The tag alias #15802 super_smash_bros._ultimate -> super_smash_bros. has been approved.

Reason: We don't have game tags for any other specific entries in the Super Smash Bros. series, so having a tag specifically for this one is inconsistent. Additionally, there are many posts with this tag that simply feature characters who have been in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate - the problem with this is that almost all of the characters who were in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate have been in a previous Super Smash Bros. instalment, so without context these posts could be about any Super Smash Bros. game featuring those characters.

The only characters that could definitively receive the super_smash_bros._ultimate tag are those that were introduced to the series in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. - the Inklings, Princess Daisy, Ridley, Dark Samus, Simon Bellmont, Richter Bellmont, Chrom, King K. Rool, Isabelle, Ken Masters, Incineroar, Piranha Plant and Joker. However, if any of these characters also appear in a future Super Smash Bros. game then we would have the same problem.

EDIT: The tag alias super_smash_bros._ultimate -> super_smash_bros. (forum #155209) has been approved by @NWF_Renim.

EDIT: The tag alias super_smash_bros._ultimate -> super_smash_bros. (forum #155209) has conflicting wiki pages. super_smash_bros. should be updated to include information from super_smash_bros._ultimate if necessary.

+1

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Historical note:

In topic #7418 (from December 2011, that is a bit more than 7 years ago), it was me who suggested aliasing SSB game tags such as super smash bros. brawl and super smash bros. melee to super smash bros., which got accepted.

(Admittedly, in the thread linked above I most certainly suggested too many aliases... Some abbreviations for the same thing such as /ssb, /ssbm and /ssbb got accepted as well. In hindsight, I would be OK with deleting some of these aliases.)

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I agree with AngryZapdos about aliasing super_smash_bros._ultimate -> super_smash_bros.

Today, a SSB post with Isabelle, or Inkling, or Incineroar, and so on may easily be considered a Ultimate post. But to repeat a point above, this would not be so clear if they appear in more SSB games in the next years.

To elaborate with more examples:

• Some characters such as Pikachu, Link and Ness started their SSB career in the first game, but we don't use a tag for the first game every time these characters appear. It goes without saying that these characters have appeared in multiple other SSB games since then, so doing that wouldn't be exactly accurate either.
• I could go on about other games. For the same reasons above, we don't use a tag like super_smash_bros._melee for characters from that game such as Bowser, Falco and Ganondorf.
  

The bulk update request #1963 is active.

remove implication super_smash_bros._ultimate -> super_smash_bros.

Reason: Apparently we would have to unimply the tag first as shown here.

EDIT: The bulk update request #1963 (forum #155213) has been approved by @NWF_Renim.

I think I have to disagree.
In most cases, it is obvious that it's just referencing the series per se.
But in case you have an image prominently featuring the Villager or Tabuu then it's fairly obvious which part of the series an image is referencing when you look at the upload date. Similar to how Splatoon1/Splatoon 2 tags are handled.

Lacrimosa said:
But in case you have an image prominently featuring the Villager or Tabuu then it's fairly obvious which part of the series an image is referencing when you look at the upload date.

The upload date means nothing, especially when you consider that an artist might dredge up something they drew years ago with a caption like "forgot to post this LOL". And when that's written in Japanese, 99.9% of uploaders will completely miss it. The same logic applies to the "I went back and drew this old game for nostalgia!" scenario. There's also the versions of these where one (or both) of these things is true but the artist says nothing, in which case nobody could tell the difference.

Even if no artist ever did these things, we use "tag what you see", not "tag what you know". Whether or not a post featuring Pikachu and Mario is from OG Smash, Melee, Brawl, 4 or Ultimate is in the same vein as an artist saying that a fully-clothed female character is a futanari - there's no way of knowing when all you have to go on is the image, and even if you did know it would make no difference if it were the other way around anyway.

AngryZapdos said:

The upload date means nothing, especially when you consider that an artist might dredge up something they drew years ago with a caption like "forgot to post this LOL". And when that's written in Japanese, 99.9% of uploaders will completely miss it. The same logic applies to the "I went back and drew this old game for nostalgia!" scenario. There's also the versions of these where one (or both) of these things is true but the artist says nothing, in which case nobody could tell the difference.

