Do we really need tags for specific times of the day? Such as:

• Midday 6
• Noon 6 posts
• Morning 1320 posts
• Afternoon 198 posts
• Evening 744 posts
• Dusk 354 posts
• Twilight 341 posts

If we do need, is it ok to at least ignore them and use only day and night?

I think a lot of these can be safely removed with either day, night, sunrise or sunset.

• Midday - virtually indistinguishable from day, also midday_lycanroc mistags
• Noon - I would've said same as above, but for some reason its actual usage seems to have post #2327435 at night and post #2791865 which looks like sunset
• Morning - day + sunrise for the most part? not sure about things like post #3064847
• Afternoon - pretty much always day and for some reason has the occasional sunset
• Evening - looks always sunset to me
• Dusk + Twilight - sunrise or sunset?

Day, dusk, night and dawn would be nicer. More poetic. Also, dawn and dusk are less directly sun focused and more towards the mood than sunrise and sunset.
Albeit: There are no images tagged with "dawn". It can be difficult to tell from a picture whether the twilight circumstances are due to dusk or dawn.

I agree that midday, noon, afternoon and evening are too specific.

Edit: Well... Noon can be quite dramatic and indicated for example by all the shadows directly beneath objects and characters.

I'd argue we only really need day, night, and twilight, the last of which would be used for both dawn/sunrise and dusk/sunset as it can be difficult to tell if the sun is rising or setting. From a TWYS perspective, we can only really tag according to lighting conditions, and there's basically only the three possible, at least when it comes to the outdoors.

I forgot to ask if it's okay to tag sunrise/sunset with day. Also what about night? Is it possible to tag sunset/sunrise with night? I know it's possible to tag it in a post, but in a single image (as a post can have multiple_images)? I'm not sure.

sieghelm_lockayer said:
I forgot to ask if it's okay to tag sunrise/sunset with day. Also what about night? Is it possible to tag sunset/sunrise with night?

That would be what the twilight tag is for, due to the ambiguity of whether it's day or night, as technically, sunrise/sunset is neither, being a transition from one to the other.

sieghelm_lockayer said:
I forgot to ask if it's okay to tag sunrise/sunset with day. Also what about night? Is it possible to tag sunset/sunrise with night? I know it's possible to tag it in a post, but in a single image (as a post can have multiple_images)? I'm not sure.

If a post contains an image where it is clearly daytime and also an image where it is clearly nighttime, the post would be tagged with both "day" and "night" as I understand it. There are few tags which are mutually exclusive with another due to how multiple_images posts are tagged. For example, the text on the wiki page for the multiple_images tag states: "If the post is split into two images, one of them solo and the other duo, then it's tagged as both. And so on."

So although at first glance "solo" and "duo" would seem mutually exclusive with one another, if a single multiple_images post contains an image that is "solo" and also one that is "duo", then the post receives both tags.

The bulk update request #1888 is pending approval.

create alias midday (8) -> day (58468)
create alias noon (15) -> day (58468)
create alias morning (2786) -> morning_(disambiguation) (0)
create alias afternoon (387) -> day (58468)
create alias evening (1766) -> twilight_(time) (0)
create implication sunset (12402) -> twilight_(time) (0)
create implication sunrise (1422) -> twilight_(time) (0)

Reason: I still not sure what we should do with dawn, dusk and twilight. Maybe:

alias twilight -> twilight_(disambiguation)
- or update twilight -> twilight_(time) first
alias dawn_(time) -> twilight_(time)
alias dusk_(time) -> twilight_(time)

But I'm not sure how useful these tags would be.

imply sunset -> twilight_(time)
imply sunrise -> twilight_(time)

alias evening -> sunset 
to 
alias evening -> twilight_(time)

alias morning -> day
to
alias morning -> morning_(disambiguation)

sieghelm_lockayer said:
create alias evening -> sunset

I'd argue that you ought to alias evening to twilight_(time) instead as it can conceivably be portrayed as evening without a sunset visible. Sunrise and sunset ought to imply twilight_(time), however, as those are visible effects that occur during twilight.

alias twilight -> twilight_(disambiguation)
- or update twilight -> twilight_(time) first
imply dawn_(time) -> twilight_(time)
imply dusk_(time) -> twilight_(time)

I think I'd go with the alias over the update as there are at least a couple of Twilights that could be caught in the mix, the book/movie series with the sparkly vampires and the MLP character. If you go the alias route, don't forget to add in:

category twilight_(disambiguation) -> invalid

sieghelm_lockayer said:
create alias morning -> day

"Morning" can also refer to dawn/sunrise.

clawstripe said:
Sunrise and sunset ought to imply twilight_(time), however, as those are visible effects that occur during twilight.

