Danbooru

What should be the order of tag categories in the tag list?

Posted under General

issue #3364 was opened up on GitHub to change the order of the tag categories as they currently stand. It would be nice to get input from the community to see what they think the tag order should be. I know that the thought with the Meta tag category is that they be placed above the Information section since they both have correlation with each other. That's the only one that I'm really opinionated on, and really don't care about the rest.

What do others think the order should be though?

I like the current copyrights-characters-artist-general arrangement. I guess I don't really have a good reason, though, other than it's what we've had for a very long time and that's how I'm used to seeing it. What are the reasons to change it?

I'd prefer copyright-character-artist-meta-general myself. The fewer-used tags in the other categories would be on the top for easier searching and editing, and the many general tags would practically be a list of its own.

fossilnix said:

What are the reasons to change it?

To be honest, I think this topic only exists because the position of Meta in topic #14678, which I thought would be placed before the general tags, as the point of Meta existing was to catch the eyes of more people.

Usually a post has one artist, one copyright, several characters, a few meta tags, plus many general tags. I argue this ordering makes the most sense as it minimizes the amount of scrolling necessary to see everything important.

Putting the artist below copyrights/characters means it shifts around on every post. It makes it hard to spot the artist at a glance. It's especially bad on everyone and crossover posts, where sometimes you have to scroll down several screens just to find the artist tag.

Likewise, meta tags going beneath general tags leads a lot of scrolling when a post has an excessive number of general tags.

Consider these examples to see what I mean:

Here's some CSS that puts the tags in artist-copyright-character-meta-general order. This doesn't work on posts that don't have all 5 categories, so this isn't usable in general, but it does give an idea of how things would look:

CSS

/* Place tag list in artist-copyright-character-meta-general order. */

#c-posts #a-show #tag-list { display: flex; flex-direction: column; }
#c-posts #a-show #tag-list :nth-child(1) { order: 2; } /* copyright header */
#c-posts #a-show #tag-list :nth-child(2) { order: 3; } /* copyright tags */
#c-posts #a-show #tag-list :nth-child(3) { order: 4; } /* character header */
#c-posts #a-show #tag-list :nth-child(4) { order: 5; } /* character tags */
#c-posts #a-show #tag-list :nth-child(5) { order: 0; } /* artist header */
#c-posts #a-show #tag-list :nth-child(6) { order: 1; } /* artist tags */
#c-posts #a-show #tag-list :nth-child(7) { order: 8; } /* general header */
#c-posts #a-show #tag-list :nth-child(8) { order: 9; } /* general tags */
#c-posts #a-show #tag-list :nth-child(9) { order: 6; } /* meta header */
#c-posts #a-show #tag-list :nth-child(10) { order: 7; } /* meta tags */

Well, I doubt that anything will be done (:3), but I also think that the orange meta-tags should be above the bulk of general tags next to an image.
I think the reasoning is pretty cclear: They don't waste space, unlike the mass of general tags, but they are more likely to be hidden by general tags if they are below.

nonamethanks said:

+1 for meta being on top of general. It was set apart in order to make it easier to see those tags, so it shouldn't be hidden at the bottom now that it exists.

What he said.

evazion said:
Likewise, meta tags going beneath general tags leads a lot of scrolling when a post has an excessive number of general tags.

+1 example:
post #2871794

Edit: oh, by the way. Is possible in general to make tag category collapsable? I mean as "expand" feature for every category and hide selected tag section but on sidebar.
I have no idea in coding and never seen the code, but I'm asking local gurus if that's actually possible to mess with sidebar in that way or it hardcoded.

Updated

You know, many people want the meta to be above general, since they were created to be visible, and the ones who implemented the code wanted it near the image's info. How about we go the third way?

I'm proposing something that is unprecedented in Danbooru history: Add an option to configure whether meta tags appear above or below general, with above being default. This way, casual users can notice the meta tags exist, and data-oriented users can configure to have all data together. Done, both sides are happy. Whether it's easy to implement is another story.

evazion said:

Usually a post has one artist, one copyright, several characters, a few meta tags, plus many general tags. I argue this ordering makes the most sense as it minimizes the amount of scrolling necessary to see everything important.