Even if no artist ever did these things, we use "tag what you see", not "tag what you know". Whether or not a post featuring Pikachu and Mario is from OG Smash, Melee, Brawl, 4 or Ultimate is in the same vein as an artist saying that a fully-clothed female character is a futanari - there's no way of knowing when all you have to go on is the image, and even if you did know it would make no difference if it were the other way around anyway.

You can simply look up what is refrenced.
By the same logic, there is also no need for the various Fate/*** copyright tags.

Fate shouldn't be held up as a good example to follow here. Fate has a ton of confusion over how to tag copyrights for Fate/Grand Order characters.

Touhou is a better comparison. When a new Touhou game comes out, we don't start tagging every post with the new game.

For instance, let's see these two posts:

• post #3327061
• Zero Suit Samus and Pikachu
• Currently tagged super_smash_bros. and super_smash_bros._ultimate.
• Original image posted on Pixiv in February 2019.
• post #342113
• Zero Suit Samus and Pikachu (just like above)
• Currently tagged super_smash_bros. (but not super_smash_bros._ultimate).
• I couldn't find the original source, but the image was uploaded on Danbooru in November 2008 (10 years ago).

The 1st one is pretty recent and was thus tagged super_smash_bros._ultimate.

The 2nd one is most likely a reference to Brawl, because that game was introduced in 2008. Should that post get tagged super_smash_bros._brawl? (which is currently an alias to super_smash_bros.)

They are exactly the same characters, so for one I would be against tagging separate games such as Brawl and Ultimate.

Stating the obvious: If we started using the image date for copyright tagging purposes, then it would literally mean that the same image could get different copyright tags based on their upload date.

Based on "tag what you see", just super_smash_bros. for both images is fine in my opinion.

I for one, mostly upload art about Pokémon games from all generations. I frequently see fan art of older games published years or decades after the game release.

Artists are allowed to play and draw about older games if they want.

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Just a comment:

It goes without saying that we can already search by the Danbooru upload date.

If we really wanted to search images by their original upload dates, we could:

1) have a separate field for the original upload date of each image, or
2) have tags like 2007 post, 2008 post, 2009 post, 2010 post etc. for the year when each image was originally posted. (as opposed to 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, etc. which are basically for years written somewhere on the posts), or
3) repurpose tags like 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, etc. to allow any post originally from these years regardless of having a written year somewhere, while using year for written years.

These 3 items are not actual suggestions, I don't think we need to do any of these things. I'm just listing some options if that helps.

I'm on the fence about this.
There are some designs which are specific to SSBU / older games.

Kikimaru said:

I'm on the fence about this.
There are some designs which are specific to SSBU / older games.

You have some examples of those? I'm aware that Zelda (and I'm guessing Link) has differences in designs between the games (example post #3427118), but in the case of Zelda we could utilize the specific Legend of Zelda game tags instead of depending on specific Smash Bros game tags.

I'm currently leaning that we can lump the games together under one tag, but I'm hesitant given that characters may have unique appearances depending on which Smash Bros game it is and would like to have that question resolved first.

evazion said:

Fate shouldn't be held up as a good example to follow here. Fate has a ton of confusion over how to tag copyrights for Fate/Grand Order characters.

Touhou is a better comparison. When a new Touhou game comes out, we don't start tagging every post with the new game.

I mean, we have to be consistent, am I right?

(Just kill the Fate tags, I'm ok for aliasing ultimate)

NWF_Renim said:

You have some examples of those? I'm aware that Zelda (and I'm guessing Link) has differences in designs between the games (example post #3427118), but in the case of Zelda we could utilize the specific Legend of Zelda game tags instead of depending on specific Smash Bros game tags.

I'm currently leaning that we can lump the games together under one tag, but I'm hesitant given that characters may have unique appearances depending on which Smash Bros game it is and would like to have that question resolved first.

