Topic: (Pokemon) Alolan Formes

Posted under Tag/Wiki Projects and Questions

Seems we're getting Alolan counterparts to a lot of older Pokemon now. This is pretty neat, I gotta say, but a problem has started to present itself: People are tagging the old form as well! I think that, like Mega forms, the Alolan forms should not get the base tag, just the Alolan_* tag.

Reason:
post #958961
Having them separate means we can actually find images like these by searching for both.

Updated by Genjar

Furrin_Gok said:
How so? It's not showing both a basic and an alolan form together.

Yours had both types in one picture, which means the tags were correct. Mine only has one, which points out your statement.

Or, this one would be good for debate, yours is technically valid. Of course, this is me going off with the tag, not comparing the differences...

Updated by anonymous

Knotty_Curls said:
could it be a suffix instead?

_(alolan)

We could alias them later if need be, but right now, does anybody think we should actually imply the base form?

Siral_Eurgh-xan said:
Yours had both types in one picture, which means the tags were correct. Mine only has one, which points out your statement.

Or, this one would be good for debate, yours is technically valid. Of course, this is me going off with the tag, not comparing the differences...

Added a bit to the OP to say why that was my reason image.

Updated by anonymous

Furrin_Gok said:
We could alias them later if need be, but right now, does anybody think we should actually imply the base form?
Added a bit to the OP to say why that was my reason image.

You still have my vote of +1. I think we should use the Alolan_* for tagging, it sounds much better than the suffix, and works well with how we do Mega_*, instead of *_(Mega)

Updated by anonymous

So, here's a question: I've been seeing guesses and parodies of more Alolan Formes. If these get uploaded, how should they be tagged? Should we have an Alolan_form_fakemon tag and just tag it with that and the base pokemon?

Updated by anonymous

Would be nice to see some kind of parent tag for both, though I don't know what that would be.

Updated by anonymous

Furrin_Gok said:
So, here's a question: I've been seeing guesses and parodies of more Alolan Formes. If these get uploaded, how should they be tagged? Should we have an Alolan_form_fakemon tag and just tag it with that and the base pokemon?

Got images for that? I'd say no, fake Pokemon aren't regional and could basically be described as alternate colors, but that's off the back of my hand.

Updated by anonymous

I want to know why that electric Z-move took out a Sandshrew. No, not the ice/steel Sandshrew.

Updated by anonymous

Lance_Armstrong said:
I want to know why that electric Z-move took out a Sandshrew. No, not the ice/steel Sandshrew.

Actually the move was used on the Alola Sandshrew but it didn't take it out. The health bar stopped dropping when it turned yellow.

Furrin_Gok said:
So, here's a question: I've been seeing guesses and parodies of more Alolan Formes. If these get uploaded, how should they be tagged? Should we have an Alolan_form_fakemon tag and just tag it with that and the base pokemon?

I don't see why they wouldn't just stay as fakemon. A fake is a fake, regardless of what it's supposed to be or where it's supposed to be from.

Updated by anonymous

Ko-san said:
Actually the move was used on the Alola Sandshrew but it didn't take it out. The health bar stopped dropping when it turned yellow.

Oh, ok. Good.

Ko-san said:
I don't see why they wouldn't just stay as fakemon. A fake is a fake, regardless of what it's supposed to be or where it's supposed to be from.

I agree. alolan_fakemon sounds like a good idea but there is no unifying aspect of the alolan forms. It should stay as fakemon.

Updated by anonymous

I think you should tag kanto_[pokemon] and alola_[pokemon], both of which implicate [pokemon], the second of which implicates alola_forme

So kanto_vulpix implicates vulpix

alola_vulpix implicates vulpix and alola_forme

Thus, users can search either kanto_vulpix or vulpix -alola_forme to get just the kanto vulpix

Updated by anonymous

GDelscribe said:
Tagging by region is a cool idea

Only region we can do that with is Alola, though. The other form isn't from Kanto, as they show up in the other regions too.

