I have a feeling that even if someone were to clean up these tags to match their intended sex, people will continue to tag females as ninja.

Should these two tags be put together?

Um? I'd go with just setting an implication from kunoichi to ninja. The Japanese wiki article on "kunoichi" says the following:

くノ一（くのいち）は忍者の隠語で女性のことを指し、仕事のしかけに女性を使うことをくのいちの術と呼んだ。しかし小説や漫画などで女忍すなわち女性の忍者を意味する言葉として用いられることが多く、これが普及している。ちなみに男性を使うことはタヂカラ（タヂカラの術）といった（これは男の田と力から由来していると思われる）。

KUNOICHI (kunoichi), in ninja terminology, denotes a woman. Using women in one's work was called "Kunoichi method". However in stories/manga/etc., it is often and increasingly used as a word meaning a woman ninja, that is, a ninja who is a woman [yeah okay, lost in translation]. Incidentally, using men in the line of work was "Tajikara method" (this is from the characters 田, "ta", and 力, "chikara", in the kanji for man, 男).

Not mentioned in this article introduction, but kunoichi comes from what look like the hiragana "ku" (く), katakana "no" (ノ), and kanji for "ichi" (一), which are the three strokes in the character for woman, 女.

Oh, and standard disclaimer - forgive my probably shitty translation, someone feel free to correct me.

tl;dr: A kunoichi is a ninja, a ninja is not necessarily a kunoichi. There is nothing wrong with tagging a female as a ninja.

remove alias kunoichi -> ninja

reason: topic #9642; consistency

Is having a separate tag for female ninjas even necessary? Wouldn't you get the same results with a ninja ~1girl ~multiple_girls search? Heck, given the fact female characters are the majority in most class/job tags, and ninja is not an exception, just search ninja and the vast bulk of the results are of female ninjas. If you want male ninjas just dig around a ninja ~1boy ~multiple_boys search or search ninja male.

Personally I'd be rather against the removal of the alias, as we have other tags where we've aliased gender-specific class -> less gender-specific class, and I'd be opposed to making it the norm to be splitting just cause of the whole giant/giantess thing.

As for the results of topic #9642, I think the results of that were not ideal, especially given the fact that the giant tag isn't being used specifically for male humanoid giants it's also being used for giant mecha (post #678011), giant beings (post #703664), giant creatures (post #612880), giant animals (post #667316), and giant monsters (post #433274). Just because we wanted to make the giantess tag a completely separate tag it results in splitting the giant tag into at least 5 other tags just to make it only for male humanoids.

honestly, i'm a little bothered in this kind of mixed and selective tagging practice.

at one side, we have been using gender-specific tags long since. we have priest and priestess; giant and giantess; policeman and policewoman (this one goes implication though); monster_boy and monster_girl; brothers and sisters; waiter and waitress; butler and maid; merman and mermaid; loli and shota; incubus and succubus; and probably more.

some of these tags have larger population than ninja. the same type of multiple tag search can be applied to some of these tags and/with specific clothes/articles and yet we maintain them separate.

and somehow we also have female-specific tags and not aliased to gender neutral ones like miko, idol, songstress, amazon, and office_lady.

anyways, are there similar tags in the same mold of kunoichi -> ninja alias? this thread actually originally discussed about an implication. so i'm curious of similar cases before or those that followed.

regarding topic #9642, there at least one mod favors going specific and the admin gave his blessing. it remained uncontested for 8 months only until now. the way i look at it, the giant tag requires some gardening subject to new definition. mecha by definition is already a giant robot (or so it says). mecha giant vs mecha -giant have significant difference. mistagged or redundant?

the others or what can be considered as noise can be separated with giant_monster or something. we already have a list of giant_* very similar to how the ambiguity of film was addressed with film_*

Well the first thing that should be taken into consideration is division between outfit tags and race tags, at minimum. Ninja as a tag is an "outfit" tag, it is tagging the outfit worn by a character, it should not care what gender the wearer of the outfit is. Tags like waiter, waitress, butler, maid, miko, policewoman, etc are "outfit" tags, they tag specific types of outfits, and it would be a bit clearer if all of them had "outfit, "costume," or "uniform" tacked at the end to make that clearer. A man wearing a waitress uniform should still be tagged waitress, and not waiter; likewise a woman wearing a butler uniform should be tagged butler and not maid. So making gender neutral and unifying under one tag butler/maid, waiter/waitress, etc actually destroys a lot of the value of these tags, and imo wouldn't be recommended.

I don't think there is a real unifying "kunoichi" outfit, so separating it out from the ninja tag to me seems more about splitting hairs on gender instead of trying to tag the appearance. Ninja itself is a rather loose outfit tag to begin with, as it's really more of a "ninja-ish looking outfit" tag.

