There isn't any consensus on how tags of aged down versions (e.g. *_(young)*, not the aged down tag itself) should be used.
There're two ways of tagging them. 1. Tag only applies to the canonical aged down version, that usually being an outfit. It's essentially an outfit tag. 2. Tag applies to the concept of aged down itself, regardless of outfit or other.
Canon and non-canon appearances shouldn't be lumped together. That's what aged down covers, theoretically. Admittedly it's undertagged, but chartags are not here to compensate that. Aged down tags should be treated as outfit tags.
When the aged down version receives more than a single outfit. Each outfit should have a tag. Either make character_(young) an umbrella tag and make character_(young)_(outfit_2), character_(young)_(outfit_3) imply character_(young), or treat them as separate characters and imply character_(outfit_1), character_(outfit_2) to the main tag directly.
There're mixed opinions concerning layered implications. I'm fine either way. But if we continue with them, the need of character_(default) increases.
Alternate costume is more complicated, it's sometimes recognizable through hair and other features, but not enough distinction with non-cane age downs. If we leave the door open it's very likely that people will flood the tag.
I personally think we should be using aged down based on how often the character appears in that form in canon (which would be none at all for most fan designs, of course). There's no indication in the tag name that it should be strictly for non-canon versions. Most people would probably expect to see just what the wiki describes: characters that are "younger than they usually are."
For example, Son Goku is a child for most of Dragon Ball (Classic) and Dragon Ball GT, but an adult for all of Dragon Ball Z. There are multiple arcs for the various stages in his life. There is no clear reference point for what his usual appearance is, so aged down for him as a child would be wrong just like aged up for his adult form would be.
However, if the entire story of Dragon Ball took place during Goku's adulthood and he changed into a child for a brief period or had a flashback to his childhood, then I think it would make sense to use the tag for those depictions, but we can't if we're strictly sticking to non-canon depictions only.
100% agree with above. I'll also add that if a character has a child tag already they should also be excluded in my opinion. For instance since we have Tiki (Young) (Fire Emblem) I think it should be excempt from the tag so it's easier to use aged down to find other young characters in the series.
Yeah I wouldn't want to, for example, exclude the designs in post #8896276 from aged down simply because they got a grand total of 4 shots or something (making them canon). I can see how distinguishing canon and non-canon might be desirable but I don't think this tag is the way to do it.
There isn't any consensus on how tags of aged down versions should be used.
There're two ways of tagging them. 1. Tag only applies to the canonical aged down version, that usually being an outfit. It's essentially an outfit tag. 2. Tag applies to the concept of aged down itself, regardless of outfit or other.
I reread my first sentence. I think there's a misinterpretation because my description wasn't clear enough. By "them" I was referring to the chartags of aged down versions of characters, like *_(young)*, not the aged down tag itself. Aged down should be used for both canon and non-canon age downs.
Aside from that I agree with Blank User's Dragon Ball example.
I don't think Tiki (Young) (Fire Emblem) is a very good example. Her "young" form is her initial form and her case is closer to an aged up, not an aged down. The reason she should be excluded from both tags is exactly the reason Blank User said, both forms are prominent and playable, there isn't one that's significantly superior to the other. As for the many *_(young)* tags that only appear in a small portion of the story, I don't see the problem of tagging them as aged down.
I'll put an example. This is what I meant. The current way I'm tagging them is that the (young) tag only applies to the default young appearance, it's more like a character_(young)_(default), so no alternate costume nor official alternate costume.
Several of the young appearances have official alternate costumes of their own, I made tags for they separately. They are currently mutually exclusive to the default tag, implying the main tag directly instead of a layered implication. This BUR is to see if people prefer layered implications similar to regular character alters and cases like Tiki (Young) (Fire Emblem).
The current way I'm tagging them is that the (young) tag only applies to the default young appearance
This is how it should be. Each chartag should cover one unique appearance. It shouldn't cover multiple outfits. Otherwise it turns tag lists into a mess where you get 3+ chartags for a single character, which becomes a total clusterfuck when there are multiple characters.
