Posted under Tag Alias and Implication Suggestions
The tag alias #57238 blender_(software) -> 3d_(artwork) has been rejected.
Reason: This tag is intended for the UI, logo, and assets of the software, but it's often used for the program that was used to create the animations and pictures.
There is no way to differentiate between other 3d modelling softwares. Therefore, this tag is, as it is used, against TWYS
EDIT: The tag alias blender_(software) -> 3d_(artwork) (forum #332241) has been rejected by @bitWolfy.
Updated by auto moderator
Sad but true. If it could be kept under control, I'd prefer to keep it for when Blender-related things are visible, but I think the genie's out of the bottle on that and the only option is to nuke it from orbit. Source_FilmMaker suffers from the same exact issue and should probably have the same thing done.
watsit said:
Sad but true. If it could be kept under control, I'd prefer to keep it for when Blender-related things are visible, but I think the genie's out of the bottle on that and the only option is to nuke it from orbit. Source_FilmMaker suffers from the same exact issue and should probably have the same thing done.
It's true... but we can still add new tags, like blender_(logo) and blender_(ui)
And for sfm, I am not sure. The first time I encountered it, I saw lots of low poly models. But... you can use low poly models in blender as well. And newer sfm stuff looks actually not bad. So, probably you are right.
Yes, this is something that has been bothering me for quite a long time, actually talked to Nimmy about it the other day.
It's a bit of a conflicting issue because:
1. It should only be tagged if blender or related assets are visible(U.I., Suzane(monkey model), Big Buck Bunny, etc).
2. On the other hand, it could be useful to tag what something was made in, but then we run into the issue of not knowing unless the artist specifies.
3. On the third hand(THE PENIS), it is relatively pointless because Blender is the editor, not the renderer. If anything it should be tagged cycles_(renderer), eevee_(renderer), or blender_(renderer), along with stuff like lightray_(renderer) for 3DS max and family.
The reason SFM is tagged is because SFM tends to be on the low tier end of stuff, honestly I don't think a majority of SFM should be allowed considering it basically is the reason SL isn't allowed(that being, a majority of stuff is just non-original content with penis slapped on it and called a day).
Not to say that all SFM is bad, there are some genuinely great SFM stuff, but it is basically babby's first editor because people see porn and want to make it and end up making garbage like this:
post #2502256
Which is literally just a penis slapped onto a clothed model, no effort.
I could do the same thing in SL(grab a model and put a penis on it and pose it), yet it'd be deleted even if the penis actually looked like it was attached to the character instead of slapped on.
This is why I like the SFM tag because it lets me blacklist low effort content.
Blender tag however is more pointless because it is used to convey that it was made in blender, when anything made in blender could be made in maya, 3ds max, etc. Unless the artist specifically says they made it in blender, you would never know. In fact, I guarentee you a lot of posts are tagged blender_(software) despite not being made in blender because someone sees a asset that was originally in a .blend format but was converted to .dae or .fbx and imported into another editor.
Not to say that low effort stuff can be made in blender, I've certainly made low effort stuff in blender for shitpost reasons but I haven't posted it.
chaser said:
Unless the artist specifically says they made it in blender, you would never know. In fact, I guarantee you a lot of posts are tagged blender_(software) despite not being made in blender because someone sees a asset that was originally...
THIS THIS THIS. Im thinking the same thing, like I know blender is like one of the major programs, but like, if you show me 2 renders made in different programs, unless its SFM, I, and probably most other people, literally wont be able to tell the difference, which makes tagging what software it was made in kind of pointless
cutefox123 said:
THIS THIS THIS. Im thinking the same thing, like I know blender is like one of the major programs, but like, if you show me 2 renders made in different programs, unless its SFM, I, and probably most other people, literally wont be able to tell the difference, which makes tagging what software it was made in kind of pointless
I find it more analogous to how art can be categorized by the date (year) it was made. It's not something intrinsic to the art as to how it's created, but it is helpful as a statistic to evaluate how many, and perhaps which pieces of art were created with specific modeling software.
Blender can be used to make 2D artwork and animations with tools like grease pencil, so this alias doesn't seem right to me.
I recall bitWolfy (I think it was bitWolfy, anyway - it was some admin at any rate) suggesting a while back that we might want to consider having tags just for the art software used, if users deem that important enough to tag (and judging by the widespread use of blender_(software), it seems that many do…), akin to digital_drawing_(artwork) or pencil_(artwork) and etc.
It certainly wouldn’t be out of place for meta tags insofar as what is being tagged relates to the technical information about the image rather than anything visible within it.
scaliespe said:
I recall bitWolfy (I think it was bitWolfy, anyway - it was some admin at any rate) suggesting a while back that we might want to consider having tags just for the art software used, if users deem that important enough to tag (and judging by the widespread use of blender_(software), it seems that many do…)
Although it tends to only be Blender and SFM that people treat this way. You don't see many people tagging Photoshop, GIMP, or ProCreate (it does happen sometimes, and are more easily cleaned, but nowhere near the frequency of Blender and SFM). And as Chaser pointed out above:
chaser said:
3. On the third hand(THE PENIS), it is relatively pointless because Blender is the editor, not the renderer. If anything it should be tagged cycles_(renderer), eevee_(renderer), or blender_(renderer), along with stuff like lightray_(renderer) for 3DS max and family.
(the renderer does have an effect on the resulting render quality and the general "look" of the render)
chaser said:
In fact, I guarentee you a lot of posts are tagged blender_(software) despite not being made in blender because someone sees a asset that was originally in a .blend format but was converted to .dae or .fbx and imported into another editor.
Given that the majority of time for 2D art we'll have no idea what it was made in, and for 3D art there will be cases where it'll be claimed to be made in one thing but actually rendered in another, it doesn't seem worthwhile. We can't verify any of it by just looking at the image.
But also, Chaser alludes to another point. 3D artwork relies heavily on premade assets. If someone makes a penis in Blender, someone else makes a creature in 3DS Max, then an artist combines them in Source FilmMaker and makes a picture, should all three be tagged? What about when the scene viewpoint is changed so the penis is no longer visible, should Blender be removed then since the only thing made in Blender isn't visible in the final image? Should we also tag what image editor was used for the textures? If an 2D editor was used to touch up the rendered picture?
