This is one of the worst messes that I've seen.
The background tag group wiki entry says that simple_background should be tagged for "pictures with enough detail to establish a location, but not much else". Such as:
post #584694 post #580513 post #577389 post #587271
But the main entry differs: "Images or Animations where the background is simplistic, usually just a single color or shape". Which is overly broad because single-color backgrounds should be tagged as plain_background instead of simple, and single shapes usually belong under abstract_background.
Part of the problem is that the other boorus use the simple_background tag for single-color backgrounds, but we use plain_background instead.
I can't figure out how to untangle this. Any suggestions?
I suppose the first order of business would be to fix the wiki, but that might not help much. Plain and simple backgrounds would still get mixed up, because of the users who either copy tags from other boorus or who are simply used to how those are tagged elsewhere.
Here's some ideas:
1. We have too many tags.
Alias plain_background to simple_background. Quick and dirty, and no more cleanup needed. The downside is that we lose some tag variety and simple_background becomes even more bloated.
2. Nuke it.
Invalidate simple_background. Less cleanup, but we lose some tag variety and gain tons of invalid tags.
3. Cleanup on aisle five.
Unalias undetailed_background from simple_background. Alias simple_background to plain_background. Manually move posts such as the above examples to undetailed_background and update the wiki entries.
This has several downsides: Actually moving those would require a lot of work, and plain_background would still need occasional cleanup.
But the upside is that it'd make tagging those slightly easier, and would require less work in the long run.
Do you suppose that any of those would work?
Updated by 31h253