Can we do something about animated posts? I feel like there should be a better way to sort them, besides between file type. Who cares about sorting between gif and png (I obviously understand there are reasons you would want to differentiate between file types)? I didn't even know pngs supported animation before this site. Not only that, but webm and mp4 are their own separate tags, but gif is animated_gif? (I understand animated_png being separate because pngs usually don't move)

I'll get on to my point.
Danbooru is a community that prioritizes quality and has a very strong focus on indexing and tagging. Why are post #2111848, post #2133897, post #2888736, post #2628569 (ew, CG), and post #3075875 all lumped into the same group?

I have a solution. I want tags that help the user differentiate between different types of animated gifs, and I have proposals for a few, along with a few examples of each and a description.

Tags

traditional_animation
Any animation traditionally animated (on a frame by frame basis, without the use of tweening)

Examples:
post #3081692
post #3020538
post #2520076
post #2523054 (personally, I think animated pixel art should get its own tag)
post #2855332

tweened_animation
Animation that makes heavy use of motion tweening. Between us, I believe that there are extremely few tweened animated images that look good. Also, if we could get a tag for all of those still images turned animations a la post #2460633, post #3073626, etc that would make my day. I hate clicking on an animated post only to get a character that's just slightly breathing.

Examples:
post #3075085
post #2941433
post #2912623 (there is hand-drawn animation in this but I believe it's minimal enough that it doesn't count)
post #2520224
post #2706564

hybrid_animation
Animation the makes even use of both hand-drawn animation and tweening.

Examples:
post #2953157
post #2550486
post #2895867
post #2939544

slideshow_animation
Animated images that are compilations of related/sequential still images.

Examples:
post #2014476
post #2445235

I had a hard time finding examples, but you guys definitely know what I'm talking about.

CG_animation
Yuck.
Animation that uses 3d models.

Examples:
post #2622221
I think we all get the point.

As a side note, I think there should be a tag for looping animations since there's one for non-looping.

My plea.

I do genuinely believe that Danbooru is the king of imageboards--it has a level of quality that you don't find anywhere else. I may have just created my account here, but I've been using this site for few years.
In the 13 years that this site has been around, I find it a little confusing that there's no way to get the kind of animation you want. Imagine how much of a leg up on Gelbooru this would be *cough* *cough*
There are close to 100K animated images on there. You think they'll be able to tag them all? This could be a good way to further establish Danbooru as the better site.

So why don't I just do all of this myself?
There are 18K animated images on this site. Not only that, but the only real way to do this requires the ability to use more than 2 tags. The way I'd do this, if I could, would be to search animated and then exclude posts that have any of the new tags I proposed. That way, you're only seeing the animated images that haven't been tagged with the new tags yet. This is also a good way to maintain it once there are no posts left to tag.
Also, without a gold account, there are some posts I just can't tag.

Then how am I expecting this to get done?
I know what you're thinking: 18K posts is still a lot to tag.
...Not necessarily.
I've been a member for about two weeks, and I've tagged just over 700 images. That's with me having work and school to deal with. We could bang this out super quick with more people. These types of animations aren't subjective, either. This seems doable. Hell, I'd help out if I had the permissions.

Is this a good idea? Or am I a dumb noob that's asking for way too much?

My suggested tags, for easy reference:

traditional_animation
tweened_animation
hybrid_animation
slideshow_animation
CG_animation
pixel_animation

Yes you are a dumb noob

Just a few things since it's too late to write something bigger:

We have a tag for looping animations called loop but it's underused.

"pixel_animation" tag seems unnecessary since it would just be pixel art + animated (someone correct me if I'm wrong).

I'm a big fan of traditional sequential animation so I've always wanted to sort out the animated tag myself, but lack of time and the size of the tag made a one man job pretty unrealistic. I'd be willing however to take part in a combined effort, and even babysit the tag in the long term to make sure new posts are tagged accordingly.

Some thoughts:

• pixel_animation, as unbreakable said, is unnecessary, since it seems to me that all posts under pixel_art animated fall under it;
• we have BOTH seamless loop and loop; furthermore there's posts under loop -animated. I suggest aliasing seamless_loop to loop because the latter is much more search intuitive (and because all animations loop in a browser by default), and creating a new tag for the kind of string loop. Someone has to suggest a name however because I'm not good at that;
• @c.dan you can use order:change_asc animated because this way even if you're limited to 2-tag searches, you'll be sorting posts by oldest tag chance. This means that the ones at the top will obviously not have any of these new tags we're set to create, so it should be fairly easy for you to find posts to tag. Meanwhile builders interested in this will do the bulk of the sorting legwork, and verify there's nothing left in the end;
• Should we have a tag for animations comprised of very few frames, like post #23124? Or should we instead tag the more fluid ones, with something like smooth animation or similar?