As for the divisions in some of the races and/or classes, I don't know. Some of it is done because it is a lot less awkward sounding as a tag having it gender-specific, such as with the monster_boy/monster_girl as opposed to monster_person. Others like succubus and incubus, what would you plan on that? Unless you take it up to just lumping them under demon, the names that exist to classify them are both gender-specific.

imho, ninja can be viewed more accurately as a class or profession (?) instead than mere 'outfit' or costume. and kunoichi as its sub-class similarly to how amazon is to a warrior or policewoman is to a police. a ninja, warrior, or police can apply to both male and female but kunoichi, amazon, and policewoman can only be for the latter.

considering the use of *_uniform, well, i can't say for use. the way the wikis were written, gender seems to be an important distinction for waiter and waitress for example. if we want one gender in the other, we use crossdressing (?) or cosplay since we don't usually expect a tray-wielding man wearing a frilly skirt with apron?

regarding using a probable ninja_costume or ninja_outfit for clarity, i don't know if that will work. there isn't exactly a uniform depiction of ninja costumes and it varies differently. naruto for one, only has kakashi in the main characters that i would consider in the traditional ninja costume. naruto, sasuke, and sakura prettily dressed much casually.

anyways, for the absence of a costume tag, the clothing articles can still be tagged usually as sleeveless kimono, fishnets, kurokote, and weapons like shuriken and kunai. i wouldn't consider splitter hairs having a kunoichi tag though because it still is a ninja (just more accurate) and besides we have precedence already.

and i don't understand why we have witch/warlock/wizard and sorcerer/sorceress all independent of mage or maybe something simpler as magic_user? are these also just 'outfit' tags?

ghostrigger said:

imho, ninja can be viewed more accurately as a class or profession (?) instead than mere 'outfit' or costume. and kunoichi as its sub-class similarly to how amazon is to a warrior or policewoman is to a police. a ninja, warrior, or police can apply to both male and female but kunoichi, amazon, and policewoman can only be for the latter.

Except we don't really tag professions, a profession of a person is only determined by their clothing and equipment, thus it is an "outfit" tag. Actually tagging their profession means tagging based on background knowledge of the character meaning tagging characters like Hakurei Reimu as Miko because that is her profession. This makes those tags unnecessarily messy because you flood them with images that are not visually related.

As for policewoman being a "sub-class" of the police tag, you're incorrect in your understanding of what the police tag is used for. The police tag is used to refer to things that are affiliated with the police departments, which may be a building, a car, a helicopter, and of course the people in uniform. The policewoman tag is a counterpart to policeman, and both tags implicate the police_uniform tag and implicate the police tag. So policewoman is actually properly a sub-category of the police_uniform tag already. (Side note on this... why does the policewoman and policeman tags implicate police? The police_uniform already does this for them).

I mentioned about tagging based on background knowledge making these things messy with things that don't seem at all visually related, the Amazon tag seems to be a perfect example of being a mess of things that seem to have no connection whatsoever (except of course to those that know said character belongs to this "profession"). The warrior tag is also messy, but at least there seems to be a connection on some sort of "adventurer's outfit" or some sort of "armor," and having a weapon. This "warrior" tag though is still an "outfit" tag, as soon as you remove the equipment from the character, the character could no longer be given those tags. It's a tagging of what they're wearing/equipped with, so its still an "outfit."

ghostrigger said:
considering the use of *_uniform, well, i can't say for use. the way the wikis were written, gender seems to be an important distinction for waiter and waitress for example. if we want one gender in the other, we use crossdressing (?) or cosplay since we don't usually expect a tray-wielding man wearing a frilly skirt with apron?

I won't deny that the wikis for probably all these tags are imo bad, because they're focusing entirely on the wrong the thing in their definitions, which is they're defining the person wearing the outfit when they should instead be focusing on the object being tagged (ie the outfit itself). When you're focusing on the person, then yes it doesn't matter about the outfit and you can use a gender-neutral tag and lump both male and female uniforms under one title. In your example waiter and waitress could probably be lumped under waiter or waitstaff, and can use the crossdressing tag to separate when one gender is wearing the other gender's uniform (or at minimum one that appears more commonly on the other gender). The problem with that approach though is that it is tagging the person, not the outfit. The outfit itself is what is being tagged and it is actually an existence all its own, it doesn't need the person there to define it it. A waitress uniform on a hanger is still a waitress uniform even when no one is wearing it, but by lumping both male and female outfits (despite having visual differences) there is no way to separate which uniform is which. The outfit is a taggable object by itself, the wikis are written in a manner completely ignoring or forgetting that fact. We're not tagging the "profession" we're tagging the "outfit" depicted.

ghostrigger said:
regarding using a probable ninja_costume or ninja_outfit for clarity, i don't know if that will work. there isn't exactly a uniform depiction of ninja costumes and it varies differently. naruto for one, only has kakashi in the main characters that i would consider in the traditional ninja costume. naruto, sasuke, and sakura prettily dressed much casually.

