[REJECTED] Tag alias: african -> very_dark_skin

@jjj14: Tagging ethnicity seems very against the "tag...

2018-08-19T23:28:55-04:00

Tagging ethnicity seems very against the "tag what you see" ethos of most other general-category tags. Even IRL, it's not something you can tell very accurately from looks; the generally preferred method for statistics and such is to ask the person themself. Sure we could tag only in cases where ancestry is confirmed, but what actual benefit would we get by having souryuu asuka langley, connor kenway, and barack obama all together in tag mixed_race_(ethnicity)?

Then there's also the issue of "racebending" - I've seen multiple artworks on Pixiv of canonically black characters drawn as a standard anime-pale Japanese girl. What ethnicity would you tag on that? And what of monochrome images? Stylistic differences in drawing facial features? What ethnicity is post #1047654?

If someone is like "hey I want to find characters that are X race/ethnicity", I'd wager there's some better website for that task.

TL;DR: let's just stay with tagging skin tone and whatever other visible features.

@keonas: I was mentioning Phara as an example where...

2018-08-18T07:49:07-04:00

I was mentioning Phara as an example where every image she had was tagged with her nationality but, i see that that got cleaned up now.
That's probably the way to go for the other nationality tags as well, since they're not very populated. Encourage people to use the *_clothes tags more.

That's kind of all i had to say. Haven't given this topic as much thought as you

Considering this is mostly an anime image site, the amount of images where another real world ethnicity is noticeable have been proportionally very low,less than 2% from what i could find. Generally i don't see the need to create a whole category of ethnicity tags.
With the acceptance of more western and video game art there have been more examples but still, too little to consider for me.

@nonamethanks: I do agree on your proposition to add the...

2018-08-17T17:37:55-04:00

I do agree on your proposition to add the "_(language)" clarifier to language tags. Another way of naming it could be "_text", such as "english_text", "french_text", etc, to be more in line with tags like "english_commentary" and the like, but that's just a matter of preference - the idea itself is valid to remove ambiguity and prevent new and inexperienced users from making mistakes.

As for the nationality/place/etc thing, I think that's also a valid proposition - the gardening should have to be done manually but it'd be trivial to gather a list of nations via wikipedia and their respective adjectives and go through their corresponding tags here. We might want to also do stuff like making sure all *_flag, etc are added to qualifying images.

The ethnicity problem is a hard one. On one hand it's already hard enough to make sure that images with rare tags such as these are properly tagged, so standardizing them would make it easier for everyone, but on the other I have the same concern as keonas, where I can't see it ending in any other way than characters like Nitocris having every single picture tagged as egyptian_(ethnicity) just to make padding for the tag list, or everyone with remotely dark skin being tagged as african.

@chilled_sake: > keonas said: > > Soo, i don't like the...

2018-08-17T17:07:47-04:00

keonas said:

Soo, i don't like the "Replace ambiguous racial/ethnic tags with specific "(ethnicity)" ones" proposition because, for most of those, they are only used when the character's ethnicity plays a clear role in the image, even though in some cases they are Overused.
I mean, we don't need to tag every single Phara image with Egyptian.

Having big general tags like x_(ethnicity) will most likely lead to mandatory tagging where noticeable, even if you suggest not to and, i personally don't want to go down that road. Might lead to other problems regarding representation of subgroups, like dark-skinned south americans, or "anime dark" where they're drawn exactly the same as the other characters but have an unnatural dark grey skin tone.

Couldn't a specific ethnic group be specified for that SA group? Like maybe, indigenous_mesoamerica or indigenous_peruvian? Do you have another tag suggestion? I imagine dark_skin + latin_american_(ethnicity) would be sufficient. Someone like Phara, I don't see a need to tag them as an ethnicity, they are just a dark skinned char with some cultural indicators, they are racially ambiguous.

@keonas: Soo, i don't like the "Replace ambiguous...

2018-08-17T15:54:25-04:00

Soo, i don't like the "Replace ambiguous racial/ethnic tags with specific "(ethnicity)" ones" proposition because, for most of those, they are only used when the character's ethnicity plays a clear role in the image, even though in some cases they are Overused.
I mean, we don't need to tag every single Phara image with Egyptian.

