I've recently encountered many pictures being tagged (eg by Granola) as miko (and due implication: japanese_clothes) regardless of what the person in the picture is wearing just because they are canon shrine maidens, even if they are (nearly) naked.
Examples:
post #419405
post #415285

Seeing Hakurei Reimu (and recently also Kochiya Sanae, who isn't even a shrine maiden in the official games) being tagged as such, I searched the forums.

Svatopluk said:
Suggesting the removal of some aliases:

miko -> japanese clothing

The best counter-argument, I think, is Hakurei Reimu. She is a miko, but does not wear Japanese clothing.

Besides, a pic of a character who is known to be a miko might be tagged as such even if she's naked. The current wiki entry for miko does not discourage this.

bikini top -> bi [etc]

albert said:
Reimu is a miko yes but she doesn't really wear traditional miko garb (red hakama, white kimono shirt).

Svatopluk said:
That was my point.

Thanks for deleting the bikini_top and bikini_bottom implications.

Reimu may have the color palette of a shrine maiden, but her clothes are in now way Japanese, and no one who doesn't know about touhou would recognize Sanae as a shrine maiden (though she isn't really one).

I think that the miko tag for those two should be reserved for posts like:
post #428799
post #351373
In their normal costumes, they look as much like a shrine maiden as Hatsune Miku (which means absolutely not). Actually, Reimu's costume looks to about 90% like the costume of another touhou character, Flandre Scarlet (everyone can agree that Flandre doesn't look like a miko).

From the point of view of a danbooru user, who searches for miko, what do you think he'd be looking for?
1. shrine maidens in a red hakama and white kimono-like shirt.
2. 1800 out of 3906 pictures filled with frilly skirts and dresses.

And what if I want to find pictures of Hakurei Reimu in a REAL miko outfit? I'd have to wade through 1483 hakurei_reimu+miko pictures to find maybe 5-10 pictures I was looking for.

Tags like gohei, ofuda, yin-yang should be tagged separately. Holding a gohei doesn't make you a miko.

Characters such as Hanyuu are completely different. Even though she has detached sleeves like Reimu, the rest of her outfit is that of a traditional shrine maiden. (hakama, kimono shirt)

Yes. We don't give a damn about canon facts: the miko tag is to be used ONLY for pictures where a girl is weaking miko garb.

I don't tag Reimu with miko so I guess I'm in agreement.

I tag Reimu as a miko because her clothes are stylized miko clothes, at least in the touhou universe.

Sanae is also a shrine maiden, so I tagged her as such.

If I am wrong, I am wrong.

Granola said:
I tag Reimu as a miko because her clothes are stylized miko clothes, at least in the touhou universe.

Prier wears what Salade claims are nun clothes, she is also, as far as the game's universe is concerned, a nun. Bridget and Index can visually pass as nunish, but Prier sure as hell doesn't, thus she is not tagged as such. The point is visual recognition, not facts, as you can see in post#419929; even if those two ARE demons, the only thing you can see there are two naked blondes. No horns, tails or any of the usual expected of demon_girl, so the tag doesn't fit. You get the idea.

I don't think I can agree at all. With Reimu, the red-and-white color scheme, tied-off hair, the detached sleeves and the way their stitching is represented, the gohei and ofuda, the sarashi... It all adds up to a bit more than just "red and white with frills and stuff".

To be perfectly honest, when I first saw a picture of her - before I knew what Touhou or any of its characters were - I thought "Wow, a miko with Western influence in her clothing. How did that happen?"

Now, with Sanae, it seems a bit more vague, but do remember that red is not always one of the colors in miko garb. The most common replacement for red is blue, which Sanae wears. White is always there, though, as a "purity" color.

Now, in either case, I suppose I can understand if the japanese_clothes tag is removed (though the detached sleeves alone justify that tag, in my opinion), but I don't think the miko tag should be removed if either of the characters is wearing their usual garb.

sgcdonmai said:
Now, in either case, I suppose I can understand if the japanese_clothes tag is removed (though the detached sleeves alone justify that tag, in my opinion), but I don't think the miko tag should be removed if either of the characters is wearing their usual garb.

