Screencap/cap tagging

I've noticed that screencap aliases to cap, but, well, how I might put it... Some people tag their images with cap for a type of headgear/hat, not really because it's a screencap per se, causing the whole confusion and ambiguosity, and whatever else it might cause.

Any suggestions on how to solve this? Unfortunately, I have no idea on how to help, just here to point it out.

cap is supposed to be reserved for screen caps. The real question is how do you neatly separate all the actual hats from the 4,292 cap posts?

I prefer screencap but changing such a well established tag now seems a bit more trouble than it's worth.

I'm willing to bet a whole bunch of those screencaps deserve to die.

The wiki page for cap specifically says "Never use this tag when referring to a cap, a type of headgear. Use 'hat' instead." So I don't think we need to worry about that.

Not to say that we should change one of the oldest tags on Danbooru, but frankly people ignore wikis more often than they read them.

Aline said:
ambiguosity

Ambiguity.

I agree with jxh2154 that screencap is preferable to cap, if only to avoid ambiguity. If its age is the only reason to keep the name, perhaps this needs to be looked at again?

A cap is not necessarily a screencap. Generally all you can say is that it is a captured frame from a video stream. And the term could be applied more loosely as well, say to caps from VHS tapes or whatever.

Anyway, I support leaving it as cap. Frankly, if a user can't be bothered to read the wiki entry, they can get lost.

Just out of curiosity, which caps aren't screencaps? Even if it comes from a VHS originally, the image would be a capture of the screen displaying the video, no? Otherwise it would be a photo of the tape itself, which wouldn't apply, and would be very dull indeed.

The only "caps" that aren't from screens that I can think of would be from physical media, and we have scan for that.

Somewhat related: I started a thread about the "screenshot -> cap" alias 5 months ago. Never got any replies, but since "cap" is under discussion...

RaisingK said:
It might just be a misassociation on my part, but the thing that bugs me about this alias is that I associate "cap" pictures as coming from anime and "screenshot" pictures as coming from games. I mean, we do have "fake screenshot", after all.

Here's the given reason for the alias: while possibly not the same(full screen with all hijinks vs. possibly select part), 95% of what is uploaded under screenshot would/could be tagged as cap, and the distinction is mostly moot anyway.

Don't these two kinds of pictures merit a distinction? Game cg wouldn't count as screenshot, but shots using character sprites or game text over the game cg would. Or something...

For images that are supposed to look like screenshots from an anime, the wiki says to use cap + photoshop but the posts tagged with both of those tags don't really reflect that statement. Wouldn't it be simpler to expand the fake_screenshot tag to include all illustrations that are supposed to like they're from a game or anime like post #423636?

reese said:
For images that are supposed to look like screenshots from an anime, the wiki says to use cap + photoshop

My feeling was that caps are for anime and screenshots are for games, so that much I can agree with. Expanding fake screenshot would just make the tag less useful.

Shinjidude said:
Just out of curiosity, which caps aren't screencaps? Even if it comes from a VHS originally, the image would be a capture of the screen displaying the video, no? Otherwise it would be a photo of the tape itself, which wouldn't apply, and would be very dull indeed.

A photo of the screen? That's not a "capture" of what's on the screen, directly siphoned from the input to the screen. Rather it's recorded from the output of the screen.

RaisingK said:
Somewhat related: I started a thread about the "screenshot -> cap" alias 5 months ago. Never got any replies, but since "cap" is under discussion...

Absolutely not. Those are two completely distinct types of images. A cap is a capture of the content, a screenshot is a capture of an application showing the content. That's one important distinction, that of meta-levelness, so to say. And then we have a whole class of screenshots of things that could never put under cap, such as photoshop WIPs, ukagaka, desktops with eroge icons on them etc.

0xCCBA696 said:
A photo of the screen? That's not a "capture" of what's on the screen, directly siphoned from the input to the screen. Rather it's recorded from the output of the screen.

I would argue that although more crude, that a photograph of a screen still is a "capture" of the image on that screen. Also, except for in 2d_dating, they probably aren't that common.

Anyway, my point is that the screen itself is not important in the case of images currently tagged as cap. It doesn't matter that they are displayed on a (computer or TV) screen - they are captured frames from some video source stream. screenshot, on the other hand, shows the composited presentation of various display elements on a computer screen, which makes the "screen" part of the word actually important, whereas in cap I don't think it is.

Hence my vote for leaving the tag as cap.

RaisingK said:
My feeling was that caps are for anime and screenshots are for games, so that much I can agree with. Expanding fake screenshot would just make the tag less useful.

I see what you mean now.

Since we have the fake_screenshot tag, maybe a fake_screencap tag could be created.