Still doesn't change the fact that what is being tagged is the outfit (clothing and equipment) though. Yes, there are things that could be put under a fairly traditional idea of what a ninja outfit would look like, and yes, there are those with clothing that is very "nontraditional" in appearance, but that doesn't negate the fact that we're tagging what is being worn in the end. Even if it is very different from the traditional appearance, it still has to be close enough to give us that impression that the character is a "ninja." We're not tagging the characters cause of the "profession" they are, we're tagging them because of the clothing and equipment they're wearing.

ghostrigger said:
and i don't understand why we have witch/warlock/wizard and sorcerer/sorceress all independent of mage or maybe something simpler as magic_user? are these also just 'outfit' tags?

Some of those can probably be lumped back into mage, but I'd say that witch and likely wizard could be separated out or made a subtype of mage, as both imo seem to be a much narrow costume set.

As for the question "are these also just 'outfit' tags?" The answer would be yes again, because we're tagging the outfit (clothing and equipment), we're not tagging the person.

NWF Renim said:
Except we don't really tag professions, a profession of a person is only determined by their clothing and equipment, thus it is an "outfit" tag. Actually tagging their profession means tagging based on background knowledge of the character meaning tagging characters like Hakurei Reimu as Miko because that is her profession. This makes those tags unnecessarily messy because you flood them with images that are not visually related.

then i'm more comfortable using class in this case because it's not mere 'outfit'. it's the overall impression the character creates regardless if it's canonical profession or not. of course the attire is part of it, but it doesn't end there. it's the expectation that this belongs to this particular class. if a user wants to look for miko does he want to see this? if he wants a policewoman would this post be relevant?

and even if 'profession' as you say requires background knowledge, are there measures to prevent them? or more correctly, are we really forbidden to tag images based on background knowledge of characters? how about tag group:family_relationships and the growing relationship tags ? weren't they based wholly on background knowledge?

hakurei_reimu miko results 3-digit pages of false positives based on a definition of miko as an 'outfit' tag or miko wearing traditional clothes. scanning randomly, i only see a handful of them satisfying this. that's why i find it weird to use a common noun intented for a person to be used for a mere 'outfit'. it's not only against what users believe but also against plain common sense.

NWF Renim said:
As for policewoman being a "sub-class" of the police tag, you're incorrect in your understanding of what the police tag is used for.

but police is aliased to police_officer and cop (both nouns refer to a person and not buildings) so it makes sense that policewoman is a direct sub-class of it. the wiki confirms this. now if you want that kind of police broader in scope and more ambiguous, the probable exact equivalent for ninja in this case might be nindou or ninpou. the police_officer will be ninja or shinobi; police_uniform to the non-existent (yet) ninja_outfit or shinobi_shouzoku; policewoman is to kunoichi. doesn't that make clearer and more sensible?

NWF Renim said:
the Amazon tag seems to be a perfect example of being a mess of things that seem to have no connection whatsoever (except of course to those that know said character belongs to this "profession").

considering its population, i think it's just fine. if one user wants to look for amazon, does he expect this? again, it's not limited to what the character is wearing but the overall impression. it's secondary if there appears to be a famous character that appear more frequently than others because she's famous in that 'profession'.

NWF Renim said:
I won't deny that the wikis for probably all these tags are imo bad, because they're focusing entirely on the wrong the thing in their definitions, which is they're defining the person wearing the outfit when they should instead be focusing on the object being tagged (ie the outfit itself).

and considering how some of our aliases currently are (maid_outfit is aliased to maid, take note also of the direction). if we are tagging the outfit then we must use a noun for an outfit. a tag for person (or class/profession/race) intended for a person (or class/profession/race). i think that would be a lot clearer and probably a wiki definition might not be even necessary.

ghostrigger said:

then i'm more comfortable using class in this case because it's not mere 'outfit'. it's the overall impression the character creates regardless if it's canonical profession or not. of course the attire is part of it, but it doesn't end there. it's the expectation that this belongs to this particular class. if a user wants to look for miko does he want to see this? if he wants a policewoman would this post be relevant?

