The tag visual_novel is completely fucked on this site. When searching it I expected the tag to return images that have the style of a visual novel. You know...the text box at the bottom with some dialogue, a character in the center of the screen, etc...basically images that would simulate a visual novel. Instead 99% of it seems to be this shit:

post #3081262
...which is to say just pictures of characters that I assume come from a visual novel. That SHOULD NOT be what the tag is used for.

In what way is the type of game a character comes from at all relevant to an image of that character? If there's an image of a crash_bandicoot do we need to also label the image with platformer and/or racing_game? If there's an image of red_xiii does that also need to be tagged with rpg? NO...because that would be stupid. So why is the visual_novel tag being applied in this way? I needs to be culled from nearly every image it's been applied to.

Now you know what video_games feels like.

watsit said:
Now you know what video_games feels like.

visual-novelists rise up

watsit said:
Now you know what video_games feels like.

and hence the vidya games BUR

strikerman said:
and hence the vidya games BUR

Which conveniently covers all the visual novel implications too. OP, you know where your vote is needed.

dickshoe said:
In what way is the type of game a character comes from at all relevant to an image of that character? If there's an image of a crash_bandicoot do we need to also label the image with platformer and/or racing_game? If there's an image of red_xiii does that also need to be tagged with rpg? NO...because that would be stupid. So why is the visual_novel tag being applied in this way? I needs to be culled from nearly every image it's been applied to.

Going too heavy handed with video_game genres is just going overboard. Visual novel's a bit of a special genre, though there wouldn't be much harm in dropping it.

Try dialog gui for what you're truly after. I can't find any evidence of a better tag, but we could benefit from one. Maybe visual_novel_gui?
Visual_Novel isn't going to easily stay very clean, so that can either alias to video_game itself, be invalidated, be kept around as exactly what it's been used for, or you can go through the effort of aliasing it to the more obvious tag and work at keeping that cleaned up.

watsit said:
Now you know what video_games feels like.

"Exactly what it should be." Obviously people are trying to tag these things on their own, it's just a thing that's going to happen whether you fight it or allow it.

furrin_gok said:
"Exactly what it should be." Obviously people are trying to tag these things on their own, it's just a thing that's going to happen whether you fight it or allow it.

Plenty of people try to tag plenty of things that the site doesn't approve of (see: everything in invalid_tag or the invalid category). Judging by the votes on the BUR, it's not like the people using the video_games tag are in the overwhelming majority.

strikerman said:
and hence the vidya games BUR

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.

The latter BUR will be eventually accepted in some form, probably having had the video_games implications taken out.
The prospect of reviewing that series of BURs is a nightmare, and blindly accepting it without making sure it's correct is not an option.
Accepting it as is would just perpetuate the issue of having a tag that is both incredibly broad in scope and not terribly useful.

bitwolfy said:
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.

If the technical side could be sorted out, I wouldn't be totally opposed to a scorched-earth approach... Nuke the whole tag, and add it from scratch.

furrin_gok said:
Try dialog gui for what you're truly after. I can't find any evidence of a better tag, but we could benefit from one. Maybe visual_novel_gui?

See also user_interface. I'd suggest ~hud ~gui ~user_interface visual_novel, but that has, like, ten images.

bitwolfy said:
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.

Technically, accepting that BUR would require no such thing. If the number of posts is the problem, the least you could do is take action as early as possible to prevent the number from growing even larger.

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.

Personally, I'd be fine with just having its implications and aliases removed as a start, so new posts stop getting the tag by implication. Since the majority of its uses are a result of implications, removing the implications will drastically slow the rate at which it's getting added, preventing the issue from getting much worse for however it's existing uses are eventually handled (how much longer until it reaches 1,000,000 posts with the site's current rate of growth, I wonder?). Handling the tag on existing posts can be done or figured out afterward, either with some site downtime to wipe the tag in one go, or a bot that slowly removes it from everything over the course of a few days, weeks, or months, or whatever else someone can come up with. With the aliases and implications removed, another tag like video_game (not plural) can take up the mantle of being for images of a video game (having the aesthetics/UI of one, seeing a game console/accessory, someone playing a video game, etc), and get appropriate aliases and implications for that more restricted definition.

Even in the worst case, there being no automation on removing video_games and users can manually delete it as they see it, would be better than leaving it as it is, in my opinion.

bitwolfy said:
So, the solution would need to involve that tag having a new definition that roughly covers its existing posts.

I don't see how you could have a definition that covers the existing posts, but also stops it from applying to the future posts that it would currently. This would essentially mean just leaving the tag as it is. Unless you mean for some kind of grandfather clause, removing the implications and aliases and changing its meaning to restrict its scope going forward, but allow old posts to keep it. That would be better than nothing, but a grandfather clause sounds like it'd also prevent old posts from getting cleaned up at all (in the same way grandfathered posts aren't deleted, a grandfathered tag comes across as people could get in trouble if they tried to manually delete it off of old posts). It also seems like using a separate tag (like video_game) for the new definition would be better than having video_games mean something different for old posts vs new, allowing video_games itself to be cleaned up and removed however it can.

Fun fact: if the unimplying BUR had been accepted at the same minute it was proposed, there would be over 78,000 fewer posts tagged video_games today.

bitwolfy said:
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.

I may be totally wrong, I have no idea how the technical side works, but could the removal be done in chunks?

bitwolfy said:
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.

i'm a very untechnical person, but for any auto-edits on posts, can't there be like a forced delay or something to avoid shenanigans

The bulk update request #4081 is active.

remove implication yaminabe_aries (105) -> visual_novel (1)

Reason: The visual_novel tag is still fucked. For some reason topic #29801 removed every one of its implications except this one.

Now that the debate is settled over tagging mediums that we can't see in the image, can we get a similar nuke for this tag? It's a much smaller task than the one already done for video_games, and has the exact same justification.

Perhaps some subtag of gameplay_mechanics could be created for the tiny minority of posts like post #3556067 that depict such things, but otherwise this one's for the bin.

Megasearch:

visual_novel -yaminabe_aries -boyfriend_to_death -kanon_(visual_novel) -repeat_(visual_novel) -clannad -angels_with_scaly_wings -morenatsu -echo_project -doki_doki_literature_club! -katawa_shoujo -nekojishi -stardust_kids -purrfect_apawcalypse -great_troubles -i_promise -password_(visual_novel) -tennis_ace -knights_college -the_human_heart_(game) -extracurricular_activities -burrows_(captain_nikko) -kemo_coliseum -far_beyond_the_world_(series) -temptations_ballad_(visual_novel) -dawn_chorus -psychic_connections

That cuts it down to 4 pages. I couldn't find any more copyright tags with more than 4 images' worth of overlap.

Some useful tags I found while browsing the above: fake_screenshot gameplay_mechanics game_screen gui

The same search with those removed:

visual_novel -yaminabe_aries -boyfriend_to_death -kanon_(visual_novel) -repeat_(visual_novel) -clannad -angels_with_scaly_wings -morenatsu -echo_project -doki_doki_literature_club! -katawa_shoujo -nekojishi -stardust_kids -purrfect_apawcalypse -great_troubles -i_promise -password_(visual_novel) -tennis_ace -knights_college -the_human_heart_(game) -extracurricular_activities -burrows_(captain_nikko) -kemo_coliseum -far_beyond_the_world_(series) -temptations_ballad_(visual_novel) -dawn_chorus -psychic_connections -fake_screenshot -gameplay_mechanics -game_screen -gui

EDIT: The bulk update request #4081 (forum #356784) has been approved by @bitWolfy.

The bulk update request #4081 (forum #356784) has been approved by @bitWolfy.