scaliespe said:
I think you misread my post. The fact that, for example, Midna implies a specific Zelda game despite being a recurring character is a problem that needs to be fixed regardless of what happens with the video_games tag. Even if you nuke the tag, that has no impact whatsoever on the fact that Midna implies a specific game in the franchise that the character is not specific to.

She was a character in a specific game though. She isn't so much a recurring character as she is a character with cameo appearances. With Twilight Princess's release in 2006, Midna was a character exclusive to it, until Hyrule Warriors in 2014, nearly 8 years later, where she became a playable character in that game. Similar for Wolf Link being exclusive to TP since 2006, until Breath of the Wild in 2017, 11 years later, where he's a special bonus character if you have the right Amibo.

Of course you then get into the weeds as what counts as "being in a game". Here's a list of where Midna's appeared outside of TP. What would count toward her being non-exclusive to TP?

scaliespe said:
I’d be in favor of an anime tag. I don’t see why anime fans shouldn’t have an easy way to search all anime content without having to use a ton of ~ operators to search through all the animes they like.

What counts as anime? The question that's sparked many flamewars.

scaliespe said:
Also, we do have a webcomic tag, which is pretty much the same thing already.

Actually it's not:

Images or animations depicting characters from any regularly-updated webcomic.

The tag would more properly be named webcomic_character, and has also had people saying it should be invalidated since we don't tag what medium a character comes from, like video_game_character, or movie_character, or tv_show_character, or even a general (non-web)comic_character.

scaliespe said:
The fire burns because of the oil, but the analogy implies that the problem with video_games exists or is somehow worsened by the fact that there are some incorrect implications, like Midna implying the wrong tag.

That's exactly what I mean, that's it's worsened by the implications since it would be ever-changing, requiring regular maintenance to update tag implications as new entries come out in a series (which as we already see, adding/removing/changing tag implications can take a really long time, during which outdated implications would be erroneously adding inapplicable tags; some implications relating to Pokemon Legends Arceus are still pending, despite the game being out for nearly a half a year with various bits of information known well before then).

But even then, you'll still have people manually tagging Twilight Princess simply because a post has Midna, and they associate Midna with TP because that's where she first appeared and it's her primary role in the series, while they may not be familiar with or care about her other appearances. Many people are tagging Pokemon Legends Arceus because it has a pokemon that first appeared in that game, even though we know they will not stay exclusive to it.

scaliespe said:
Things like Pokémon probably don’t need specific game tags in the vast majority of cases, especially considering a large part of the franchise is from the anime. However, I do think Pokémon fans would appreciate the ability to search for, for example, Pokémon Sun/Moon specifically and to find those posts that specifically make reference to the game in one way or another.

Where would the separation be between a reference to the Sun/Moon games, or the anime's Sun/Moon arc, or the manga, ...?

scaliespe said:
I think it would be tagged more than you think

Maybe, but I wager a lot of that would be on account of misinformed or over-zealous tagging (not knowing or caring that something or someone has appeared elsewhere outside of a particular entry).

scaliespe said:
At any rate, my proposal is, above all else, meant to create a workable solution that accords with the admins’ desire to not have to nuke the tag. It’s not perfect, but I think this is the most feasible solution that avoids mistags as much as possible.

The desire doesn't seem to be not to nuke the tag itself, but to have to take the site down for several hours or days to actually clean up the tag from everything. To which there has been the suggestion to just remove the implications without taking the site down, to stop the bleeding as it were, and worry about cleanup later which can be done slowly over time. Either way, many if not most implications for it are bad and would need to be removed, and regardless of what happens with the tag afterward, removing the current set of implications and starting fresh with a set plan for the tag, would be the cleanest and quickest way to deal with it.

magnuseffect said:
How do you plan to deal with distinction between things that originated as their anime, and things that started as something else and were adapted to anime?

Well, like 99% of those are probably adapted from a manga, so:

scaliespe said: I’d propose one for anime/manga (in the same tag, as they overlap very strongly)

But in cases where an anime overlaps with a different existing category, like video games (ie. Pokémon), then the franchise itself simply wouldn’t imply anything, and something like an anime tag would just have to be applied manually in cases where the post is recognizably specific to the anime.

strikerman said:
can we just nuke the tag

probably not:

bitwolfy said:
The video_games debate has no easy fix.
It's not as simple as either clicking "Accept" on your BUR or TheVileOne's.

Accepting the former would potentially mean somehow removing a tag from almost 672,000 posts.
I'm still not entirely sure how feasible that is from a technical perspective. Same goes with aliasing it to something. It might even require some site downtime.
So, the solution would need to involve that tag having a new definition that roughly covers its existing posts.

watsit said: What counts as anime? The question that's sparked many flamewars.

I’m really not the person to ask anything about anime, but I figure that at least most animes are unquestionably considered anime, and possible edge cases can be handled on a case-by-case basis.

Actually it's not:
The tag would more properly be named webcomic_character, and has also had people saying it should be invalidated since we don't tag what medium a character comes from, like video_game_character, or movie_character, or tv_show_character, or even a general (non-web)comic_character.

I’d say the wiki is poorly worded, as there is a large list of webcomic copyright tags that imply webcomic. Sure, it’ll be mostly due to characters implying the tag, but technically any reference to or any content from any of those webcomics would qualify for the comic’s copyright tag, thereby implying webcomic, even if no characters from the comic were depicted. Which, essentially, is exactly the same as how video_games works, or at least how it’s intended to work.

That's exactly what I mean, that's it's worsened by the implications since it would be ever-changing, requiring regular maintenance to update tag implications as new entries come out in a series (which as we already see, adding/removing/changing tag implications can take a really long time, during which outdated implications would be erroneously adding inapplicable tags; some implications relating to Pokemon Legends Arceus are still pending, despite the game being out for nearly a half a year with various bits of information known well before then).

I’m sure that issue would continue to exist even if video_games was nuked, or if it had never even existed. As it stands, these implications are already ever-changing since current policy is to have characters imply what they’re from, and if what they’re from changes, we’re left having to redo the tags. At least if, as I suggest, major characters only imply the franchise and not the individual game, we can avoid most future issues with establishing implications.

