I've been wondering about posts which show characters in, for example, a poster on a wall or a dream/thought bubble of one of the main characters, as it seems the more of these posts I look at for a possible answer to this question, the more I see differences in the way these posts are tagged, so I'd like to know how the rest of you handle them.

From looking at various examples the done thing seems to be to tag the character species (and name if known), but from there the tags on these posts differ vastly.

Some go as far as to tag these posters/thoughts as their own individual posts within the picture (especially if there is a sex act in the poster/thought) and others don't.

Also, should these characters be taken into consideration when tagging duo, group, etc or should the main characters be tagged this way and a *_focus tag added to account for the poster/dream characters?

DragonFox69 said:
Also, should these characters be taken into consideration when tagging duo, group, etc or should the main characters be tagged this way and a *_focus tag added to account for the poster/dream characters?

To the last one, from what I understand you should technically use solo/duo/etc. for tagging "a poster on the wall" because it counts (sort of) as a separate image. I tag everything else in it just the same as I would the rest of the post. I've seen cases where a post would be SFW if it wasn't for things in the background and the tags and rating should definitely reflect this. I know I've heard from admins that even a tiny pinkie pie avatar in a tumblr screenshot should be tagged.

(the rest isn't really a guideline or anything, just how I handle it)

I personally don't bother if "a poster on the wall" is technically solo simply because if someone was searching for solo they wouldn't want an orgy with a picture of a solo character on the wall to show up in the results. However if something is already tagged this way I'll usually just leave it be (or check to see who tagged it, gauge how well they've been tagging posts, and make corrections if needed).

For the rest...it really depends on how much they are emphasized. I focus on the main part of the picture first and if I want to get into more detail (or if the post is very detailed) I'll start finding things to tag. I figure if it comes to one or the other, it is usually more important to tag the focus of the picture and miss a tiny picture in the background. Put another way, I try to avoid making someone search for nipples as if they are trying to find Waldo.