evazion makes the same mistake mayhem-chan did two years ago in forum #272361: mixing up form and essence. this works fine for general tagging – i mean, this how tagging by visual elements should usually be done (ahem) – but, obviously, covers are defined by not how they look but the very fact they were used as covers, and comparing them by visual hints only just because youtube thumbnails don't have an established pattern (that uploaders must follow) doesn't sound fair. so, i don't like the logic presented in '[use cover for] cover art of any type, whether real or "mocked-up"', because it ignores the significance of a function in art.
i was about to agree with anon tokyo about fake cover remaining general just for convenience, but this tag technically belongs to meta category as well, as the fakeness is not defined until the provenance is known. again, fake cover looks like a cover but with the only difference that it hasn't been used as such and this fact cannot be proved within the image. hence, it is a meta-knowledge for that image. 'obviousness' of the visual attributes (which are really common and by which it's quite easy to guess the format, sure, i agree) is not something that refutes meta status of the tag, it only proves the format made its appearance recognizable.
from danbooru standpoint, characters might not be in meta category, but copyrights are, as they are classified by its attributes – characters or context in the whole, basically a hierarchy – and presented in an image via these characters or the context; and so artists (but via source this time). meta tags we currently have are more like uncategorized leftovers which subject scope are much broader than any other category has. that's because, strictly speaking, nearly all tags here are meta tags – no image (as a visual sign) has explicitly written data that we just transfer other than file properties (for an image as a file), that is ironically not metadata (exif is anyway removed, iirc); we tag ourselves, we are translating the visual language into the natural language based on data given by an artist and common sense. when it was decided to categorize these tags, i suppose meta category hadn't felt significant enough to divide it on a smaller parts as listed on tag group:metatags.
interestingly, help:metatags lists jpeg artifacts and scan artifacts as exceptions, when they, even being part of an image, has nothing to do with the contents, as both of them are emerged from retrieving / processing the original image in its pure (or ideal, if you want) form, in its native medium. and here i'd wanted to clarify whether on danbooru we describe the whole image or the contents we find the main point of an art interest in, i.e. the part of that image? i had fun time tagging phonecard (object) along with phonecard (medium) in post #5346362 because the phonecard was photographed to capture its contents, and it is the main point of interest there. but imagine another iteration: that photo has been printed and scanned, so that you'd want to tag it as a scan, and probably no more? or maybe scan, photo (medium) and phonecard (medium)? keep in mind that scan denotes the way of retrieving an image – as well as photo (medium) – and ideally requires an additional medium tag, but with a photo you'll have a world as a medium itself – unless you want to create a large number of unnecessary medium tags. the notion of medium can shift from 'image is what we scanned / what we photographed' to 'image is the scan / the photograph itself that just contains another image in it'. if anything, i hope we'll never get into such a mess and stay with more convenient way of tagging what community find useful, and keep focus on art rather than being meticulous about meta that much.
but being somewhat meticulous is necessary in this case. i think that proper description of meta tags should be slightly shorter than how help:metatags puts it in. 'meta tags are tags that convey information about an image' is great – just stop there unless you want to heavily rework this category. i'm trying to convince other users to stop thinking in the visuals to describe an image using meta tags, but it's likely the term 'meta' should be defined first. please do, if still in doubts, and maybe we'll be able to solve this issue (so that it does not appear later).
but then we would also need to reconsider the categorization of tags like parody, meme, *_(style), etc. they don't feel quite right in general category, they don't feel quite right in meta category, as they describe the context in a broad sense, but are still based upon image contents.
as a common hanken fan myself, i can say that provenance matters a lot, and having these tags buried under the pile of other general tags is not just simply wrong but also inconvenient to look them up (wavedash have a point). and, of course, any fake covers need to be unimplied from corresponding provenance tags, if we go this way. furthermore, i would be happy if we would at least have subcategories in meta category – without names, just with a blank line between them – to bring tidiness and easier reading. as i said above, i can see how we ended up with these categories / tags, but there's still a hope nonetheless. but this is definitely a topic that needs to be talked thoroughly.
p.s. by the way, you are missing some other cover tags (laserdisc cover, vhs cover, etc.)