But even then, you'll still have people manually tagging Twilight Princess simply because a post has Midna, and they associate Midna with TP because that's where she first appeared and it's her primary role in the series, while they may not be familiar with or care about her other appearances. Many people are tagging Pokemon Legends Arceus because it has a pokemon that first appeared in that game, even though we know they will not stay exclusive to it.

True, true. However, I think this may not be an issue. This effect is, to some extent, already established and expected. Like how we handle character tagging, there may be an element of TWYK - I mean, I’ve seen characters tagged just from disembodied hands, because the hands appear to be those of the character and because the artist says that’s who it is. The character may imply a franchise or copyright holder, meaning the copyright tag will be on the post even if there’s no other content they own visible anywhere in the image. And this is just from a hand or a foot or something, things that you may not even be able to identify as that specific character without outside knowledge. But as long as it’s not obviously wrong, the tag stays. Especially considering alternate_species situations where it may be even harder to identify the character without taking the artist’s word for it.

Likewise, if an artist has Twilight Princess specifically in mind with their Midna drawing, and tags it as such, is that actually a problem? People searching Twilight Princess probably would not find it to be an incorrect search result. As long as it isn’t added by implication, it should be fine. The implication would be a problem in cases where an artist draws her specifically in the context of a different game, warranting the copyright tag for that game instead.

Where would the separation be between a reference to the Sun/Moon games, or the anime's Sun/Moon arc, or the manga, ...?

Likewise, I am not the best person to ask anything about Pokémon. I know each game has its own setting and cast and art style that differentiates it from other games in the series, but what correlation that has with the anime is entirely outside the scope of my knowledge.

The desire doesn't seem to be not to nuke the tag itself, but to have to take the site down for several hours or days to actually clean up the tag from everything. To which there has been the suggestion to just remove the implications without taking the site down, to stop the bleeding as it were, and worry about cleanup later which can be done slowly over time.

“To stop the bleeding” implies that this is a worsening problem actively interfering with tagging; I speculate that the admins have not wanted to do that either simply because that isn’t the case. The existence of the video_games tag itself actually isn’t a problem. It doesn’t harm anything; it’s only a single extra tag added to some posts. It may be mistagged on some posts, but it’s easily ignored, and some people find some use for it even despite the current inaccuracy. It’s not the same thing as an invalid alias that is actively preventing posts from receiving correct tags, or an invalid implication that’s cluttering a valid tag with invalid results. The worst interpretation is that it’s a tag that in itself is not very useful, but its continued existence doesn’t interfere with anything.

Either way, many if not most implications for it are bad and would need to be removed, and regardless of what happens with the tag afterward, removing the current set of implications and starting fresh with a set plan for the tag, would be the cleanest and quickest way to deal with it.

This may be a fair point. However, it does seem that this BUR would relocate many of the invalid video_games implications to individual games rather than publishers or franchises - though a few game developers are getting the implication here, so those would have to need changed before it could be approved. Still, perhaps going that route would be better than wiping all the implications considering that that BUR already exists and a lot of it could be done all at once.

watsit said:
The desire doesn't seem to be not to nuke the tag itself, but to have to take the site down for several hours or days to actually clean up the tag from everything. To which there has been the suggestion to just remove the implications without taking the site down, to stop the bleeding as it were, and worry about cleanup later which can be done slowly over time. Either way, many if not most implications for it are bad and would need to be removed, and regardless of what happens with the tag afterward, removing the current set of implications and starting fresh with a set plan for the tag, would be the cleanest and quickest way to deal with it

I agree with this. As much as I'd like to alias it to invalid_tag and be done with it, that's probably not gonna be feasible.

scaliespe said:
probably not:

To be clear, that bolded part was in reference to grandfathering in existing uses of the tag, to avoid having to remove it with some site downtime, but it was still with the consideration of removing the existing implications. There are other options besides a full nuke-it-from-orbit approach requiring site downtime, and grandfathering old uses with a new description that would also exclude it from being used on future posts. Such as removing the implications, preventing the majority of future uses, and allowing users to remove it manually as they find them.

scaliespe said:
I’m really not the person to ask anything about anime, but I figure that at least most animes are unquestionably considered anime, and possible edge cases can be handled on a case-by-case basis.

Anime is just a Japanese word for animation, which in the west is used to refer to "Japanese animation", but not just any animation, one that follows a particular style (Japanese animation styles vary a lot; just as not all American animation looks Disney-esque, not all Japanese animation looks "anime"). The original Thundercats was done by a Japanese animation studio for a western production company, same as Transformers: The Movie. Do they count as anime? Avatar: The Last Airbender (and The Legend of Korra) was done by an American animation studio, but purposely went for an "anime aesthetic". Is that an anime? There is also (I think it's still around) an animation studio in Japan that has mostly foreign (non-Japanese) staff, who try to keep to an "anime aesthetic". Would that stuff be considered anime?

scaliespe said:
I’d say the wiki is poorly worded, as there is a large list of webcomic copyright tags that imply webcomic. Sure, it’ll be mostly due to characters implying the tag, but technically any reference to or any content from any of those webcomics would qualify for the comic’s copyright tag, thereby implying webcomic, even if no characters from the comic were depicted. Which, essentially, is exactly the same as how video_games works, or at least how it’s intended to work.

Even there, there's a problem. e6 doesn't actually allow "webcomics", which it defines to be

The Uploading Guidelines say:
As a webcomic counts any comic that is exclusively hosted on their own page, exclusively hosted on a webcomic host, or monetized through ads.

We do allow comics generally, though, when they're also found in places like FA or DA, and we even have a comic tag to use when an image is presented in a comic format (i.e. actually says something about how the image looks). A tag to indicate something in the post is related to a webcomic seems both redundant and overreaching when there's already a tag to say a post looks like a comic.

scaliespe said:
I’m sure that issue would continue to exist even if video_games was nuked, or if it had never even existed.

video_games being erroneously tagged due to an outdated implication wouldn't occur if the implications to video_games were removed, that issue wouldn't continue to exist. The issue with a character implicating a specific entry in a series is a separate issue with no easy answer as long as some series keep tags for individual entries. And being the case that there is no easy answer to dealing with implications to individual entries in a series as the series continues to evolve, we don't need to throw video_games on top of it in the mean time to cause more erroneous tags. Don't let perfection be the enemy of good; striving for a "perfect" solution to these issues doesn't have to prevent a good solution to partially improve the situation.

scaliespe said:
Likewise, if an artist has Twilight Princess specifically in mind with their Midna drawing, and tags it as such, is that actually a problem?

