[REJECTED] eliminating eyebrows_visible_through_hair and useless tags

mass update eyebrows_visible_through_hair -> -eyebrows_visible_through_hair

Link to request

There are methods of animation used so frequently that tagging them is almost like tagging skin. What use is there in tagging eyebrows visible through hair—what possible benefit is there? If you search for -eyebrows_visible_through_hair it's as though you didn't even run a search.

EDIT: This bulk update request is pending automatic rejection in 5 days.

EDIT: This bulk update request has been rejected because it was not approved within 60 days.

EDIT: The bulk update request #1827 (forum #151508) has been rejected by @DanbooruBot.

Maybe there are some people who like to see some art without that trope in use.

Just because a tag is exceedingly common doesn't mean it's useless.

I think the tag still have its uses compared to other useless tags like coloured frills, coloured towels and coloured earrings for example.

tapnek said:

Maybe there are some people who like to see some art without that trope in use.

Functionally though, the tag does not achieve this, and will not be able to without a monumental tagging effort. Besides, because of the ubiquity of the style and it's seeming defaultness, wouldn't it be better to tag the absence of it? I'm not suggesting to do that either.

iridescent_slime said:

Just because a tag is exceedingly common doesn't mean it's useless.

Could you give an example of how it might be used or is used? As far as I can tell people aren't searching for it either.

Unbreakable said:

I think the tag still have its uses compared to other useless tags like coloured frills, coloured towels and coloured earrings for example.

I'm clawing to find such a usage but for this kind of tag I do not see one that's actually possible.

I'm convinced this is the most worthless tag on Danbooru. It's a prime example of the tagging bloat that's been getting worse and worse over the last few years.

This is a standard trope in anime art. It's practically as common as big eyes and tiny noses. It doesn't deserve to be tagged for the same reason we don't tag those things either.

This tag is present on a third of all posts from the last year. If it were tagged on older posts the way it is on new uploads, it would easily have 1 million posts. And if you search -eyebrows_visible_through_hair you'll see that even on posts where it's not currently tagged, in most cases it should be. If it were fully tagged I think it'd have at least 1.5 million posts, maybe 2 million. It'd be one of the biggest tags on the site.

Other tags that are this common - 1girl, solo, long hair, breasts - have clear use cases. This tag does not. It's not useful for filtering, and it's not something that's actually interesting to search for in it's own right, not in the way these other tags are.

Any tag that would apply to millions of posts needs a very strong justification in order to exist. Otherwise you're asking the rest of us to expend an enormous amount of collective tagging effort on something that provides no value in return.

I'd be prepared to accept this tag being replaced with an "eyebrows not visible through hair" (or equivalent - eyebrows concealed by hair might be better) tag, but if we go this route then the new tags should definitely be created and tagged up decently before the existing tag is removed, as the existing tag makes it a lot easier to find these posts to tag. The only downside is that I think it would be tagged a lot less reliably than the current tag on account of the fact that eyebrows being not visible through the hair is the norm and default, however abundant the opposite may be in anime-style art.

And should images where one eyebrow is visible through the hair but the other not (quite common in hair over one eye posts but rare elsewhere) count as "eyebrows not visible through hair" or should that get its own tag?

I'm entirely opposed to having it removed entirely with no replacement as it is a distinct way of drawing with no other way of looking for it. This is what the update above is trying to do and why I have given it a thumbs down.

skylightcrystal said:

I'm entirely opposed to having it removed entirely with no replacement as it is a distinct way of drawing with no other way of looking for it.

Same. Removing it would mean removing any way to find posts without it. The answer to mistags is tagging them correctly, not nuking the whole thing.

I generally don't like destroying information from the system, since it's hard to return if we do. If the marked case is the absence, then I agree with the inversion idea, and replacing it with eyebrows_not_visible_through_hair or the like. That'd solve tag bloat (though again, more information is usually better than less). The issue would be in carrying out the inversion, since it's prevalant but untagged on the bulk of the -eyebrows_visible_through_hair query, so you couldn't just invert straight away without some serious tag gardening. That gardening would need to be done before the other tag was nuked if it were to be successful.

skylightcrystal said:

The only downside is that I think it would be tagged a lot less reliably than the current tag on account of the fact that eyebrows being not visible through the hair is the norm and default, however abundant the opposite may be in anime-style art.

I disagree. Nothing could be possibly tagged less reliably than the current eyebrows_visible_through_hair. Seriously, if you search for -eyebrows_visible_through_hair, almost all of the posts do, in fact, contain eyebrows visible through hair, despite not being tagged as such.

