I do agree that specialized tags would help in trying to find specific variants of outfits, and I do appreciate on some level the sheer effort that went into tagging them, but...
Fundamentally I don't feel separate chartags are necessary. Or at least not worth the cost of cluttering up chartags. This complicates chartag number searches even more, and more annoyingly, CLUTTERS UP autocomplete tags seriously, spilling over to Kancolle (and Warship Girls and other related games) since all the characters share the same ship namesakes.
With the rate of skins coming up, the list will be filled full with Azur Lane charskins, making it highly annoying to use autocomplete tags.
Most of the specific skins can be searched for by using character + several outfit-related gentags. Dress or maybe cocktail_dress for Taihou's forbidden feast outfit, and black_bikini for whatever-Eugen-swimsuit-wear-is-I-don't-remember. Now, this isn't perfect due to mistaggings and false positives, but this is the same for other copyrights like Touhou (like trying to look for Remi's 'popehat' CoLA outfit).
A lot of the skin's names are also non-descriptive and hard to remember. They are named to draw attention when marketing them to player, not to aid description. This makes it even more highly frustrating for the average user to remember the 3 or so extra skin tags (which may soon balloon to 10+ the way they release new skins to generate revenue), never mind the sheer potential amount.
For the above two reasons (outfit tag + char being good for most purposes like in other copyrights, and the idiosyncratic hard to remember names), I'm also against having it as a gentag except for some particularly notable outfits on a case-by-case basis (and the skin is named in a descriptive enough and unique enough manner to avoid confusion).
Otherwise, chartags are going to be filled with things like Remilia_Scarlet_(Curiosities_of_Lotus_Asia), Sado_(Setsubun)_(Kantai_Collection), Venom_Snake_(tuxedo) (that one's even a named DLC skin!), Makarov_(Pumpkin_Mishka)_(Girls_Frontline), Vittorio_Veneto_(qipao)_(Warship_Girls_R), Enterprise_(Starlight_Oath)_(Azur_Lane), Leon_S_Kennedy_(pirate)_(Resident_Evil_6), etc. etc. and all the tens to hundreds possible outfits/skins, PER character.
Enjoy scrolling the list (and accidentally misclicking unless you squint through the multiple similar lines) when you type out tags for autocomplete.
feline_lump said:
My (somewhat weak) preference is to keep them as character tags. We're dealing with designs that are going to be applied to 1 character 99% of the time, so I think it only makes sense to link them together. Is the current wiki documentation, such as the lists on saber or list of vocaloid derivatives, not enough to clear up confusion?
There's a third option — no chartag, no specific gentag, just tag the clothes.
feline_lump said:
If we do convert them to general tags, qualifiers are inevitably going to be necessary. I clean up the punkish gothic tag from time to time because people keep assuming it's punk + gothic and not a copyright-specific tag.
This here would seem to indicate that the tag is poorly-named. Maybe it should be renamed to punkish_gothic_(idolmaster) instead.
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Now to sum it up, chartags are used to tag characters. Alternate persona(e) of a character may have sufficient weight to stand as separate characters in of themselves, such as when they're performing another role under disguise (all the superhero/alter-ego tags including magical girls), an alternate self from an alternate timeline (code_g_(azur_lane)), a clone with a distinct personality (misaka_imouto), an alternate version of the character from a separate continuity (alice_margatroid_(pc-98). Fan-versions of characters may also be given separate chartags (usually when they are tagged consistently on Pixiv/Nico/etc, have different personalities from their canon selves, and/or are drawn in a specific way, like plasma-chan_(kantai_collection).) In any case, having different names for the alternate versions of the characters adds additional weight to term being considered for separate chartags.
Same character in a different outfit, no, not even if the outfit is named.