From the group, solo, duo, and whatever other character count tag there is

"It does not matter how small, distant from the viewer, detailed, or important to the scene (including things like background ferals and ambient creatures) a character is."

I strongly disagree with ambient creatures getting counted for the purposes of group tags, it would make a huge number of pictures groups if they simply take place in the woods and have a ladybug flying around in the background, or whatever reason an artist decided to draw an insect. There is no way this benefits the average user, searching "group" you would think you're about to get pictures featuring 3 distinct characters interacting in a scene, not just one character with a couple of dragonflys sitting on a stick in the background.

IF there is a crowd in a background, that's one thing, but insects or fish should not contribute to character counting. This sentence should get removed.

bobbertjones said:
From the group, solo, duo, and whatever other character count tag there is

"It does not matter how small, distant from the viewer, detailed, or important to the scene (including things like background ferals and ambient creatures) a character is."

I strongly disagree with ambient creatures getting counted for the purposes of group tags, it would make a huge number of pictures groups if they simply take place in the woods and have a ladybug flying around in the background, or whatever reason an artist decided to draw an insect. There is no way this benefits the average user, searching "group" you would think you're about to get pictures featuring 3 distinct characters interacting in a scene, not just one character with a couple of dragonflys sitting on a stick in the background.

IF there is a crowd in a background, that's one thing, but insects or fish should not contribute to character counting. This sentence should get removed.

Let's say there are 3 characters on the foreground slowly getting cornered by a pack of wolves, then the post should be tagged group and trio_focus.

wolfmanfur said:
Let's say there are 3 characters on the foreground slowly getting cornered by a pack of wolves, then the post should be tagged group and trio_focus.

I agree with this, those wolves are significant to the image. I still think it shouldn't include random small creatures

Like this gets tagged duo according to that sentence cause they have a butterfly on their hand
post #2678334
and this gets tagged group, they have a small crab on their finger and another one hanging off of them
post #4017739

I do not think this is how it should go

EDIT: I have been informed these are bad examples and I see why now.

bobbertjones said:
Like this gets tagged duo according to that sentence cause they has a butterfly on their hand
post #2678334
and this gets tagged group, they have a small crab on their finger
post #4017739

Actually, I don't think these should be tagged with ambient creatures, since the creature is directly acting with the main subject who is looking directly at it and holding it (or hanging off their ripped clothing). The ambient_* tags are supposed to indicate ambient background details, not specific subjects.

the tagging standard had been that ambient creatures didn't count toward character count. like, that was the point of the ambient_* tags.
the changes to the character count wikipages and ambient creature wikipages happened earlier this year and were, as far as I can tell, done without discussion, which is pretty strange since the user who made the changes is pretty active and has a lot of edits and quite a few forum posts.

watsit said:
Actually, I don't think these should be tagged with ambient creatures, since the creature is directly acting with the main subject who is looking directly at it and holding it (or hanging off their ripped clothing). The ambient_* tags are supposed to indicate ambient background details, not specific subjects.

So you think they shouldn't be tagged solo?

I really wonder who is actually helped in any way by tagging images like this as group solo_focus

post #3873627

faucet said:
I really wonder who is actually helped in any way by tagging images like this as group solo_focus

post #3873627

Nobody! It's confusing to the person searching, and a headache to the tagger which begs the point of why

darryus said:
the tagging standard had been that ambient creatures didn't count toward character count. like, that was the point of the ambient_* tags.
the changes to the character count wikipages and ambient creature wikipages happened earlier this year and were, as far as I can tell, done without discussion, which is pretty strange since the user who made the changes is pretty active and has a lot of edits and quite a few forum posts.

So should it be changed back just the same? I didn't want to mess with something this hugely used without discussion. I just don't know how these things go.

bobbertjones said:
So you think they shouldn't be tagged solo?

Not those images at least, no. Ambient creatures would be more for scenarios like
post #573045 post #3945816
where the fireflies/birds are just minor background or foreground details.

watsit said:
Not those images at least, no. Ambient creatures would be more for scenarios like
post #573045 post #3945816
where the fireflies/birds are just minor background or foreground details.

Fair points. Goes by what I said here even

I agree with this, those wolves are significant to the image.

Even so, the sentence basically removes the point of ambient tags and should get at the very least changed

Ambient creatures shouldn't count for the overall character count. So I agree, that sentence seems misguided.

However, to be clear: ambient creatures are like a small spider on a bookcase in the background for ambiance, or a random distant couple of birds in the sky that basically just keeps it from looking like an empty area of the picture, or some decorative fish in the background with no personality or interaction with the main characters of the image.