Sorry, but they are outfits. It is their attire that defines what we tag these characters, it is nothing else. The outfit they're wearing defines what "class" you're claiming they are. The miko tag is an outfit tag, which is why is implicates the Japanese_clothes tag and it is also why we have had to create a nontraditional_miko tag to cover outfits that are reminiscent of the traditional miko outfit, but would not qualify for the Japanese clothes tag. It is why in the past we've argued for purging Hakurei Reimu and other Touhou characters from the miko tag before. Some of these outfits are more broad in the clothing that can be worn to fall under it, but in the end it is "clothes makes the man."

ghostrigger said:
and even if 'profession' as you say requires background knowledge, are there measures to prevent them? or more correctly, are we really forbidden to tag images based on background knowledge of characters? how about tag group:family_relationships and the growing relationship tags ? weren't they based wholly on background knowledge?

Not all tags are based on visual appearance, but there are different reasons for different types of tags, so please don't go off-topic and drag tags that are unrelated to the argument. If we know a character's gender, then we will tag based on that knowledge, there won't be argument over doing that. Tagging things like policewoman, maid, miko, etc are different and are tags defined by appearance and appearance only. For tags like these they're that which can be defined 100% based on visual information (and should) and using anything else to define them brings about excessive noise to the tags.

ghostrigger said:
hakurei_reimu miko results 3-digit pages of false positives based on a definition of miko as an 'outfit' tag or miko wearing traditional clothes. scanning randomly, i only see a handful of them satisfying this. that's why i find it weird to use a common noun intented for a person to be used for a mere 'outfit'. it's not only against what users believe but also against plain common sense.

We've already argued about tagging of miko in the past and the results are that miko is for traditional Japanese Miko garments, so most of those are mistagged and should be cleaned up. If it would tagged properly, only those depicting Hakurei Reimu in the traditional Miko garb should appear in the results.

As for two things, one, just because I say "outfit" doesn't mean it is only one very specific type of clothing or combination of clothing (as clearly different maids, waitresses, and the like don't wear perfectly identical outfits). Two, 3-digit page results sounds nice and large but we can give an actual number to that as ~3,461 images. To put that in perspective there are ~33,577 Hakurei Reimu images that exist under hakurei_reimu -nude -casual and ~5,393 images under miko -touhou. The touhou images are being improperly tagged, but just because people are mistagging doesn't mean we should change the definition to suit them.

As a sidenote, the nontraditional miko tag was created as a compromise to keep those images out of the miko tag, while still giving them a tag to exist under. My original proposal was to have the miko tag cover all of them, and have a traditional_miko tag cover images that fell under the Japanese_clothes tag. This still doesn't change my position that it is all an outfit though and that it is the garb they're wearing that is defining them being placed under the tag. Just because we might have a naked character holding a gohei and ofuda giving off the "impression" of a miko, doesn't imo justify tagging it as miko.

ghostrigger said:
but police is aliased to police_officer and cop (both nouns refer to a person and not buildings) so it makes sense that policewoman is a direct sub-class of it. the wiki confirms this. now if you want that kind of police broader in scope and more ambiguous, the probable exact equivalent for ninja in this case might be nindou or ninpou. the police_officer will be ninja or shinobi; police_uniform to the non-existent (yet) ninja_outfit or shinobi_shouzoku; policewoman is to kunoichi. doesn't that make clearer and more sensible?

And those aliased were a mistake and happened after the already existing policewoman -> police_uniform -> police implications existed, we make mistakes because we're human and we don't always notice what has already been laid down in the past. It doesn't take much to change it, and the fact that we have things like post #799407 and post #936152 shows that the police tag is more than just police officers. The fact that the bulk are of people is because that is what is more likely drawn, so I don't need to propose changing the police tag to broaden it out, it is already that way, it is your understanding of how the tag operates that is off right now and not in tune with how its usage is set up.

Wikis are written sometimes by people who do not go and look at what was discussed on the forums or they have a poor or narrow understanding of how the tag should be used, just because the definition says something doesn't necessarily mean it is always right (and the fact is definitions can be changed later and can be changed to be inaccurate as well). And I've explained before most of these wikis are written badly because they focus on the wrong thing, which is the person, and not the thing being tagged, the outfit, so you have just only really confirmed the wikis need changing (which is a common situation that pops up if you spent any time on the forums).

I could see how your equivalent with police and ninja may seem more clear and sensible, but I don't think it can work properly that way. You're not going to have a level above Ninja because you don't really have things like a ninja department or something like that, where police will have equipment (vehicles, machines, etc) tied to them. You can have people showing ninja arts and not be a "ninja," but that would still be a separate tag from Ninja as it is not like you'll have every image of a ninja showing off their ninja arts, but you will have an outfit making you say that the character looks like a ninja or more accurately looks "ninja-ish." The other problem then comes is that Ninja can't be separated between Kunoichi and Ninja because there isn't a real set of outfits that is truly defined, and things that would be closer to probably a "traditional ninja outfit" would be gender neutral like post #1420027 and post #1276689. A policewoman at minimum, particularly in Japan, has not only the difference of a skirt but also their hats are usually unique to female officers, and there are other differences that are particular to a female uniform and not a male uniform.

ghostrigger said:
considering its population, i think it's just fine. if one user wants to look for amazon, does he expect this? again, it's not limited to what the character is wearing but the overall impression. it's secondary if there appears to be a famous character that appear more frequently than others because she's famous in that 'profession'.