It seems to me the description would be the proper place to list out any relevant software used in its making. Artists already do this sometimes for 2D art, they'll mention if it was made in Photoshop, GIMP, Flipnote Studio, etc, as well as if other software was also used to touch it up, and also sometimes how long it took to make. That would be the perfect place to mention what the 3D image or animation was made in (as well as where any prefab assets are from), creation/render times, etc.
stupidmelon said:
Blender can be used to make 2D artwork and animations with tools like grease pencil, so this alias doesn't seem right to me.
its true but no one uses it like this... at least for furry porn blender 2d_animation
dubsthefox said:
its true but no one uses it like this... at least for furry porn blender 2d_animation
...apparently they do actually: blender_(software) 2d_animation
faucet said:
...apparently they do actually: blender_(software) 2d_animation
oh... I am just lost :D Maybe it should be invalid instead 🤔
faucet said:
...apparently they do actually: blender_(software) 2d_animation
I wonder how many of those would actually result in a mistag, though. Currently there's 8 results with that search.
post #3068959 post #2716669 post #2716685 post #2572139
These four are 2D animation composited with 3D elements, so 3d_(artwork) is valid (the background in the first three, and the cylinder in the fourth).
post #2808390
This one makes me think it's 3D animation made to look 2D. Or at least a 2D/3D composite with the 3D elements blended seamlessly with the 2D elements.
post #2460275
This one I think is using 3D elements for some backgrounds. Difficult to tell with how blurry it is, but I think so.
post #2661568
This one might be using a 3D background, just textured to look drawn. Difficult to say, but possibly.
So that leaves 1 to 4, in total of the nearly 5K posts with blender_(artwork) that may not really be 3D. I think that's good enough for this alias. If it were invalidated instead, it would be much more extra cleanup work and posts that tried to use it may end up missing 3d_(artwork) because of an ultra-rare situation.
watsit said:
Although it tends to only be Blender and SFM that people treat this way. You don't see many people tagging Photoshop, GIMP, or ProCreate (it does happen sometimes, and are more easily cleaned, but nowhere near the frequency of Blender and SFM). And as Chaser pointed out above:(the renderer does have an effect on the resulting render quality and the general "look" of the render)
If an admin were to deem these tags worth keeping, I’d start applying the software tags whenever I know what the artist used. I don’t do that currently as the whole concept is under debate, but the other software tags could certainly be populated.
That said, if we’re not going to keep these, I agree aliasing to 3D would be better even if there’s an extremely small case of it causing a mistag.
watsit said:
I wonder how many of those would actually result in a mistag, though. Currently there's 8 results with that search.(snip)
So that leaves 1 to 4, in total of the nearly 5K posts with blender_(artwork) that may not really be 3D. I think that's good enough for this alias. If it were invalidated instead, it would be much more extra cleanup work and posts that tried to use it may end up missing 3d_(artwork) because of an ultra-rare situation.
There may also be some in blender_(software) -3d_(artwork), not everything has been tagged properly. How about fixing these tags first?
Well aliases/implications should never cause a mistag, and you can definitely make 2D art with Blender, either actually 2D or 3D with filters to make it look 2D.
It'd be a lot to go through, but I feel disambiguating blender_(software) and the other 3D software's tags would be best, then having blender_(ui), blender_(logo), and maybe a blender_(copyright) as the actual copyright tag to distinguish it from the disambiguated tag.
If we want to distinguish the quality then, as Chaser said, it might be best to tag the renderer instead, even if only the artist would really know for sure.
Possibly a bit subjective, but we could also have detailed_model, detailed_scene, simple_modeland simple_scene tags to differentiate between high and low quality models, such as if characters have actual fur or the model is shaped to give the idea of fur, and the quality of the general scene. Instead of the scene tags we could also just use simple/detailed_background, which could still work for 3D.
pup said:
Well aliases/implications should never cause a mistag, and you can definitely make 2D art with Blender, either actually 2D or 3D with filters to make it look 2D.
Implications shouldn't, because adding a valid tag shouldn't require a mistag to be added (since the only way to get rid of the mistag then is to remove a valid tag). Aliases don't have that issue, if an alias causes a mistag, you can easily remove the mistag. And if what was being added was a mistag anyway (the reason it was aliased to begin with), it's not a big deal if a very very small handful remain a (different) mistag while others are replaced with a proper tag.
watsit said:
Implications shouldn't, because adding a valid tag shouldn't require a mistag to be added (since the only way to get rid of the mistag then is to remove a valid tag). Aliases don't have that issue, if an alias causes a mistag, you can easily remove the mistag. And if what was being added was a mistag anyway (the reason it was aliased to begin with), it's not a big deal if a very very small handful remain a (different) mistag while others are replaced with a proper tag.
I disagree, if we alias blender_(software) to 3d_(artwork) then it'll mistag any 2D blender post, without having a tag to replace it. Even if it's only a handful, it shouldn't be put in place if it's not accurate, and not all posts made with Blender are 3D.
It'd also make it hard to go through those posts and apply more correct tags, hence why disambiguation would be better as it's essentially a flag to say the post needs it's tags updating. As said earlier, a lot of times only the artist will know for sure if it was made in blender, so aliasing it to a generic tag will make it impossible without checking the source/description of every 3D post to see if they mention Blender. Not to mention needing to go over every 3D post to see if it has the blender ui/logo in, rather than just those tagged with blender_(software)/disambiguation.
The only thing that gets in my mind now is to alias it to digital_media_(artwork). But I don't know how it would work with mixed_media posts. Do we tag photography_(artwork) and digital_media_(artwork) in mixed_media? If so, this could work out.
pup said:
I disagree, if we alias blender_(software) to 3d_(artwork) then it'll mistag any 2D blender post, without having a tag to replace it.
Except 3d_(artwork) can be easily removed from affected posts (which, as noted, is a whopping 1 to maybe 4 examples total out of nearly 5,000), since there's nothing keeping the tag there. If the tags are left alone or disambiguated, you would still end up with a mistag that has to be removed and/or replaced on all posts that someone used the tag on (which will happen a lot). But this alias would automatically replace it with an appropriate tag that is correct over 99.9% of the time. I would rather we have to fix maybe one post per year instead of multiple per day. That goes doubly if Source_FilmMaker gets the same treatment (31,000 more posts to deal with).
dubsthefox said:
The only thing that gets in my mind now is to alias it to digital_media_(artwork). But I don't know how it would work with mixed_media posts. Do we tag photography_(artwork) and digital_media_(artwork) in mixed_media? If so, this could work out.
As far as I know, mixed_media posts should also tag each of the different types of media used.
Updated
A big problem is that the people who use the blender_(software) tag simply do not know what it's supposed to mean. I imagine that the average user doesn't visit the wiki, and that the people who use the blender_(software) tag probably assumed from context (by just searching it) that anything made in Blender should be tagged with it.
In my opinion, having tags for all software seems fine. Sure, it can't be confirmed what something was actually made in, and only small parts of a post might have been made with it, but its just trivia anyways. I don't think people would use software-specific tags much if they weren't copyright-tags that are literally at the top of the tags list.