It's really common for gacha games to have things like "character A has alternate form B which has outfits C and D". Usually these alternate forms are things like powered-up versions (remodels, etc), versions from alternate timelines (older, younger, etc), or the same character in a new class or a new rarity level. A lot of the time there's not much visual difference between these alternate forms and new skins, it's just an excuse to treat the same character as a new playable unit to sell more gacha rolls.
Two chartags for a single character is acceptable. 3+ chartags for a single character should be avoided as much as possible. There should be a stronger reason for it than "because the game says so".
The ideal is to have one tag for the base character and one tag for each unique appearance. There are a bunch of gacha games that violate this (Honkai Impact 3rd, Girls' Frontline 2: Exilium, certain Arknights characters released as new classes) and it makes the tagging really difficult to understand if you're an outsider to these series.
This is how it should be. Each chartag should cover one unique appearance. It shouldn't cover multiple outfits. Otherwise it turns tag lists into a mess where you get 3+ chartags for a single character, which becomes a total clusterfuck when there are multiple characters.
It's really common for gacha games to have things like "character A has alternate form B which has outfits C and D". Usually these alternate forms are things like powered-up versions (remodels, etc), versions from alternate timelines (older, younger, etc), or the same character in a new class or a new rarity level. A lot of the time there's not much visual difference between these alternate forms and new skins, it's just an excuse to treat the same character as a new playable unit to sell more gacha rolls.
Two chartags for a single character is acceptable. 3+ chartags for a single character should be avoided as much as possible. There should be a stronger reason for it than "because the game says so".
The ideal is to have one tag for the base character and one tag for each unique appearance. There are a bunch of gacha games that violate this (Honkai Impact 3rd, Girls' Frontline 2: Exilium, certain Arknights characters released as new classes) and it makes the tagging really difficult to understand if you're an outsider to these series.
So are you suggesting that we start nuking "X form parent tag" and make "X form (default)"? We've been talking about this for a few years but still sticking with the status quo.
Question. If we do this, should a form's default tag be "X form" or "X form (default)"? I'm seeing some tags named "X form" being used for X form's default appearance and I think it can cause confusion.
I'm curious to know what the alternative would be, because as far as I'm aware - for Honkai Impact 3rd specifically, since I'm catching up on years worth of mess to sort out - while that is indeed true that we don't necessarily need to do some things just because the game says so, the tagging philosophy does hold about tagging unique individual appearances and the way we're doing things now largely - except a few stragglers - makes things easy to find. Maybe not to tag for outsiders though without strong wikis.
Maybe the wikis don't do a good enough job at explaining because they've opted for three-tiered implications, but nearly every costume - especially newer ones - are a unique appearance and not just a slight power up or trivial change. We have such costumes but they aren't tagged (and rightfully so). And if the meaning you imply here is to not have two levels of umbrella tags, it becomes very easy to sort out the "clusterfuck" because the tagging is already there - but it won't change that some of the oldest characters are still going to have 20+ chartags at minimum, so I'm not sure what angle you're looking at this from.
For reference's sake, we're talking about monstrosities like Kiana Kaslana with approximately 30 character tags as an older type of character with multiple unique appearances that are in the "C and D belong to B of A" format (I am not at all convinced by the argument that these aren't unique enough to be tagged or that this violates our principles), whereas newer characters like Thelema Nutriscu treat both the base outfit and costumes as "individually unique appearances" and avoid three layers as things stand.
Any examples of copyrights you think do it well and why compared to the ones that are apparently not so well?
If I want to search for all versions of something like Saber Alter or Shun (Small) (Blue Archive) I don't see why I should be doing a 9-tag search just because we don't want three layers of implications.
The ideal is to have one tag for the base character and one tag for each unique appearance. There are a bunch of gacha games that violate this (Honkai Impact 3rd, Girls' Frontline 2: Exilium, certain Arknights characters released as new classes) and it makes the tagging really difficult to understand if you're an outsider to these series.