If they are interacting with the main others in the picture or part of/extension of the main focus, then they aren't ambient. Like those first two images you gave as examples, the anthro is the main focus, but they're interacting with the smaller critters, so they are not ambient creatures. Those are more examples of "anthro_focus" and also "solo_focus", but they are not examples of solo nor are they examples of ambient.

So that sentence should be changed on the wikis. But rules about ambient creatures do not apply to those first two thumbnail examples regardless.

bobbertjones said:
I agree with this, those wolves are significant to the image. I still think it shouldn't include random small creatures

Like this gets tagged duo according to that sentence cause they have a butterfly on their hand
post #2678334
and this gets tagged group, they have a small crab on their finger and another one hanging off of them
post #4017739

I do not think this is how it should go

in both of these have the feral creatures are subjects of the image, ambient creatures are like birds or bats flying way in the background or sea creatures doing their own thing while a character is in focus. if a character is interacting directly with a creature it's not ambient, it's a subject.

furrypickle said:
Ambient creatures shouldn't count for the overall character count. So I agree, that sentence seems misguided.

However, to be clear: ambient creatures are like a small spider on a bookcase in the background for ambiance, or a random distant couple of birds in the sky that basically just keeps it from looking like an empty area of the picture, or some decorative fish in the background with no personality or interaction with the main characters of the image.

If they are interacting with others in the picture or part of/extension of the main focus, then they aren't ambient. Like those first two images you gave as examples, the anthro is the main focus, but they're interacting with the smaller critters, so they are not ambient creatures. Those are more examples of "anthro_focus" and also "solo_focus", but they are not examples of solo nor are they examples of ambient.

So that sentence should be changed on the wikis. But rules about ambient creatures do not apply to those first two thumbnail examples regardless.

Points taken, admittedly I just grabbed those from a loose search. Thank you for clarifying this better than I did

faucet said:
I really wonder who is actually helped in any way by tagging images like this as group solo_focus

post #3873627

This one is an extreme example, I couldn't even tell there was a gull in the distance, but if a character interacts with another character no matter the size or importance, it should be tagged.

jeeze... going through all these posts and tag edits to fix all them is going to be a chore. it's not just changing posts back to solo or duo either, there's a bunch that shouldn't have been tagged with ambient_* at all.

furrypickle said:
Ambient creatures shouldn't count for the overall character count. So I agree, that sentence seems misguided.

However, to be clear: ambient creatures are like a small spider on a bookcase in the background for ambiance, or a random distant couple of birds in the sky that basically just keeps it from looking like an empty area of the picture, or some decorative fish in the background with no personality or interaction with the main characters of the image.

If they are interacting with others in the picture or part of/extension of the main focus, then they aren't ambient. Like those first two images you gave as examples, the anthro is the main focus, but they're interacting with the smaller critters, so they are not ambient creatures. Those are more examples of "anthro_focus" and also "solo_focus", but they are not examples of solo nor are they examples of ambient.

So that sentence should be changed on the wikis. But rules about ambient creatures do not apply to those first two thumbnail examples regardless.

darryus said:
in both of these have the feral creatures are subjects of the image, ambient creatures are like birds or bats flying way in the background or sea creatures doing their own thing while a character is in focus. if a character is interacting directly with a creature it's not ambient, it's a subject.

I was gonna say - yeah, that's definitely duo when he's interacting with that insect.

wolfmanfur said:
This one is an extreme example, I couldn't even tell there was a gull in the distance, but if a character interacts with another character no matter the size or importance, it should be tagged.

Seems both solo and duo should apply? No wait, the birds aren't interacting, either? :P Yeah, group should not be on that post. Reasonably, either group+solo_focus or solo+ambient* should be used, right? If the birds were interacting, then it wouldn't be ambient, and thus a group. Since they aren't...

It seems that there is consensus that this example is not a good candidate for the group tag. Underneath the current description of character counts on the wiki it would count, so I propose changing
(Both of these are under What exactly counts as a character?)

• It does not matter how small, distant from the viewer, detailed, or important to the scene (including things like background ferals and ambient creatures) a character is.
• A silhouette counts as a character only when it is not a shadow of an unseen character. Many ambient creatures will also be silhouettes.

To:

• Any character that is a part of the scene, no matter how small, detailed, or distant (including things like background ferals) a character is.
• A silhouette counts as a character only when it is not a shadow of an unseen character.
• Any small creature clearly in the background should not be counted and instead tagged with the appropriate ambient_* tag

bobbertjones said:
It seems that there is consensus that this example is not a good candidate for the group tag. Underneath the current description of character counts on the wiki it would count, so I propose changing
(Both of these are under What exactly counts as a character?)