From personal experience: Metatags like the year are so unspecific (a whole year of tolerance!) and so often untagged/unknown, that I have never had any use out of it. Its literally more useful for me to search by upload date, despite that being possibly 30 years off.
The easiest solution I see would be to add tags for all software that people care about. Then change the meaning of the blender_(software) tag to be "made in blender" with the uploader/artist being allowed to self-report on it however they like. Then add a new tag called blender_(copyright) (and similar for other programs) that use the original definition.
The worst part will be finding the old posts that actually need the copyright tag. But it's either that, or change nothing and have an eternal conflict between the wiki description and the peoples usage of the tag.
The tag alias blender_(software) -> 3d_(artwork) (forum #332241) has been rejected by @bitWolfy.
ichhabs said:
A big problem is that the people who use the blender_(software) tag simply do not know what it's supposed to mean. I imagine that the average user doesn't visit the wiki, and that the people who use the blender_(software) tag probably assumed from context (by just searching it) that anything made in Blender should be tagged with it.
In my opinion, having tags for all software seems fine. Sure, it can't be confirmed what something was actually made in, and only small parts of a post might have been made with it, but its just trivia anyways. I don't think people would use software-specific tags much if they weren't copyright-tags that are literally at the top of the tags list.
From personal experience: Metatags like the year are so unspecific (a whole year of tolerance!) and so often untagged/unknown, that I have never had any use out of it. Its literally more useful for me to search by upload date, despite that being possibly 30 years off.The easiest solution I see would be to add tags for all software that people care about. Then change the meaning of the blender_(software) tag to be "made in blender" with the uploader/artist being allowed to self-report on it however they like. Then add a new tag called blender_(copyright) (and similar for other programs) that use the original definition.
The worst part will be finding the old posts that actually need the copyright tag. But it's either that, or change nothing and have an eternal conflict between the wiki description and the peoples usage of the tag.
I second this, I also thought blender_(software) meant to tag art made with blender when I posted my own. I think it's the most obvious first thought anyone has upon seeing the tag.
It's quite hard to differentiate one 3d software to another, but the artist likely knows what they used, so I suppose we can trust posts uploaded by the artist at least? (Even if they mention in external tags at their sources?)
dubsthefox said:
It's true... but we can still add new tags, like blender_(logo) and blender_(ui)
And for sfm, I am not sure. The first time I encountered it, I saw lots of low poly models. But... you can use low poly models in blender as well. And newer sfm stuff looks actually not bad. So, probably you are right.
I second the creation of (logo) and (ui) tags.
While different things, having the tags blender_(software) | blender_(ui) | blender_(logo) feels somewhat similar to having <copyright game tag> | <game character tag>.
---------------------------
So in my personal opinion,
I think A is fine, but B may be the more organized/less error prone way. I'm up to work in these tagging projects, but first I would like to confirm if the proposed tag editing is ideal.
Addiiotnally, we currently have blender_cycles and blender_eevee tags, Cycles and Eevee are the rendering engines that can be used in blender, and they may or may not have different visual results. As far as I am aware, cycles is best for realism, but is more noise-artifact prone, while Eevee is simpler, allowing for good and quick rendering.
Near imposible to tell apart, so either invalidate, alias to blender_(software)/made_in_blender, or trust the uploader if the sources mention that information or if the uploader is the artist.
m3g4p0n1 said:
Addiiotnally, we currently have blender_cycles and blender_eevee tags, Cycles and Eevee
It's useless to tag the render engine. If the artist knows what they is doing, you can barely see a difference
Someone who is looking for an image/video, won't be distracted by a wrong reflection.
And the mentioned noise does not occur, if the artist knows how to set up lighting.
Just... throw it in the bin.
Updated
Ah the blender_(software) tag problem has been ongoing for years.
In fact I remember forum topic #21752 from 2018 that asked for a new feature: tagging by software - it is unresolved to this day.
Then in December 2019 someone went through 278 out of 327 posts tagged with blender_(software) and removed the tag. And out of the remaining 49 posts only 1 actually had elements of the Blender UI visible - in other words according to the rules (which haven't changed since then) all blender_(software) tags should've been removed except on that one single post.
And so I commented in that thread arguing that the tag was more useful describing all the 327 posts that have been created with blender rather than that one single post that had elements of the UI visible. In my mind it's more likely that a potential viewer would search for posts created with a specific software rather than posts that have the UI of the software visible somewhere anyway.
angrydraconequus said: In other words the tag that was pretty useful for finding Blender created content will now be completely useless for everyone. How is this an improvement? Isn't the tagging system in place to enable people to quickly and easily find exactly what they're looking for? Because a rule like that achieves the exact opposite.
angrydraconequus said: I understand that SFM might be tagged as a courtesy for people that want to blacklist it (because of lower quality) but it's not a 100% solution as a lot of SFM images are not properly tagged. Searching for a specific piece of software that isn't SFM though is a 100% solution.
Anyway after most blender_(software) tags have been removed back then (and I don't remember if they were actually restored or not) people still kept using it on posts created in Blender. Fast forward to today we now have 8300+ posts tagged as such. So clearly we have a precedent that the people not only want to tag it, but consistently do. And we have a very big database of posts tagged that way and it would be a shame to purge it or alias it to some generic 3d_artwork tag.
angrydraconequus said: Yeah you can only do so much with generic 3d_artwork tag. There's so much that falls into this category that it's almost useless - you get things like GMOD images, actual game screenshots, SFM, Unity3D, Blender, Cinema4D all clumped together with very little means of sorting through them.
And so my proposal is to create a new Software category that allows meta knowledge just like lore tags already do and move the blender_(software), source_filmmaker, cinema4d, maya_(software) and all the others into that category. And yes, C4D, Maya, 3Ds Max etc. don't have that many posts tagged yet. But if the Software category were to be created, people would be more encouraged to tag these less common pieces of software and it would eventually lead to e621 having a more comprehensive and accurate tags regarding all software - not just Blender and SFM.
And finally - why I think tagging software matters?
1. Because artists like to take pride in their art - and part of that is sharing the methods or medium or software in which the artwork has been created. Sometimes it might be even be bragging rights - like painting a Mona Lisa in MS Paint - while maybe the artwork itself might not be the most impressive without context, it might be an incredible achievement when knowing the limitations that it was created with.
2. Because users can search for artwork created with particular piece of software. And while there might not be enough of a difference between two random pieces of artwork created in say Blender and Maya to distinguish which is which, there are still strengths and weaknesses to both these pieces of software that can lead to the entire collection of artworks from each piece of software following unique trends or a certain style. And of course this is most apparent when comparing artworks from SFM, Daz3D and Blender, but there is also a difference between artworks from Blender and Maya and Cinema4D and Houdini etc. Anyway having the tag provides more search options than not having it - and isn't that the entire point of the tagging system to provide as much description as possible for the users to find exactly what they want?