Updated by anonymous

This may seem overly simple but why not just have a single separate tag to put in along side alola Pokemon rather than having a separate tag for each one? Something simple like 'alola' would be enough to find any one of them you want used in conjunction with the pokemons name.

Updated by anonymous

Genjar

Former Staff

OrangeLightning said:
This may seem overly simple but why not just have a single separate tag to put in along side alola Pokemon rather than having a separate tag for each one? Something simple like 'alola' would be enough to find any one of them you want used in conjunction with the pokemons name.

Because then, trying to search for posts that feature both normal and alolan vulpix (alolan vulpix duo) would also find posts such as:
post #959014 ...instead of... post #958961

Which doesn't seem good for searchability.

Updated by anonymous

Tag the old forms as Pokemon (Normal Form) and the new forms as Alolan Pokemon. Simple. Have both imply the Pokemon.

Updated by anonymous

Wrekt said:
Tag the old forms as Pokemon (Normal Form) and the new forms as Alolan Pokemon. Simple. Have both imply the Pokemon.

and how you planned to make everyone understand that they are supposed to use special tag for regular vulpix? it would create a whole ton of extra work 1. just to add this new tag system 2. to keep all the normal form images properly tagged.

Updated by anonymous

Wrekt said:
Tag the old forms as Pokemon (Normal Form) and the new forms as Alolan Pokemon. Simple. Have both imply the Pokemon.

Why not just use wildcard searches? *vulpix reveals both Alolan and original vulpixes.
Also, normal_ and _(normal_form) are bad:

Chessax said:

Clawdragons said:
I don't know. The term "original" seems like it carries a value judgment with it. Perhaps that's just me though. I'm a bit sensitive to that perhaps because of how often I see disagreements between first-generation supremacists and others. It seems like there's a chance you're playing with fire there (or, playing with ice, perhaps, depending what region you're in).

If they would have said "normal" or similar I might have agreed, but "original" simply means the first (unless we talk about "new").

But I like suffixes so in that case I would personally suggest ninetales_(original)

Especially when you consider that with the Alolan Exeggutor, Alolans consider it to be the "True" form of Exeggutor, "Normal" for them would be the supertall palm tree, while for foreigners it might not be.

Updated by anonymous

Furrin_Gok said:
Why not just use wildcard searches? *vulpix reveals both Alolan and original vulpixes.

I feel as though that's unintuitive for new users though. We shouldn't require knowing about things like wildcard searches for something as common as Pokemon.

Updated by anonymous

Furrin_Gok said:
Why not just use wildcard searches? *vulpix reveals both Alolan and original vulpixes.
Also, normal_ and _(normal_form) are bad:
If they would have said "normal" or similar I might have agreed, but "original" simply means the first (unless we talk about "new").

But I like suffixes so in that case I would personally suggest ninetales_(original)

Especially when you consider that with the Alolan Exeggutor, Alolans consider it to be the "True" form of Exeggutor, "Normal" for them would be the supertall palm tree, while for foreigners it might not be.
[/quote]

Considering no one that will ever use this website will be Alolan, there will never be anyone who considers Alolan Exeggutor to be normal Exeggutor. That's not something we need to worry about.

Mutisija said:
and how you planned to make everyone understand that they are supposed to use special tag for regular vulpix? it would create a whole ton of extra work 1. just to add this new tag system 2. to keep all the normal form images properly tagged.

Using the vulpix tag only for non alolan vulpixes implies the Alolan Vulpix is not actually a Vulpix, which it is. And we do need an ubrella tag to cover both forms. They aren't separate Pokemon. They're just different forms of the same Pokemon. I suppose we could use Vulpix (disambiguation) or something like that as the umbrella tag but that seems stupid? Users who want to see both Vulpix normal form and Vulpix alolan form should find both with a simple "Vulpix" search.
EDIT: Plenty of people who do searches on the site don't know or care at all about the site rules, while people who upload should be aware of them. It seems more reasonable to make uploaders follow special rules than casual users.