Putting the artist below copyrights/characters means it shifts around on every post. It makes it hard to spot the artist at a glance. It's especially bad on everyone and crossover posts, where sometimes you have to scroll down several screens just to find the artist tag.

To be honest, I think a copyright is the most important tag in an image, therefore it's logical it should be listed first. Or maybe my suggested meta placement option suggestion can work for all types, thus rendering any ordering discussion moot (unless we want to discuss what order should be the default once that option exists).

I don't think adding new options for every small disagreement over the UI is a great idea. I don't think the order in which tags go is something one should have to configure, or even think about. Many Danbooru users don't have an account to begin with, and even of those who do, very few will be aware of any new options.

Let me put it this way: on Gelbooru, the tags aren't grouped by type, they're just in alphabetical order in a big wall of text. It sucks, but am I going to create an account to see if there's some way to make it not suck? No.

To be honest, I think a copyright is the most important tag in an image, therefore it's logical it should be listed first. Or maybe my suggested meta placement option suggestion can work for all types, thus rendering any ordering discussion moot (unless we want to discuss what order should be the default once that option exists).

A post can have many copyrights, but you almost never have more than one artist. Putting the artist on top has no downside. It's one tag. Putting it after copyrights/characters has a very big downside on crossover and everyone posts. I don't see a good argument for it, beyond "it's always been this way".

evazion said:

A post can have many copyrights, but you almost never have more than one artist. Putting the artist on top has no downside. It's one tag. Putting it after copyrights/characters has a very big downside on crossover and everyone posts. I don't see a good argument for it, beyond "it's always been this way".

^ Agree to this, but when I read that, somehow this triggered me to remember the infamous touhou scroll collaboration with it's longest (so far) "artist" tag section.

While the odds of appearing this kind of tagging is veeeery low, they are still fewer than multicopyrighted images. So my vote is for "artist" first and "general" last. And I more often look for artist than copyright or characters.

parasol said:

It'll be less confusing if the sidebar and the tag edit box use the same ordering (they're currently different).

I think the metatags should go last, to make them more accessible when editing.

Splitting the category orderings was a purposeful design decision. As far as the order goes, the thought was that General tags should go last, so I inserted Meta before General using the previous ordering. If they need to be more accessible, they could always be moved to the top is where I'd prefer. The Character, Copyright, and Artist categories usually don't get modified anyways.

Honestly I don't find most meta tags informative. I'm not sure why tags like highres or check_translation should take precedence over tags that actually describe the content of the image. I prefer leaving them last.

Rather a collapse function, each section should probably be truncated to a fixed number of tags with an option to expand to reveal the rest.

albert said:

Rather a collapse function, each section should probably be truncated to a fixed number of tags with an option to expand to reveal the rest.

Only if there's an option to have them always (or by default) expanded. Doing this individually for every image when tag gardening would be a real pain.

It could also mean people are less likely to become aware of tags that are later in alphabetical order, as most learning of previously unfamiliar tags comes from seeing them used on an image. Or at least it does for me, and I'd be surprised if it were different for other people.

A big no to make gentags collpsable from me.
Like Kuuderes said, it would be a really pain to open the tag list then and look if everything's alright.

But meta tags are never more than 4 tags and rarely even three. They don't waste any space and in the edit bo the meta tags are already above the gen tags.

And maybe people get finally aware of tagme and try to actively avoid/garden it.

Updated

Is the goal of meta tags to emphasize important tags, or to de-emphasize unimportant tags? IMO it should be the former. To be honest, I think if a tag adds little value it should be nuked, not just pushed to the bottom.

Many large meta tags duplicate existing searches:

I think many of these could be safely nuked. That would go a long way towards eliminating meta tags that add the least value.

^Many/most of those searches would not be equivalent database search durations. Eliminating them all might work fine for Platinum+ with a 9 second database timeout, but it would absolutely hinder all of the other users. Some of them time out even with the benefit of having a longer timeout duration.

It would be basically trading processing work done on the frontend for processing work done on the backend. The processing work on the frontend only affects the server and the users that regularly garden those Meta tags. However, processing work on the backend will affect all users, moreso those at the lower level.

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