Clarifying usage of additional Touhou copyright tags

tl;dr current touhou wiki guidelines for adding additional touhou-related copyright tags to posts are vague and subjective and rewriting a more clear usage for them - either in the touhou wiki or their respective copyright tags - can be used to justify edits made by tag gardeners. This includes reducing the need for the full cast of one copyright appearing to having 3 or 4 minimum of the associated characters together in a post, with or without respective playable character.

Currently, the Touhou wiki states in a short sentence before the first header that a specific Touhou copyright should not be tagged unless the post makes a direct reference to it or contains the full cast from it. I propose a slight rework of that portion of the wiki to replace the requirement for the visible full cast of one game (excluding playable chars) to needing 3 or 4 or more characters from a game (excluding playable chars), without characters from other games. This means posts like post #1382643 can keep its Ten Desires tag, and posts containing 3+ residents of Scarlet Devil Mansion together without anyone (but including Reimu, Marisa, or Satsuki), like post #3991619, qualify for tagging The Embodiment of Scarlet Devil.

"Direct reference" stated in the Touhou wiki is overshadowed by the "full cast" requirement it seems, meaning people will remove a specific game copyright tag from a post which shows a spell card from said game (a clear and direct reference to the game), or remove the tag from a post parodying the game in some way (post #4546543 is a direct (and arguably obvious) reference to the title screen of EoSD but its tag was removed). References to a game will also include a character in a pose of their official art from that game (post #4495699), or Reimu wearing an outfit from a game instead of her "usual" outfit (post #4419411). For print works like Foul Detective Satori, the copyright can be tagged if the post depicts an official_alternate_costume from the work, and album works like Dolls in Pseudo Paradise is just a basic but clear reference (post #4684620 is debatable but the monochromatic color scheme matches the official art for DiPP). As something debatable, if a post has the copyright name of a work, like in post #3865937, it should be tagged wherever it's translated or in romaji text; they're for some reason being removed from such posts.

I've shared my thoughts in topic #18961 for this, which includes a bit more information than what I've written here such as visible gameplay elements qualifying for the copyright tag. I think replacing the usage part in the Touhou wiki with a condensed summary of what I've written about this issue is fair, and won't really change mistags by people who click on the related/translated tags and forget about it. Potentially having a notice in each copyright tag's wiki stating something like "do not add this tag to a post unless the post makes a reference to said tag.

So it's been a long read, but to conclude, I don't like the "full cast" requirement for tagging, say The Embodiment of Scarlet Devil if I see a 4girls post containing Meiling, Patchouli, Sakuya, and Remilia outside the scarlet devil mansion, since if I want to search for posts containing multiple characters interacting with each other from one specific copyright, I ought to do it in one copyright tag. Also, by redefining this usage in a wiki, it can prevent edit wars or arguments where the current wiki is used as the defense.

Edit: some additional points, is that while a solo post of a character is a reference to their respective work/game, it's tag bloat which is why the initial "full cast" requirement exists, and why I proposed reducing it to 3 or 4 as the minimum. Also another thing I've noticed, is the validity of tagging the copyright when a post contains only the playable cast of a game (ie. Ten Desires for Reimu, Marisa, Sanae, and Youmu together, also qualifying for the Playable Command pool).

"Direct reference" stated in the Touhou wiki is overshadowed by the "full cast" requirement it seems, meaning people will remove a specific game copyright tag from a post which shows a spell card from said game (a clear and direct reference to the game), or remove the tag from a post parodying the game in some way (post #4546543 is a direct (and arguably obvious) reference to the title screen of EoSD but its tag was removed). References to a game will also include a character in a pose of their official art from that game (post #4495699), or Reimu wearing an outfit from a game instead of her "usual" outfit (post #4419411). For print works like Foul Detective Satori, the copyright can be tagged if the post depicts an official_alternate_costume from the work, and album works like Dolls in Pseudo Paradise is just a basic but clear reference (post #4684620 is debatable but the monochromatic color scheme matches the official art for DiPP). As something debatable, if a post has the copyright name of a work, like in post #3865937, it should be tagged wherever it's translated or in romaji text; they're for some reason being removed from such posts.

All these examples still count as direct references. Blame taggers for being dumb.

I mostly agree with this, although it kinda opens up a can of worms. For example the SDM may appear as background and doesn't necessarily have to do with EoSD, but could have to do with Silent Sinner in Blue, although i'm unsure if that could be overcategorization.