Updated by anonymous

My suggestion is definitely:

  • ninetales
    • ninetales_(original) (/original_ninetales)
    • ninetales_(alolan) (/alolan_ninetales)

Why implicated tags? Simplified searching while still being able to find the Alolan forms and if so inclined only the original form and in case someone hates alolan it can also easily be blacklisted as ninetales_(alolan) and everything will work mostly like before, or negated in a search i.e. ninetales -ninetales_(alolan) or why not ninetales -ninetales_(original). It has the added benefit of making tagging projects fairly easy.

It would also be hard to not keep people from tagging the alolan forms with the old ninetales, which would making it hard to not have an umbrella tag. Then the only option would be @Wrekt's and to disambiguate, but that seems unnecessarily complicated for this issue.

Why use original? Because it's easy to understand (despite raised concerns), tagging the old ones as _(kanto) (or whatever, I don't know pokemon lore) requires more understanding of pokemon lore than necessary, especially if the other is called _(alolan) which requires you to know at least one of these.

Wrekt said:
Especially when you consider that with the Alolan Exeggutor, Alolans consider it to be the "True" form of Exeggutor, "Normal" for them would be the supertall palm tree, while for foreigners it might not be.

Considering no one that will ever use this website will be Alolan, there will never be anyone who considers Alolan Exeggutor to be normal Exeggutor. That's not something we need to worry about.

For reference: What I didn't say but also thought about with "normal" was in the sense of normal to general pokemon lore, i.e. since alolan are canon, they are pretty much normal pokemon.

Wrekt said:
Using the vulpix tag only for non alolan vulpixes implies the Alolan Vulpix is not actually a Vulpix, which it is.

Just a counter example: black_panthers are black leopards or jaguars, yet we don't tag black panthers as either of those.

Similar thing could be applied here.

Updated by anonymous

Chessax said:
Just a counter example: black_panthers are black leopards or jaguars, yet we don't tag black panthers as either of those.

Similar thing could be applied here.

Leopards and jaguars are different species of animals, and the term "black panther" refers to entirely black versions of both animals. The black panther tag could not imply either because it is not explicitly one or the other, while an Alolan Vulpix is simply a Vulpix from the Alola region. Same animal.

Updated by anonymous

Wrekt said:
Leopards and jaguars are different species of animals, and the term "black panther" refers to entirely black versions of both animals. The black panther tag could not imply either because it is not explicitly one or the other, while an Alolan Vulpix is simply a Vulpix from the Alola region. Same animal.

What if you have a leopard jaguar hybrid with melanism :P. Was the best example I could think of, also:

post #958952

Is fairly different from the original exeggutor, to the point of pretty much looking like a distinct, but related, species. But it doesn't matter, I agreed with you :)

Updated by anonymous

Wrekt said:
Considering no one that will ever use this website will be Alolan, there will never be anyone who considers Alolan Exeggutor to be normal Exeggutor. That's not something we need to worry about.

You seem to be missing my point: We aren't from either continent, because they're both fictional. Exeggutor's bio mentions it first came from a tropical region, and that it grows taller when exposed to sunlight; the Alolan Exeggutor lives in a tropical region and grew super tall thanks to sunlight. In that sense, it is how an exeggutor is normally supposed to look, but not the original form we were introduced to.

Updated by anonymous

Furrin_Gok said:
You seem to be missing my point: We aren't from either continent, because they're both fictional. Exeggutor's bio mentions it first came from a tropical region, and that it grows taller when exposed to sunlight; the Alolan Exeggutor lives in a tropical region and grew super tall thanks to sunlight. In that sense, it is how an exeggutor is normally supposed to look, but not the original form we were introduced to.

It's heads grow larger, not that it grows taller. And my point is that only people from Alola would consider the Alolan Exeggutor it's "normal" form. Since we aren't, and there's nowhere else in the known Pokemon world where that form exists, it's fairly safe to say that that is not it's normal form, and it instead changes when in that specific region.

