Cataloguing Limbus/Project moon E.G.O and Identities

Posted under Tags

Login_to_view said in forum #420700:

?

If you want BURs to be approved, make them easy to understand. Neither tag has a wiki and Nursefather of the Ring only had one post, which was a group shot so I couldn't even tell which character it was. All the discussions about it were redacted like the Epstein files, and when unspoilered they were lore ramblings that were completely incomprehensible to me.

Forgive me for what is going to be a pretty big vent post.
If there are any questions I can try to reword some parts or explain myself more clearly, and I don't want to sound hostile, just frustrated.

tl;dr I feel like there is a general distrust towards the ability to manage tags of the people in this thread

Let's all take a step back.

When the game released, I instantly realised how much of a mess tagging it was going to be, and moved to try to make its tagging as simple as possible before it was too late (refer to thread OP). In short: instead of having a new character tag for each outfit, each outfit set was going to get its own tag.

It was, in my opinion, going somewhat smoothly. Most people agreed on how the tagging system was working, it wasn't perfect, obviously, but you were able to easily find what you were searching for. If you roll back, most BURs have unanimous approval among people who actually use the tag, and every time someone who was out of the loop asked for explanations (usually @nonamethanks as he manages most BURs), I tried to explain my reasoning the best I could.

You can just go to page 1 of this thread to see how that went, my big explanation just went ignored and the bur fell off. I then had to poke the thread multiple times to get it approved in the first place, because nobody had an issue with it except nnt.
Unanimously approved BURs in the thread fell off without any given explanation multiple times (for example forum #358843).

The nail in the coffin for me was forum #344002. Nobody approved of it, but for some reason it passed anyway despite the only reply to it being my worry that it was going to make a mess of the existing tags.

Since then I kind of stopped contributing to this thread, because it always felt like I had to fight to get some implications or name updates approved, despite, again, them having 3+ upvotes and no mid or downvotes (or people arguing for alternatives).
It feels incredibly frustrating, and being unsure about my effort bearing any fruit isn't exactly a motivational boost... Doubly so when similar efforts get ignored (forum #412864 for example: everyone that actively searches for the limbus tags agreed on it being a good idea, but it didn't pass because it didn't manage to convince a couple admins who wouldn't use the tag anyway?)

I understand your positions, I've been in the forum trenches for years and I know how ugly and silly some tags can get.
That said, is there any way to mend this disconnection? If you want I can even explain things on Discord, I (and others) just want to keep the tagging clean as much as you do, and this constant pushing back helps neither side.

evazion said in forum #420990:

All the discussions about it were redacted like the Epstein files, and when unspoilered they were lore ramblings that were completely incomprehensible to me.

I completely agree on that however, that entire thing was unneeded

Login_to_view said in forum #421454:

The nail in the coffin for me was forum #344002. Nobody approved of it, but for some reason it passed anyway despite the only reply to it being my worry that it was going to make a mess of the existing tags.

The approval with forum #344002 with literally zero support was always a very odd incident and I heavily dislike the breaking up of the identity tags only for the associations.
This feels like a thorn in limbus tagging and the fact that liu, zwei, etc weren't added to ruina characters after the fact annoys me too. That might be due to the user's ban, though.

BUR #56008 has been approved by @nonamethanks.

remove alias finn_(wonder_lab) -> finn_(project_moon)
rename rose_(wonder_lab) -> rose_(wonderlab)

That aside, qualifiers.
Finn (Wonderlab) and Finn (Ruina) are 2 separate characters. Everyone forgot because Wonderlab is not that good or remembered.
And Rose's is written wrong most of them were before but that stopped mattering with the _(project_moon) qualifier.

I'll make an attempt to untangle the current tagging so far (and also try to make it as understandable as possible to evaz and nnt)
It's going to be a pretty long post because I will try to be as informative as possible (while also trying to remove as much fluff as possible).
If there are parts hard to comprehend I can reword them or explain them better.
If the post is too long and you don't have time nor interest to digest the information then Just Trust Me On This One

We got 3 main outfit tags:

- Identity tags
- Uniform tags
- EGO tags
Plus the occasional "alternate" character like Sancho which take a character tag of their own but don't worry about it

We can safely ignore EGO tags for now, they can be somewhat improved but for now they work and that's the most important thing, so I won't explain them.

I will try to tackle Identity and Uniform tags. (Mostly the latter)

Identities

To recap the reasoning of why the tagging is, currently, the way it is: Identities in Limbus Company are, basically, "What if this character was part of this other faction in an alternate universe?".

Further explaination on what identities are tagging-wise + FAQ

The main gameplay and story revolves around 12 playable characters (post #6174508) getting various identities over the course of the game.
They can be random mooks or they can take the spot of important characters in the story (example: Ishmael (post #10972439), one of the main characters, has gotten an identity based on Kira_(project_moon) (post #10677654, post #10602941).
Many of them are centered around specific factions or archetypes, so they have been grouped up in gentags as to not make 20+ character tags per character.
A lot of fanart plays around with the concept too, giving identities to NPCs (most notably yuri)

Q: If they are based on existing characters, shouldn't they be cosplay tags?
A: Not every identity is based on a character, and those that are aren't tagged as cosplay to avoid tag bloat (and making that cosplay tag useless).

Q: Ok but why can't they be character tags?
A: Beyond the immense tag bloat that would cause (posts like post #10101050 would more than double the character tag count), it would also ignore art of unofficial identities (Meursault never got a Zwei identity, that doesn't stop people from drawing him as such (post #7160903).)

TL;DR they work like undertale au tags, as bad as that sounds

What you need to know is that I can search for kurokumo_clan_(identity)_(project_moon) heathcliff_(project_moon), and have it return a collection of artworks of That specific character in That specific outfit. Some searches are more accurate than others but the point is that It Works

Uniforms

As previously said, Uniform tags didn't exist at the beginning. They got made through forum #344002, which split Identity tags into Identity and Uniform.
The reasoning behind it was that identities wore standardized uniforms anyways.

The good thing is that now you can search for outfits as a whole: looking up zwei association south uniform now returns characters which wear it as default outfit (for example Isadora (project moon)).

The bad thing is that it doesn't consider identities with multiple outfits: Just look up ishmael_(project_moon) zwei_association_south_uniform. Many of the Zwei identities have artworks where they're undercover (post #7169828), and those posts shouldn't be tagged with the standardized uniform tag.
Removing the tag means it breaks the identity searches. Keeping the tag means the Uniform tag doesn't do it's job properly.

Proposals

There are two main courses of action:

- Undo Uniform tag, reinstate Identity tag
Pros: Clean tagging
Cons: Can't search for uniforms as a whole

- Remake faction identity tag, keep both
Pros: Uniform tag works properly
Cons: Tag bloat, having to tag two different tags for the same thing is annoying and prone to tagging mistakes/forgotten

Removing Identity tags as a whole is not an option, because it would leave out way too many outfits (refer to the casual/undercover zwei association outfits above).
I personally think the first is the best option. The second option is more niche and useful, but it makes things more complex for something that I doubt people would look up in the first place. (If someone is looking up zwei uniforms, I think they would rather look up the npc character themselves rather than the outfit they're wearing)

Either way, something must be done because the uniform tags have been left half-assed.

I had to fine-tune a LLM to danbooru to finally understand this topic, but I think I get it now. Fine by me if you want to revert that BUR and treat the identity tags as broad AU tags. Limbus has its own skin system that's different from other gachas, so it's gonna clash with how we do gacha costumes no matter which way we choose, we might as well do it in a way that people like.

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