The full cast policy exists because it completely removes any ambiguity over which specific work an artist is referencing. To use your EoSD example of Meiling, Patchouli, Sakuya, and Remilia, all four of those characters also appear in Immaterial and Missing Power. Unless there's a direct reference to one of the two games somewhere in the post, how do you decide which to tag? Even if you make the ruling that we're tagging characters based on their debut game, what about posts featuring those four characters that do directly reference IaMP, do we tag both games or do we say that referencing the fighting game disqualifies the shooter?

Then there's the "excluding playable characters" bit. Reimu and Marisa are in EoSD. If we're going with 4+ characters, Meiling, Patchouli, Sakuya, and Remilia count, but swap any one of them with Reimu and suddenly it doesn't? Sure, those two appear in every single game, but saying that a post featuring Patchouli, Sakuya, Remilia and Reimu isn't an EoSD post because Reimu is there seems arbitrary. Also there's a lot of focus on the SDM here, but they're not the only characters that debuted in EoSD. There's also Cirno, Daiyousei, and Rumia. Swap any of those into the previous four specified characters and it would still qualify as an EoSD post. If it's 3+, then Rumia, Cirno, and Daiyousei alone would qualify.

Then what about the fighting games? Those feature an almost entirely pre-existing cast, with just one or two new characters. They break the "playable" rule automatically, but most likely we would exempt them from it. Then how do the characters that actually debut in them work? Are the Yorigami sisters alone enough to tag AoCF, or does there need to be two other characters? Are Reimu and Marisa excluded here as well? How do we deal with art that happens to feature 3 or 4 characters that all appeared in one or more of the fighting games, but there's no evidence that the artist drew them together for that reason? Youmu, Alice, Patchouli, and Yuyuko appear together in both IaMP and SWR. Which do we tag, if either, or do we tag both? Do we disregard any context that would confirm that they definitely weren't drawn together for that specific reason?

This isn't even getting into the print works.

The current system probably isn't perfect, and dumb taggers don't help, but a "partial cast" system seems to me like a rulings nightmare, with people arguing over which copyright should be tagged whenever casts overlap, leading to weird, unintuitive, and arbitrary exceptions and clauses that no one will follow anyway because no one reads the wikis.

Also, add to this that 3/4+ is itself entirely arbitrary. Sakuya and Remilia don't count, but add Patchouli and now it counts because there's three of them. An SDM focused comic would be randomly tagged with EoSD based on the number of SDM members on each page. This page with Remilia, Sakuya, Koakuma, and Patchouli gets tagged EoSD, but the next page doesn't because Koakuma left on the previous page and now only Remilia, Sakuya, and Patchouli are present.

blindVigil said:

The current system probably isn't perfect, and dumb taggers don't help, but a "partial cast" system seems to me like a rulings nightmare, with people arguing over which copyright should be tagged whenever casts overlap, leading to weird, unintuitive, and arbitrary exceptions and clauses that no one will follow anyway because no one reads the wikis.

I agree with your argument, which was my main cause of worry. It is to be said though that the current rulings are too strict.
I personally think an artwork should be tagged with a copyright if:

-The context depicts a scene from the work (eg. The red mist, Reimu and Marisa fighting in the bamboo forest in IN, the Prismriver ensemble concert in AoCF, etc.)
--The context depicts objects of the incident of a certain work (The cheat items in ISC, the occult balls from ULiL, the cards from UM)
-The clothes are specifically based off of a certain work's appearance (eg. Marisa's horrible M thingy from UFO, Reimu's cat print in WBaWC, Chen's design in FDS)
-The pose of the character(s) is specifically based off of a sprite from a game
-It depicts the cast of the game in a context where it's supposed to glorify the cast. (An artwork showing the taoist gang (so, without Yuyuko and Kyouko) floating around in the Divine Spirit Mausoleum would get the TD tag. Conversely, a doujin about the everyday life in the SDM would not get the EoSD tag. I'm unsure about this, but throwing it here.)

tl;dr use the tag sparingly and with common sense, but because common sense doesn't exist in gensokyo is very vague in this case, these could probably be the general guidelines used.
I think they should be fairly flexible, but avoid extreme cases (tagging every hakugyokurou thing as PCB is extreme for example).