The problem is we can't have it that way. Miko implicates japanese_clothes, so either you have both, or you remove both. I don't think it's worth removing the implication for a couple exception cases.

Shinjidude said:
Miko implicates japanese_clothes, so either you have both, or you remove both. I don't think it's worth removing the implication for a couple exception cases.

With the sheer amount of Touhou material on this site, even Reimu alone constitutes more than "a couple exception cases".

I do agree with you, mind, but I'm willing to compromise on that point.

I was treating Reimu and Sanae themselves as the exceptions. Of course there are more than a couple posts between the two, considering Touhou's popularity.

That would be my point, yes.

If someone really wanted to, why not search for miko using "miko -touhou"? That would get what they wanted, if they didn't want to see any Reimu.

Reimu looks like a miko. Prier does not look like a nun. Just because Reimu is popular and floods other tags does not mean the miko tag cannot be used for her. There are always workarounds to those kind of problems.

Reimu looking like a miko is rather subjective and based on the viewer looking at the image as well as the artist who made it. Different artists depict the outfit with varying degrees of similarity to the traditional outfit, some being extremely close and others being very far off. So you'd need an extremely loose definition of miko to actually fit all of them.

Personally I believe that the tag should be reserved for the traditional styled one. As it stands there is right now no easy way to find images of the current Reimu wearing an actual traditional miko outfit (assuming such images exist), which can only be resolved by either removing the japanese_clothes tag implication or removing miko from Reimu and Sanae's standard costume.

To me it'd make the most sense to remove the miko tag from Reimu and Sanae. We shouldn't get rid of the implication between miko and japanese_clothes just because of 2 characters from 1 series with character designs by 1 man don't fit the mold. I don't care how many images are under Hakurei_Reimu, she's in the end just one character from one series. If that series is the odd one out, then we shouldn't try to manipulate the whole system just to make it fit.

Honestly though, if you want Reimu in her standard costume you just search Hakurei_Reimu detached_sleeves (semi-joking).

Perhaps split the tag in two, touhou_miko and miko, seeing as how there is a rather distinctive style to each.

or add a touhou_miko/miko_(touhou) tag to all the reimu/sanae images where they're wearing the distinctive touhou miko outfit and an implication from the new tag to miko, as it would be a subset of miko.

The only "touhou miko" are Reimu and Sanae, and they already have their own damn tags.

Reimu is a miko, but she does not wear a miko outfit, so she doesn't get the tag.

How is this complicated?

If you implicated it to miko, we'd be back to square one almost. We'd have the exact same situation as now, except you could do a negative search to filter them out, which is a little better. However, if the problem is them not actually being a Japanese style, and polluting japanese_clothes, the implication would not fix that.

Granola said:
If someone really wanted to, why not search for miko using "miko -touhou"? That would get what they wanted, if they didn't want to see any Reimu.

This, I think, is the best solution.

Again, though, the question remains in the air as to whether the miko -> japanese_clothes implication should stand.

I think it should, and we just shouldn't give the Miko tag to miko's who don't wear miko clothing.

See my earlier post - a priori of any knowledge about Touhou at all, on my first viewing of a picture of Reimu, I thought "Looks like a miko, but with a western influence on the traditional clothes."

In other words, the clothing looked like a miko to someone with no meta-knowledge on the subject.

That, to me, says that the implication is questionable.

Fencedude said:
The only "touhou miko" are Reimu and Sanae, and they already have their own damn tags.

This would only be true if every image of reimu and sanae had them wearing the outfit, which they obviously don't. Zun will probably end up adding more in the future too.

touhou miko is a bad tag.

I suppose tagging reimu as a miko is subjective to the tagger's perception. Any picture (of course not all of them) that I think she looks like one in, I tag it as such. To me, the current system is fine.