I tried to alias No_Background to Transparent_background but appearently its already aliased to "general" (if i read it correctly)

this makes no sense to me, because it should be aliased to transparent_background instead.

But no_background doesn't have any tags. =/

https://e621.net/tag_alias?query=no_background&aliased_to=&user=&approved=all&forum_post=all&order=tag

It's been aliased to invalid_background by the way, bit of a strange one. I could technically see people trying to find the right words for transparent_background and coming up with no_background instead, so it would be a better alias. I agree with your idea.

Jugofthat said:
But no_background doesn't have any tags. =/

https://e621.net/tag_alias?query=no_background&aliased_to=&user=&approved=all&forum_post=all&order=tag

It's been aliased to invalid_background by the way, bit of a strange one. I could technically see people trying to find the right words for transparent_background and coming up with no_background instead, so it would be a better alias. I agree with your idea.

the weird thing was i accidentally put it instead of transparent_background and got -1 posts.

:I

Yeahhh, the servers are weird like that with some invalidated tags.

Invalid_background actually has a -2.

Jugofthat said:
Yeahhh, the servers are weird like that with some invalidated tags.

Invalid_background actually has a -2.

and i think no_background being an alias to it would be better, since no_background is also shorter to type than transparent_background.

Jugofthat said:
Yeahhh, the servers are weird like that with some invalidated tags.

Invalid_background actually has a -2.

Any time you see a negative post count on a tag, it means at some point the tag was removed from a deleted post. I can explain why this is (it's actually kind of good timing considering I just did a mass edit on all the invalid_* tags).

Let's say we have the following posts tagged with invalid_tag:

• Visible posts: 50
• Deleted posts: 150

The system doesn't count deleted posts under the count because...well why would you? It would be confusing if the tag count was constantly off because it was counting posts that didn't exist. So this is what we might have for the current tag count:

• invalid_tag 50

Add up the total amount of tags and we get 200 (50 visible posts + 150 deleted posts).

Now let's say I do a mass edit and deleted all instances of invalid_tag from both visible and deleted posts. What would be the result?

• invalid_tag -150

This happens because the server doesn't actually recount the tags every time something is changed (because that would be expensive to do computing-wise). Instead, the server says "Hmm, last time I counted all the tags, this had 50 results. I'm deleting 200 results, so the tag count is now -150." At some point later during off-peak hours, the server will go back and double-check the tag count.

Tag counts tend to be more up-to-date on the tag index, but they will occassionally show similar weird numbers until the servers get around to recounting it.

Scakk said:
and i think no_background being an alias to it would be better, since no_background is also shorter to type than transparent_background.

That was actually done intentionally. While having a transparent background is having no background, it also tends to get tagged for times where the artist didn't draw a background (e.g., post #666861). This unfortunately happened too often to reliably alias it to transparent_background, so it was invalidated instead.

I learned something today. :) Thank you.

I had previously seen the server taking its time in adding or subtracting posts from the tag count (it's very noticeable when you add several new posts at once), but hadn't realized that it's for reasons of being taxing otherwise. Thought it was just a quirk.

So you had actually just removed a bunch of invalid_background and no_background tags from deleted posts, if I'm not mistaken? That's a nice bit of coincidence.

Now I'm wondering though, what exactly is the point in doing that if the posts containing those tags weren't visible to people anyway?

parasprite said:
That was actually done intentionally. While having a transparent background is having no background, it also tends to get tagged for times where the artist didn't draw a background (e.g., post #666861). This unfortunately happened too often to reliably alias it to transparent_background, so it was invalidated instead.

Ah yes, of course, users mistaking a white_background for there being no background at all sounds even more probable than my reasoning. Why didn't I think of that? Makes lots of sense tbh, it's pretty ambiguous when you really think about it. =|

Jugofthat said:

So you had actually just removed a bunch of invalid_background and no_background tags from deleted posts, if I'm not mistaken? That's a nice bit of coincidence.

Now I'm wondering though, what exactly is the point in doing that if the posts containing those tags weren't visible to people anyway?

Deleted posts are also sometimes restored. :P

There are a few other cases (mostly having to do with aliases/organizing tags) where clearing them out beforehand is actually useful. For instance, if I'm going to be invalidating tags (such as the ones I'm going through over the next couple days) having invalid_tag clean means that I can go through the posts afterwards or even undo the alias in case something goes wrong.

I've also done it when wiping certain tags that tend to come with irrelevant/bad quality uploads. Particularly the tags that aren't really worth bothering over an alias but are too stupid/pointless to be useful in the tag search (e.g., monstrous_boobs, bitches, big_gun, your_mom, etc.).

Aww, but I like bitches and big guns and ur mom lol. :(