If Twilight Princess implies video_games, and the drawing of Midna doesn't show anything like a video game, yes, because the tag is indicating a "video_games" is in the image when it's not. If the video_games implication wasn't there, I might actually agree the use of Twilight Princess itself on its own is relatively harmless in that scenario since the character is at least in that game (depending on how exactly the image looks, but in a general sense it wouldn't necessarily be a problem for Twilight Princess to be on a Midna-focused image).

scaliespe said:
“To stop the bleeding” implies that this is a worsening problem actively interfering with tagging;

It is, since it's continuing to get added to posts that don't have anything to do with video games, and the more posts it's added to, the more work will be necessary to deal with it. As it is, the site can't automate cleaning up video_games without downtime because there's so many posts, and it feels like some kind of worker paralysis is at play here; they don't want to remove the implications because there would be a lot of work to clean up the tag, but by not removing the implications, the amount of cleanup work is increasing, causing more trepidation to removing the implications because of more work, etc. But the more the implications keep adding it to posts, the harder it's going to be to clean up when something is finally done, whatever that something ends up being. Removing the implications now will make it easier to clean up and restructure in the future, regardless of what that restructuring will be like.

scaliespe said:
The existence of the video_games tag itself actually isn’t a problem. It doesn’t harm anything; it’s only a single extra tag added to some posts.

Unnecessary/useless tags on posts are a problem. The same reasoning can apply to invalid_tag, or any other single tag. It's just one extra tag on a post, ignore it. But it's an issue because there are many "single extra tag"s floating around out there, so it often will be multiple extra tags on a post, of which this is one of them.

at this point, i'd be happy if literally any action was taken for this bur

how many times can i bump a thread before a mod yells at me? place your bets now!

but seriously. even if the implications were removed without the tag itself getting affected in any way, i'll take that (for now)

watsit said:
To be clear, that bolded part was in reference to grandfathering in existing uses of the tag, to avoid having to remove it with some site downtime, but it was still with the consideration of removing the existing implications. There are other options besides a full nuke-it-from-orbit approach requiring site downtime, and grandfathering old uses with a new description that would also exclude it from being used on future posts. Such as removing the implications, preventing the majority of future uses, and allowing users to remove it manually as they find them.

If we’re not going to nuke the tag, we may as well allow it to be tagged on future posts that are clearly still video game-related in some way, however we define that. Leaving it only on old posts seems like a weird solution. And anyway, the real problem is not the existence of the tag itself, but the fact that it was being incorrectly applied to a lot of posts due to bad implications. That doesn’t mean every use of the tag is invalid though, and there will continue to be posts in the future that qualify for the tag, whatever definition we give it.

Anime is just a Japanese word for animation, which in the west is used to refer to "Japanese animation", but not just any animation, one that follows a particular style (Japanese animation styles vary a lot; just as not all American animation looks Disney-esque, not all Japanese animation looks "anime"). The original Thundercats was done by a Japanese animation studio for a western production company, same as Transformers: The Movie. Do they count as anime? Avatar: The Last Airbender (and The Legend of Korra) was done by an American animation studio, but purposely went for an "anime aesthetic". Is that an anime? There is also (I think it's still around) an animation studio in Japan that has mostly foreign (non-Japanese) staff, who try to keep to an "anime aesthetic". Would that stuff be considered anime?

I’d be fine with excluding all of those, and limiting it specifically to Japanese animation with a traditional anime aesthetic. Like I said, just limit it to the cases that nobody would question.

Even there, there's a problem. e6 doesn't actually allow "webcomics", which it defines to be
We do allow comics generally, though, when they're also found in places like FA or DA, and we even have a comic tag to use when an image is presented in a comic format (i.e. actually says something about how the image looks). A tag to indicate something in the post is related to a webcomic seems both redundant and overreaching when there's already a tag to say a post looks like a comic.

It does seem that the webcomic tag is defined differently that the term is on the uploading guidelines. I don’t think that’s a problem, though. The guidelines are defined that way so that we don’t end up with issues with comics that are not supposed to be hosted anywhere outside their own site (which is most likely being used as revenue for the artist - hosting the content on E621 would take away from their revenue). However, this clearly isn’t the general definition of a webcomic, just a limitation placed on our uploads. A webcomic is still a webcomic if the artist also uploads to Twitter or elsewhere.

As far as comic goes, they’re still not the same thing. First, webcomic implies a long-running series rather than something like a single page or short series of images. Something long enough to get its own copyright tag, most likely - for short comics we’d probably use a pool instead of creating a tag for it. Secondly, webcomic is being used as a genre tag like video_games (my initial point), so fanart of the series gets the tag even if it’s not in comic format. So it definitely isn’t synonymous with comic. It may not be the most useful tag imaginable, but it doesn’t seem to cause any problems, and some people probably have a use for it.

video_games being erroneously tagged due to an outdated implication wouldn't occur if the implications to video_games were removed, that issue wouldn't continue to exist. The issue with a character implicating a specific entry in a series is a separate issue with no easy answer as long as some series keep tags for individual entries. And being the case that there is no easy answer to dealing with implications to individual entries in a series as the series continues to evolve, we don't need to throw video_games on top of it in the mean time to cause more erroneous tags. Don't let perfection be the enemy of good; striving for a "perfect" solution to these issues doesn't have to prevent a good solution to partially improve the situation.

In the mean time, we could at least have tags that certainly won’t cause mistags get the implication - namely, like I said, tags that refer to specific video games or entries in a series rather than an entire series, as those will always be video games. I don’t think characters should generally imply those tags, though, except maybe for cases where we can be certain the character will never appear elsewhere. Having characters imply the series instead, like Midna -> Legend of Zelda, would be preferable.