• It does not matter how small, distant from the viewer, detailed, or important to the scene (including things like background ferals and ambient creatures) a character is.
• A silhouette counts as a character only when it is not a shadow of an unseen character. Many ambient creatures will also be silhouettes.

To:

• Any character that is a part of the scene, no matter how small, detailed, or distant (including things like background ferals) a character is.
• A silhouette counts as a character only when it is not a shadow of an unseen character.
• Any small creature clearly in the background should not be counted and instead tagged with the appropriate ambient_* tag

Yeah, if she was on a beach and it was crowded, then it would have been group+solo_focus if she was the foreground character, right? Might not be a bad idea to add some examples like that.

Some selected quotes and notes from previous iterations of this topic:

This thread suggests that ambient characters are expected to count as characters, but there's an immediate contradictory example from one of the users, justified by difficulty of finding some of the more subtle ambient creatures.

This agrees with the current iteration of the wiki page for ambient_bird and solo etc. still that ambient creatures should be counted as characters.

Here is a thread where one issue seems to be confusion between the solo and duo wiki's wording of "someone" vs "any characters or creatures". At some point after this, the duo wiki seems to have been updated to use the "someone" wording, rather than the other way around as was suggested at the end of this thread.

There's some debate here about whether or not the ambient characters are important enough to tag. Some users think that the character count should reflect the importance of the character in the scene, while other users think that the "any character" rule is better for consistency.

There's some disagreement in this thread, with one user who treated ambient_* as not counting and another arguing that they should count. (Selected quotes are two of the same users from the previous thread with the same opinions)

My own process is based on these posts; that any creature should be considered a character, even if it is ambient or easy to miss. There are cases like post #3873627 above, where there are background creatures still recognizable but easily missed, but I think that those should be covered by the solo_focus and other *_focus tags. It seems better than introducing ambiguity into what counts and what doesn't. Additionally, the *_focus tags serve the purpose of making cases such as these still very searchable, such as by using ~solo ~solo_focus if you want images that contain one 'important' character such as the above, ignoring the background.

I will update the policy accordingly to whatever we decide. A former staff had mentioned (on Discord) on multiple occasions that they did count. The edits were to gather all of the unwritten stuff about char counts into one place, so it could be easier to keep track of. Personally I see it as ignoring TWYS on the grounds of characters not being important enough, and that it muddies tagging a bit.

What counts as an ambient creature is a weird subjective issue in and of itself.

I can reverse any changes I made to existing count tags on my end without anyone needing to help me.

sys-yok said:
Some selected quotes and notes from previous iterations of this topic:

Wow. Thank you for this comprehensive list of debates, and cliffnotes of each. Extremely helpful.

topic #29280 (2021-04)

topic #29280

Here is a thread where one issue seems to be confusion between the solo and duo wiki's wording of "someone" vs "any characters or creatures". At some point after this, the duo wiki seems to have been updated to use the "someone" wording, rather than the other way around as was suggested at the end of this thread.

This should get fixed. Any creature can get tagged for the character count, so any should be the proper word here, ambient count or not. Additionally, all the character count tags should have the same text about what counts as a character because this is universal between all of them.

topic #29412 (2021-05)

topic #29412

There's some debate here about whether or not the ambient characters are important enough to tag. Some users think that the character count should reflect the importance of the character in the scene, while other users think that the "any character" rule is better for consistency.

This is a good thread and I'll respond in a sec, but just wanna say if this was not tagged duo, I would never have caught that. That is a sneaky drifloon at the top.

topic #30281 (2021-07)

topic #30281

There's some disagreement in this thread, with one user who treated ambient_* as not counting and another arguing that they should count. (Selected quotes are two of the same users from the previous thread with the same opinions)

My own process is based on these posts; that any creature should be considered a character, even if it is ambient or easy to miss. There are cases like post #3873627 above, where there are background creatures still recognizable but easily missed, but I think that those should be covered by the solo_focus and other *_focus tags. It seems better than introducing ambiguity into what counts and what doesn't. Additionally, the *_focus tags serve the purpose of making cases such as these still very searchable, such as by using ~solo ~solo_focus if you want images that contain one 'important' character such as the above, ignoring the background.

You make good points. Before I start rolling, I will note that the main user championing "ambient creatures count" in these threads is mostly from watsit, I don't mean this in an accusatory or negative way. I just notice that a significant pattern here that I don't want misconstrued as general support from a larger amount of users from these examples. I'll also note watsit linked a helpful image example higher in this thread for ambient creatures.

Without rehashing too much of what was said in these linked threads, counting ambient creatures in the character count does simplify the tagging and removes ambiguity. This is at the cost of the "group" tag getting inflated greatly, for things that nobody is searching that picture for. I tend to lean towards "ambient creatures don't count", and in a more important point

furrypickle said:
Ambient creatures shouldn't count for the overall character count. So I agree, that sentence seems misguided.

