Vehicle_(personification) tags

Posted under Tags

BUR #46176 has been rejected.

create alias uss_wisconsin_(bb-64)_(personification) -> uss_wisconsin_(bb-64)

(Using the above example as a first start. Please read below, vote, and comment.)

We have lots of personified vehicle images on Danbooru, many of which fall under one or another copyright, but many of which are original creations by artists. I understand that some time ago there was drama around tagging said personification with the gentag of the vehicle, leading to the creation of various *_(personification) tags, but they've been applied incredibly unevenly. Some tags are applied thoroughly, some spotty, and some vehicles haven't had it applied at all. So, my question is, should we just do away with these *_(personification) tags for original designs?

Benefits would be a much better browsing experience for users who want to see a vehicle whether or not it's personified, and reduce artificial fragmentation of the gallery, making it easier to search a vehicle without having to do multiple searches to see both regular and personified vehicles. Downsides would be for users who specifically want to see a vehicle unpersonified, though that could be mitigated with a second vehicle-specific tag in the search, like vehicle focus or warship.

So, please vote and comment your thoughts below. I can see the benefits and downsides of doing either system, but the half-assed application we currently have is just annoying either way.

I'm voting against it purely because it's much better to have separation between a vehicle and its personification. Vehicle focus and warship, as examples, don't work to completely replace it (though that can be fixed with tag gardening). Finally, I think it's incorrect to tag a personification with its inspiration, since the vehicle isn't really there; it's just a personification.

Ultimately, I think the best solution is to be more consistent and tag personifications as such.

8253803 said:

I can think of another reason: for example f-14_tomcat_(personification) is not one character but a catch-all tag for all personifications by different artists, so even if there needs to be character tags for vehicle personifications, it is more useful to be in the format of vehicle_(artist).

The question isn't necessarily whether to have vehicle_(artist) char tags, it's whether the personification tag of a vehicle should be aliased to said vehicle. So to use your example, voting for this BUR says you think f-14_tomcat_(personification) should simply be folded into f-14 tomcat, while a vote against this BUR means you think the gentag f-14 tomcat should only be used for depictions of the vehicle itself, and that personifications without a char tag should have one created for them.

I've got a lot of BURs to submit either way, but I want to get a sense of which way Danbooru users think we should go.

In the same vein as the separation of umamusume and their *_(racehorse) counterparts (I understand that rideable animals and vehicles are different, but let's ignore that for the sake of discussion), I don't believe mecha musume/personification variants should be aliased to their actual vehicle counterparts; especially with the many cases where the personification barely has a resemblance to the vehicle they're supposedly representing.

I disagree that it'd create a better browsing experience when it necessarily means an extra no_humans, vehicle focus, or other similar tag in the event of looking for images of the vehicle alone.

And, while this is being directed toward vehicles in specific, it sets a strange precedent in my mind for the personification of other objects like firearms, food, household appliances, etc. It just doesn't quite jive well in my mind, neither from a usability nor a categorization perspective.

Ai-to-Yukai said:

And, while this is being directed toward vehicles in specific, it sets a strange precedent in my mind for the personification of other objects like firearms, food, household appliances, etc. It just doesn't quite jive well in my mind, neither from a usability nor a categorization perspective.

While I don't agree with the aliasing part, I do agree with the underlying discussion at that, which is that, for military vehicles such as tanks, ships, et al, there has been an arbitrary fragmentation enforced by a select handful of users who just didn't want to see anime girls in their military vehicles tags (check the tag histories of the older tags, you'll see who), even though in most other situations personifications still get tagged with the thing they are personifying (when it's original art and similar, given the decision reached in topic #10067 where copyrights centered around personifications do not do this).

Ideally, we would just have both the vehicle tag and the personification tag present on a given post.

Historyanon said:

The question isn't necessarily whether to have vehicle_(artist) char tags, it's whether the personification tag of a vehicle should be aliased to said vehicle. So to use your example, voting for this BUR says you think f-14_tomcat_(personification) should simply be folded into f-14 tomcat, while a vote against this BUR means you think the gentag f-14 tomcat should only be used for depictions of the vehicle itself, and that personifications without a char tag should have one created for them.