If Twilight Princess implies video_games, and the drawing of Midna doesn't show anything like a video game, yes, because the tag is indicating a "video_games" is in the image when it's not. If the video_games implication wasn't there, I might actually agree the use of Twilight Princess itself on its own is relatively harmless in that scenario since the character is at least in that game (depending on how exactly the image looks, but in a general sense it wouldn't necessarily be a problem for Twilight Princess to be on a Midna-focused image).

Does Midna currently appear in any non-video game media? If not, then all appearances of Midna are currently valid uses of video_games. But even so, if the use of Twilight_Princess is not invalid, and Twilight Princess is a video game, then the addition of video_games is similarly valid.

Remember, video_games does not imply that something “looks like video games” or has video games present in the image - it refers to any image that even so much as references a video game. Kinda like how meme works. Yeah, it’s broad, but it’s what we’re stuck with unless we can wipe the tag from some hundreds of thousands of posts. And anyway, some people still seem to find it useful despite its breadth.

The real crux of the matter is that sally_acorn should never imply video_games through any chain of implications, and other similar situations. It’s at least arguably valid for most appearances of sonic_the_hedgehog - or at least it’s usually not an obvious mistag like the Sally Acorn posts are - though he should ideally still be handled on a case-by-case basis where there’s some reference to Sonic being presented in his video game incarnation rather than his film or comic appearances, like post #2346273 for a random example. That’s definitely video game sonic. That’s the ideal case, anyway - but if an artist says a particular drawing of Sonic is meant to be from a video game, tags that game and tags video_games via implication, I think that’s fine. It’s maybe not the ideal, but it’s not an actual problem like sally_acorn implying video_games is, which is clearly just wrong. If we can set up the system such that those clearly wrong tags don’t happen, I think that would be good enough to have a functioning albeit broad tag and we don’t have to make any really radical changes.

It is, since it's continuing to get added to posts that don't have anything to do with video games, and the more posts it's added to, the more work will be necessary to deal with it. As it is, the site can't automate cleaning up video_games without downtime because there's so many posts, and it feels like some kind of worker paralysis is at play here; they don't want to remove the implications because there would be a lot of work to clean up the tag, but by not removing the implications, the amount of cleanup work is increasing, causing more trepidation to removing the implications because of more work, etc. But the more the implications keep adding it to posts, the harder it's going to be to clean up when something is finally done, whatever that something ends up being. Removing the implications now will make it easier to clean up and restructure in the future, regardless of what that restructuring will be like.

What I meant by that is simply that even the mistagged implications don’t interfere with anything else. Something like an incorrect alias should ideally be resolved as quickly as possible, as it would be actively replacing a correct tag with an incorrect one. I’m not saying that this issue should never be fixed, just that it’s probably not as urgent as something that’s actively interfering with correct tagging.
Or, we could start with smaller BURs that fix the more obvious errors that will need to be resolved no matter what happens with video_games, as opposed to simply wiping all the implications regardless of validity. I feel like those would be approved much more quickly, and even people who want to keep video_games largely intact would agree with removing them if they are, in fact, not video games.

Unnecessary/useless tags on posts are a problem. The same reasoning can apply to invalid_tag, or any other single tag. It's just one extra tag on a post, ignore it. But it's an issue because there are many "single extra tag"s floating around out there, so it often will be multiple extra tags on a post, of which this is one of them.

You’re assuming that it is a useless tag. Several people here have described their reasons for using the tag; while you can say that it may be very broad and is often mistagged due to bad implications, neither of those arguments imply that the tag is fundamentally useless. In fact, if anyone actually uses it, it is, by definition, not useless.

scaliespe said:
If we’re not going to nuke the tag, we may as well allow it to be tagged on future posts that are clearly still video game-related in some way, however we define that.

Why? The whole problem here is that it's usage is so vague and arbitrarily applied that it's functionally useless that says nothing about the image. And the point of removing the implication is to stop it from being tagged on future posts. As the admins have said, since so many posts have the tag they would have to take the site down for some time to actually remove the tag automatically from all posts that currently have it, which they understandably don't want to do, so instead we can slowly remove it from posts manually as we find them. But to do that we need to remove the implications, and it would be counterproductive to then manually add it to posts when trying to also remove it from posts.

scaliespe said:
Leaving it only on old posts seems like a weird solution.

Temporarily. Since the site would require downtime to automatically remove it after deimplication, that's not an option. So instead we can leave it on old posts when the implications are removed, after which we can manually remove it from those old posts that shouldn't have it.

scaliespe said:
And anyway, the real problem is not the existence of the tag itself, but the fact that it was being incorrectly applied to a lot of posts due to bad implications.

More that it has a bad definition. A better definition would allow the tag to remain on some posts, but it would still be removed from the vast majority.

scaliespe said:
Secondly, webcomic is being used as a genre tag like video_games (my initial point), so fanart of the series gets the tag even if it’s not in comic format.

Considering the definition of the webcomic tag, that's clearly the wrong way to use it because we don't otherwise tag posts based on the medium the subjects in the image are related to, which leaves video_games as the outlier it is.

scaliespe said:
So it definitely isn’t synonymous with comic.

Not synonymous, but close enough for most practical uses.

scaliespe said:
In the mean time, we could at least have tags that certainly won’t cause mistags get the implication - namely, like I said, tags that refer to specific video games or entries in a series rather than an entire series, as those will always be video games.

I don't see the point since we don't imply tags for individual movies to a movies tag or tags for individual comics to a comics tag. It's also not unusual for individual entries in a series to get cross-promotion in other mediums (e.g. Pokemon Red/Blue Rescue Team is a Pokemon game, which also has an anime special and a manga series to promote it). Or for things that were comics to be turned into TV shows and/or movies and/or games.

scaliespe said:
Does Midna currently appear in any non-video game media?

I wouldn't be surprised if there's a manga adaption of the game or some other promotional material. I don't know every bit of content that was ever released around the games she's appeared in, and I doubt most people do either, which would make it impossible to know whether something like that would apply. That's a big reason why I don't think we should imply things to video_games because we won't always know those things are actually game-exclusive, let alone the time necessary to fix it when that changes during which time there would be mistags.

scaliespe said:
But even so, if the use of Twilight_Princess is not invalid, and Twilight Princess is a video game, then the addition of video_games is similarly valid.

