Preamble / why I'm suggesting this:
So I've noticed an increase in the number of tags which try to specify multiple pieces of information at once. I'm talking about tags like, for instance, overweight_male, which take two descriptors of the same character and connect them.
I've made it clear before that I don't support this type of thing, because if the principle were applied consistently, it would dramatically increase the number of tags in use, and would dramatically increase the effort of tagging images correctly.
So I'm proposing this as the only solution I've been able to think of that allows both the specificity that is clearly desired as evidenced by those sorts of tags, without dramatically increasing the difficulty of tagging most images.
Requested feature overview description.
Effectively, the concept of character-oriented tagging is this:
Users, when tagging an image, would be able to define a character (as in, something which would count towards the solo-duo-group tags), and then would be able to tag that character with any number of tags which apply. When searching, users would have the option to either search for terms normally, which would function mostly identically to how it functions now, or to search with a certain syntax which searches through characters defined on posts and returns posts which have a character which has all such tags on it.
Tags which can't be tied to a character would remain in a general pool.
An example:
Let me pick an example image to show how this would work. This one should work:
There are two characters in the image. So we'd define two characters, and there would be a general pool for tags which aren't specifically linked to either.
General:
slimefur female/female feral_on_feral duo forest size_difference
Character 1:
female bayleef scarf_only mostly_nude pussy anus feral on_top looking_back 1_toe smaller
Character 2:
dergonite_(character) female dragonite dragon lying pussy anus feral 3_toes larger
I have a few things to point out here. First, you'll notice that tags like female_on_top are no longer necessary, because that is simply a character that would get both the female and on_top tags. Similarly for tags like larger_female or smaller_female - generic larger and smaller tags would suffice.
Note also that there are some repeated tags between the two characters.
Why would it be useful?
An analysis of of pros and cons:
Cons:
Most importantly, this is almost certainly technically infeasible. This would require a substantial change to the code itself, which is not true for simply adding new tags.
This would require substantial work on the part of taggers to bring it to a level that would be effective - however, mitigating that is that the current trend towards combo-tags would require probably much more work in the long-term.
It makes sense for some implications to go within the character the original tag was placed under, but it could be argued for others that it might make more sense in the general pool (an example of the former: rodent -> mammal; an example of the latter: smaller -> size_difference, though it could also be argued that something like this would be fine to remain in the character object).
Some tags would necessarily need to be repeated, and for images with many many characters visible, this could be a lot of work.
Since many existing combo-tags would effectively be replaced, users in general would need, on average, to use more search terms per search.
Searching through multiple characters on images would probably be harder on the system than simply performing one search per image.
Pros:
Many existing tags could be eliminated, as their function could be replicated with simpler tags. This is of particular note with combination-tags.
There would be a massive increase in the amount of search-specificity, allowing users to search for combinations between tags that would be entirely infeasible to tag in the traditional sense.
The amount of additional work caused by defining characters would, for the typical image, be fairly minor, and offset by the reduction in the number of unique tags necessary.
The organization of character-oriented tagging might make it easier for users to keep things clear and tag more effectively - effectively, it makes certain key tags more obvious, especially when they are missing, compared to them being in a huge jumble in a big "general" pool of tags
What part(s) of the site page(s) are affected?
Tagging system.
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To be clear, like I said earlier, I don't think this is actually technically feasible, but there would be some pretty dramatic advantages to this system, so I thought it might not be a terrible idea to post it anyway.
Updated by Fifteen
