Aliasing original_characters → fan_character
Link to alias

Reason:

Or invalid tag.

EDIT: The tag alias original_characters -> fan_character (forum #269328) has been rejected by @NotMeNotYou.

aliasing to fan character is terrible idea because original characters are not fan characters. its in the name.

Ruikuli said:
aliasing to fan character is terrible idea because original characters are not fan characters. its in the name.

original_character is already aliased away

forum #144035

MyNameIsOver20charac said:
original_character is already aliased away

forum #144035

it really shouldnt be. this alias is the reason why i regularly run into fan character tag slapped on posts that are not any kind of fan content

Ruikuli said:
aliasing to fan character is terrible idea because original characters are not fan characters. its in the name.

Original characters are fan characters. It's in the name. Original, means not part of the franchise, thus fan character.

Furrin_Gok said:
Original characters are fan characters. It's in the name. Original, means not part of the franchise, thus fan character.

original character is used mostly as term for characters that are not part of any franchise. for example when i looked through original character tag on tumblr, only about 10-20% were fan characters. usually when people mean fan characters, they say "fan character", and when people talk about their original characters, they say "original character". shocking.

Ruikuli said:
original character is used mostly as term for characters that are not part of any franchise. for example when i looked through original character tag on tumblr, only about 10-20% were fan characters. usually when people mean fan characters, they say "fan character", and when people talk about their original characters, they say "original character". shocking.

i actually see people call fan characters original characters all the time, especially on places like FA and DA.

Ruikuli said:
original character is used mostly as term for characters that are not part of any franchise.

The term "original character" in that context is pretty much meaningless on this site of a million fursonas. If you wanted to see them you could catch a lot with copytags:0 -zero_pictured.

animperfectpatsy said:
The term "original character" in that context is pretty much meaningless on this site of a million fursonas. If you wanted to see them you could catch a lot with copytags:0 -zero_pictured.

im not saying that we should keep the tag as separate tag. im saying that the alias is bad because it leads so often people's random fursonas getting the fan character tag. and this is a really huge problem. i mean look at fan_character copytags:0. some are fan characters with missing copyright tags, but we have literally hundreds if not thousands posts mistagged as fan characters thanks to this alias alone

I do agree with Ruikuli, I just made the alias because that's how it already is. Fan character is both underused in general, with many uploads of fan characters not having it at all, and constantly mistagged because people obviously use the term differently than the page defines it. It'd be best to invalidate all the original and fan character tags.

Opilione said:
I do agree with Ruikuli, I just made the alias because that's how it already is. Fan character is both underused in general, with many uploads of fan characters not having it at all, and constantly mistagged because people obviously use the term differently than the page defines it. It'd be best to invalidate all the original and fan character tags.

imo fan character tag is good to have. the amount of times i have seen people throw shit fits about art containing fan characters is astonishing, so its good to give them ability to blacklist fan characters.

the problem here is following aliases:

• original_character -> fan_character
• oc -> fan_character
• ocs -> fan_character
• oc_only -> fan_character

the terms oc and original character are not exclusive to fan characters as all the shit in fan_character copytags:0 demonstrates, and this alias causes fan character tag being added to content that does not have fan characters just because people try to tag their sonas as oc

animperfectpatsy said:
The term "original character" in that context is pretty much meaningless on this site of a million fursonas. If you wanted to see them you could catch a lot with copytags:0 -zero_pictured.

What about images of OCs with a copyright tag present? An OC holding a pokéball will get the pokémon tag despite no Pokémon characters present.

BlueDingo said:
What about images of OCs with a copyright tag present? An OC holding a pokéball will get the pokémon tag despite no Pokémon characters present.

Technically it's still within that copyrighted world, so it'd still count as a fan character, no?

MissChu said:
Technically it's still within that copyrighted world, so it'd still count as a fan character, no?

Except when it isn't. We have pokéballs in real life (well, toy ones at least) and it's not like an artist has never put one in an obviously non-Pokémon setting before.