The use of twilight_princess would only be provisionally valid, in that it's a minor detail that may or may not be correct and doesn't cause significant problems (though I wouldn't take issue with someone who does take issue and wants to remove it). Adding in the video_games tag here, though, would cause a bigger problem if it's not known whether the character is exclusive to games and the image is depicting that game, making it no longer a minor detail and require more scrutiny for correct use of the tag.

scaliespe said:
Remember, video_games does not imply that something “looks like video games” or has video games present in the image - it refers to any image that even so much as references a video game.

According to it's current bad definition. Even your suggestion would limit the tag to actual depictions of specific games, so it wouldn't be for "any image that even so much as references a video game" and would require the specific game to be depicted. But plenty of us say it should be even more restricted than that, and should be for things that "look like video games" or a depiction of a video game paraphernalia.

scaliespe said:
Yeah, it’s broad, but it’s what we’re stuck with unless we can wipe the tag from some hundreds of thousands of posts.

I'm more than willing to help chip away at that number.

scaliespe said:
I’m not saying that this issue should never be fixed, just that it’s probably not as urgent as something that’s actively interfering with correct tagging.

Well, as it is, this has been pending for a year, and in that time, an additional 166,000+ posts have had the tag added by implication that needs checking over and correcting. That number is not getting any lower.

scaliespe said:
Or, we could start with smaller BURs that fix the more obvious errors that will need to be resolved no matter what happens with video_games, as opposed to simply wiping all the implications regardless of validity.

We agree that many of the implications are bad. We just disagree about how many of those implications are bad due to differences in how we think the tag should be handled, which is going to require more discussion to come to a consensus. It would be easier and less messy to add the implication back to whatever is deemed valid later, letting the system do it's thing to auto-add the tag that lost it in the mean time, then to continue to delay with debates about what exactly should keep the implication (requiring multiple BURs to fix up character and series implications separate from the video_games implications themselves) and continuing to prevent cleanup from the ones we would agree shouldn't have it.

Just passing by to let Strikerman know:

remove implication sega -> video_games # missing

According to forum researchers, missing implications are the leading cause of BUR failure. Always check the script messages, kids.

scaliespe said:
And anyway, the real problem is not the existence of the tag itself, but the fact that it was being incorrectly applied to a lot of posts due to bad implications. That doesn’t mean every use of the tag is invalid though, and there will continue to be posts in the future that qualify for the tag, whatever definition we give it.

Bad implications are one thing, but there are few other tags like video_games which carry an inherent risk of becoming bad only in retrospect. Implications are never meant to be temporary, but there is no case of a video game character who might not have an appearance in another form of media in the future.

watsit said:
I wouldn't be surprised if there's a manga adaption of the game or some other promotional material.

Nintendo have a go-to mangaka duo who've done adaptations of most of the series, even.
A quick Google shows Midna is in the adaptation of Twilight Princess, though you could probably argue it's derived from the game anyway.

Adding to the what even is anime? question, there's enough emulation of comic styles considered indicative of manga that such media originating from China, Korea, and France have their own distinct nation-of-origin terms with Wikipedia articles.
And to re-cover similar ground, one of the series (Dofus) listed as notable in the manfra article in fact derives from a video game which also has an anime-esque animated series.

gattonero2001 said:
Just passing by to let Strikerman know:

remove implication sega -> video_games # missing

According to forum researchers, missing implications are the leading cause of BUR failure. Always check the script messages, kids.

Edited thanks to Earlopain. For what it's worth, I'm almost certain the request was valid at the time of creation.

At the moment, what exactly is blocking anything from happening to the tag?

strikerman said:
at this point, i'd be happy if literally any action was taken for this bur

strikerman said:
how many times can i bump a thread before a mod yells at me? place your bets now!

but seriously. even if the implications were removed without the tag itself getting affected in any way, i'll take that (for now)

strikerman said:
At the moment, what exactly is blocking anything from happening to the tag?

Please be patient, this BUR is an exceptional case and there are many possible courses of action. Several options are being considered and compared.

gattonero2001 said:
Please be patient, this BUR is an exceptional case and there are many possible courses of action. Several options are being considered and compared.

i'll take that as my cue to stop bumping

just kinda hard to be patient when it's been over a year

gattonero2001 said:
Please be patient, this BUR is an exceptional case and there are many possible courses of action. Several options are being considered and compared.

Which courses of action exist besides "approve" and "reject"?

6, 6 unactivated users voting for the BUR! ah ah aaaaaaaah

The bulk update request #982 (forum #311372) has been approved by @Rainbow_Dash.

Looks like christmas came early

I avoided debating on this, but I suppose it's for the best. Vox Populi, Vox Dei.

OK. So! What do we do now about the 847,000+ pics still tagged with it?

If it doesn't actually have a game itself or someone playing a game in the pic (which would probably warrant a singular version of the tag), do any of them actually count anymore?

FINAL COUNT!

If this BUR had been accepted at the same minute it was proposed, there would be 255,598 fewer posts tagged video_games today.

The bulk update request #3712 is active.

remove implication baba_is_you (79) -> video_games (18)

Reason: Also, you missed one.

EDIT: The bulk update request #3712 (forum #352361) has been approved by @gattonero2001.

The bulk update request #3712 (forum #352361) has been approved by @gattonero2001.

Cool, thanks for taking a tool away from me.

Seems odd to remove being able to filter out stuff from video games in a search, but okay. Adding -video_games to a search was in fact useful.

spnkrgrenth said:
Seems odd to remove being able to filter out stuff from video games in a search, but okay. Adding -video_games to a search was in fact useful.

1. There was no common definition of "stuff from video games".
2. There was never an equivalent tag for "stuff from movies".

I've noticed there's now a videogame_setting tag linked from the video_games wiki. It has no wiki itself, and the existing results don't make any sense. None of the posts with it look like a video game setting, just generic combat, fantasy, or sports settings, which are definitely not exclusive to video games.

Farewell nebulous tag that caused so many blacklist issues, you will not be missed. Here's hoping whatever context-specific taggings are used from here on don't turn into a snarl of aliases and implications.

topic #35523 picks up the weird gamefreak stragglers

I imagine an archive of the arts like this site attracts the hoarder types. Only someone with that mindset could argue to keep a tag that's making the place worse. I get it, but I'm glad things were finally able to move forward and things got cleaned up. This was the right move. The trashbags were thrown out of the apartment.

minus said:
making the place worse.