Isn't "twilight" specifically for sunset? I've never heard it used in reference to sunrise. The term is typically used to demarcate a period of ending, e.g. someone's "twilight years" meaning their final years rather than their beginning years. So with the sun, it would refer to the period of it going away, not coming forth.

watsit said:
Isn't "twilight" specifically for sunset? I've never heard it used in reference to sunrise. The term is typically used to demarcate a period of ending, e.g. someone's "twilight years" meaning their final years rather than their beginning years. So with the sun, it would refer to the period of it going away, not coming forth.

Something is ending at sunrise: the night. Twilight is a period of transition between daytime and nighttime and not necessarily at sunset. As per Wiktionary:

1. The soft light in the sky seen before the rising and (especially) after the setting of the sun, occasioned by the illumination of the earth’s atmosphere by the direct rays of the sun and their reflection on the earth.

2. The time when this light is visible; the period between daylight and darkness.

Therefore, when the sun can be seen or be implied to be fully above the horizon, it's day. Twilight is when the sun is illuminating the sky to some degree but is still fully or partially below the horizon. Night is when the sun isn't directly illuminating the sky (reflected sunlight as from moonglow or off another celestial object doesn't count). Sunrise and sunset are specific visual elements during twilight although there are times when it might be appropriate to tag them as day instead of twilight, such as when the sun is clearly close to the horizon but is fully over it.

clawstripe said:
Something is ending at sunrise: the night. Twilight is a period of transition between daytime and nighttime and not necessarily at sunset. As per Wiktionary:
Therefore, when the sun can be seen or be implied to be fully above the horizon, it's day. Twilight is when the sun is illuminating the sky to some degree but is still fully or partially below the horizon. Night is when the sun isn't directly illuminating the sky (reflected sunlight as from moonglow or off another celestial object doesn't count). Sunrise and sunset are specific visual elements during twilight although there are times when it might be appropriate to tag them as day instead of twilight, such as when the sun is clearly close to the horizon but is fully over it.

I had discussed this same issue a while back when trying to clean up the sun_ray/god_ray/crepuscular_ray etc. tags. Though twilight seems to refer specifically to the time before the actual sunrise and after the sunset and not to the time when the sun is actually visible, this isn’t ideal for tagging. The idea was to find a tag that encapsulates both sunrises and sunsets (since it’s not easy to discern between the two in static images), though after some extensive googling, I’ve come to the conclusion that no such word or term exists in English. So I think simply expanding twilight outside of its technical definition to include sunrise/sunset would be useful. Then we can simply have those three times of day - day, night, and twilight, and have sunset and sunrise both imply twilight.

scaliespe said:
So I think simply expanding twilight outside of its technical definition to include sunrise/sunset would be useful. Then we can simply have those three times of day - day, night, and twilight, and have sunset and sunrise both imply twilight.

This seems to be about the best way to handle it. All those different times mentioned in the OP aren't really obvious under TWYS (maybe save when there's a digital clock that shows AM/PM as well as the number part of any given time), but just a binary (day/night) would be paring things down a little too much IMO.

clawstripe said:
I'd argue that you ought to alias evening to twilight_(time) instead as it can conceivably be portrayed as evening without a sunset visible. Sunrise and sunset ought to imply twilight_(time), however, as those are visible effects that occur during twilight.

Done.

watsit said:
"Morning" can also refer to dawn/sunrise.

What should we do with that tag then?

scaliespe said:
The idea was to find a tag that encapsulates both sunrises and sunsets (since it’s not easy to discern between the two in static images), though after some extensive googling, I’ve come to the conclusion that no such word or term exists in English. So I think simply expanding twilight outside of its technical definition to include sunrise/sunset would be useful. Then we can simply have those three times of day - day, night, and twilight, and have sunset and sunrise both imply twilight.

Could you write the wiki for twilight_(time)?

sieghelm_lockayer said:
What should we do with that tag then?

It will need to be manually cleaned up, perhaps invalidated/disambiguated. It seems to be used for multiple purposes: early day, sunrise, and for no visible reason.

I think morning would be better off disambiguated, seems like it can be replaced with the following

• day
• sunrise
• waking_up

And maybe even more

watsit said:
for no visible reason.

My guess would be that it came from trying to tag morning_wood, or maybe just the fact they're in bed? No time of day can really be discerned from this image though.

I recently discovered the night_time tag (80 posts at time of writing), which should be aliased to night. I wonder if there are any more duplicate tags?