Population of a tag usually just warrants a second look at it, but it doesn't stop a tag from being disposed of if it doesn't have real value. As for what people expect under the tag, what they should expect is a collection of images that share a similar theme, so questions comes down to "what is an amazon? Is it a taggable concept?" Going from the looks of the tag, I'd say it almost doesn't seem to be a taggable concept. You have images like post #1444822, post #1591444, post #1042073, post #1142656, post #1300455, and post #426394 in there and what is the real unifying theme? Seems to me that the only one is that we have a female character in it, which would make the tag pointless to retain. There are images of what I'd personally think could be called an "amazon" with a few things like post #1074303, post #1487417, post #1329071 and/or post #957184, but even then is there a real unity amongst the images? You're mixing tribal women with more or less bikini mail clad warrior women. At minimum the amazon tag needs a lot of cleaning.

ghostrigger said:
and considering how some of our aliases currently are (maid_outfit is aliased to maid, take note also of the direction)

It is not that way because of what you think, it was done just to insure that what was under those tags were unified under one tag and at the time things like waitress, nurse, etc were established so we wanted to keep that the norm at the time. It does not actually give support that it was intended to tag the person, though I can understand how you would think that adds wait to your argument.

jxh2154 said in topic #2272:

As others said, we would never tag someone as a maid if they weren't in a maid outfit, regardless of their occupation, if even known.

I'd be more inclined to use the _outfit tag since that's more to the point. We're only tagging the clothing. Same for nurse and waitress and similar.

On the other hand it's longer, thus less convenient. And we already seem very well established with maid/nurse/waitress. So I'm fine with aliasing to maid if everyone else is.

NWF Renim said:
Sorry, but they are outfits. It is their attire that defines what we tag these characters, it is nothing else. The outfit they're wearing defines what "class" you're claiming they are.

sorry to repeat too, but they are not just simply outfits. i'm pretty sure you know this as you'll admit latter that not all tags are based on visual appearance. the fact the many users continue using tags beyond their designed for 'outfit use only' tell us something is blatantly wrong. so wrong that large tags are so polluted that they require massive maintenance. or maybe it's beyond help already because nobody took cared of it and simply ignored it for so long. and this is not a product of a single individual who mindlessly mass tagged posts but our very own active community of users. add the fact that we have tag_group:jobs independent and not a subset of tag_group:attire. this subconsciously enforces the idea that 'attire' and 'jobs' are separate things.

the outfit a character wears will give us a hint what class he belongs. the outfit is not the class nor the characters themselves. that's why we have specific tags for every attire. the tag for class is not the tag for the attire. we have no shortage of tags, so we should not use nouns intended for persons to objects and sacrifice clarity. what exactly do we gain from this?

anyway, what exactly is the reason why pilot and pilot_suit exist independent of each other? and not aliased like maid_outfit and maid? pilot_suit is for the outfit and pilot is for the class. there are posts that it's unclear what the character is actually wearing but a user still expects the post if he's looking for a pilot like post #280449. despite the earlier claim that tagging 'professions' is tagging based on background knowledge, it's not a requirement. one doesn't need to know the series or the character to tag this as pilot. how about post #447730, is the pilot tag intended for the outfit or for his class? this disproves the notion that "clothes make the man". how about post #1354458 and post #1268584 , do we have to zoom in to know what exactly the character is wearing? the class tag in this case is enough and the taggers decided pilot tag is good enough.

tags for attire shouldn't even be aliased to nouns intended for persons in the first place. take post #105347 , it's tagged as sailor because sailor_uniform and sailor_suit were aliased to it. that's plain wrong. scanning randomly, i spotted a lot of mistags. post #1280194 , post #1335770 , post #1227405 are not posts i expect for a sailor.

the truth is users tagged the attire and tagged what they perceived to be the character's profession too all the time. there's no need to lump them together. the result of such restriction is only a bigger mess and loss of clarity.

