I know I can tag something as artist:name to mark it as an artist tag as opposed to a non-artist tag, but if there were already tags of "name" pre-existing, all them them gets converted to artist:name. This sort of automatic-conversion functionality should be removed.

that's what character:*_(character) is for

i assume this is what you're referring to

Here is one I can't seem to figure out this morning yet.

http://e621.net/post/show/202569

somebody set blue as the artist (which is the basic for picture that is really blue). I fixed and made a artist:blue_(blues_clue) but for the living life of me can't get "blue" back as a basic tag.

ippiki_ookami said:
that's what character:*_(character) is for

i assume this is what you're referring to

Not really, since if that was set it shouldn't be an issue to begin with. The problem is when an artist name is similar to a common tag, and someone sets that with artist:tagname. All the normal tags become "artist:tagname automatically, see example bade by Murmillos. (this also applies to character:tagname for the matter.)

Thoguh I would note that blue as a standalone tag should really be aliased to invalid_tag anyway, along with any other colour abjectives.

Murmillos said:
but for the living life of me can't get "blue" back as a basic tag.

Fix'd

Lyokira said:
I know I can tag something as artist:name to mark it as an artist tag as opposed to a non-artist tag, but if there were already tags of "name" pre-existing, all them them gets converted to artist:name. This sort of automatic-conversion functionality should be removed.

All of the tags stay as "name". If you tag something as "artist:name", that is saved to the post's tags as "name", and then it tells the system "Oh hey, 'name' is an artist tag, so color it every time it shows up". There's no way to have a single tag be multiple types based on what image it's on, which is why we have "name_(artist)" and "name_(character)" tags.

I think Lyokira's point is what happens when something like what Murmillos said comes up? Hell, I did the same thing a few weeks ago when I just wasn't thinking clearly and set red as a character tag, rather than tagging the image red_character (it has since been fixed). I think they're both pointing out that users can't fix this. It looks like the only way is to bring it up to a mod.

I think a really reasonable solution is actually to introduce a fourth tag type (or rather, mark it as such). The Tagging Help page says there are three types: Artist, Character, and Copyright. Why not make a "General"type? That way if I accidentally set red as a character again, I can go "whups" and then do "general:red, char:red_(character)" to fix it right off.

slyroon said:
Fix'd

What was the required syntax again to change it back?

edit: Or is it what Red said above, only a mod can fix that? I could have sworn I've corrected a tag before in that manner. Perhaps a recent change that prevents 'users' from undoing a mistake of that manner?

I just tested it and on both an admin account and a member account, I could successfully create a new tag 'testtag', change it with artist:testtag, then copyright:testtag, then back to general:testtag with no problems. general: is indeed a working tag type, I'll add that to the help page with the rest.

Other things MAY interfere with tag type changing, such as aliases, implications, artist pages for some tags, etc.

What actually makes someone an "artist"? Is it if you upload art then you are an artist? How does this work?

xxxFurryFanxxx said:
What actually makes someone an "artist"? Is it if you upload art then you are an artist? How does this work?

We tag the artist if we know the artist of course. If not, then the unknown_artist tag will be added.

Oh

xxxFurryFanxxx said:
What actually makes someone an "artist"? Is it if you upload art then you are an artist? How does this work?

Is this a serious question?
I'll assume that it is.

Answer:
The artist is the person who drew the picture.
Sometimes, a picture has mutliple artists (one draws the lines and another puts in the colors).
Uploading a pic does not make you an artist, but sometimes artists upload their own pics.
Commissioning a pic does not make you an artist. Having an idea that somebody else draws does not make you an artist.
Does editing pics make you an artist? I don't know.

If you don't know or don't care who the artist is, tag the pic with "unknown_artist".

Sometimes, people commission pics and upload them to their FA accounts. And in the description, they write "the artist wishes to remain anonymous". In this case, you can tag the pic with "anonymous_artist".

And then there's the "anonymous" tag. It's currently a character tag, so maybe it should be changed to "anonymous_character" to avoid confusion?

Lyokira said:
The problem is when an artist name is similar to a common tag, and someone sets that with artist:tagname.

That's why I think all artist tags should end with "_(artist)", and all character tags with "_(character)". But I stopped doing that some time ago because people don't seem to like it.

Munkelzahn said:
That's why I think all artist tags should end with "_(artist)", and all character tags with "_(character)". But I stopped doing that some time ago because people don't seem to like it.

If it's a common word or phrase I would agree...but take a look at my uploads. None of the artists I upload would be confused with anything else.

Munkelzahn said:
That's why I think all artist tags should end with "_(artist)", and all character tags with "_(character)". But I stopped doing that some time ago because people don't seem to like it.

That should only be done if there are multiple tags with the same name, like if there was an artist named "Female". We don't need to do it when the artist's name is something like Johnson_McBoogerFeeble.

tony311 said:
I just tested it and on both an admin account and a member account, I could successfully create a new tag 'testtag', change it with artist:testtag, then copyright:testtag, then back to general:testtag with no problems. general: is indeed a working tag type, I'll add that to the help page with the rest.