Username_Hidden said:

I agree with your argument, which was my main cause of worry. It is to be said though that the current rulings are too strict.
I personally think an artwork should be tagged with a copyright if:

-The context depicts a scene from the work (eg. The red mist, Reimu and Marisa fighting in the bamboo forest in IN, the Prismriver ensemble concert in AoCF, etc.)
--The context depicts objects of the incident of a certain work (The cheat items in ISC, the occult balls from ULiL, the cards from UM)
-The clothes are specifically based off of a certain work's appearance (eg. Marisa's horrible M thingy from UFO, Reimu's cat print in WBaWC, Chen's design in FDS)
-The pose of the character(s) is specifically based off of a sprite from a game
-It depicts the cast of the game in a context where it's supposed to glorify the cast. (An artwork showing the taoist gang (so, without Yuyuko and Kyouko) floating around in the Divine Spirit Mausoleum would get the TD tag. Conversely, a doujin about the everyday life in the SDM would not get the EoSD tag. I'm unsure about this, but throwing it here.)

tl;dr use the tag sparingly and with common sense, but because common sense doesn't exist in gensokyo is very vague in this case, these could probably be the general guidelines used.
I think they should be fairly flexible, but avoid extreme cases (tagging every hakugyokurou thing as PCB is extreme for example).

All of those would fall under "direct reference." (Except for maybe the Taoist example. I'm not sure about that one.) If posts like those aren't being tagged with the appropriate game, it's because people are wrongly omitting/removing the tags, not because they don't qualify.

NOTE: Don't tag individual Touhou games unless the game is directly referenced by the post. All of the characters in a picture having debuted in the same game is not enough to count. The full cast of a game (with or without the protagonists) appearing will usually count, so long as no other characters are present.

This is the clause from the Touhou wiki. The full cast bit is not its own criteria, it's a "direct reference" example. The entire cast, with or without the playables, qualify as a direct reference to the game the cast belongs to. People just keep misinterpreting this to mean that "full cast" is the only acceptable criteria, which isn't the case.

There is no ambiguity, the related tag should be the first game or work a set of characters appear in unless the post has an identifiable reference to something else. Hypothetically, in a parallel universe where we always tagged the copyright for individual characters no matter what, Kogasa for example defaults to being tagged with Undefined Fantastic Object, unless elements are present where it validates tagging Ten Desires or Touhou Gouyoku Ibun instead. In other words, groups of characters like SDM residents with the arbitrary minimal number I mentioned in OP default to being tagged The Embodiment of Scarlet Devil - their roots - unless it would show the rocket from Silent Sinner in Blue, or shows them in their outfits from Foul Detective Satori, in which those will override their "default" tag.

As I've said, I find this handy for having a search containing only characters from the subcopyright where it can be fine-tuned for the character count, since Touhou is such a broad tag and I initially felt that usage of the subcopyright tags were too restricted to allow this in a capacity myself and others could benefit from.

As much as I regret making this topic for something that will benefit no significant number of people (and since mistags by the current standards were basically limited to people adding related & translated tags), I hope others can find a bit of merit to my thoughts on this.

I get what you mean, but that would cause a mess.
Taking your example:
-SDM + scarlet mist = The Embodiment of Scarlet Devil
-SDM by itself = The Embodiment of Scarlet Devil
-SDM + rocket in the background = Touhou Bougetsushou
-SDM + Remilia has the wing hats = Foul Detective Satori
-SDM + Remilia is crouching like in her fighting games' sprite (post #2076656) = Immaterial and Missing Power (and also maybe Scarlet Weather Rhapsody and Touhou Hisoutensoku?)
-Remilia but her clothes are from an alternate palette from the fighters = see above

This would require from taggers a lot of meta knowledge of the series, and i wouldn't be surprised to see people mistagging the examples from the third onwards as EoSD.

This is without even counting some edge cases, such as Shameimaru_Aya, which, although she first appeared in Phantasmagoria of Flower View, she's the protagonist of Shoot the Bullet (and also appears in Mountain of Faith as a boss, but leaving that aside).
By your logic, post #3840345 should be tagged as Phantasmagoria of Flower View, because Aya appears in the background and she has first appeared in PoFV. (As a less extreme example, by your logic every Aya solo post should be tagged as PoFV or BAiJR, since they both released at the same time. Or every Akyuu post should be tagged as Akyuu's Untouched Score, since that's where she first appeared in.)

In general i don't see much usefulness to your proposal, since it would split some characters into at least 5 different copyright tags, nullifying the ease of search (and causing more confusion and discussion about touhou tagging).