NWF Renim said:
The miko tag is an outfit tag, which is why is implicates the Japanese_clothes tag and it is also why we have had to create a nontraditional_miko tag to cover outfits that are reminiscent of the traditional miko outfit, but would not qualify for the Japanese clothes tag. It is why in the past we've argued for purging Hakurei Reimu and other Touhou characters from the miko tag before. Some of these outfits are more broad in the clothing that can be worn to fall under it, but in the end it is "clothes makes the man."

the fact that miko implicates japanese_clothes is even worse. when did frilly skirt and detached_sleeves become japanese_clothes? it only carries over the pollution to an even larger tag. just browse randomly miko posts without negating a particular copyright. how many actually falls to the traditional red hakama and white haori? how frequent is the mistags? despite the wiki definition, this isn't followed faithfully. because people use miko as miko referring to the person and not the outfit. and nobody enforces it strictly. considering the poor tag name, this requires regular gardening too, which nobody cared doing. why not just create a simpler and more direct tag name like miko_outfit or traditional_miko_outfit for the red hakama and white haori pair? and implicate that to japanese_clothes? wiki might not be even needed. and leave the posts to the new broad tag class miko to anything that suggests a miko but doesn't fall either to the traditional_miko_outfit or nontraditional_miko outfit. is there a reason why this shouldn't be done?

what we consider as noise today might not be just noise tomorrow. it might snowball into something bigger and searching harder. i don't see the need to reinvent words/terms made right for persons and try to forcibly fit it into inanimate objects just to save a few letters and drop clarity. is the trade even worth it? i only see disadvantages keeping things as is.

NWF Renim said:
Not all tags are based on visual appearance, but there are different reasons for different types of tags, so please don't go off-topic and drag tags that are unrelated to the argument. If we know a character's gender, then we will tag based on that knowledge, there won't be argument over doing that. Tagging things like policewoman, maid, miko, etc are different and are tags defined by appearance and appearance only. For tags like these they're that which can be defined 100% based on visual information (and should) and using anything else to define them brings about excessive noise to the tags.

this isn't off-topic. it's connected. your earlier claim was tagging profession means tagging based on background knowledge. but i said it's not a requirement. outfit forms just a part of a profession a character probably practices or what appears to. there's no need to force tag reimu as miko in every post even if you know (or not) she's a miko. that's why i use 'class' instead of 'profession'. canonical or not doesn't matter. if one character gives an impression of being a miko then tag it as miko (not the current def. of an attire). it's still within the tag-what-you-see realm so i don't see a problem. and background knowledge hardly matters in this case.

i mentioned the family and relationship tags earlier because they exist 0% on visual appearance. and i don't see a reason keeping general tags based in gross and solely background knowledge alone. if such tags exist, why those that have visual elements can't? policewoman, maid, miko, etc are nouns for persons not clothes. we have specific tags for their attire. post #805277, post #1636269, post #1436563, post #1067952, post #864125 are few examples why policewoman refers to the person and not clothes. where exactly is the police_uniform (implicated) here? we can tag 'jobs' or classes loosely in the same way as count-gender tags - and these tags are intended for persons. using post #1041818 as reference: 'job' (person) -> policewoman, attire (visual element/object) -> skirt; for the count-gender tag counterpart (person) -> 1girl, feature (visual element) -> blonde_hair. post #285342 , do i need to know that the lady is working under the police force or not since not all those that direct traffic are police officers? it doesn't matter, if i'm looking for a policewoman, i also want this to appear in my searches. based off background knowledge? tagging professions =/= tagging based on background knowledge. tagging classes =/= tagging attire.

the problem is the notion to absolutely associate a person for this specific attire alone and nothing else and yet use a broad tag not specific about the attire. that's just wrong. using a broad tag that can mean several things and expect it to work on limited cases only? if one can identify the attire then use that tag. there's no need to alias that outfit tag to the person.

excessive noise only increases if we keep using broad tags to refer to specific/limited situations. it would be better to remove the aliases and go specific. broad tags for broad concepts. specific tags for specific items.

NWF Renim said:
We've already argued about tagging of miko in the past and the results are that miko is for traditional Japanese Miko garments, so most of those are mistagged and should be cleaned up.

as mentioned earlier, there's something wrong why mistags grew this big. this is not a simple noise. it's worthy of rethinking and reconsideration already. the current tag name is misleading. the wiki definition is against the common tagging practice. nobody enforces the definition. the large community persists using the intuitive denotation.

if we are so willing to oppose the new proposed giant definition because of a handful of mecha, why can't we change miko which is in absolute disarray with 3-digit pages of false positives? where's the justice in that?

NWF Renim said:
If it would tagged properly, only those depicting Hakurei Reimu in the traditional Miko garb should appear in the results.

the fact that the desired posts are lost in ~3600+ posts (3-digit pages) and find only a handful of them would clearly tell you the current miko is not working as intended. current miko tag is specific: traditional clothes - red hakama and white haori. but a miko is not limited in wearing just that outfit. and yet, what do we have?

