Killing Color Streak Tags 3.0

BUR #44532 is pending approval.

deprecate red_streaks
deprecate green_streaks
deprecate aqua_streaks
deprecate blue_streaks
deprecate pink_streaks
deprecate white_streaks
deprecate purple_streaks
deprecate orange_streaks
deprecate black_streaks
deprecate brown_streaks
deprecate grey_streaks
deprecate blonde_streaks

Third times the charm I guess. It has been about a year since attempt #1 (topic #28342), and six months since my last attempt in topic #30410 and both times went absolutely nowhere. Now topic #32712 exists using them (and while unlikely to succeed, is proof of what needs to be done), so let's try this again, and preferably this time an admin can approve or reject the BUR (I won't be happy if manually rejected, but I won't try making this BUR again if that happens). We need to decide the fate of these tags, sooner or later, and in my opinion they deserve to be deprecated.

I wanted to try nuking them again, but I had a feeling a full-on nuke would bring more harm than good at this point (that's how bad they've gotten), so loathe as I am to do it, let's just go for the deprecation, I guess. I'm not going to rehash myself explaining how awful these tags are (and why their defenders like them), just read the other two threads attempting this for details.

Not willing to agree with a nuke until a better option is agreed upon for how to deal with coloured streaks that don't take up a large volume of the hair. I think it's silly to tag something like post #9484703 red hair but equally silly for it not to be tagged in some way.

And that's fair. I don't think the opposing argument is necessarily bad or anything. I just think the solution of colored streak tags is not a great one. There was talk in topic #30410 for, say, "mostly red hair" as a solution, but I'm not sure how solidly a solution that'd be right now.

I don't think these streak tags get searched very much either, which was one of the key reasons Evazion cited for nuking light blue hair and dark blue hair in forum #330076 (not that I think these are a very similar situation, but I can see this being pointed out). To me, it seems the main argument for them is to aid in searching for fully colored hair instead of actually, you know, getting searched for by people. Is that an accurate assessment?

If so, then perhaps I can propose the idea of "fully red hair", for example, as an alternative? If people are really having a hard time finding fully colored hair, then that implies it's no longer the norm tagging wise. If we have tags for what people actually want to see instead of these weird work-arounds to exclude the streaked hair, then perhaps that'd be the step we'd want to go.

Of course, if we do that, multicolored hair will need some reworking in order to not get fully chopped, but we can cross that bridge when we get there.

i just don't think it's reasonable to expect that someone searching for red hair wants/expects to find hair that's actually mostly brown with a small streak of red, or that someone searching red hair expects to find Matoi Ryuuko.

Knowledge_Seeker said:

...perhaps I can propose the idea of "fully red hair", for example, as an alternative? If people are really having a hard time finding fully colored hair, then that implies it's no longer the norm tagging wise. If we have tags for what people actually want to see instead of these weird work-arounds to exclude the streaked hair, then perhaps that'd be the step we'd want to go.

Of course, if we do that, multicolored hair will need some reworking in order to not get fully chopped, but we can cross that bridge when we get there.

A fully_red_hair tag would essentially just be a tandem tag for the red_hair -multicolored_hair search. It's also flawed in much the same way as an unmodified red_hair search, as while users looking for red hair certainly might want to exclude post #9652067, they're probably actively looking for post #9651101, which fully_red_hair would not catch.

While I can completely understand why your goal was "enable users to find red_hair posts where all of the hair is red", the goal should really be "enable users to find red_hair posts where a majority of the hair is red". And on that note...

Knowledge_Seeker said:

There was talk in topic #30410 for, say, "mostly red hair" as a solution, but I'm not sure how solidly a solution that'd be right now.

That was me. Here's what I said:

Everything I said then remains true now. On their own, the color_streak tags do not let users exclude posts where the hair is mostly other color(s), because there are many different ways to only have a small amount of red in your hair. On its own, mostly_red_hair would completely solve this issue.

AngryZapdos said:

A fully_red_hair tag would essentially just be a tandem tag for the red_hair -multicolored_hair search. It's also flawed in much the same way as an unmodified red_hair search, as while users looking for red hair certainly might want to exclude post #9652067, they're probably actively looking for post #9651101, which fully_red_hair would not catch.