Explain?

votp said:
you will not be missed.

Speak for yourself.

sexygriffon said:
Explain?

We have this entire thread to explain

I need some advice. I prefer art of original/generic characters so I was using "-video_games" as part of my daily searches to get rid of a whole lot of fanart with a single negation tag (less work than needing to build a blacklist of every video game). Now that that's no longer possible: does anyone have any suggestions for helping me get rid of the fanart easily (specificaly video-game related)?

(and before anyone asks, I'd rather avoid using copytags:0 cuz for some reason holidays, religions, 'patreon', and website names are set as a copytag, and I don't want to miss those)

vuccala said:
I need some advice. I prefer art of original/generic characters so I was using "-video_games" as part of my daily searches to get rid of a whole lot of fanart with a single negation tag (less work than needing to build a blacklist of every video game). Now that that's no longer possible: does anyone have any suggestions for helping me get rid of the fanart easily (specificaly video-game related)?

(and before anyone asks, I'd rather avoid using copytags:0 cuz for some reason holidays, religions, 'patreon', and website names are set as a copytag, and I don't want to miss those)

I don't have an answer, but I am curious about how exactly you were avoiding the metric fuckton of Zootopia and My Little Pony artwork that shows up in every search. If your objection is to fanart in general, that sounds like a problem that should be solved properly rather than using one rule-breaking tag as an incomplete proxy for it.

You're right that there are a bunch of things in the copyright category that probably shouldn't be there. And then there are tags like blender_(software) and patreon that are beyond redemption at this point.

vuccala said:
I need some advice. I prefer art of original/generic characters so I was using "-video_games" as part of my daily searches to get rid of a whole lot of fanart with a single negation tag (less work than needing to build a blacklist of every video game). Now that that's no longer possible: does anyone have any suggestions for helping me get rid of the fanart easily (specificaly video-game related)?

(and before anyone asks, I'd rather avoid using copytags:0 cuz for some reason holidays, religions, 'patreon', and website names are set as a copytag, and I don't want to miss those)

You can blacklist companies that often develop video games. You'll definitely hit some stuff that isn't related to gaming, but if you're that dead-set on not seeing content that happens to have a game character, that's your best option.

wat8548 said:
I am curious about how exactly you were avoiding the metric fuckton of Zootopia and My Little Pony artwork that shows up in every search.

That was easy: [-hasbro] and [-disney] within my bookmarked daily searches (I prefer those as negation tags rather than blacklist so that the search results aren't full of hidden results).

wat8548 said:
If your objection is to fanart in general, that sounds like a problem that should be solved properly

I'll do what I can with negation and blacklists, but I do wish e621 had a way to filter for original artwork. Perhaps copytags:0 could have potential with some adjustments (like moving holidays/mythologies/blender_(software)/patreon to the Meta tagtype?). Or maybe a new set of meta tag like Meta:Original/Meta:Fanart/Meta:Public_domain (just throwing around ideas). I like what Pixiv users do, which is tag original works as オリジナル ("original" in Japanese).

strikerman said:
You can blacklist companies that often develop video games.

Thanks, guess I'll have to start there.

vuccala said:
I'll do what I can with negation and blacklists, but I do wish e621 had a way to filter for original artwork. Perhaps copytags:0 could have potential with some adjustments (like moving holidays/mythologies/blender_(software)/patreon to the Meta tagtype?). Or maybe a new set of meta tag like Meta:Original/Meta:Fanart/Meta:Public_domain (just throwing around ideas). I like what Pixiv users do, which is tag original works as オリジナル ("original" in Japanese).

I believe the Blender tag was added before meta tags were even a thing, it just needs to have it's category changed, alongside Source Filmmaker, to meta. Holiday tags I'm not sure why were made copyright tags to begin with, probably because copyright is used as "setting" in many cases.

vuccala said:
I need some advice. I prefer art of original/generic characters so I was using "-video_games" as part of my daily searches to get rid of a whole lot of fanart with a single negation tag (less work than needing to build a blacklist of every video game). Now that that's no longer possible: does anyone have any suggestions for helping me get rid of the fanart easily (specificaly video-game related)?

(and before anyone asks, I'd rather avoid using copytags:0 cuz for some reason holidays, religions, 'patreon', and website names are set as a copytag, and I don't want to miss those)

I always found it kind of unintentionally hilarious that holidays are considered a copyright tag. Like... I get the reason, I just feel like there's a funny irony to it. (As if Christmas wasn't commercialized enough, now it's copyrighted and all that. =p)

wat8548 said:
If your objection is to fanart in general, that sounds like a problem that should be solved properly rather than using one rule-breaking tag as an incomplete proxy for it.

I second this. I don't know exactly what should be done about it, but enough people want to avoid or specifically search for fan art that SOMETHING should be. I can't pretend to understand the aversion/fixation to such an incredibly broad category, but I can't deny that it exists.

Maybe "fan art" should be a lore tag? That would address the TWYK thing.

votp said:
I believe the Blender tag was added before meta tags were even a thing, it just needs to have it's category changed...

The blender tag needs a category change to invalid. It is completely useless. It was supposed to be used for images with blender assets, the UI, or the logo. But people decided to destroy its purpose, and tag posts to show it was made in blender, what is against TWYS. You can create cinematic scenes, indistinguishable from real life, and N64 style, washed out texture, low poly crap. There is absolutely no reason to have this tag any longer.

The video_games tag is locked on post 1678282 for some reason, though I guess it doesn't matter since it's a deleted post?

Hmm, saw the notice. Let it burn? :P

votp said:
Holiday tags I'm not sure why were made copyright tags to begin with, probably because copyright is used as "setting" in many cases.

In a sense, copyright tags can also be considered theme tags. It's just most of the time, the theme is that of a franchise/copyright or the company or person who owns said franchise/copyright. Holidays are similar in execution except nobody really owns them like a franchise is. In any case, it's a convenient place to set them apart where people can better see them.

dubsthefox said:
The blender tag needs a category change to invalid. It is completely useless. It was supposed to be used for images with blender assets, the UI, or the logo. But people decided to destroy its purpose, and tag posts to show it was made in blender, what is against TWYS. You can create cinematic scenes, indistinguishable from real life, and N64 style, washed out texture, low poly crap. There is absolutely no reason to have this tag any longer.