3. It's very common for people to ask artists (especially 3D artists) what software they used to create a particular piece. Having a dedicated tag clearly stating the software will save a lot of people the trouble and keep useless "is this blender?" comments to the minimum.
4. Because e621 is an archival website, knowing what software something was created with is a valuable piece of information that might be useful in the future. For example it could be used in some statistics of how fast the popularity of certain software looked over the years.
As for the blender_cycles and blender_eevee tags - I don't think they're as useful.
The differences in quality between different renderers are minuscule, especially modern offline renderers like Cycles, Octane, Vray, Renderman, Redshift, Arnold, Corona etc. All of them can be pretty much indinstinguishable from each other and most of their differences come down to rendering speed or production features like the ability to render insanely big scenes or some particular effects like caustics. In other words the choice of a renderer very rarely matters and has limited effect on the final quality of the artwork.
Mental Ray might be a standout as it's an older, discontinued renderer that's still used by h0rs3 to this day - and you can certainly see the difference in rendering quality - especially the dynamic range and overall colors as well as realism of the materials and lighting in general.
Eevee is also bit different since it's a real-time renderer that works a lot like many video game engines, but in many cases even it can be made to look very similar to the quality of modern offline renderes (it's also very modern so doesn't suffer from the same issues as Mental Ray does).
angrydraconequus said:
Ah the blender_(software) tag problem has been ongoing for years.
In fact I remember forum topic #21752 from 2018 that asked for a new feature: tagging by software - it is unresolved to this day.
Then in December 2019 someone went through 278 out of 327 posts tagged with blender_(software) and removed the tag. And out of the remaining 49 posts only 1 actually had elements of the Blender UI visible - in other words according to the rules (which haven't changed since then) all blender_(software) tags should've been removed except on that one single post.
And so I commented in that thread arguing that the tag was more useful describing all the 327 posts that have been created with blender rather than that one single post that had elements of the UI visible. In my mind it's more likely that a potential viewer would search for posts created with a specific software rather than posts that have the UI of the software visible somewhere anyway.
Anyway after most blender_(software) tags have been removed back then (and I don't remember if they were actually restored or not) people still kept using it on posts created in Blender. Fast forward to today we now have 8300+ posts tagged as such. So clearly we have a precedent that the people not only want to tag it, but consistently do. And we have a very big database of posts tagged that way and it would be a shame to purge it or alias it to some generic 3d_artwork tag.
And so my proposal is to create a new Software category that allows meta knowledge just like lore tags already do and move the blender_(software), source_filmmaker, cinema4d, maya_(software) and all the others into that category. And yes, C4D, Maya, 3Ds Max etc. don't have that many posts tagged yet. But if the Software category were to be created, people would be more encouraged to tag these less common pieces of software and it would eventually lead to e621 having a more comprehensive and accurate tags regarding all software - not just Blender and SFM.And finally - why I think tagging software matters?
1. Because artists like to take pride in their art - and part of that is sharing the methods or medium or software in which the artwork has been created. Sometimes it might be even be bragging rights - like painting a Mona Lisa in MS Paint - while maybe the artwork itself might not be the most impressive without context, it might be an incredible achievement when knowing the limitations that it was created with.
2. Because users can search for artwork created with particular piece of software. And while there might not be enough of a difference between two random pieces of artwork created in say Blender and Maya to distinguish which is which, there are still strengths and weaknesses to both these pieces of software that can lead to the entire collection of artworks from each piece of software following unique trends or a certain style. And of course this is most apparent when comparing artworks from SFM, Daz3D and Blender, but there is also a difference between artworks from Blender and Maya and Cinema4D and Houdini etc. Anyway having the tag provides more search options than not having it - and isn't that the entire point of the tagging system to provide as much description as possible for the users to find exactly what they want?
3. It's very common for people to ask artists (especially 3D artists) what software they used to create a particular piece. Having a dedicated tag clearly stating the software will save a lot of people the trouble and keep useless "is this blender?" comments to the minimum.
4. Because e621 is an archival website, knowing what software something was created with is a valuable piece of information that might be useful in the future. For example it could be used in some statistics of how fast the popularity of certain software looked over the years.
As for the blender_cycles and blender_eevee tags - I don't think they're as useful.
The differences in quality between different renderers are minuscule, especially modern offline renderers like Cycles, Octane, Vray, Renderman, Redshift, Arnold, Corona etc. All of them can be pretty much indinstinguishable from each other and most of their differences come down to rendering speed or production features like the ability to render insanely big scenes or some particular effects like caustics. In other words the choice of a renderer very rarely matters and has limited effect on the final quality of the artwork.
Mental Ray might be a standout as it's an older, discontinued renderer that's still used by h0rs3 to this day - and you can certainly see the difference in rendering quality - especially the dynamic range and overall colors as well as realism of the materials and lighting in general.
Eevee is also bit different since it's a real-time renderer that works a lot like many video game engines, but in many cases even it can be made to look very similar to the quality of modern offline renderes (it's also very modern so doesn't suffer from the same issues as Mental Ray does).
It does bring another point to my mind, it's pretty much improbable for 3d artworks to showcase UI, since those would be considered screencaps, which aren't allowed as far as I'm aware.
Sure, there may be cases of using the ui as a detail in another artwork, but I don't think that's an amount of usage that warrants a exclusive copyright tag.
angrydraconequus said:
1. Because artists like to take pride in their art - and part of that is sharing the methods or medium or software in which the artwork has been created. Sometimes it might be even be bragging rights - like painting a Mona Lisa in MS Paint - while maybe the artwork itself might not be the most impressive without context, it might be an incredible achievement when knowing the limitations that it was created with.
Then should we also tag how long the image took to be made (total time from start to finish, and the time doing actual work on it)? How much difficulty the artist had in making it? What references they used? How many custom brushes? Or for traditional art, tags for canvas size, scanner or camera model? Number and size of brushes used? Brand of brushes and whether they were new or old? Whether it was a dry or wet canvas? Stuff an artist may take pride in.
angrydraconequus said:
2. Because users can search for artwork created with particular piece of software. And while there might not be enough of a difference between two random pieces of artwork created in say Blender and Maya to distinguish which is which, there are still strengths and weaknesses to both these pieces of software that can lead to the entire collection of artworks from each piece of software following unique trends or a certain style.
This is a contradiction. If "there might not be enough of a difference between two random pieces of artwork created in say Blender and Maya to distinguish which is which", then there wouldn't be "software following unique trends or a certain style". It can't be both visually distinct and not distinct.
angrydraconequus said:
3. It's very common for people to ask artists (especially 3D artists) what software they used to create a particular piece. Having a dedicated tag clearly stating the software will save a lot of people the trouble and keep useless "is this blender?" comments to the minimum.