There might be at least one unique design like Zelda's in one of the games, and both Brawl and Ultimate have campaigns featuring unique bosses/enemies - however, since Smash Bros. games like to bring back these old characters in the form of collectibles there's always the possibility that even these "exclusive" characters could make an appearance in future games. For example, the final boss from Brawl exists as a collectible in Ultimate, as do a few of the campaign enemies.

AngryZapdos said:

There might be at least one unique design like Zelda's in one of the games, and both Brawl and Ultimate have campaigns featuring unique bosses/enemies - however, since Smash Bros. games like to bring back these old characters in the form of collectibles there's always the possibility that even these "exclusive" characters could make an appearance in future games. For example, the final boss from Brawl exists as a collectible in Ultimate, as do a few of the campaign enemies.

Collectibles is a very bad argument to use, because even if they're included in the current smash bros, they exist inherently as references to past games and are not themselves a reference then to the current existing game.

The question to resolve shouldn't be if or when a character appears in which game, it's how they appeared in those games and if there is something there that requires being able to distinguish between the games.

NWF_Renim said:

Collectibles is a very bad argument to use, because even if they're included in the current smash bros, they exist inherently as references to past games and are not themselves a reference then to the current existing game.

The question to resolve shouldn't be if or when a character appears in which game, it's how they appeared in those games and if there is something there that requires being able to distinguish between the games.

Well, if we have for example Galleom then this is a tie between Brawl and Ultimate.
I'd say we should keep things simple (even though my very first comment has a different opinion): We shouldn't try to have more tags but less and Smash is a rather straight-forward franchise where one copyright tag may suffice.

We do have precedent for tagging individual entries in a series of fighting games. Street Fighter, Tekken, and Mortal Kombat all do it. There's also nothing stopping us from tagging solely the series when a picture could apply to multiple or all of the games (e.g. post #364573). And we've got use cases like the different Zeldas, Links and Ganons, the recent Zero Suit redesign, exclusive alt costumes, game announcement hype posts, and such.

The question is basically whether we could get anyone to garden these tags well enough to reap the marginal benefits of splitting them. Seems like the consensus so far is no. But if anyone wants to step up, sure, it might work.

It's pretty simple, really. If there are designs, bosses etc. that hint to a specific game, in this case SSBU, we should tag it as such. If multiple games apply to it, not. For SSBU, the initial idea for an own tag was the story mode and some new designs. And if I don't want any spoilers for it, or anything else cause I wish to be surprised, I only need to tag "-ssbu".

I don't think it's necessary to remove this tag. It's easy enough to find out that a fanart is referring to this game and there are no other ssb tags to be confused. And one specific ssb game is far away from a pain to tag.

Marqant said:
no other ssb tags to be confused. And one specific ssb game is far away from a pain to tag.

We only have 1 tag (super_smash_bros._ultimate) because I suggested aliasing the others when Ultimate didn't exist yet (topic #7418).

The full list of tags might look like this:

• super_smash_bros.
• super_smash_bros._(classic)
• super_smash_bros._brawl
• super_smash_bros._melee
• super_smash_bros._for_nintendo_3ds_and_wii
• super_smash_bros._ultimate
  

Marqant said:

...one specific ssb game is far away from a pain to tag.

You could get posts that reference each particular Smash game, so we should either tag none of the specific games or all of them.

To me, the massive effort required to both garden the current almost 4k Smash Bros. posts and make sure those and any future posts are properly tagged is simply not worth the trouble. Sometimes it’s better to cut a rope than untangle its many knots.

It's not trouble if you know the franchise. Just do it like you always do and ignore the tags you are unfimiliar with. No one expects every single of millions of fanarts to be tagged perfectly (though I always try it). And it's always possible to tag afterwards. I don't know about tagging the other games. You could do it like Pokémon and create "gen 1 ssb character" or something like that.

But if you all have made up your mind, I will not dig in any further.

For something like Fate and especially Idolmaster the sub-copyright tags are definitely useful so it makes sense to have those.

For something like Smash Bros, either way could work but there's not much problem with just using the Smash Bros tag due to a lot of overlap between the series' games, I just personally don't have a problem with leaving the tag either.