Updated by anonymous

Furrin_Gok said:
News: Coroco revealed the Alolan forms of Meowth and Marowak: Meowth is now a dark type, Marowak is a Ghost/Fire type. More stuff for our Alolan_ problem!

What about Alolan_Pokemon? Tag it if there is a Alolan Pokemon in the image, with the same concept as with tagging shinies. If a person is looking for, say, an Alolan meowth specifically, then meowth alolan_pokemon solo, etc. for any other search options.

I understand that they are different forms, but this could be a good idea since there is no good word stated to differ between the different pairs.

Updated by anonymous

Wrekt said:
It's heads grow larger, not that it grows taller. And my point is that only people from Alola would consider the Alolan Exeggutor it's "normal" form. Since we aren't, and there's nowhere else in the known Pokemon world where that form exists, it's fairly safe to say that that is not it's normal form, and it instead changes when in that specific region.

Normal in day to day language is a relative concept not an absolute one hence anything can be normal, making "normal" a bad absolute descriptor (which is what tags should ideally be).

Kogith said:
Tag them with exeggutor phenotypic_plasticity.

Siral_Eurgh-xan said:
What about Alolan_Pokemon? Tag it if there is a Alolan Pokemon in the image, with the same concept as with tagging shinies. If a person is looking for, say, an Alolan meowth specifically, then meowth alolan_pokemon solo, etc. for any other search options.

Well, it depends how much specificity we want in searching. Descriptors (alolan/normal/original) not tied to a character/species will be useless if you:

  • Want to search for two different Alolan in one post
  • Want Alolan Meowth but post contains non-alolan Meowth and another Alolan pokemon.

Siral_Eurgh-xan said:
I understand that they are different forms, but this could be a good idea since there is no good word stated to differ between the different pairs.

Please tell me why original is not a good word, I can accept that it's not good if I get an explanation (I can even accept it being awkward to type).

The only negativity with the word so far seemed to be some pokemon generation superiority bias, not something wrong with the word itself.

Updated by anonymous

chessax said:
Please tell me why original is not a good word...

Tell me what original means. 'Cause last I checked, there is literally no pokemon that isn't somwhow based off of a species or object that exists; they're not original either.

A person may take the word original too seriously and leave tags out, like canine, feline, dragon, mouse, etc.. We already have problems with people tagging with sexual dimorphism and ignoring the hybrid Fakemon tag, and as stated we have a blanket tag for shiny Pokemon. Using another blanket tag would surface only one problem, where the person doesn't tag it (knowingly or not).

With original, the tag Fakemon would be useless because all the hybrids within are original concepts. Then, we'd also have people clashing against "original_*", because there are new "original" Pokemon in that region, like mimikyu or salandit. Would they, too, deserve the original suffix or prefix?

Updated by anonymous

Genjar

Former Staff

TonyLemur said:
What's wrong with, for example, just having an alolan_vulpix tag that implies vulpix?

Makes it impossible to search for both forms in the same post.

Since there's already fifteen posts that feature alolan vulpix with the standard form, that's probably a concept that the users want to be able to search for.

If it's implicated, the only way to find those is by browsing through all posts that contain alolan vulpix. And there's going to be a lot of those, eventually.

Updated by anonymous

Siral_Eurgh-xan said:
Tell me what original means. 'Cause last I checked, there is literally no pokemon that isn't somwhow based off of a species or object that exists; they're not original either.

A person may take the word original too seriously and leave tags out, like canine, feline, dragon, mouse, etc.. We already have problems with people tagging with sexual dimorphism and ignoring the hybrid Fakemon tag, and as stated we have a blanket tag for shiny Pokemon. Using another blanket tag would surface only one problem, where the person doesn't tag it (knowingly or not).

With original, the tag Fakemon would be useless because all the hybrids within are original concepts. Then, we'd also have people clashing against "original_*", because there are new "original" Pokemon in that region, like mimikyu or salandit. Would they, too, deserve the original suffix or prefix?