Shinjidude said:

I generally don't like destroying information from the system, since it's hard to return if we do.

The issue with the tags as they are right now is that they provide no information. If you want to see eyebrows visible through eyes, you don't need a tag because almost literally every picture contains it. If you want to see pictures that don't have it, then -eyebrows_visible_through_hair is useless because almost every post there has untagged eyebrows visible through hair. Replacing the tag with "eyebrows_occluded" or similar would be the only way to make a useful search, and would be adding information, not destroying it.

While I don’t particularly care about having or not having this tag, I’d like to throw in that the inverse of eyebrows_visible_through_hair is not something like eyebrows_not_visible_through_hair but rather something like eyebrows_behind_hair and the case of hair not crossing the eyebrows at all, possibly because bald or forehead applies.

Out of curiosity, are there no data on the number of times the tag has been searched in the past years?

That would be the best indicator whether the tag's actually needed or not.

I've personally seen usage of the tag where the tiniest fraction of the eyebrow is visible through the hair, in my opinion it's an altogether needless tag that's often just used to bloat tag counts.

indexador2 said:

The issue with the tags as they are right now is that they provide no information. If you want to see eyebrows visible through eyes, you don't need a tag because almost literally every picture contains it. If you want to see pictures that don't have it, then -eyebrows_visible_through_hair is useless because almost every post there has untagged eyebrows visible through hair. Replacing the tag with "eyebrows_occluded" or similar would be the only way to make a useful search, and would be adding information, not destroying it.

It does provide some information though for this case. It would be useful in cultivating and kick-starting the inverted tag. If the current tag is applied, then you shouldn't need to consider that post for trying to tag the inversion. It'd be almost necessary for creating the new tag, since simply tagging everything not currently covered would obviously be wrong. Doing so would involve adding additional information, but that's true for all tag gardening, as nothing is 100% included where applicable or 100% accurate where applied. My idea would be to nuke the common, less meaningful tag in the end, and only leave the less common inverted tag which would become more meaningful on the minority of posts it applies to.

Shinjidude said:

Sounds good to me.

eyebrows behind hair sounds like a good inversion to this tag.

How would we tag post #3274104 in which the eyebrows are clearly visible but partially occluded by hair?

How would we tag post #3283718 or post #2945046 ?

If you think eyebrows behind hair is worth tagging, then fine, go ahead and populate it. If you believe eyebrows visible through hair is worth keeping, then help populate it too.

The fact is that eyebrows visible through hair is practically nonexistent on posts before 2016. It's on 15k posts out of 2.2 million. I'd wager it should be on at least a million. Nuking the tag makes no difference when it may as well not exist on anything more than two years old anyway.

The reason it's not tagged on older posts is because nobody actually cares. I find it difficult to believe that anyone geniunely has a use for this tag when nobody seems to have even noticed that it's almost completely absent on everything more than a couple years old.

If you think these tags are worth having, then show it by populating them. Otherwise it's meaningless to talk about how these tags should exist unless you intend to populate them, and frankly, and I don't believe anyone seriously does. If you actually do try to populate either of these tags, I think you'll quickly see what an enormous waste of time they really are.

evazion said:

If you think eyebrows behind hair is worth tagging, then fine, go ahead and populate it. If you believe eyebrows visible through hair is worth keeping, then help populate it too.

The fact is that eyebrows visible through hair is practically nonexistent on posts before 2016. It's on 15k posts out of 2.2 million. I'd wager it should be on at least a million. Nuking the tag makes no difference when it may as well not exist on anything more than two years old anyway.

The reason it's not tagged on older posts is because nobody actually cares. I find it difficult to believe that anyone geniunely has a use for this tag when nobody seems to have even noticed that it's almost completely absent on everything more than a couple years old.

If you think these tags are worth having, then show it by populating them. Otherwise it's meaningless to talk about how these tags should exist unless you intend to populate them, and frankly, and I don't believe anyone seriously does. If you actually do try to populate either of these tags, I think you'll quickly see what an enormous waste of time they really are.

Next you're gonna tell us the 1girl tag is useless because it comprises 10% of the database.

It's 70% and in fact, at one point Albert did propose nuking 1girl for exactly that reason. See topic #12379. It didn't pass because people could actually explain what the tag was good for.

And as a matter of fact, when the solo tag was first started people wanted to nuke it too, exactly because it was seen as too infeasible to retroactively tag. See topic #1552. It won out because the tag was useful enough for people to do the actual work of tagging it.

But like I said, if you think the tag has value then populate it. As it stands the tag doesn't serve its purpose. If you actually search for eyebrows visible through hair you're missing out on the majority of posts.