Other things MAY interfere with tag type changing, such as aliases, implications, artist pages for some tags, etc.

I must have been misspelling "general:"; like I said, it was early in the morning.

tony311 said:
I just tested it and on both an admin account and a member account, I could successfully create a new tag 'testtag', change it with artist:testtag, then copyright:testtag, then back to general:testtag with no problems. general: is indeed a working tag type, I'll add that to the help page with the rest.

Other things MAY interfere with tag type changing, such as aliases, implications, artist pages for some tags, etc.

Changing a single tag is no problem. The problem is that changing that single tag changes ALL the other tags that already exists.

Lyokira said:
Changing a single tag is no problem. The problem is that changing that single tag changes ALL the other tags that already exists.

And? Create a new appropriate tag. Just be smart about it. Look to see if a similar worded tag (or artist / character) exists first.

Murmillos said:
And? Create a new appropriate tag. Just be smart about it. Look to see if a similar worded tag (or artist / character) exists first.

1) Sometimes a name is just that obscure that what seems like it should be a unique name isn't all that unique.
2) That doesn't help if anyone else makes the mistake anyway.
3) There's a reason why we left mass-tag-editing to privilidged members, and as a seperate function from normal tag editing. Let's keep it that way.

Lyokira said:
1) Sometimes a name is just that obscure that what seems like it should be a unique name isn't all that unique.
2) That doesn't help if anyone else makes the mistake anyway.
3) There's a reason why we left mass-tag-editing to privilidged members, and as a seperate function from normal tag editing. Let's keep it that way.

1) Be careful and do a search before changing a tag's type
2) If someone breaks it, you can fix it by changing the type back (general:, artist:, character:, copyright:)
3) The only way to do this is to prevent regular users from changing the types of tags, which causes more problems than it solves.

It seems to me that you have a mental model of how tags works that looks something like this:
Each post has a list of tags like this:
artist:a general:b character:c copyright:d general:e general:f general:g

When it displays that list, it shows it as
a
b
c
d
e
f
g
(with appropriate coloring based on the prefixes)

Under this model, it would be possible to change the types of a tag on a per-image basis. However, the way it works is more like this:

Each post has a list of tags like this:
a b c d e f g
And there's a master list that looks like this:
a:artist b:general c:character d:copyright e:general f:general g:general h:general i:artist and so on

When it displays the tags, each post looks at the master list to see how it should display the tags it has. There are a number of advantages to doing it this way (some technical, some from a usability perspective), but that's beyond the scope of this post.

edit: this post is now less vertical

Snowy said:
1) Be careful and do a search before changing a tag's type
2) If someone breaks it, you can fix it by changing the type back (general:, artist:, character:, copyright:)
3) The only way to do this is to prevent regular users from changing the types of tags, which causes more problems than it solves.

It seems to me that you have a mental model of how tags works that looks something like this:
Each post has a list of tags like this:
artist:a general:b character:c copyright:d general:e general:f general:g

When it displays that list, it shows it as
a
b
c
d
e
f
g
(with appropriate coloring based on the prefixes)

Under this model, it would be possible to change the types of a tag on a per-image basis. However, the way it works is more like this:

Each post has a list of tags like this:
a b c d e f g
And there's a master list that looks like this:
a:artist b:general c:character d:copyright e:general f:general g:general h:general i:artist and so on

When it displays the tags, each post looks at the master list to see how it should display the tags it has. There are a number of advantages to doing it this way (some technical, some from a usability perspective), but that's beyond the scope of this post.

edit: this post is now less vertical

Just a side query: how does preventing normal users from changing the type of tag cause issues? (other than needing a mod to change the type of tag individually, which for all intents and purposes would work similar to the current implication system?)

Inconvenience, mostly.
It's less convenient for the users (let's say I upload an image from a new artist. I can just tag it with artist:xyz and be on my way, instead of creating a forum topic to request it), it's less convenient for the mods (they don't need the extra workload), and there's really no justification for it.

Features should be restricted if they're dangerous if misused or likely to be abused. Aliases and implications are dangerous if misused, in that they are a pain in the ass to fix if done improperly. To take an example from recent history, cum_covered gets aliased to messy (instead of implied), the alias needs to be removed and then someone needs to look at every messy image to see if cum_covered needs to be added. If messy got implicated to cum_covered, then after the implication is removed someone would have to look at every cum_covered post and see if that tag needs removal.

Mischaracterized tags aren't dangerous like that. They're one-step fixes, and it can be fixed by anyone. There's no reason to add the hassle that a restriction would cause.

tony311 said:
I just tested it and on both an admin account and a member account, I could successfully create a new tag 'testtag', change it with artist:testtag, then copyright:testtag, then back to general:testtag with no problems. general: is indeed a working tag type, I'll add that to the help page with the rest.

Oh, fantastic. Then I think nothing need be changed.