Some more tags to add to posts when applicable since this is the best occasion to do so as such effort will necessarily require going through all posts manually:

• smears which i've just created - you can see it specifically in post #2875605 a lot, this tumblr shows lots of example to better clarify what it is. It's pretty much impossible right now to find any other example, so it really needs to be populated;
• genga (which I've also just created), while probably not having many posts here, is still to be kept in count because you could find the lone post needing the tag to be found again. I've been meaning to upload several of them from sakugabooru for a while but it's in my neverending backlog.

I can't think of anything else, so if nobody disagrees on these main points or on the opening post's tag list I'll start working on populating the tags in a couple of days.

edit: I feel like a cg_animation too is unnecessary, as everything can be found under 3d animated.

nonamethanks said:

• we have BOTH seamless loop and loop; furthermore there's posts under loop -animated. I suggest aliasing seamless_loop to loop because the latter is much more search intuitive (and because all animations loop in a browser by default), and creating a new tag for the kind of string loop. Someone has to suggest a name however because I'm not good at that;

looped_animation would be my suggestion since it's both descriptive and autocomplete would suggest it after typing "loop".

Gollgagh said:

looped_animation would be my suggestion since it's both descriptive and autocomplete would suggest it after typing "loop".

That's a better suggestion than mine tbh. It also makes it easier to keep the loop tag under eye in case of mistags. I'd go with that and keep "loop" for physical loops if nobody has any objection.

I'm a big fan of traditional sequential animation so I've always wanted to sort out the animated tag myself, but lack of time and the size of the tag made a one man job pretty unrealistic. I'd be willing however to take part in a combined effort, and even babysit the tag in the long term to make sure new posts are tagged accordingly.

Some thoughts:

• pixel_animation, as unbreakable said, is unnecessary, since it seems to me that all posts under pixel_art animated fall under it;
• we have BOTH seamless loop and loop; furthermore there's posts under loop -animated. I suggest aliasing seamless_loop to loop because the latter is much more search intuitive (and because all animations loop in a browser), and creating a new tag for the kind of string loop. Someone has to suggest a name however because I'm not good at that;
• @c.dan you can use order:change_asc animated because this way even if you're limited to 2-tag searches, you'll be sorting posts by oldest tag chance. This means that the ones at the top will obviously not have any of these new tags we're set to create, so it should be fairly easy for you to find posts to tag. Meanwhile builders interested in this will do the bulk of the sorting legwork, and verify there's nothing left in the end;
• Should we have a tag for animations comprised of very few frames, like post #23124? Or should we instead tag the more fluid ones, with something like smooth animation or similar?

Some more tags to add to posts when applicable since this is the best occasion to do so as such effort will necessarily require going through all posts manually:

• smears which i've just created - you can see it specifically in post #2875605 a lot, this tumblr shows lots of example to better clarify what it is. It's pretty much impossible right now to find any other example, so it really needs to be populated;
• genga (which I've also just created), while probably not having many posts here, is still to be kept in count because you could find the lone post needing the tag to be found again. I've been meaning to upload several of them from sakugabooru for a while but it's in my neverending backlog.
  

The reason I still believe that a pixel_animation tag would still be useful is it uses up both tags that anyone under builder rank is allowed. Having a tag for pixel animation would let them at least have one tag to narrow their search. I feel like most basic members would give up searching for a certain pixel animation instead of shelling out or contributing enough to become a builder. Plus, it doesn't really fall into any of the other categories I proposed, so it makes enough sense to me.
Think about it this way: traditional_animation would be okay, but pixel_animation wouldn't? It makes more sense to have posts tagged with pixel_art and animated to imply pixel_animation. It just seems like a reason to just use gelbooru to me. Having that extra tag available would make it feel much more fair to non-builders.