In Girls' Frontline's case, we aren't solving this in a way you'd prefer until we deal with the copytagging situation as discussed in topic #19556. I won't reiterate my personal opinion from there here, but I will explain why I think it is necessary (and even how it links to what NNT said above).
Regardless of whichever solution was taken, it would provide an opportunity to make clear what goes with what. I'll use the most popular character represented on Danbooru, HK416 (Girls' Frontline). In a scenario where we have a series tag, we could update the parent chartag to be, what is now her most popular name, Klukai (so either klukai_(reverse_collapse)/klukai_(girls'_frontline). HK416 (Girls' Frontline), Clukay (Neural Cloud) and Klukai (Girls' Frontline 2) could all be nuked in favor of default tags (GFL2 actually does give costume names for defaults if a doll has an alternate costume available, while for GFL1 and NC, we could just call them their "Griffin" and "Magrasea" costumes, assuming they don't get reused elsewhere, ex. hk416_(griffin)_(girls'_frontline)/hk416_(griffin)_(girls'_frontline_1)). Per the decision reached in forum #364561, we don't have to have consistent qualifiers at the end of chartags if they look terrible. With the potential nuking of the parent game chartags, you could do hk416*(girls'_frontline)/{{hk416*(girls'_frontline_1)}}, clukay*(neural_cloud) and klukai*(girls'_frontline_2) for the specific remaining chartags or {{klukai_(reverse_collapse) girls'_frontline}}/{{klukai_(girls'_frontline) girls'_frontline_1}}, {{klukai_(reverse_collapse) girls'_frontline_neural_cloud}}, or {{klukai_(reverse_collapse) girls'_frontline_2:_exilium}} for alternate costumes, completely nude art, etc.
So if you want to flatten down the implications, you need to provide an alternate means for someone to search all versions of a given character in a specific game, and GFL currently does not provide that.
Paging @Ylimegirl wrt Fate tagging to follow/give input/interpretation on this discussion as one of the prime examples of multi-level implication chains for characters and costumes, which I am surprised was not one of the first examples of chaotic tags, and instead went for cases where I feel the chains are a lot more sensible to have.
I have been summoned. Can't say I know too much about non-Fate franchises for horrible tagging fun, and we've got a few different examples going on here, but the most basic rule I use for doing layered implications is "do they look the same nakey" / "is there any possible scenario where they could be confused for each other".
For some examples of Fate nonsense I've dealt with, Gareth (Swimsuit Saber) had no reason to continue existing because every single form looks different, so it got flattened. Having the ascensions for Kama's swimsuit all be underneath Kama (Swimsuit Avenger) made no sense because Kama's got a whole three-life-stage thing going on, so eventually that got reworked into Kama (Young), Kama (Teenager), and Kama (Adult).
Martha (Swimsuit Ruler) technically has slightly different color schemes in every single ascension, but she's got that common hairstyle and also artists will mix-and-match anyways, so no point in flattening that. Oda Nobunaga (Swimsuit Berserker) has the common design of the headphones around neck along with her weird guitar thing, meaning there are absolutely cases where she can be depicted as her swimsuitsona without it being any of her specific ascensions.
Despite NNT's initial protests they did eventually approve the quadruple implication of Archetype Earth (Celebratory Attire) to Archetype Earth (Third Ascension), which I still stand by because of the hairstyle. Conversely, I didn't push for Altera (Celebratory Attire) to be implied to Altera the Santa (despite the official name of the illustration, which I follow for the wiki's description) because nothing about that costume is inherently connected to her Santa-sona specifically.
Enough about Fate stuff that statistically only I care about. Looking at Damian's example of HK416. The fact that Clukay and Klukai are both implicated to the tag but not anywhere on the wiki's gallery is already setting off some alarms in my head. Looking at the galleries for those two subtags, it looks a lot like there's no reason for the skins to be implied directly to the subtags appearance-wise aside from the name she's called in each one. To loop it back to Fate (unfortunately), this reminds me of what I attempted to do with Lady Avalon (topic #32320) and Uesugi Kenshin (topic #32682), only succeeding on the latter.