I disagree with that. There's typical render results that differ between Source Film Maker and Blender for example. If you know, you know, and can very much see it. Lighting limitations of SFM and noise in Cycle renders are two stereotypical examples.

People seeking to search for those or filter them out would find immense use in that. Even if only for academic curiosity as to which tools were used to make something. I've used it myself for that exact purpose more time than I can count.

I can see why an all-encompassing tag would be subject to removal, even though I can't really see that harm in having that around either. (People in this very thread even went as far to express regularly using it.) If we start removing smaller tag/filter options simply for the sake of tag purity, I'd say that's a big step backwards.

It shouldn't be a copyright tag anymore, though. If anything that needs to be a meta tag, and tags added for Blender UI and Blender assets respectively so things can be represented accurately.

clawstripe said:
In a sense, copyright tags can also be considered theme tags. It's just most of the time, the theme is that of a franchise/copyright or the company or person who owns said franchise/copyright. Holidays are similar in execution except nobody really owns them like a franchise is. In any case, it's a convenient place to set them apart where people can better see them.

Why do we need to "better see" the words christmas or halloween? Especially since the holidays tag, which those both imply, is general?

EDIT: We should probably move the Blender/SFM discussion to somewhere more on-topic like topic #33295 or topic #21752.

While I can understand why this decision was made, I notice that there are more and more tags that are so specific that unless you go hunting for it, you won't know. This is especially true with species (thinking of panther vs pantherine for example), but if we want to tag a screenshot of a game now we have to use game_screen. Is there really anyone who uses that term? I'd think game_screenshot or something would be a better alternative, sounds more english to me.

netchicken said:
While I can understand why this decision was made, I notice that there are more and more tags that are so specific that unless you go hunting for it, you won't know. This is especially true with species (thinking of panther vs pantherine for example), but if we want to tag a screenshot of a game now we have to use game_screen. Is there really anyone who uses that term? I'd think game_screenshot or something would be a better alternative, sounds more english to me.

Considering that screenshots of games are against the Uploading Guidelines, it is probably no bad thing that such a tag is obscure.

wat8548 said:
Considering that screenshots of games are against the Uploading Guidelines, it is probably no bad thing that such a tag is obscure.

That is very true. It makes sense in this case then.

I'm okay with this change for reasons already stated. VotP's use of the word "nebulous" is appropriate. I believe the tag can still be utilized, but it would need to be applied in a situation where it's warranted. An obvious example coming to mind is one where a character in the image is playing a video game.

It doesn't need to be applied to every single Pokemon or Star Fox image on these boards.

indigoheat said:
I'm okay with this change for reasons already stated. VotP's use of the word "nebulous" is appropriate. I believe the tag can still be utilized, but it would need to be applied in a situation where it's warranted. An obvious example coming to mind is one where a character in the image is playing a video game.

We do have the playing_videogame tag. Once all the dust has settled, we'll see whether the video_games tag can be resurrected in some way.

Uh, is it just me, or the video_games tag is being automatically removed from any posts that have this tag, without users necessarily removing it from the tag script?

Wasn't it supposed to be a disambiguation tag, rather than an invalid tag? As in, someone must manually check and remove it?

Edit: I say that because, in my last post changes, I removed the video_games tag without actively removing it from the script, that's why I feel it's weird.

m3g4p0n1 said:
Uh, is it just me, or the video_games tag is being automatically removed from any posts that have this tag, without users necessarily removing it from the tag script?

Wasn't it supposed to be a disambiguation tag, rather than an invalid tag? As in, someone must manually check and remove it?

Edit: I say that because, in my last post changes, I removed the video_games tag without actively removing it from the script, that's why I feel it's weird.

They've special-cased it somehow. Presumably it's the same system that does mass updates, but I've never seen it used to remove a tag before.

It also appears that all the old implications have been fully purged, rather than marked "deleted" as is normal practice. This has had interesting effects on the forum posts which proposed them, e.g. topic #29550.

How to search for videogame related porn, other than by franchise / publisher/ character?

pron&chill said:
How to search for videogame related porn, other than by franchise / publisher/ character?

By franchise/publisher/character. "videogame related" is too vague, particularly when dealing with cross-media franchises like Pokemon, the Witcher, etc, so you'll need to be a little more specific about what you're interested in.

I thought nobody outside of Hollywood had been under the impression that "videogame" is a genre for at least twenty years.

why. this is such a terrible idea imo

like why not put it under a "lore" tag or somthing. Just because something works differently does not mean it's the same. It's a useful tag, so I personally would NOT remove it.

lankylank said:
like why not put it under a "lore" tag or somthing.

That doesn't solve the fundamental issue of "video game related" being an incredibly vague status, with very different opinions on what should count, and it being over-tagged to the point of uselessness.

lankylank said:
It's a useful tag

Go on then, don't leave us hanging. Useful for what?

What if I want to search for images that have characters from video games in general?
Maybe there should be a tag called videogame_character?

crackers0106 said:
What if I want to search for images that have characters from video games in general?

Who would count as "from video games"? Geralt was in some video games, but also a book, movie, and tv show. Jessie and James from Pokemon, who were in the anime and got some appearances in the games? How about Ash and Gary, who were modeled after Red and Blue from the games but are technically separate characters? Misty and Brock, who were in the first game as one-off bosses and had cameos in some later games, but their most prominent roles were in the anime. How many Sonic characters first appeared in comics or tv shows before appearing the games?

wat8548 said:
Go on then, don't leave us hanging. Useful for what?

For looking for content related to video games. If you’re looking for video game characters specifically of no specific genre.

lankylank said:
For looking for content related to video games. If you’re looking for video game characters specifically of no specific genre.

Can you be more specific about what you mean? What constitutes "content related to video games"? When is a character a "video game character", given it runs the gamut from 'was referenced once in a line of dialog' to 'has only ever appeared in video games and never outside of video games'. How would such broad searches of nothing specific be useful?

watsit said:
Can you be more specific about what you mean? What constitutes "content related to video games"? When is a character a "video game character", given it runs the gamut from 'was referenced once in a line of dialog' to 'has only ever appeared in video games and never outside of video games'. How would such broad searches of nothing specific be useful?