I've got a lot of BURs to submit either way, but I want to get a sense of which way Danbooru users think we should go.

This example of what it means voting yes/no confuses me. Voting yes means to alias the *_(personification) to the vehicles gentag.
Voting no means searching f-14 tomcat should show only vehicles and not the personifications. Are those not two different changes to current behavior? Right now, searching f-14 tomcat displays both the vehicles alone, and their personifications. Though yes, some posts with the *_(personification) charatag have removed the personification tag.

While I don't agree with aliasing, I agree the *_(personification) chara tag is a bit odd. I don't think replacing the personification tag with *_(personification) chara tags is a good idea. If I were to search for aircraft and personification in order to search for design ideas, I wouldn't be able to because they would be behind their own individual *_(personification) chara tags.

Damian0358 said:

Ideally, we would just have both the vehicle tag and the personification tag present on a given post.

I agree this is the ideal situation.

Updated by jjs3

jjs3 said:

This example of what it means voting yes/no confuses me. Voting yes means to alias the *_(personification) to the vehicles gentag.
Voting no means searching f-14 tomcat should show only vehicles and not the personifications. Are those not two different changes to current behavior?

Not when it comes to ships, which is the situation that I am most familiar with. With ships, they either have the gentag or a *_(personification) tag, with the only exceptions I've found being tags that have been created very recently, and only then until they're gardened. While I'm less familiar with the situations regarding other types of vehicles, my continued frustration with this unending unanswered question has led me to create this vote.

Historyanon said:

Not when it comes to ships, which is the situation that I am most familiar with. With ships, they either have the gentag or a *_(personification) tag, with the only exceptions I've found being tags that have been created very recently, and only then until they're gardened. While I'm less familiar with the situations regarding other types of vehicles, my continued frustration with this unending unanswered question has led me to create this vote.

I suspect that's because of the rules around not tagging kantai_collection and azur_lane characters as a personification, which then were applied to original shipgirl designs.

winterless said:

I suspect that's because of the rules around not tagging kantai_collection and azur_lane characters as a personification, which then were applied to original shipgirl designs.

Well, how about we ask someone who's been involved in the creation of these tags? @ion288 and @Changemynameshit are the two names that come to mind personally, with the latter a more recent devotee, while I think ion was among the first if not the first to push for the untagging of vehicle tags in favor of personification chartags.

ion, what inspired you to create these tags, and generally for both of you, what are your thoughts on the topic?

What would people think of making *_(personification) tags work like *_(cosplay) tags? Which is to be specially coded to add the base chartag and cosplay tag, or in this case add the vehicle gentag and personification tag. It would be simple enough to add -personification to a search since it's guaranteed to always be added (for some reason *_(personification) -personification at the moment returns more than zero results which seems like a contradiction).

I can't quite remember why we separated them back then. I remember there where a lot of mecha musume posts that had tank or fighter jet tags. Cleaning this was annoying due to the many implications those tags had. It may have been during this gardening that it was decided to separate the personifications from the vehicles.

I don't think the _(personification) tags where originally char tags though. At least that seems weird to me now. Character tags are usually connected to a copyright or an artist but different artists can make quite different personifications.

On a somewhat related note. If we'll go with *_(personification) route, what would, be the correct way of tagging personifications of fictional vehicles? (For example World of Warships boats, or Star Wars space boats). Is it *_(copyright)_(personification) or *_(personification)?

Aken_Bosch said:

On a somewhat related note. If we'll go with *_(personification) route, what would, be the correct way of tagging personifications of fictional vehicles? (For example World of Warships boats, or Star Wars space boats). Is it *_(copyright)_(personification) or *_(personification)?

We could get away with just *_(personification) for the most part, unless there's a need to specify the copyright due to the vehicle sharing a name with something else, like Star Trek's USS Enterprise.

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