The description works well for that, along with all other details the artist feels like giving about its creation.
angrydraconequus said:
4. Because e621 is an archival website, knowing what software something was created with is a valuable piece of information that might be useful in the future. For example it could be used in some statistics of how fast the popularity of certain software looked over the years.
An art archive isn't the place I'd look for software popularity.
m3g4p0n1 said:
It does bring another point to my mind, it's pretty much improbable for 3d artworks to showcase UI, since those would be considered screencaps, which aren't allowed as far as I'm aware.Sure, there may be cases of using the ui as a detail in another artwork, but I don't think that's an amount of usage that warrants a exclusive copyright tag.
It's also used for logos and other creations owned by the Blender Foundation, like Big Buck Bunny (which should be a character tag? don't know why it's a copyright tag since it's a character). The same how it works like furaffinity, patreon, steam_(software), etc. Logos, characters, UI... if something associated with it is shown, tag it. But you don't tag it just because an image was in FA, or Patreon, or Steam, just as you shouldn't tag it just because an image was made in Blender, Photoshop, Krita, Paint.NET, etc.
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watsit said:
...like Big Buck Bunny (which should be a character tag? don't know why it's a copyright tag since it's a character).
Because the copyright tag is for the animated short itself, not the character. It's conceivable that someone could post pictures of the three rodent antagonists or the bird to e621 without the rabbit. All that needed to be done was to create and add in a tag for the character himself.
watsit said:
Then should we also tag how long the image took to be made (total time from start to finish, and the time doing actual work on it)? How much difficulty the artist had in making it? What references they used? How many custom brushes? Or for traditional art, tags for canvas size, scanner or camera model? Number and size of brushes used? Brand of brushes and whether they were new or old? Whether it was a dry or wet canvas? Stuff an artist may take pride in.
Strawman - let me take your argument, greatly exaggerate it and then refute that exaggerated argument because it is easier to defeat than the real argument.
But aside from that monstrous exaggeration we actually do have pretty detailed tags for different types of traditional media instead of just one tag saying "2d_(artwork)": https://e621.net/wiki_pages/6511
And that includes differentiating between different types of paints (acrylic, watercolor, gouache and oil) as well a wide variety of different drawing materials like airbrush, crayon, pen, pencil, charcoal, graphite.
3d_(artwork) on the other hand doesn't have any official subcategories and in my opinion it should. After all 3d_(artwork) is a very broad concept that will cover things like - video game screenshots (there are still a lot of Skyrim screenshots on the site), SFM art, Unreal Engine art, Blender art, Zbrush sculpts, 3d simulations (cloth, fluid, smoke), maybe even grease pencil animation (2D static or animated elements animated in 3D space).
So why not start with the software tags that are already tagged on over 45 thousand posts and add them as official subcategories to 3d_(artwork)?
I also don't understand why some people insist on deleting the blender_(software) tag from eight thousand three hundred posts just to have a total of SEVEN WHOLE POSTS tagged 'correctly' according to the rules. (I was able to find only 7 posts that actually do feature Blender logo, parts of it's UI or have related characters - Big Buck Bunny or Suzanne).
Why not just rename the current blender_(software) tag to something else that's more appropriate like blender_(artwork) and then tag the remaining few rare cases where Blender logos or UIs actually do make an appearance with the now appropriate copyright tag - blender_(software). Furthermore have the blender_(artwork) purposefully not imply blender_(software) tag so they would remain separate and so blender_(software) would only be used on those few posts with Blender's UI elements, logos or characters.
Do the same for source_filmmaker, cinema4d, daz3d, maya_(software), 3dsmax, zbrush, unreal_engine, unity_(software), garry's_mod and probably a couple of others.
watsit said:
This is a contradiction. If "there might not be enough of a difference between two random pieces of artwork created in say Blender and Maya to distinguish which is which", then there wouldn't be "software following unique trends or a certain style". It can't be both visually distinct and not distinct.
It is not a contradiction - again if you take two random images you might not be able to tell which piece of software they were created with, but if you look at all the artworks from Blender and all the artworks from Maya for example, you will notice a difference in the type content that's usually done with those pieces of software.
In the same way as if you took two very similar paintings - one from 1500s and one modern one and decided that there is no difference between what people used to paint back then and now because these two random paintings are very similar and impossible to distinguish.
But only when you look at all the paintings done in the 1500s vs all the paintings done today you will see that they (on average) follow different trends and styles, even though there might be similarities between some of them. Is that comparison more clear?
watsit said:
An art archive isn't the place I'd look for software popularity.
It was just an example, and whether you would or wouldn't doesn't make a difference.
The point is you could, and personally I'd say that an art archive, especially one so well maintained (no other website comes close to e621's tagging accuracy) could be a perfect place to gather such statistics as you have artworks from many different artists gathered in one place, covering many years and all consistently tagged according to the same principles and rules.
watsit said:
It's also used for logos and other creations owned by the Blender Foundation, like Big Buck Bunny (which should be a character tag? don't know why it's a copyright tag since it's a character). The same how it works like furaffinity, patreon, steam_(software), etc. Logos, characters, UI... if something associated with it is shown, tag it. But you don't tag it just because an image was in FA, or Patreon, or Steam, just as you shouldn't tag it just because an image was made in Blender, Photoshop, Krita, Paint.NET, etc.
Big Buck Bunny has both a character and a copyright tag because it's both the name of the character and the title of the animation. The same is true for many other characters from popular media that share the same name as the title of the thing they're in. Spider-Man for example.
As for the Furaffnity, Patreon and Steam I already addressed how to solve the copyright issue a couple paragraphs up. But it's also obvious that these 3 are not pieces of software that you could create artwork with so there can be no confusion when tagging these, especially since each of them also has a separate tag for their respective logos (furaffinity_logo, patreon_logo, steam_logo). The same cannot be said for Blender, Photoshop or other creative software which can be used to make the art, it can also have it's logo visible in the art or it can have some parts of the UI or related copyrighted characters visible - so that's why I think we need tags to differentiate all of these cases.
Finally if the blender_(software) tag ends up being purged I guarantee you that people will still try to tag it the same way they have been doing for the past 4 years. And unless the moderation is going to start giving out a lot of warnings and bans, then couple years from now we're going to end up in the same exact situation we are now.
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angrydraconequus said:
Strawman - let me take your argument, greatly exaggerate it and then refute that exaggerated argument because it is easier to defeat than the real argument.
