The Reluctance of Tagging Disembodied Limbs With Counter Tags

According to some users, tagging disembodied limbs with counter tags is a thing that shouldn't be done, not even with 1other (post #6176485 being a recent example that led to the creation of this topic). This, in my opinion, goes against one of the reasons the 1other family tags were created, and this gets even worse on posts tagged with 1girl + hetero but not any *boy(s) tag. As far as I know there aren't any hard rules what to do in these situations so I wanted to get opinions on it (I'm firmly in the "tag it" camp 99% of the time).

topic #21237 is related to this.

I believe that all out of frame/pov posts should be given all applicable people counters, to do otherwise is confusing at best and antithetical at worst. Even in your example post, solo focus was used with a single counter tag, (and no people, crowd, etc. etc.) which makes zero sense. How can something be solo focus if the tags suggest solo?

Tagging ambiguous out of frame anime hands with 1boy hetero is bad enough, but to intentionally void any representation besides solo focus -- or less than that; there are more than a few mistags in 1girl solo ~pov ~out_of_frame -- is a clear devolution and not sufficient. Maybe it's time to establish a formal rule about this.

I can understand both sides of this issue. People looking up hetero porn want posts that clearly feature a boy and a girl having sex (even if the "boy" is nothing more than a pair of hands and a dick) when they perform searches that include counter tags. At the same time, some people using counter tags for other purposes (or even some people using it for porn) want their searches to feature actual people and not just an ownerless dick.

Always including counter tags on every post solves the former, but not the latter. Do we have a way to satisfy the other side?

blindVigil said:

Always including counter tags on every post solves the former, but not the latter. Do we have a way to satisfy the other side?

It would be nice to have a tag functionally opposite to out of frame for 2+ people, but I'm unsure what name it could have that's informative enough to the non-wiki-readers without being too clunky. both in frame, or all characters in frame? these names are patent pending, please don't murder me...

I think they should always be tagged. Regardless of it being a minimal presence in the image, it's important in order avoid solo_focus pics being tagged with 1girl and nothing else. Most of the time it's easy to determine if a limb is male or genuinely ambiguous, particularly by seeing the artist's other works.

Of note is that post #6176485 was indeed tagged as 1boy, but it was removed later. Not only that, but the commentary appears to imply that it's actually 2girls+yuri (Patchouli is not tagged on pixiv at all).
I would have tagged it as 1other because the hands as just fair-skinned and soft enough to not be undeniably male, but they lack the detail seen on female hands (compare how Koakuma's hands have fingernails while the other ones don't.)

BobTheBuilder_v1 said:

Even in your example post, solo focus was used with a single counter tag, (and no people, crowd, etc. etc.) which makes zero sense. How can something be solo focus if the tags suggest solo?

Using solo_focus with only a single counter tag is not ridiculous; as you mentioned, it is in fact encouraged in the case of people posts where the background characters are essentially just props with no identity or presence. Counter tags are for people with a meaningful presence in a post, and disembodied body parts (even if they're "meaningfully present" by grabbing a bob, or sexing a girl) are not people. Just like a crowd, they are only akin to a prop, and tagging them with counter tags poisons searches for male/genderless characters.

I've heard the argument "just use male_focus/other_focus", but this is rather short-sighted as it assumes every search for, say, 1other is trying to exclusively find posts with only androgynous/genderless characters. In reality, it's very easy to imagine someone just wanting to see "an androgynous/genderless character", not caring if there happens to be a boy or a girl in the post as well. And again, tagging disembodied body parts with 1other means that search will be littered with random hands.

Regardless of my opinion on this, i think it's unfeasible to enforce any policy here. The average user is going to see an obviously male hand and is going to tag 1boy.
It'd be like trying to tell people not to tag details that are too small and not relevant to the picture. We tried that, it's a pointless endeavour. Just look at bird scenery.

AngryZapdos said:

Using solo_focus with only a single counter tag is not ridiculous; as you mentioned, it is in fact encouraged in the case of people posts where the background characters are essentially just props with no identity or presence. Counter tags are for people with a meaningful presence in a post, and disembodied body parts (even if they're "meaningfully present" by grabbing a bob, or sexing a girl) are not people. Just like a crowd, they are only akin to a prop, and tagging them with counter tags poisons searches for male/genderless characters.

I brought up people and crowd as they both provide context (beyond using your eyes) to an image with 1girl/boy/other + solo focus that tells the viewer why solo focus was used instead of solo. if we stop using 1boy/1other there is no equivalent representation for out of frame limbs in a post's tags other than the incredibly vague solo focus, that can mean any number of things, which is why I'm against this practice. I would consider disembodied limbs to be more prop-like, whereas out of frame limbs are just the result of being cropped out (read: artist laziness).

I've heard the argument "just use male_focus/other_focus", but this is rather short-sighted as it assumes every search for, say, 1other is trying to exclusively find posts with only androgynous/genderless characters. In reality, it's very easy to imagine someone just wanting to see "an androgynous/genderless character", not caring if there happens to be a boy or a girl in the post as well. And again, tagging disembodied body parts with 1other means that search will be littered with random hands.

I understand the argument and pain of having 1boy/1other searches infinitely flooded with penises budging in from the corner frame, but unless a new tag or rule can be devised I don't agree with simply not tagging them anything.

disembodied limbs should be tagged with the appropriate gendercount tags, since ive seen situations where an artist later drew the rest of the picture and it was an identifiable character, it wouldnt make sense to one image to have 1girl solo_focus and the expanded to have 2girls solo_focus

BobTheBuilder_v1 said:

I brought up people and crowd as they both provide context (beyond using your eyes) to an image with 1girl/boy/other + solo focus that tells the viewer why solo focus was used instead of solo. if we stop using 1boy/1other there is no equivalent representation for out of frame limbs in a post's tags other than the incredibly vague solo focus, that can mean any number of things, which is why I'm against this practice. I would consider disembodied limbs to be more prop-like, whereas out of frame limbs are just the result of being cropped out (read: artist laziness).

I understand the argument and pain of having 1boy/1other searches infinitely flooded with penises budging in from the corner frame, but unless a new tag or rule can be devised I don't agree with simply not tagging them anything.

I really don't see how "not tagging anything" is such a big problem so as to take precedence over a problem of massive tag poisoning though.
To me, Angryzapdos' point straight up invalidates any incentive to go and tag disembodied limbs with gender count tags; At that point, what i take from this is there really needs to be alternative counter tags specifically for those disembodied limbs, and even now that i write this here, i realize it is kind of baffling this wasn't done earlier, because counter tags specifically for props seem like something just as useful as pov and female pov, in essence.
Having something like 1prop etc + male prop, female prop, may be a step in the right direction, but that's just one very barebones idea i got and i'm sure something more elegant can be figured out, as long as we collectively accept that getting new tags at all is much better than keeping on massively poisoning other tags