First off, I don't dispute any decisions here. However, as I was directly chastised regarding this topic, I think it's critical people here get a good understanding of the situation from a different perspective. And having never been directly confronted about tag mistakes before in over a decade of being on this platform, I am going to assume that this is a very serious subject that people are trying to address and treat it as such.
Unbreakable said:
I don't see the point in tagging sleeveless and strapless on the same garment, if they have no straps then they won't have any sleeves, otherwise it would be an off-shoulder_* instead. Otherwise we might as well do implications between the tags.
Short Version:
I highly recommend finding a way to make the distinctions among sleeveless_*, strapless_*, and off-shoulder_* more obvious on the wiki, in the same manner that the difference between skirts and dresses are very clearly illustrated on their respective wikis. This will be a reoccurring problem otherwise.
The Details:
To be frank, it is not common knowledge or intuitive that sleeveless implies a strap and that strapless implies that no sleeves exist. I will say, however, both of these facts become more understandable when the off-shoulder_* tag is known. But in my case, until reading this forum post I was only aware of off_shoulder and did not know the existence of off-shoulder_* tags, much less how they differ in usage from off_shoulder. I can say I'm happy I now know this tag exists and I intend to use it correctly, because it helps solve a conundrum discussed later below.
The major problem is that most people who don't know the details previously discussed in this forum post are unlikely to look up the wikis on sleeveless or strapless and realize the mistake, because both terms, as used in common speech, are not innately mutually exclusive in language. Likewise, the distinction that tags like off-shoulder_dress are meant for clothing specifically designed to be off_shoulder comes up only in the wiki for off_shoulder and the respective off-shoulder_* wikis. This is not a problem, maybe, if someone is curious and looks up, let's say off-shoulder_dress after searching through the tag group:dress. However, considering that I have read through tag group:dress many times and many of the tags under it for trying to find the precise tag for images, I still missed the existence of off-shoulder_dress, and I would be astounded if the average tagger on this site knows it exists, and even more if they could distinguish it from sleeveless and strapless based on the discussion above.
To clarify: this is not simply a misuse of sleeveless and strapless that you all are talking about. It's a misuse and/or misunderstanding of three separate tags. To demonstrate this problem in action, let's consider these scenarios:
1) A dress with straps and no sleeves --> sleeveless_dress
This makes perfect sense.
2) A dress with no straps or sleeves --> strapless_dress but not sleeveless_dress
Already you will have lost a good portion of people, because you can correctly in informal conversation refer to such a dress as sleeveless. However, if sleeveless must imply straps in the world of fashion (or on this platform), so be it. No complaints from me.
3) A dress with sleeves but no straps --> off-shoulder_dress but not strapless_dress
This makes sense under two conditions:
One: someone takes strapless to mean "no straps, no sleeves, etc.", which is questionable to assume as a natural stance because in conventional language sleeves are not synonymous with straps. However, considering sleeves attached to the dress need some support (else they'd be detached sleeves), it is reasonable to refer to that support as a "strap" and thus you'll get no complaint on the decision here.
Two: The tagger knows that off-shoulder_dress exists and how to use it. Else, you have a situation where you cannot use sleeveless_dress or strapless_dress and the tagger is left wondering what to do next (assuming everything from above is already accepted and known). In this case, sure, the tagger may leave the tag out or go searching through tag group:dress for the precise tag for the job (if they aren't overwhelmed by the massive list of options). However, if the tagger does not already know the details discussed in this forum post regarding sleeveless and strapless, this scenario reinforces the mistakes discussed herein. I predict, because I have done it myself, that there will be many strapless_dress tags incorrectly used in place of off-shoulder_dress tags. Once you have a tagger that thinks you can have a strapless_dress with sleeves, then it follows that a dress with neither straps nor sleeves will warrant both strapless and sleeveless.
Solution: I argue that this problem would diminish if the off-shoulder_* tags were more visible and directly compared and contrasted next to each other as we see in the wikis for skirt and dress.