Same reason you search for anything on here: to find something that applies to the tag. I search video games when I want to find characters from video games and don’t want to be too specific with what kind of game it is.

lankylank said:
Same reason you search for anything on here: to find something that applies to the tag.

Circular reasoning. The tag was nuked for being too vague and broad, with no way to make a clear, focused definition for what it applies to. You want the tag to search for video game related content. What is video game related content? What applies to the tag, which has no clear, focused definition for what applies to it. You haven't narrowed down what you mean, so you are getting what the site has deemed applies to the tag.

lankylank said:
I search video games when I want to find characters from video games and don’t want to be too specific with what kind of game it is.

Here you go, then. Nintendo has over 500k active posts (though there's plenty more non-Nintendo but still video game related posts), and there's almost 3.8M posts on the site (actually plenty less, since there's a lot of deleted or destroyed posts adding to that count), which means, statistically there's something video game related more than once every 7.5 posts.

lankylank said:
I search video games when I want to find characters from video games and don’t want to be too specific with what kind of game it is.

What is the difference, from your perspective, between a character not from a video game and a character from a video game you've never heard of?

wat8548 said:
What is the difference, from your perspective, between a character not from a video game and a character from a video game you've never heard of?

I don’t get what you’re asking. I actually like it when it’s a game I never heard of, just gives me a new game to play.

watsit said:
Circular reasoning. The tag was nuked for being too vague and broad, with no way to make a clear, focused definition for what it applies to. You want the tag to search for video game related content. What is video game related content? What applies to the tag, which has no clear, focused definition for what applies to it. You haven't narrowed down what you mean, so you are getting what the site has deemed applies to the tag.

Here you go, then. Nintendo has over 500k active posts (though there's plenty more non-Nintendo but still video game related posts), and there's almost 3.8M posts on the site (actually plenty less, since there's a lot of deleted or destroyed posts adding to that count), which means, statistically there's something video game related more than once every 7.5 posts.

While a lot of stuff is, doesn’t mean that’s the whole site. I’m just saying it can me helpful to just have a tag for game related content specifically. Searching imo is a lot easier than going to the homepage.

lankylank said:
I don’t get what you’re asking. I actually like it when it’s a game I never heard of, just gives me a new game to play.

See, this is exactly the circular reasoning Watsit was talking about. In the context of this website, which is not a gaming platform (at least since Flash got nuked), there is literally no observable difference between characters that have appeared in video games and characters that have not. (That's not even getting into the other major reason the tag was abolished, the fact that aladdin_(disney) didn't count as a "video game character" despite being on the Genesis that one time.)

lankylank said:
I’m just saying it can me helpful to just have a tag for game related content specifically.

You cannot conceivably call 99% of what used to be in the video_games tag "game related content". What "game related content" is depicted in this picture of Fox McCloud giving anthro Bowser a blowjob, to take just one out of hundreds of thousands of examples?

It sounds like what you want is a video game database, not a furry art archive.

I understand this change, but I do think there's a solid use case for going the other way. If you want fanart of a certain media but not a specific one, it could be nice to search for maybe a video_game_(copyright), film_(copyright), music_(copyright), literature_(copyright), television_(copyright), anime_(copyright), cartoon_(copyright) etc. I agree that it's really bad for video_games to be so vague that it includes several very different things, but I think more is more here.

watsit said:
Who would count as "from video games"? Geralt was in some video games, but also a book, movie, and tv show. Jessie and James from Pokemon, who were in the anime and got some appearances in the games? How about Ash and Gary, who were modeled after Red and Blue from the games but are technically separate characters? Misty and Brock, who were in the first game as one-off bosses and had cameos in some later games, but their most prominent roles were in the anime. How many Sonic characters first appeared in comics or tv shows before appearing the games?

It would count as "from video games" if the character originated from one. Jessie, James, Ash, and Gary technically came from the anime, so it wouldn't apply to them.
Misty and Brock came from the games, so it would apply for them in most cases except for images where the context is clearly the anime.
For example, if I see an image of Brock or Misty having a Pokemon battle with Red from the games, then I would add the tag. But if it's an image of, say, Brock and Misty with Ash and Pikachu, then the tag wouldn't apply.

If a character appeared in a videogame, but didn't come from one, for example Garfield who has had a few videogames, or a Sonic character that first appeared in the comics or TV shows, then you wouldn't tag the image as videogame_character

crackers0106 said:
It would count as "from video games" if the character originated from one. Jessie, James, Ash, and Gary technically came from the anime, so it wouldn't apply to them.
Misty and Brock came from the games, so it would apply for them in most cases except for images where the context is clearly the anime.
For example, if I see an image of Brock or Misty having a Pokemon battle with Red from the games, then I would add the tag. But if it's an image of, say, Brock and Misty with Ash and Pikachu, then the tag wouldn't apply.

If a character appeared in a videogame, but didn't come from one, for example Garfield who has had a few videogames, or a Sonic character that first appeared in the comics or TV shows, then you wouldn't tag the image as videogame_character

So the same character sometimes would and sometimes wouldn't be tagged as a video game character. And a character whose first appearance was in a comic or tv show wouldn't get the tag, even if they're well known in video games. And art of a video game character can look no different than someone's OC.

Such a tag is supposed to be useful how?

Some of my videos are of my video games that I make. Do I just not worry about a video_games tag for them, or is there a better tag for this?

beachside_bunnies said:
Some of my videos are of my video games that I make. Do I just not worry about a video_games tag for them, or is there a better tag for this?

That's against the uploading guidelines:

Bad things to upload:

• Screen captures: Screenshots from games, still images from movies, video snippets from YouTube, etc.
• This includes all content created in sandboxes like Second Life, Minecraft, and similar.
• This also includes all ripped image files from visual novels and similar games.

watsit said:
That's against the uploading guidelines:

If they made the game and its content, they're just animations rendered in a certain way, that just so happen to have alternative interactive versions. I wouldn't say that's quite the same as uploading a modded Skyrim or Mass Effect clip.