands alone" and that popular opinion doesn't matter, I invite you to Google both "hisasi" and "hisashi nekoman".

"Hisashi nekoman" yields 2,460 results.

"Hisasi" meanwhile yields 739,000 results.

That's just over 300 times more results.

So, is continuing to label this artist using your romanization system which is, as I've pointed out, inconsistent and already has precedent for exceptions, more important than identifying Hisasi by the name he signs all his work by and the name by which the vast majority of people know him by?

Bumping the thread again. I know, it probably seems like I'm beating a dead horse here and you're probably right. But what can I say: the principle of it strikes a nerve with me.

Particularly given the inconsistencies I've already pointed out in my last post. And since today I noticed an artist called "hevn", whose name remains unaltered from the artist's pixiv, I was reminded of those inconsistencies. "Hevn", despite its similarities in both spelling and pronunciation to the word "heaven", is either a nonsense word or an acronym. The artist did not spell it "heaven." If they wanted to be known as heaven, they would have typed the two extra letters. They made a choice to spell their name a certain way, and you have, rightfully so, respected that choice. To do otherwise would be confusing and untrue to the artist's intent.

Artists choose their monikers' spellings deliberately. Def Leppard is not "Deaf Leopard." PSY is not "sai." And the Beatles were not "The Beetles." So what I'm saying is, the word "hisasi", whether it's a deliberately stylized word, or simply a nonsensical alteration of an existing word (hisashi), does not need romanizing. Like the musicians I've just listed, the name was chosen by the artist and even if it is pronounced the same as another "proper" word, the choice needs to be respected.

"Hey man! Did you see the new SAI music video?"
"The...Swedish visual rock band? Didn't know that was your kind of thing man..."
"No, SAI! That Chinese dude who did Gundam Style."
"..."