Using order:change_asc animated would mean that I would have to keep my browser window open and save my place. Being able to exclude tags would be much more efficient. Not to mention I might not be the only one with that idea that wants to help out, so not only will saving my place probably end up being useless, it'll stop any other non-builders from being able to help out without combing through every post to see where the tags stop.
In addition, as a non-builder, I won't be able to tag loli or shota (not that I want to tag shota) so I'll be skipping posts that need tags. You can argue that the builders will eventually catch them, but I like to be thorough.

smooth_animation seems pretty subjective. At what fps is animation "smooth"? Even then, just because something is hypothetically 120fps and butter smooth animation, doesn't mean it belongs in its own category. Technically, all motion tweened animation would be smooth, as there's no choppiness involved. This tag would theoretically include both tradition animation and tweened animation anyway.

Isn't smears basically just a crappier motion blur? We can also alias them later though, so I guess there's no harm.

I'm glad that my idea is actually getting some attention, I kind of expected a "Nah, not worth it" and that's it. I really do love this site and I'm glad I can make it better in such a big way. Hell, I've been adding soles tags for the past week or so to any pictures of feet that didn't already have them (I used the same method I proposed for tagging animated).

P.S. @nonamethanks I tagged that one cat girl post you mentioned, post #23124

c.dan said:

The reason I still believe that a pixel_animation tag would still be useful is it uses up both tags that anyone under builder rank is allowed. Having a tag for pixel animation would let them at least have one tag to narrow their search. I feel like most basic members would give up searching for a certain pixel animation instead of shelling out or contributing enough to become a builder. Plus, it doesn't really fall into any of the other categories I proposed, so it makes enough sense to me.
Think about it this way: traditional_animation would be okay, but pixel_animation wouldn't? It makes more sense to have posts tagged with pixel_art and animated to imply pixel_animation. It just seems like a reason to just use gelbooru to me. Having that extra tag available would make it feel much more fair to non-builders.

Just FYI, the argument "regular users can only search for 2 tags" is not a valid reason to make a tag/pool. Also, Gold gets 6 tags, Platinum and higher gets 12.

c.dan said:

The reason I still believe that a pixel_animation tag would still be useful is it uses up both tags that anyone under builder rank is allowed. Having a tag for pixel animation would let them at least have one tag to narrow their search. I feel like most basic members would give up searching for a certain pixel animation instead of shelling out or contributing enough to become a builder. Plus, it doesn't really fall into any of the other categories I proposed, so it makes enough sense to me.
Think about it this way: traditional_animation would be okay, but pixel_animation wouldn't? It makes more sense to have posts tagged with pixel_art and animated to imply pixel_animation. It just seems like a reason to just use gelbooru to me. Having that extra tag available would make it feel much more fair to non-builders.

We don't create new tags just to accomodate members - it's the harsh truth of the site. Same reason we have black legwear/neckwear/footwear/etc instead of separate ones for subcategories for example - if a tag is equivalent to a 2-terms search then we simply remove the tag. There's also the fact that it's not technically possible with the current state of the server software to have two tags imply a third when they're both in a post but not when only one of them is.

Using order:change_asc animated would mean that I would have to keep my browser window open and save my place. Being able to exclude tags would be much more efficient. Not to mention I might not be the only one with that idea that wants to help out, so not only will saving my place probably end up being useless, it'll stop any other non-builders from being able to help out without combing through every post to see where the tags stop.
In addition, as a non-builder, I won't be able to tag loli or shota (not that I want to tag shota) so I'll be skipping posts that need tags. You can argue that the builders will eventually catch them, but I like to be thorough.

You misunderstood me - you can keep refreshing that search, because posts you edit will end up being put at the bottom, continuously shifting the search. order:change_asc orders pictures by which was edited the least recently, basically

smooth_animation seems pretty subjective. At what fps is animation "smooth"? Even then, just because something is hypothetically 120fps and butter smooth animation, doesn't mean it belongs in its own category. Technically, all motion tweened animation would be smooth, as there's no choppiness involved. This tag would theoretically include both tradition animation and tweened animation anyway.

Yeah that was just an idea I threw around, I wouldn't be sure myself how to use such a tag.

Isn't smears basically just a crappier motion blur? We can also alias them later though, so I guess there's no harm.

Smears is for a specific technique where an animation is made fluid by making inbetween frames look distorted. Motion blur is different, because smears can be comprised of two overlapping pictures of disembodied hands to make an animated character seem like he's moving his hands pretty fast, for example. It's hard to describe, but the tumblr I linked shows a lot of examples that are not at all motion blur.

See for example this or this - there's no blur, just weirdly-looking still frames that make the animation appear much more fluid in motion. Some anime examples are in this video - you start seeing them everywhere once you know what they are. In this last example a subset of them partly falls under motion blur, but they're generally distinct enough to well deserve their own tag.