Danbooru

Move poros from character to general

Posted under Tags

Thanks for your comment @mongirlfan. I thought the character tag was only for things that are actually characters. I suppose if you consider a generic SnK titan as a taggable character then you might as well do the same for poros. Seems weird to me but if that is the status quo then I don't want to challenge that.
About poros, they're basically animals, so they're definitely sentient. There is at least one individual character, the Poro King, but he doesn't have much art as far as I am aware.

I don't actually know if there's a solid norm for this (gonna explain later) but that's how I see.

In the case of Poros, Titan and Chao and others, they are fictional living creatures but they don’t have many individual and singular characters based off them. Same thing for most Pokemon and monsters from Monster Hunter. (although in the case of Titans, the tag is supposed to be used for generic non-intelligent titans, not for the nine titans from titan shifters which have individual tags).

Now in the case of Draphs, we have a lot more individual and intelligent characters that are from that species/race. For other races like Elf, Orc and Goblins, they are not a character tag because they are more generic and appears in tons of different copyrights, while Poros are much more unique to their copyright, so there’s also this factor.

However if we followed this pattern, I think fictional races in Final Fantasy like Miqo'te and Viera should be general tag, not character tag, so this might become an issue.

I don't know much about LoL (correct if I'm wrong), but Poros seem like Chao from Sonic, a mascot creature from their world, don't have complex human-like intelligence, has some few individuals (like Cheese and Poro King).
Now what if they were one of the main races the player could choose in a game, and we had more intelligent and human-like characters from their race, I'm pretty sure they would fit better as a general tag instead.

i think the distinguishing trait is actually whether characters of that species show up in many posts in which they cannot be given their own chartag (either because they have no name, their name is unknown, or they don't pass the obscurity threshold to deserve the tag.)

So for the FFXIV example, we have y'shtola rhul, but we also have a ton of random Miqo'te OCs which can't be given chartags for the above reasons.

This is not the case for, say, Draphs, who people generally speaking do not make unnamed OCs of. It's also less likely to be the case for other LoL races like yordles.

I agree that Poro, Chao, and Titans should be character tags, much in the same way individual Pokémon are character tags.

Honestly, I've always been extremely confused by race tags as character tags in regards to Warcraft and Final Fantasy. Some of them don't even need tags as they're literally humans with a fancy name, like hume and hyur.

But we need to have a serious discussion about race tags as character tags when dealing with MMO and fantasy races.

7HS said:

i think the distinguishing trait is actually whether characters of that species show up in many posts in which they cannot be given their own chartag (either because they have no name, their name is unknown, or they don't pass the obscurity threshold to deserve the tag.)

So for the FFXIV example, we have y'shtola rhul, but we also have a ton of random Miqo'te OCs which can't be given chartags for the above reasons.

This is not the case for, say, Draphs, who people generally speaking do not make unnamed OCs of. It's also less likely to be the case for other LoL races like yordles.

Tauren and Night Elf are gen tags. But Worgen, Draenei, and Blood Elf are character tags. We have solo images of official NPCs from FFXIV with 3-5 character tags because of people tagging them, their race, and then their canon class(es). Because several Final Fantasy classes are also character tags.

We definitely need a policy on how to treat race tags, because the current situation is pretty chaotic.

7HS said:

i think the distinguishing trait is actually whether characters of that species show up in many posts in which they cannot be given their own chartag (either because they have no name, their name is unknown, or they don't pass the obscurity threshold to deserve the tag.)

That's a bad metric. We don't know how many unuploaded posts are out there, and all it takes is for a single dedicated uploader to show up to balloon a tag to thousands of posts. It would make more sense to base it on whether there are named characters of a race, or whether the race is sentient, though I can see both arguments resulting in endless arguing.

nonamethanks said:

We definitely need a policy on how to treat race tags, because the current situation is pretty chaotic.

I think this thread gives a pretty solid metric with Poro and Chao. If they're like Pokémon and other mascots, they should be character tags. If they're a genuine race, I'd vote that they should be gen tags regardless of whether or not the tag population is 90% MMO player OCs or not.

Just FYI, if things like miqo'te are going to be turned into gentags then I'm predicting they'll have to get a qualifier, on account of being specific copyright terms with no english meaning which would otherwise become lost in a sea of blue and would make no sense to the average user.

nonamethanks said:

Just FYI, if things like miqo'te are going to be turned into gentags then I'm predicting they'll have to get a qualifier, on account of being specific copyright terms with no english meaning which would otherwise become lost in a sea of blue and would make no sense to the average user.

I am ok with that.

For the case at hand I am of the opinion that all poro, chao and titan deserve their category as they are brand defining creatures even if they are naught dimensional characters at that.

On the broader topic I think fantasy races should be general only if they belong to public domain and by extension real world mythology. I also lean towards keeping the general category based on real-world knowledge as much as possible but I admit it isn't possible with all of them: of course I wouldn't make lance of longinus a character tag. But at that we also have alastor_(shakugan_no_shana) which is just a peculiar collar.

Which is also the problem by trying to force a solution by induction here for the sake of consistency. Where the pattern was just decided erratically by the emergent actions of different people.

Updated

For me it comes down to what makes the tag list easiest to read. That's all character tags are for. Most of these animal-like creatures are character tags because they feel more character-like than gentag-like. They don't have unique names, but they do have a consistent unique appearance, like characters do.

If we need a rule, I'd say that if it's an animal species with a consistent unique appearance, like a Pokemon, or an RPG monster, or a mascot creature, then it gets a chartag. If it's a humanoid race, then it gets more difficult. Draph is a gentag because there are a lot of named Draphs, and it would be weird to give them two chartags. On the other hand, Miqo'te is a chartag because most Miqo'te posts are unnamed OCs, and it feels a little weird to have posts with an identifiable character but no chartag. I don't know if there's a good answer here. It might be easiest just to say that all humanoid races are gentags.

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