authentic old art style tag = shouldn't be in "decade_(style)" or "artstyle" tags?

Posted under Tags

BUR #54234 has been rejected.

create alias decade_(style) -> decade
create alias faux_retro_artstyle -> faux_retro
create alias retro_artstyle -> retro

(Note: For the first BUR it's ONLY for authentic posts. Read the description for more.)
I gotta be honest I've always had a problem with how style tags have been handled on here for a while now. I believe that recently (IIRC) there's a new tag faux_retro_artstyle meant to separate authentic old art from modern works that imitate it. But my main problem with this is that we still have retro_artstyle as a tag on here which people still mix up when tagging actual old art and modern recreations due to the fact that it gives off the implication of a deliberate "artstyle".

Which brings me to another point (which may or may not be my bigger point) and I'm not sure if this is a personal thing and I may sound a bit nitpicky but I'm a little against the term "artstyle" or "retro_artstyle" tags being used on actual old/authentic art with that look due to the fact that objectively it's not an artstyle and it's just what it looks like because of the trends it came from at the time. The new art that replicates this IS an art style based off of what was popular at the time and it works well but we still put both the authentic art and the modern recreations under the same "_(style)" and "artstyle" tags. While it is objectively an art style now due to nostalgia factors it's kinda like calling an old photo from the 1940s "sepia (style)" when the photo isn't a "style" of anything but rather the the limitations of colors back then and wasn't aiming for an aesthetic or style like how do we now.

To counteract this, I propose two new changes (meant to sorta be all together at once) by:
1: Re-introducing decade-based tags like "2000s" (and equivalents for other decades) and alias 2000s_(artstyle) to simply "2000s" or "00s," using those tags only for authentic works from that era (or to make it easier, posts already identified as such.) At the same time, the "_(style)" tags would be reserved strictly for modern works that intentionally replicate those looks.

2. To avoid confusion, the term "artstyle" could be removed from the current tags, simplifying them to “retro” and “faux_retro,” and aliasing older and modern replication posts accordingly.

"It's not an artstyle, it's just what the art looked like back then."

Congrats, you just described what an artstyle is. You're drawing a line in the sand on whether something's a "style" based on... whether it's a product of its time, or an imitation. It's the same visual art style, it makes little sense to make that kind of distinction.

In any case, I believe the word retro by itself is ambiguous, and might inspire some to put retro-themed "modern style" art into the tag, not just old (or old-style) art.

I see, well I made this in the heat of things so I apologize that it's not clear as I would've wanted or causes more ambiguity problems (which it most likely will). My intention was to at first tag proper artwork as they were and made but looking at it further, I realize I was indeed just nitpicking since at the end of the day, it is an art style. If that's the case (and looking back at what I said since now it looks incredibly stupid), I would like to request we keep things as is, not debunk things any further and close this BUR.

Updated by user 1494741

Oh yeah, as a side note, I understand what you're trying to signal in the first line of this BUR, but it's an invalid BUR line nonetheless, so this BUR would never pass in its current state anyhow. You'd have to actually write out what you want the BUR to do, but what you wanted to do would render the decade tags ambiguous as well for the same reason I stated.

You can close the BUR yourself. Click the BUR link (in this case, BUR #54234) and click the Reject button.

I think retro artstyle is a bad tag personally and should just be deprecated. Faux retro artstyle renders it uless and you can just exclude it to find authentic examples.

I kind of see where you're coming from since I similarly find it goofy to lump Chibi Maruko-Chan in with Inuyasha but I don't think your names are any clearer and the logical extension of removing *_(artstyle) is tagging every image with the year it was made which is a meta discussion not a visually taggable element.

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