Again I think I just don't know enough about these franchises to comment further on the nitpicky, but my general opinion remains "if they look indistinguishable from each other there should probably be a link, unless there's a reason not to". yes this means there's a lot of work to do with artoria pendragon i am putting that off until the last possible moment thank you.
Some additional thoughts I had while discussing this with Damian due to the way some copyrights work or are bloody confusing is that ultimately, tags are more for our users and they indeed - again - don't have to match exactly what the game says. Though the problem is to treat this like a one-way street or reach an "ideal utopia" where there's only two levels of implication chains.
The only other answer I've arrived at is to break some consistency with some tags where some have direct implications and others do not. The thing is that breaking consistency is difficult to get approved and sometimes makes things worse because now you have some things following the source material's structure and others that don't, and that would be sensible purely from a looks standpoint.
We say that we want the tags to be understandable to people who have zero clue about the copyright which is where the wikis pull a lot of their weight. The thing is that sometimes even with zero understanding, just the mere appearance of a costume allows taggers to form an association. Sometimes it is more sound to follow the source material than it is to reach some tagging perfection. Some of the problems faced by gachas is needing to share character tags across 2-5 copyrights because they have the literal same appearance in all of them, or in a wild case, Seele Vollerei (Azure Memories) is the default appearance of Seele Vollerei in Benghuai Xueyuan but a costume for a variant in Honkai Impact 3rd. Sometimes, to orient towards the source, is the best solution.
Naturally - for most people that don't know anything about a copyright, they can't form immediate associations of "C costume belongs to B variant of A character", if they really are unique appearances and look nothing like the other character's tags. Though that's just not the reality of it. And I think largely the wikis need some upkeep first, and then discussions second to set up a good venue. But I don't believe that needing to search so many tags - which is untenable for blue users - to find every character and their outfits or only a specific subset of them would do us any good just because we want a clean character tags tree.
I think my main takeaway here is that every copyright is different regarding these sorts of things. While generally speaking, the ideal should be a two-tag hierarchy, sometimes that simply isn't possible for whatever reason (Exhibit A: the Fate tags).
While I mostly handle the Nikki Series these days (though I wanna make a list of gachas missing game cgs deas or alive to upload when I get bored of that, but that's completely off-topic), which makes use of chartags for individual outfits combined with [insert chartag here] (as these outfits tend to be drawn as their own actual characters by fans more than on actual characters, meaning normal costume tagging simply does not work), I have noticed that with official alternate costumes, characters with an alternate version of themself that behaves completely differently are where the two-tag hiearchy starts getting a little dicey.
This most commonly occurs with characters at alternate ages (as has been discussed at length in this thread), but it can occur with, say, pre-amnesia and post-amnesia versions of characters being given separate costumes, or full on alternate universe versions of characters. Whether to flatten into a two tag hierarchy as is the norm or to deal with the 3+ tag hierarchy is truly a question that depends on the copyright and character it seems. I'd offer to help out more, but my expertise in gacha copyrights is going to be of little use lol.
Looking at Damian's example of HK416. The fact that Clukay and Klukai are both implicated to the tag but not anywhere on the wiki's gallery is already setting off some alarms in my head. Looking at the galleries for those two subtags, it looks a lot like there's no reason for the skins to be implied directly to the subtags appearance-wise aside from the name she's called in each one.
Yeah, because at the end of the day, they are ultimately supposed to be for the character's appearance in each of the respective games more broadly. The absence of a proper series chartag ensures this. I will also emphasize that I already have planned out how the wikis for the series chartags would look like. Now, I would've used Klukai as an example and posted it here, but as one of the most popular character, I, uh, can't. Posts can't have more than 5 images included, so...
It would not make sense to have HK416 (Girls' Frontline)'s wiki be this wiki as it was ultimately not supposed to be used for this purpose, being intended specifically for one game, Girls' Frontline. As evazion himself said in forum #332294, the current tagging set-up is not ideal due to the inadequencies it has for searching versions of characters, specifically the GFL1 version.