NWF Renim said:
Two, 3-digit page results sounds nice and large but we can give an actual number to that as ~3,461 images.

it's still large whether you select the number of pages or the number of posts. it's way larger than mecha giant (~37) vs. mecha -giant (~9873).

NWF Renim said:
The touhou images are being improperly tagged, but just because people are mistagging doesn't mean we should change the definition to suit them.

miko -touhou assumes anything about touhou is problematic and excludes touhou non-canonical miko posts like post #293840, post #178002, post #627501. so what should we do, ignore? it will not be long that we'll need to negate every copyright (with miko-themed characters) to get what we really want. take miko kantai_collection, how many can you actually find the traditional red hakama and white haori? most of them actually fall in the current nontraditional_miko tag. scanning randomly, i found at least 2/333. again, the intended miko fails.

isn't wiki definitions changeable, right? we always consider how tags are used in the community for proposed definitions, that's why police was expanded (or expected to accomodate) to a larger scope despite the human aliases of police_officer and cop. that's why there's opposition to limit the giant tag to giant male humanoid, because there's a handful of users using it for something else.

and yet, here we are ramrod straight and inflexible in changing miko caused by people's action that amounted to thousands? isn't this double standard? intellectual dishonesty? i hope not.

is there really no way to make things clearer and prevent mistags and direct users to clearer and cleaner tagging practice? i suggested earlier on how to possibly solve this. miko_outfit is the simplest. it will appear on top even in autocomplete or prefix it with traditional to make it clearer. we can leave the old miko alone. it doesn't matter. use nouns for clothes intended for clothes, use nouns for persons intended for persons. good tags are simple, direct to the point, clear, and maintenance-free. we can achieve all of these with miko_outfit than old plain miko.

negating a copyright is just a band-aid solution but it shouldn't be the norm in addressing problematic mistags especially with this magnitude. we shouldn't keep things difficult especially if there's a way out of it.

NWF Renim said:
Just because we might have a naked character holding a gohei and ofuda giving off the "impression" of a miko, doesn't imo justify tagging it as miko.

if it looks or acts like or has hints of being a miko (as a person), i expect to find that in naked miko. it doesn't matter if she's real miko or not or just cosplaying or having gohei or ofuda or sword.

NWF Renim said:
And those aliased were a mistake and happened after the already existing policewoman -> police_uniform -> police implications existed, we make mistakes because we're human and we don't always notice what has already been laid down in the past.

i said that because you claimed that my understanding of policewoman as a subclass of police was incorrect. regardless what the definition of the tag police is, policewoman will always remain a sub-class of it. direct sub-class under cop or police_officer and a few rungs under police defined with broader scope. but since police (broad, buildings included) is aliased with very specific cop (person), a few levels were lost. again police mecha generating a few posts somehow changed the definition of police as a person class. it makes sense to remove the aliases of police_officer and cop from police for clarity. with this police becomes legitimately broad as military and the new aliased pair of police_officer and cop function as a human class above policewoman and policeman.

i don't expect to see post #936152 when searching cop or police_woman though and it so happened that we already have a specific tag police_car which might be a lot faster and more accurate than relying on plain police. same goes for post #799407 , this is an unnecessary noise for searching police_officer. but what can we do? this aliases must be stopped.

mistakes happen because we keep ignoring that mistakes even took place and pretend everything is fine and good. we are sacrificing clarity. we kept insisting a broad concept must be aliased to a specific item. we kept a person aliased to an object. and we expect people to follow this?

NWF Renim said:
Wikis are written sometimes by people who do not go and look at what was discussed on the forums or they have a poor or narrow understanding of how the tag should be used,

i personally think nobody should have the monopoly of writing 'good' wikis. considering that some of them were written by people promoted no less by competent mods themselves undermine the writers true capability. it's also against the very spirit of community-driven wiki - by the people, for the people.

good tags (general tags at least) could have good wikis. bad tags will be always bad even with the best wikis. but the best tags don't even need a wiki. shouldn't we all aim for this, right? again, good tags are simple, direct to the point, clear, and maintenance-free.

if you don't trust or wary of the wiki writers i think it's worth considering changing tag names (or introducing clearer tag names) to direct/aid writers and users to what actually is the focus. this will likely happen anyway when things go messier or more polluted. there's no need to alienate them further, because some people actually read their work. wikis are intended to be read anyway. tags, wikis, aliases, implications, etc, can all be changed. nothing is really permanent here, so why not initiate the change and make things clearer and simpler?

NWF Renim said:
just because the definition says something doesn't necessarily mean it is always right (and the fact is definitions can be changed later and can be changed to be inaccurate as well)

the same can be said why people still use miko intended for the person and not the outfit. they don't trust or read the wiki since there's the pessimistic notion that wikis aren't always right. but we can fix this with clearer tags. or we can't?