Thanks, that makes sense. Although I think you're exaggerating the problem slightly, especially the "there is literally no pokemon that isn't somwhow based off of a species or object that exists", last time I checked we have a whole pokemon type for ghosts, additionally we got dragon, fairy, etc. (if you go hyperbole I can too, also never use the word literally lightly around me, because I will take you literally :P).

In my native tongue we got different words for new (originell) and initial (original) so I guess I probably got stuck on that...

However that still doesn't resolve searching issues coming from using blanket terms (both hybrid and fakemon suffer from search issues, but they're not really comparable since they're not canon, shiny_pokemon has same issues but is at least canon) and from the somewhat heated discussion it seems like it is indeed an issue.

But maybe I'm making a small issue much larger than other people perceive it...

Updated by anonymous

TonyLemur said:
What's wrong with, for example, just having an alolan_vulpix tag that implies vulpix?

Conversely, what's wrong with just searching for *vulpix? If they don't know about wildcards, there's a little instructions link next to the search box that explains them.

Updated by anonymous

At this point, I just wondering if someone is willing to tag that original or normal or base or standard or default whatever.... Especially who can do tag scripts or mass tag edit. Because your power is more important than regular member's empty talk.

Updated by anonymous

Lance_Armstrong said:

Ko-san said:
I don't see why they wouldn't just stay as fakemon. A fake is a fake, regardless of what it's supposed to be or where it's supposed to be from.

I agree. alolan_fakemon sounds like a good idea but there is no unifying aspect of the alolan forms. It should stay as fakemon.

post #964963 has an "Alolan Jynx" which is actually being tagged as such. Seems users outside the forum want to still give them alolan_ tags.

Updated by anonymous

TonyCoon

Former Staff

Genjar said:
Makes it impossible to search for both forms in the same post.

Since there's already fifteen posts that feature alolan vulpix with the standard form, that's probably a concept that the users want to be able to search for.

If it's implicated, the only way to find those is by browsing through all posts that contain alolan vulpix. And there's going to be a lot of those, eventually.

OK, how about not having it imply vulpix?

Updated by anonymous

Genjar

Former Staff

TonyLemur said:
OK, how about not having it imply vulpix?

That's what I'd go with.
It works well enough for mega_pokemon, should work for alolan_pokemon too.

And having different systems for different forms seems overtly complicated.

Updated by anonymous

TonyLemur said:
OK, how about not having it imply vulpix?

Genjar said:
That's what I'd go with.
It works well enough for mega_pokemon, should work for alolan_pokemon too.

And having different systems for different forms seems overtly complicated.

Would that work? Considering shiny_pokemon and alternate_colors are still tagged with their base form, from the little I know not all alolan forms are very different from their non-alolan form and simply differ by color. At least the mega forms are (usually) morphologically different.

Updated by anonymous

Genjar

Former Staff

Chessax said:
Would that work?

I think so.
All Alolan Pokemon that have been revealed so far look distinct from the base form. They all have other differences than just the color. Vulpix is the one that's closest to a palette swap, but even that one has some noticeable differences.

Updated by anonymous

Genjar said:
I think so.

Well, if you think it can be kept clean, then I'd be alright with using two separate tags and not implying, it would enable good search distinction. Otherwise I'm still for using a new "kanto" and a new alolan tag with old tag as an umbrella tag.

Updated by anonymous

Genjar said:
I think so.
All Alolan Pokemon that have been revealed so far look distinct from the base form. They all have other differences than just the color. Vulpix is the one that's closest to a palette swap, but even that one has some noticeable differences.

Vulpix's tail has become a bit wispy, but that's about it. Meowth, on the other hand, just has his eyes perpetually half closed. However, if we treat these other forms like Mega forms, then we should do the same with all of them.

Updated by anonymous

Genjar

Former Staff

Furrin_Gok said:
Vulpix's tail has become a bit wispy, but that's about it.

Wispy hair too, and the body proportion is different from the base form. The Alolan form is slightly slimmer. Not that I expect artists to actually notice it and draw it like that, but... still.

Updated by anonymous

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