A strawman is when you take an argument, construct a different argument from it, and then go after that argument that you didn't make. That's not what I did. Your argument was "artists take pride in their art, so we should tag details about the art the artist is proud of, such as what it was made in", which is what my response centered around. There are other details the artist may be proud of for the work, such as how long it took, how many custom elements they used, the brushes/canvas used, the camera or scanner, etc. These are all in line with your argument about tagging what they used because the artist was proud with what they managed to make with it. Why should these not be tagged under your reasoning?
angrydraconequus said:
But aside from that monstrous exaggeration we actually do have pretty detailed tags for different types of traditional media instead of just one tag saying "2d_(artwork)": https://e621.net/wiki_pages/6511
And that includes differentiating between different types of paints (acrylic, watercolor, gouache and oil) as well a wide variety of different drawing materials like airbrush, crayon, pen, pencil, charcoal, graphite.
Because there are many different types of traditional/physical tools that create different-looking results. Watercolor produces a very different look than gouache, which produces a very different look than acrylic. Using a pen produces a very different look to airbrush. Notably, though, digital art doesn't have anywhere near that amount of artwork types; at best maybe you could tag one of those types if it looks like it (e.g. if you simulate watercolor in Photoshop and it can be taken as a watercolor painting). However, you don't have this under 3D art since you don't paint in that traditional way. And the software used doesn't give nearly the kind of visual distinction that those traditional materials do. It comes down to the shaders and rendering methods, but even there, those are converging on a singular realism style instead of separating into distinct looks. At best you may have artists trying to create more stylized looks, but even then, that's not tied to the software used.
angrydraconequus said:
So why not start with the software tags that are already tagged on over 45 thousand posts and add them as official subcategories to 3d_(artwork)?
Because it's not TWYS. If the artist doesn't say, we can't reliably tag what it was made in. And given how 3D artwork is normally constructed from prefab materials that may be made in other programs, does that mean a 3D animation that had models made in Z-Brush, textures made in Photoshop, animated in Maya, rendered in Blender, used DAIN to make it 6000fps, had touch-ups done in After Effects, then converted to a webm with FFmpeg, should have all of that tagged since it was software used in its creation? How would you distinguish a post that has a model made in Maya and then rendered in Blender, from a post that has a model made in Blender and then rendered in Maya? If these programs do have enough to visually distinguish between them, yet we should tag software that was used to make it, how would you distinguish what the software was used for?
angrydraconequus said:
I also don't understand why some people insist on deleting the blender_(software) tag from eight thousand three hundred posts just to have a total of SEVEN WHOLE POSTS tagged 'correctly' according to the rules.
Because that's the rules? And it's not fair to give special treatment to tags just because they're misused. A tag being heavily misused doesn't mean it shouldn't be fixed (if someone wants to put in the effort). Do you want to know how many posts had a_cat_is_fine_too due to mistagging, yet it was still brought back in line with how it was meant to be used? Did you see what happened to video_games?
angrydraconequus said:
It was just an example, and whether you would or wouldn't doesn't make a difference.
The point is you could, and personally I'd say that an art archive, especially one so well maintained (no other website comes close to e621's tagging accuracy) could be a perfect place to gather such statistics as you have artworks from many different artists gathered in one place, covering many years and all consistently tagged according to the same principles and rules.
Just because you could doesn't mean you should. e6 is far from consistently tagged as many posts are lacking even basic tags because the uploader couldn't be bothered. While others can help add missing tags, tags that depend on information found elsewhere are less likely to be added after the fact, if the information was even given at all. Trying to gauge any kind of software popularity through tags here would have a heavy amount of error that can't be controlled for. You're better off going to places that deal with art software, or software in general, rather than a furry image board.
angrydraconequus said:
Big Buck Bunny has both a character and a copyright tag because it's both the name of the character and the title of the animation. The same is true for many other characters from popular media that share the same name as the title of the thing they're in. Spider-Man for example.
Though Big Buck Bunny is a single video starring the titular character. Spider-Man is a franchise monster with its own interconnected multi-verse.
angrydraconequus said:
Finally if the blender_(software) tag ends up being purged I guarantee you that people will still try to tag it the same way they have been doing for the past 4 years. And unless the moderation is going to start giving out a lot of warnings and bans, then couple years from now we're going to end up in the same exact situation we are now.
If people would continue to misuse it after cleanup, an alias would work well at preventing future misuse. A cat is fine too even had a warning in its wiki, "The more this gets tagged for random felines, the more likely it is to get invalidated. Stick to meme-related content if you wish to keep the tag." and it almost was invalidated due to constant misuse until bitWolfy and some others did a massive purge to bring it down under 40 uses according to its intended use. It's apparently remained manageable since then, but that threat of invalidation is still a potential if it becomes unmanageably misused again.
watsit said:
A strawman is when you take an argument, construct a different argument from it, and then go after that argument that you didn't make. That's not what I did. Your argument was "artists take pride in their art, so we should tag details about the art the artist is proud of, such as what it was made in", which is what my response centered around. There are other details the artist may be proud of for the work, such as how long it took, how many custom elements they used, the brushes/canvas used, the camera or scanner, etc. These are all in line with your argument about tagging what they used because the artist was proud with what they managed to make with it. Why should these not be tagged under your reasoning?
Because we have the ability to choose how descriptive, detailed and pedantic we want the tags to be and your examples take things simply too far to be useful. Again, grossly exaggerated example that could be similarly made about many other things to seemingly disprove them.
watsit said:
Because there are many different types of traditional/physical tools that create different-looking results. Watercolor produces a very different look than gouache, which produces a very different look than acrylic. Using a pen produces a very different look to airbrush. Notably, though, digital art doesn't have anywhere near that amount of artwork types; at best maybe you could tag one of those types if it looks like it (e.g. if you simulate watercolor in Photoshop and it can be taken as a watercolor painting). However, you don't have this under 3D art since you don't paint in that traditional way. And the software used doesn't give nearly the kind of visual distinction that those traditional materials do. It comes down to the shaders and rendering methods, but even there, those are converging on a singular realism style instead of separating into distinct looks. At best you may have artists trying to create more stylized looks, but even then, that's not tied to the software used.
I agree, there is less distinction in 3D software than in those traditional methods but that doesn't mean there's no distinction at all. All 3D software have their strengths and weaknesses and differ in what kinds of artwork are easy, hard or impossible to do in that particular piece of software. For example not many people are going to attempt rigging a character with full muscle simulation in Blender - there's only one paid addon that kinda does it but it's honestly crap. On the other hand this is definitely very possible to do in Maya and especially Houdini. You will also never see complex, multi-layer fully simulated clothing on characters coming from Blender or Maya, but you will see them from Houdini. These are just some extreme examples of software differences that will affect artwork, but there are other more subtle ones too.
There is also another matter - artworks created with Maya tend to be (on average) higher quality than in Blender - and by that I mean the skill level of an average Maya artist is much higher. Blender is free and therefore more beginner and hobbyist friendly so you will get a lot of people posting their early works.