This is from an admin, and I feel like that should cement it unless another staff speaks up. EVEN SO, this ambient tag should be used sparingly. With all that in mind, I'm going make these changes to the wiki:

• Change someone -> any creature as discussed in linked forum earlier
• Add a sentence to reflect that ambient creatures don't count, along with emphasizing that ambient creatures should be used only for clear background elements that add nothing, and don't interact at all to the picture
• Make all character count related wikis match if they don't already

bobbertjones said:
I will note that the main user championing "ambient creatures count" in these threads is mostly from watsit, I don't mean this in an accusatory or negative way.

I'm not, and I apologize if I sounded like I did. My main issue here is those first two examples, which everyone seems to agree should not count as ambient creatures and should be duo/trio respectively. In the two examples I gave, there are ambient fireflies/birds, and I wouldn't include them in the character count, I would tag those posts solo.

I agree ambient creatures should not count. When people search for duo or group, background birds that are just V-shaped lines are not what they want to see. It would be so bad for searching.

The wiki's have been updated in the way I stated earlier (got ninja'd by a certain wolfmanfur), see for yourself here: solo, duo, trio, group. If you disagree with the change, say so.
(I left out large group because that doesn't seem like it wants to talk about character count at all, and three different tags showing the same thing I think is enough.)

I now notice a different issue though.

There is no ambient creatures general tag. I would want to link it so ambient creatures can be expanded upon without making the character count wiki pages look too gross, so I'll try writing one up and linking it in the relevant section of the wiki pages. This may not happen today because I have studying to do, so just watch out for a post for when I do write it if you care, or post here if you do it yourself.

Rewrote the content on ambient creatures in the solo tag. The definition didn't account for how nuanced this meaning is. We are really picky about what we consider an ambient creature.

Describing handling of character counts would be simple if we just treated all living things the same. We will have to live with all of the added complexity and subjectivity by going down this route.

While the solo, duo, trio, etc. pages have been updated, the wikis for solo_focus and similar are not, and ambient_bird still claims that ambient creatures should count in general and to use the focus tags for such situations. It also would help to have some sort of general ambient creature tag or ambient tag group to centralize the explanations, as BobbertJones said.

Separately, here's some example images and my interpretation of how they could be tagged, both including and excluding ambient creatures.

I personally would still prefer to tag all creatures regardless of importance, as I think in almost every case the "important" character count can be conveyed by the *_focus tags the same way it already is for images containing background crowds or other background groups. I would find this to be more searchable overall, though admittedly the distinction between tags such as solo and solo_focus is not always obvious to new users. Not counting ambient creatures simplifies things for users in this way, but also serves to make small details harder to find later.

If others still prefer ambient creatures to not count, the definition for what counts as ambient should at least be made more precise to ensure characters are not accidentally excluded due to mistagging whether or not something is ambient. I like the guidelines of "interacting with the main scene" and "could be removed without impacting the image," but at the same time these feel too subjective, as sometime interactions are not obvious and whether or not something is important to the image can be interpreted differently, such as the example from topic #29412:

watsit said:
[snip]
The same picture should warrant the same tags, regardless of the subjective view of who tagged it. A post like
post #2484633
is a good example; to me, Ho-oh looks like an irrelevant background character, which is just there to help the image composition and give a little more life to the scene aside from Lugia posing, much like an ambient bird would. But CrocoGator thinks, as a legendary (not unique, mind, there can be multiple of a given legendary species) it's more interesting to consider the picture is about both of them. Whether or not it counts as solo or duo shouldn't be up to my or their subjective take... there's two characters there, it's duo, regardless of whether it's an important aspect of the picture.

Ehh... I thought the whole time, we tag every creature that's visible. I did it this way the last two years. It was simple: "It is visible, it gets tagged." Now I have to decide: "is this bird present enough to be counted or not."
It is counterintuitive, in my opinion.
:cate: :foxtired:

Some data used to estimate current counting methods. Regarding the notes column, for sake of time I only looked at the first page of thumbnails to get an estimate of what the rest may be like.

*Results are mixed for all of these, but seemed to be predominantly the indicated method.

The results this gave me was about 2100 posts likely excluding ambient creatures, 2686 likely including ambient creatures, and about 1125 where the posts were too mixed or difficult to quickly identify a trend. This should account for most posts tagged with ambient_*, based on the results for the individual post counts as compared to the total (even with error). It looks to me that including ambient creatures held a small majority, but there's clearly enough results for both methods that trying to standardize on one will require some significant cleanup either way.