MissChu said:
Technically it's still within that copyrighted world, so it'd still count as a fan character, no?

if i draw my fursona in room with pokemon poster on wall, its not fan character

Ruikuli said:
if i draw my fursona in room with pokemon poster on wall, its not fan character

If said character is clearly within a setting, say... a recognizable town of Pokemon, or Skyrim, or wherever, and they look like they belong in that universe, would they be tagged as a fan character?

+1 for original_character > invalid_tag and original_characters > invalid_tag

So at the end of the day people are going to apply the original character tag mostly to fan characters set in a known franchise. When someone makes a true "original character" that doesn't belong to anything, most don't think of or tag it as such, at least not here and if we used it for that it would be a bloated, useless tag. Our tags need to be useful and reflect how people use the site. People really shouldn't be tagging their own fursonas as original character. That's like the default state of literally any creation ever and is about as helpful as tagging "copyright" on every image.

If 99% of people tagging original character are using it for what are essentially fan characters, then an alias to fan character makes sense.

It's not technically inaccurate to call it an original character when the character itself as an individual originated from a fan. I'll push this alias through in a few days and maintain the other one if there isn't a better reason for not doing so.

again, we have literally hundreds if not thousands results in fan_character copytags:0 and only few of those are fan characters with missing cooyright tags.

this is not just occasional mistags. this is a massive and constant issue. if an alias causes literally hundreds of mistags like this, its a bad alias. it shouldnt even be up for debate.

So, while she's not the site's intended audience, my niece (11) tends to use 'fan character' or a specialized franchise-based slang for characters that exist in another's setting (fantrolls, "My warrior cat", "my pony character") while using "original character" to refer to her own characters that were created outside of a franchise.

So, there's clearly some confusion on what an original character is. It is easy to say that we'll just keep an eye on things and tag franchises as they come up, but... there are a LOT of franchises out there. So many. It'd be near impossible for anyone to be able to recognize every franchise.

So, I would actually recommend a disambiguous that basically says "either tag fan_character or tag nothing, thx"

Bumping this because I was trying to suggest this, but I accidentally suggested an implication instead.

Reason: A new wiki page was made recently trying to establish a tag for characters that are not part of any preexisting copyright, which is way too broad to be worth tagging since there many characters out there that would meet this definition (including fursonas). original_character has already been aliased to fan_character since "original character" is a common definition for fan characters anyway.

I've since edited and locked the original_characters wiki page as well.

booruhitomi said:
Bumping this because I was trying to suggest this, but I accidentally suggested an implication instead.

I've since edited and locked the original_characters wiki page as well.

There still seems to be quite a few fan_character copytags:0 results, due to the original_character -> fan_character alias. A wiki page won't stop people from using it incorrectly if they don't read it, and if a significant number of people are tagging original_character for original characters in an original setting, these aliases would seem to be invalid. SnowWolf's suggestion for disambiguating original_character and original_characters would be my suggestion. If it's an original character for someone else's setting, it's a fan_character, if it's an original character for an original or basic setting, don't tag anything.

For what it's worth, I'd personally agree to moving original_character and all its variants to disambiguation / invalid category, with a wiki explaining why we don't tag that here, and to either add fan_character (if applicable), or remove the tag. Yeah, some people are still likely to mistag here and there, but at least that'll separate out most of the posts where people are just tagging any OC they have.

The tag alias original_characters -> fan_character (forum #269328) has been rejected by @NotMeNotYou.

So... are we going to do anything about this? So far the only thing that's happened is a wiki page getting locked. The fact that fan_character is mostly not used as intended is well known.

wat8548 said:
So... are we going to do anything about this? So far the only thing that's happened is a wiki page getting locked. The fact that fan_character is mostly not used as intended is well known.

topic #31635

The bulk update request #6148 has been rejected.

change category fan_character (140147) -> invalid

Reason: What was said already

EDIT: The bulk update request #6148 (forum #385677) has been rejected by @slyroon.

The bulk update request #6148 (forum #385677) has been rejected by @slyroon.