With Maya it's a different story since it's the go-to software for anyone trying to get into the industry. Most of the people learning Maya do it much more seriously rather than just as a hobby. This also means there's much less people starting learning Maya and it's userbase has a much higher percentage of already highly skilled people.
watsit said:
Because it's not TWYS. If the artist doesn't say, we can't reliably tag what it was made in. And given how 3D artwork is normally constructed from prefab materials that may be made in other programs, does that mean a 3D animation that had models made in Z-Brush, textures made in Photoshop, animated in Maya, rendered in Blender, used DAIN to make it 6000fps, had touch-ups done in After Effects, then converted to a webm with FFmpeg, should have all of that tagged since it was software used in its creation? How would you distinguish a post that has a model made in Maya and then rendered in Blender, from a post that has a model made in Blender and then rendered in Maya? If these programs do have enough to visually distinguish between them, yet we should tag software that was used to make it, how would you distinguish what the software was used for?
It's very simple - if I spend 20h in Blender animating, making the environment, simulating fluids etc. then render it for 500h in Maya and finally touch up for an hour in After Effects and convert with FFmpeg - what do I tag? Blender. Because that's what I - the artist, spent the majority of time in.
Yes it's not TWYS, but we already have several exceptions from that - the year the artwork was made in, character names and the recently introduced lore tags.
watsit said:
Because that's the rules? And it's not fair to give special treatment to tags just because they're misused. A tag being heavily misused doesn't mean it shouldn't be fixed (if someone wants to put in the effort). Do you want to know how many posts had a_cat_is_fine_too due to mistagging, yet it was still brought back in line with how it was meant to be used? Did you see what happened to video_games?
I'm not a fan of blindly following the rules just because they're rules. If we see that the rule is not working well we can come up with a better solution and change it, instead of trying to force everyone to comply extra hard.
Also video_games tag was so broad and tagged on virtually everything even tangentially related to video games that it became completely useless - software tags wouldn't have that issue.
Don't know the story behind a_cat_is_fine_too but it seems like people were tagging things that weren't even related to the meme and again that doesn't apply to software tags.
watsit said:
Just because you could doesn't mean you should. e6 is far from consistently tagged as many posts are lacking even basic tags because the uploader couldn't be bothered. While others can help add missing tags, tags that depend on information found elsewhere are less likely to be added after the fact, if the information was even given at all. Trying to gauge any kind of software popularity through tags here would have a heavy amount of error that can't be controlled for. You're better off going to places that deal with art software, or software in general, rather than a furry image board.
Again it really doesn't matter, it was just an example. And yes, there are errors - virtually all tags are misused here and there and many things are left untagged, but e621 is still the best site I know when it comes to how well things are tagged. So while it's not perfect, it's pretty much as good as it gets.
watsit said:
Though Big Buck Bunny is a single video starring the titular character. Spider-Man is a franchise monster with its own interconnected multi-verse.
So? The copyright tag exists so it encompasses everything related to that copyright - there are other characters in the short besides Big Buck Bunny - if they're ever depicted without Big Buck Bunny then the tags will reflect that - big_buck_bunny will be tagged but big_buck_bunny_(character) will not.
Same way if an image depicts the Green Goblin solo the post will have both spider-man_(series) and green_goblin tags but not spider-man_(character).
But this discussion is getting nowhere. Everything said here has already been said before by multiple people in multiple other threads over the past 4 years and it never goes anywhere and so the rules are unchanged and the tag is still being used as it was always used - to describe artworks created in Blender rather than depicting Blender. In my opinion the tag in it's current form is much more useful than in it's intended form but ultimately it doesn't matter and it's very likely that we'll see each other in another thread just like this one a couple of years down the line.
angrydraconequus said:
Because we have the ability to choose how descriptive, detailed and pedantic we want the tags to be and your examples take things simply too far to be useful.
That doesn't answer the question. You said we should tag things about the creation of the image the creator may be proud of, instead of leaving it to the description. Why allow 3D software (which has minimal effect on the look of the piece), but not the time, canvas, or camera used? Where are you putting this arbitrary separation, and why? All you're saying here is we should tag the programs used, and giving a reason that you don't want to apply to other things it logically would. If your reason can't stand up under its own weight, it's not a very good reason.
angrydraconequus said:
There is also another matter - artworks created with Maya tend to be (on average) higher quality than in Blender - and by that I mean the skill level of an average Maya artist is much higher. Blender is free and therefore more beginner and hobbyist friendly so you will get a lot of people posting their early works.
With Maya it's a different story since it's the go-to software for anyone trying to get into the industry. Most of the people learning Maya do it much more seriously rather than just as a hobby. This also means there's much less people starting learning Maya and it's userbase has a much higher percentage of already highly skilled people.
That sounds like it's more about effort than the tools used. Do we want to abuse the tag system to say "it's tagged blender, so is probably a lower effort piece", and crap on the work of artists that use blender to make high-quality work?
angrydraconequus said:
It's very simple - if I spend 20h in Blender animating, making the environment, simulating fluids etc. then render it for 500h in Maya and finally touch up for an hour in After Effects and convert with FFmpeg - what do I tag? Blender. Because that's what I - the artist, spent the majority of time in.
So it's another layer of ambiguity. A post is tagged with blender because someone said it was made in blender; was it the program the artist used to put the most work in, or what it was completed in? Should it actually be tagged Z-Brush instead if, despite being tagged Blender by someone, the creator put more work into it with something else? How can we know what the majority of time the artist spent in, if all they say is "Made in Blender"? How about if someone spends 40 hours making models in Maya and releases them for others to use, someone else spends 30 hours making models in Z-Brush and releases them for others to use, then someone else comes along, uses models from both those other people, and spends 2 hours posing them to make an image. Should it be tagged Maya, Z-Brush, or Blender?
angrydraconequus said:
Yes it's not TWYS, but we already have several exceptions from that - the year the artwork was made in, character names and the recently introduced lore tags.
Lore tags were made to deal with constant issues people were having with tags, stuff that caused artists to go DNP. I wouldn't put the software used on the same level as that, or character names or creation/publication date.
angrydraconequus said:
I'm not a fan of blindly following the rules just because they're rules.
And I'm not a fan of breaking the rules for the sake of breaking the rules. Or to give tags special treatment to misuse because of heavy misuse. I dislike the idea of people being rewarded for breaking the rules (getting a tag changed to fit their misuse) that others get in trouble for almost daily.
angrydraconequus said:
If we see that the rule is not working well we can come up with a better solution and change it, instead of trying to force everyone to comply extra hard.