NWF Renim said:
I could see how your equivalent with police and ninja may seem more clear and sensible, but I don't think it can work properly that way.

i showed the analogy between police and ninja to illustrate the tag hierarchy and the counterpart human class. it also showed the defect that police shouldn't be aliased to police_officer and cop tags since the former covers broad concepts. the most important part there is to have a different tag for class (broad) and a different tag for outfit (specific attire). nouns for persons and nouns for objects. again, the police as cop/police_officer (only) will be ninja or shinobi; police_uniform to ninja_outfit or shinobi_shouzoku; policewoman is to kunoichi. since there's no standard uniform for the outfit, how do i locate (traditional) posts only like post #44137 and post #231779? and post #40469 (the girl)? would plain ninja be enough? ninja has about ~3500+ posts while police has ~1200+. if police has deeper tag hierarchy but with lesser posts can't ninja add a few more? are we forbidden to use specific tags or ninja terms if such tags exists?

NWF Renim said:
The other problem then comes is that Ninja can't be separated between Kunoichi and Ninja because there isn't a real set of outfits that is truly defined

just like a said before and the second post in this thread kunoichi is still a part of ninja. we are not really separating them but establishing a specific class (relationship/sub-class) and it's not entirely because of the outfit. outfits will earn their own tags. if one can't tag the outfit or the absence of it, the class/sub-class takes care of it, assuring the post is still under a manageable umbrella/sub-class/class. would going accurate or specific be that bad?

NWF Renim said:
A policewoman at minimum, particularly in Japan, has not only the difference of a skirt but also their hats are usually unique to female officers, and there are other differences that are particular to a female uniform and not a male uniform.

just like what i illustrated earlier, policewoman is a subclass of supposedly police_officer/cop tag. and it's false that skirt and hat make the difference. for example, post #1350587 post #692061 post #284894 post #284081 post #42768 all disprove that notion. the skirt and the hat hardly mattered in some posts. the policewoman tag was used because the police_officers were all females. it definitely refers to the class and not to the outfit (skirt/hat).

NWF Renim said:
Population of a tag usually just warrants a second look at it, but it doesn't stop a tag from being disposed of if it doesn't have real value.

in any case, if ~30 or even less posts merit a discussion more so for ~259 posts awaiting disposal. since amazon has no wiki, i would assume people use this for dictionary definition of a female warrior regardless what their attire is. regarding the first few posts, i don't know who boa_hancock is, but i would guess she's a famous or prominent or top amazon in her series like how famous reimu is for being a miko in touhou. if we don't like boa_hancock, we can exlude her like how one excluded touhou from miko posts earlier. post #1042073 (at the background), looks like a masked amazon with futuristic armor. what's wrong with post #1142656? a tribe of female warriors, i definitely expect this. nothing wrong with post #1300455 since the amazon refers only to the female. if you're looking for the same outfit like some sort of uniform then you'll likely find none. people tag the posts because they look like or act like female warriors/fighters. with boa_hancock who probably be much better as a leader. again, it's the class not the outfit.

while looking at population, goddess is another female-specific tag and with a larger post count. is there a reason to nuke them since they don't share a common 'outfit'? if these tags exist why kunoichi can't?

NWF Renim said:
I'd say it almost doesn't seem to be a taggable concept... There are images of what I'd personally think could be called an "amazon" with a few things like...

the fact that there's a community of users using it and with considerable population despite the absence of a site wiki; and you were able to spot some and categorize them under the amazon class tag attest the it's a taggable concept. it might contain some you personally don't want to because there's no single agreed upon definition. in any case, i find this a legitimate tag. again, a female-specific tag.

NWF Renim said:
It does not actually give support that it was intended to tag the person, though I can understand how you would think that adds wait to your argument.

then if somehow we reached some sort of mutual agreement, then you'll understand why i think the alias direction is wrong. i would assume that these tags existed separately together with maid_uniform (?) and maid_costume (?). for convenience perhaps aliases were made. the larger population or with the shortest name prevailed to eliminate redundancy. but again, maid is poor tag name choice, because the focus is the attire, right? so it should be any of the nouns intended for attire instead. same can be said to nurse, nurse_outfit and nurse_uniform.

if you're planning to curb future mistags and misunderstanding between users, taggers, gardeners, and wiki writers, i think it's worth considering changing aliases and start using specific tags. danbooru v2 perhaps is in a lot better capacity in handling large sum of posts. besides, it looked like jxh2154 was in agreement in using *_outfit (nouns for objects) back then. at the very least, this resolves some points.