While I can completely understand why your goal was "enable users to find red_hair posts where all of the hair is red", the goal should really be "enable users to find red_hair posts where a majority of the hair is red".

Ooh, yeah I didn't think of those majority red hair posts when I came up with this idea. Yeah, that'd be a problem if we go with that. Also, yeah excluding multicolored hair is probably the better solution. Something these tags fail to do because then they'd need to imply multicolored hair.

That was me. Here's what I said:

Show

These streak tags are bad, period. They follow the inefficient trend of having to exclude five different tags rather than just search for a single tag. For them to actually work the way everyone's clamoring they do and let us search for hair that's mainly one color, we'd need a search like red_hair -red_streaks -red_inner_hair -red_tips -red-striped_hair -red_hair_roots. However, those other tags don't even exist, making color_streaks extra useless.

If you want to find characters with mostly red hair, then you should just tag mostly_red_hair. I'm open to better names, but the idea itself is sound. The very existence of (and recent uptick in) characters with multicolored_hair, and the multitude of different ways that multicolored hair can be depicted, means that the only real solution to this is to invert the current approach. Instead of having to create, maintain and exclude 50 other tags, all we'd need is one for each color, which can then imply the base hair color tag.

I'll admit there's still inconvenience in this approach, because searching for mostly red hair and completely red hair at the same time is impossible. However, both individual searches (red_hair -multicolored_hair and mostly_red_hair) are very simple and easy to use, and a vast improvement over the patchwork mess that would be necessary to maintain red_hair -red_streaks -red_inner_hair -red_tips -red-striped_hair -red_hair_roots.

Everything I said then remains true now. On their own, the color_streak tags do not let users exclude posts where the hair is mostly other color(s), because there are many different ways to only have a small amount of red in your hair. On its own, mostly_red_hair would completely solve this issue.

With all this in mind, yeah, I think mostly red hair would be the better solution to the problem. If the purpose of these tags is to avoid getting posts like post #9654121 in one's red hair search, the solution isn't to create streak tags which serve no utility beyond aiding in that one specific search. The solution is to make excluding things like that post viable, while also not removing posts of interest like post #9651101 which actually stand a shot at being searched outside of that one specific search.

my only issue with a mostly_<color>_hair tag is that to search for posts which contain fully/mostly colored hair, you'd have to input a search like (red_hair -multicolored_hair) or mostly_red_hair, which is fairly counterintuitive and doesn't work with the two tag limit so rip member-level users, but it does sound a little better than maintaining a variety of "red streaks, red tips, red inner hair" etc. tags.

If it's any condolences, the current method is even more counterintuitive than this solution to performing this search. Ideally, being able to be performed by member users is the goal, but I'll settle for "doable in a three tag search" if two tags just can't seem to work.

At the very least, I imagine the vast majority of members don't care about hair colors enough for this to be a problem. RIP to the minority who do, sorry guys. If we can figure out a way in two tags that'd be great.

I'm of the opinion we should knock the member search limit up to three tags anyway, but that's a whole different ballpark than these stupid streak tags.

Kaleidoscoped said:

my only issue with a mostly_<color>_hair tag is that to search for posts which contain fully/mostly colored hair, you'd have to input a search like (red_hair -multicolored_hair) or mostly_red_hair, which is fairly counterintuitive and doesn't work with the two tag limit so rip member-level users, but it does sound a little better than maintaining a variety of "red streaks, red tips, red inner hair" etc. tags.

My issue with a tag for hair that's either completely or mostly one color is that it will make up most of the base hair color tag. Take brown, for example. There are only 136k posts in brown_hair multicolored_hair, while brown_hair itself has almost 1.7 million posts. A hypothetical tag for hair that's all or mostly brown would apply to ~1.6 million of the existing brown_hair posts, which is just shy of 90%. At that point, we'd have spent far more manpower on a tag that's almost identical to a cursory brown_hair search.

With mostly_x_hair tags, however, we get the same functionality without the bloat.