An alias is a solution. If people misuse tags that much, they don't get to use the tag anymore. Wouldn't be the first time that's happened.
angrydraconequus said:
Also video_games tag was so broad and tagged on virtually everything even tangentially related to video games that it became completely useless - software tags wouldn't have that issue.
Except it does. If a post tagged as Blender or SFM or Maya doesn't actually tell you anything useful about the post, nothing about how it looks, nothing about its quality, nothing about anything except to be a fun fact provided by the artist, it's useless as a tag. Would be fine to add to the description, but as a full-fledged tag? I say no.
angrydraconequus said:
Don't know the story behind a_cat_is_fine_too but it seems like people were tagging things that weren't even related to the meme and again that doesn't apply to software tags.
It was related in the sense that it had felines, often feral, often having or about to have sex, which is what the meme made a joke out of. It's a similar situation to the software tags: The a cat is fine too tag is supposed to be for something from the meme being visible, as the blender_(software tag is are supposed to be for something from the software being visible. But people kept applying them too broadly, tagging a cat is fine too on many NSFW feline posts without the meme visible, just as people tag blender_(software on many 'made with blender' posts without anything from the software visible. A cat is fine too was left with an ultimatum; use it properly or lose it, and if it wasn't for the effort of some people to clean it up from posts it shouldn't be on, it would've been invalidated/aliased away. So blender_(software) should get the same ultimatum; use it properly or lose it, and if no one will or can clean it up from posts it shouldn't be on, it should be invalidated/aliased away.
watsit said:
If a post tagged as Blender or SFM or Maya doesn't actually tell you anything useful about the post, nothing about how it looks, nothing about its quality, nothing about anything except to be a fun fact provided by the artist, it's useless as a tag. Would be fine to add to the description, but as a full-fledged tag? I say no.
I suppose we ought to just nuke most of the meta category tags, then, as most of them don't provide any of that either. The fact that an artwork was made in 2018 says nothing about its quality or appearance. And, yet, many people seem to find the year tags interesting and useful in other ways. That's the entire purpose of the meta tag category in the first place. It's never been strictly TWYS nor strictly utilitarian for searching purposes. Most of those tags are just, well... meta information about the post itself, hence the name. Given that, it wouldn't be out of place in any way to tag the software used in the meta category. It's really not much different from differentiating between pen_(artwork) line_art and digital_drawing_(artwork) line_art, which can in many cases be impossible to distinguish visually, relying instead on the artist's own word. I don't see how this is any different.
In fact, the reason I'm here on this two-months dormant thread is because I'm working on a BUR for a similar issue now, that being watercolor_(artwork). There are programs such as ArtRage and Rebelle which actually simulate real paper and the way that certain paints such as watercolor interact with it in order to create extremely realistic digital paintings. In many cases, you simply can't tell the difference between a perfectly scanned traditional watercolor painting and a watercolor painting made digitally in one of the aforementioned software. And, yet, we still tag them as either digital or traditional. This is really no different from tagging Blender or Source Filmmaker. The software used in this case is much like a medium in that, while it's possible to create identical-looking artwork in different media (see the above pen_(artwork) vs. digital_drawing line_art example), differences tend to manifest across a wider range of images. In the case of 3D work, it's due to the differing strengths and limitations of the software. In the case of 2D, it's due to the differing strengths and limitations of the medium.
This also applies to various 2D software, for which tags also exist, such as Microsoft Paint and Flipnote Studio. Looking through either of those tags reveals noticeable differences from usual 2D artwork which is arguably much more useful information than existing meta tags like year tags and aspect ratios. And, personally, I think it would be a shame to not be able to find animations like this simply because we wanted to forbid the tagging of software for no real good reason. Sure, you could create something that looks like that in other software, but you'd have to be deliberately trying to copy the "look" of Flipnote Studio art, whereas the software naturally produces artwork with this look by the very nature of its functions and limitations. The same, to perhaps a less significant degree, can be said of essentially any medium or software tag.
Also, since the recent Code of Conduct update, it has been explicitly stated that TWYS only applies to general category tags. Tags in other categories must only be objectively true information, which the software used qualifies as. Having tags for software therefore does not violate any tagging guidelines, except that it should be in the meta category rather than copyright (which can only be done by administrators).
scaliespe said:
Also, since the recent Code of Conduct update, it has been explicitly stated that TWYS only applies to general category tags. Tags in other categories must only be objectively true information, which the software used qualifies as.
It must also fit the intended use if the category, and fit the intended use of the tag. A category or tag being non-TWYS doesn't make it a free-for-all, you can't tag characters as artists despite the character being "objectively true information", you still can't tag art as a commission, you still can't tag characters owners, etc. The CoC update is largely to clarify how things have already been working, there hasn't been some fundamental change in what can be tagged or how. After all, as people have been pointing out, these other categories already have a non-TWYS element; you don't see the artist tagged for Artist, you don't (usually) see the company tagged for Copyright, it's often pointed out (by myself, wat8548, and others) that Species works with a heavy element of lore/artist-say-so since characters are often so stylized or generic that it's difficult to say what they represent, Meta has a number of non-visual tags to it, etc. So that change is just helping clarify this fact, it's not some significant change in tagging procedure.
Updated
As a digital artist who's interested in how pieces were made, I would LOVE art program meta tags! As others have said, it's similar to a medium. Clearly there is a demand for it since the blender tag is constantly used in this way.
watsit said:
It must also fit the intended use if the category, and fit the intended use of the tag. A category or tag being non-TWYS doesn't make it a free-for-all, you can't tag characters as artists despite the character being "objectively true information", you still can't tag art as a commission, you still can't tag characters owners, etc. The CoC update is largely to clarify how things have already been working, there hasn't been some fundamental change in what can be tagged or how. After all, as people have been pointing out, these other categories already have a non-TWYS element; you don't see the artist tagged for Artist, you don't (usually) see the company tagged for Copyright, it's often pointed out (by myself, wat8548, and others) that Species works with a heavy element of lore/artist-say-so since characters are often so stylized or generic that it's difficult to say what they represent, Meta has a number of non-visual tags to it, etc. So that change is just helping clarify this fact, it's not some significant change in tagging procedure.
Of course, I didn't mean to imply that the usage of the category has been changed - just to say that TWYS isn't a valid argument against meta tags, which is an argument that was made in the above thread. The same argument has been made many times before by many users over the years, probably at least in part because it has never been officially and explicitly stated that non-general category tags need not obey TWYS until the recent CoC update. As for the meta category itself, software used still fits fully within the provided definition of the category on the wiki, so I don't see that as a valid objection either.
cloudpie said:
As a digital artist who's interested in how pieces were made, I would LOVE art program meta tags! As others have said, it's similar to a medium. Clearly there is a demand for it since the blender tag is constantly used in this way.
I really think this is the solution. Have any software tags in meta tagging, not the main tag.