Having big general tags like x_(ethnicity) will most likely lead to mandatory tagging where noticeable, even if you suggest not to and, i personally don't want to go down that road. Might lead to other problems regarding representation of subgroups, like dark-skinned south americans, or "anime dark" where they're drawn exactly the same as the other characters but have an unnatural dark grey skin tone.

The language suggestion, yes, absolutely.

@chilled_sake: Bumping this. Could someone give feedback to...

2018-08-17T15:17:47-04:00

Bumping this.

Could someone give feedback to those suggestions if possible, I'm planning on making some BURs

@chilled_sake: Edit: I have significantly revised this post in...

2018-08-07T02:02:03-04:00

Edit: I have significantly revised this post in the two hours after posting it for organization and readability since it covers a lot of ground:

Afro-textured hair

ion288 said:

How about an afro-appearance tag? It seems to be politically neutral and could separate depictions of "black" people from deeply tanned people and those with whitefro.

7HS said:

Sounds good to me. It's not terribly intuitive but a possible term is afro-textured hair. Other terms mentioned on that page are "kinky hair" and "wiry hair."

+1, I agree with this approach, it is very intuitive for users.

I will say though, "afro-textured" is not the same as an "afro" which is a big frizzy ball of hair like mine whereas afro-textured could have different styles. Afro is a distinct cultural style that should be kept as its own tag and not aliased, and should be included cornrows, and hairlocks as subsets of a broader afro-textured_hair tag. The afro-texutred tag also does not carry a racial requirement, which is good as other-raced people may wear their hair in African styles or African people may wear theirs straight.

As we populate that tag, it will become easier in the future to create more tags as the African styles mentioned in the article 7HS linked, further increasing the proposed tag's value. Now on to my own proposals:

Replace ambiguous racial/ethnic tags with specific "(ethnicity)" ones

Currently we're tagging for hair type and skin tone. Ethnicity is handled very poorly. We have a lot of ambiguous tags like mexican (79), indian (84), native_american (491), jewish (6), asian (589), and causacian (581) which are tagged without precision, meaning that a user may refer to culture, religion, the nation, ethnicity, or some combination.

Instead we can replace those with tags such as african_(ethnicity), latin_american_(ethnicity), white_(ethnicity) and others. To further clarify "african_(ethnicity)" to distinguish it from white settlers and Arabs in the north of the continent, we could instead use "sub-saharan_african_(ethnicity)" or black_(ethnicity) but I'm not sure, it could be insensitive or inaccurate.

Application 1

For ambiguous characters like post #850770, mixed_race_(ethnicity) can be used in addition to other ethnic tags. For instance, it may be tagged white_(ethnicity) african_(ethnicity) mixed_race_(ethnicity). This removes the need to have to create a clear point of delineation where none may exist. The character also appears to me to be "light-skinned black," or what historically was called mulatto in the US from centuries of mixing but either could be insensitive words to use.

Application 2

post #1961086 may be tagged african_(ethnicity) dark_skin

Ethnicity should not be required for most posts

As a general rule in the anime world, most characters are light-skinned and may be seen as some generalized "white" or "asian," however tagging them all as such would be exhaustive and pointless. Further, a character may have dark skin but that does not make them black. Unless specific ethnic features are included, just specifying if a character has dark, tan, or abnormally light skin is sufficient.

"Race" and fictional subraces

Referring to groups as an ethnicity rather than a race leaves more room for real-world ambiguity. Race is also a politically-charged word worth just avoiding.

When it comes to fictional humanoid types it could be useful to alias tags like elf to elf_(race) and dwarf to dwarf_(race).

Those two tags and other human-like creatures in tag group:legendary creatures, as well as android could be implied to a tag like "humanoid" or "race_(fantasy)" (Wikipedia).

Addressing ambiguous country/nationality tags

Tags such as belgium (12), brazil (128), and mexico (60) are ambiguous and may refer to a number of things like ethnicity, national sports team, or the nation itself. To address this they should have an aforementioned tag or possibly a "(place)" tag when referring to the country, or potentially "(nationality)" when where a character is from is important to a post. For instance if you're referring to Belgium the country, use belgium_(place) or a tourist from Belgium, belgium_(nationality); instead of brazil, latin_american_(ethnicity) or something like brazilian_national_football_team may be used.

(nationality) tags could verge into the "tag what you know" territory of the dictum, "tag what you see not what you know" so I'm not sure how practical they may be, unless someone has a better idea.

For countries like France, where the word for their people and language are the same—French—distinction is especially needed, in addition to the following proposal:

Alias language tags into _(language) tags

Instead of having tags like french or chinese, french_(language) and chinese_(language) should be used. Some users will inevitably assume that the former tags should be used where instead ethnicity or cultural tags are needed. The suffix _(language) will guide them to tag correctly.

some notes

So I've covered a lot here. I think if needed we could make a new "Ethnicity, culture, nationality, and language re-tagging effort" or maybe just rename this one if that's what it's become. I really would like to know what you think of all this so please let me know!

@7HS: Sounds good to me. It's not terribly intuitive...

2018-08-07T00:48:06-04:00

Sounds good to me. It's not terribly intuitive but a possible term is afro-textured hair. Other terms mentioned on that page are "kinky hair" and "wiry hair."

@ion288: How about an afro-appearance tag? It seems to...

2018-08-05T01:57:34-04:00

How about an afro-appearance tag? It seems to be politically neutral and could separate depictions of "black" people from deeply tanned people and those with whitefro.

@tapnek: Might nuke the African tag in a couple hours....

2018-08-01T05:52:14-04:00

Might nuke the African tag in a couple hours. Does anyone object?

7HS said:

I don't really know how best to tag clearly African people with lighter skin,

The tag dark skin.

@7HS: Uh, if you check the tag history that was your...

2018-08-01T01:26:39-04:00

Uh, if you check the tag history that was your tag.

Actually it wasn't, because the very_dark_skin tag was originally ebony and was aliased in topic #10308, with that wiki entry dating from when the tag was still 'ebony' - I suggested the new tag myself, but didn't consider that the wiki entry would be carried over and cause confusion.

My preference would be to just nuke that wiki and make very dark skin what it says on the tin, with no ethnic assumptions. I don't really know how best to tag clearly African people with lighter skin, but I guess african is as good a tag as any. It's better than 'ebony' anyway.

@Kikimaru: When something like post #1961086 gets...

2018-07-30T12:57:26-04:00

When something like post #1961086 gets mistagged it's clear few are reading the wikis.

@DanbooruBot: The tag alias african -> very_dark_skin (forum...

2018-07-24T00:31:59-04:00

The tag alias african -> very_dark_skin (forum #147391) has been rejected by @Hillside_Moose.

@DanbooruBot: This tag alias is pending automatic rejection...

2018-07-23T00:03:43-04:00

This tag alias is pending automatic rejection in 5 days.

@tapnek: > ion288 said: > > The girl in post #850770...

2018-05-29T21:44:29-04:00

ion288 said:

The girl in post #850770 clearly dosnt have very dark skin though. Is there a term for light skinned black people that isnt offensive?

Unfortunately, no. They're not tanned so the only option is to tag them with dark skin.

@ion288: The girl in post #850770 clearly dosnt have...

2018-05-29T11:54:35-04:00

The girl in post #850770 clearly dosnt have very dark skin though. Is there a term for light skinned black people that isnt offensive?

@Claverhouse: Apart from the fact that some Africans are...

2018-05-29T07:25:53-04:00

Apart from the fact that some Africans are light and some non-Africans are dark, I haven't noticed a high proportion of posts here including the Dark Continent.

Some of the Kemono friends may be actual Africans.

@BrokenEagle98: > tapnek said: > > Or we can change the...

2018-05-29T01:28:41-04:00

tapnek said:

Or we can change the definition to fit the term better. Just use it for very dark skin.

Not everyone is aware of the 1M+ tags on this site, and most users are more likely to use the more familiar terms. Changing the wiki is only as effective if people actually read it, which isn't very much at all. Bottom-line, without an alias, users WILL keep populating that tag.

Well... I've already brought up my point and made my vote, and I don't want to sound like a broken record. It won't be more work for me anyways.

@tapnek: > BrokenEagle98 said: > > Either we alias it,...

2018-05-29T01:10:08-04:00

BrokenEagle98 said:

Either we alias it, or it keeps getting populated.

Or we can change the definition to fit the term better. Just use it for very dark skin.

@BrokenEagle98: > very dark skin: > > Use this tag for...

2018-05-29T00:57:47-04:00

very dark skin:

Use this tag for characters with distinct African origin or body features.

Either we alias it, or it keeps getting populated.