otoko no ko -> trap

nonamethanks said:

It seems to me like you have confused onk for an umbrella tag, when it was actually only for one type of posts. It's an understandable mistake but one entirely caused by the stupid tag name, which didn't reflect what the tag was for. If you want an umbrella tag for traps and girly boys that's a different topic than what we're doing here. Look at the wiki definition for the latter, it's even explicitly mentioned that the two tags are not to be confused.

All I'm getting from this conversation is that people have confused trap with girly boy because the previous name was dogshit. I usually only browse the porn of this, but i guess I'll have to garden out the safe posts.

I don't think it's fair to claim that it's entirely caused by the tag name when you're also dealing with the fact that its wiki has 23 Other Names, most of which are in Japanese. You might find that a bunch of what you perceive to be mistags are due to taggers choosing to stick with those Other Names, whether it be the Japanese artists themselves or else, especially as they might disagree with the labeling of what you'd personally consider 'girly boy' (which, on a related note, currently has topic #32140 ongoing - I wonder what Zets' opinion on this is). Like, again, per forum #362862, has there been any contention over this from general uses of the tag, not just people who use it for porn?

post #9479986
https://www.pixiv.net/users/94448288/illustrations
These all images have otoko no ko tag in pixiv.
Also, this doesn't trick the readers. So you don't need to yell 'It's a trap!

I think if you want to limit mistagging within the scope that you have set you will need to kill a lot of related tags (and the conception of 'trap' within, say, the imageboard culture you're referred to is in my estimation wider than Danbooru's, so it will likely stay at some random uploader baseline level)

sa2ko said:

post #9479986
https://www.pixiv.net/users/94448288/illustrations
These all images have otoko no ko tag in pixiv.

Yes, and that's why trap should not be called otoko no ko. Half of those don't fit our definition.

https://www.pixiv.net/en/artworks/130296763 look at this one, this is just straight up a guy in a business suit. Adding this tag to these posts is straight up tag poisoning.

Damian0358 said:

I don't think it's fair to claim that it's entirely caused by the tag name when you're also dealing with the fact that its wiki has 23 Other Names, most of which are in Japanese.

It looks pretty simple to me. People see otoko no ko in translated tags, they assume it's for any kind of skinny guy, they click the tag ignoring the wiki definition. If the tag was called trap it would have at least given them pause on tagging (assuming they're not a related tags spammer).

sa2ko said:

These all images have otoko no ko tag in pixiv.

to be fair if we took source tags as the undeniable truth, we would have a lot more mistagged posts, either because their definition doesn't match ours, or because artists are generally not that good at tagging their own stuff. sometimes it's even both!

nonamethanks said:

It looks pretty simple to me. People see otoko no ko in translated tags, they assume it's for any kind of skinny guy, they click the tag ignoring the wiki definition. If the tag was called trap it would have at least given them pause on tagging (assuming they're not a related tags spammer).

I don't think it being trap would've helped.

On a related note, what are your opinions on the examples given in the wiki, both the earliest ones and the current ones?

I also underestimated the strictness of criteria for the tag back when it was otoko no ko. If otoko no ko is a broader category than trap to the point it makes it harder to find these posts, then I can’t argue against it. I do wish we had a less loaded equivalent that didn’t invite controversy and possibly marginalize others (I’m still hoping femboy could work), but if we really don’t have any other way to communicate the concept properly, then we don’t really have much of a choice. One of the most important functions of Danbooru is to categorize art in a way that makes it easy for users to find what they’re looking for. There are ways users can avoid seeing trap on their page (like a CSS script) if they can’t ignore it entirely, but this can’t be done at the expense of it’s functional purpose.

On that note, I think, as others suggested, we should consider bringing otoko no ko back, but as its own tag. It could follow the more broad usage otoko no ko ended up having. And if trap is a subset of otoko no ko, we should alias it as well.

I’m not withdrawing my criticisms of how NNT handled the voting (even though part of it was someone else making the BURs and he kinda had to go along with it), but that’s unrelated to what is actually the best choice.

nonamethanks said:

Yes, and that's why trap should not be called otoko no ko. Half of those don't fit our definition.

That also means otoko no ko should not be called trap. You've just explained why 'otoko no ko' isn't the same as 'trap', and why the 'otoko no ko' tag shouldn't be wholesale replaced with 'trap'.

Detailed and specialized tagging is what made Danbooru become an anime-art database, instead of just a huge collection only good enough for casual browsing.
howto%3Atag

The only arguments for replacing the 'otoko no ko' tag with 'trap' are that:
1, Some Danbooru copy sites use 'trap'
2, It's not a kanji.

This fails to explain how 'trap' could possibly classify images more accurately or clearly.

I don't deny that there are genres where shouting 'trap!' maybe more fit. Those can exist as sub-genre tags under 'otoko no ko'. For example post #3613144

In otaku culture, Japanese is like Latin language of the Roman Empire and other languages can't perfectly capture 100% of the meaning. Terms like otoko no ko, mesugaki, lolibaba, do M hoihoi(pixiv tag) are especially untranslatable. Forcing replacements with confusing, narrow meaning, mismatched terms like 'trap' (just to promote English community's own expressions) provides no benefit for image tagging.

nonamethanks said:

https://www.pixiv.net/en/artworks/130296763 look at this one, this is just straight up a guy in a business suit. Adding this tag to these posts is straight up tag poisoning.

If this image has the 'otoko no ko' tag on Pixiv and having many hearts, it means the image is popular to dudes who want to masturbation with the image.

BUR #42881 is pending approval.

remove alias otoko_no_ko -> trap

If not all otoko no kos are traps and users want to search for non-trap otoko no kos, then otoko no ko should not be aliased to trap. This may also help reduce pollution of trap.

If necessary, we can implicate them instead after cleanup.

sa2ko said:

That also means otoko no ko should not be called trap. You've just explained why 'otoko no ko' isn't the same as 'trap', and why the 'otoko no ko' tag shouldn't be wholesale replaced with 'trap'.

Detailed and specialized tagging is what made Danbooru become an anime-art database, instead of just a huge collection only good enough for casual browsing.
howto%3Atag

The only arguments for replacing the 'otoko no ko' tag with 'trap' are that:
1, Some Danbooru copy sites use 'trap'
2, It's not a kanji.

This fails to explain how 'trap' could possibly classify images more accurately or clearly.

I don't deny that there are genres where shouting 'trap!' maybe more fit. Those can exist as sub-genre tags under 'otoko no ko'. For example post #3613144

In otaku culture, Japanese is like Latin language of the Roman Empire and other languages can't perfectly capture 100% of the meaning. Terms like otoko no ko, mesugaki, lolibaba, do M hoihoi(pixiv tag) are especially untranslatable. Forcing replacements with confusing, narrow meaning, mismatched terms like 'trap' (just to promote English community's own expressions) provides no benefit for image tagging.

I'm not sure you properly understand what's been done here. "otoko no ko" was not replaced with "trap". The tag was always trap. That's what it was called when it was created, and it has always been intended for use on male characters that convincingly passed as female. It was never meant to be used to broadly cover any effeminate or androgynous males.

The problem is that over a decade ago, an admin changed the name of the tag to "otoko no ko" because they believed "trap" is offensive, and did so without allowing people to discuss it. We never had a tag for "otoko no kos", we had a tag for "traps" that was incorrectly named.

If you want a tag for otokonokos, it needs to be its own tag.

Blank_User said:

BUR #42881 is pending approval.

remove alias otoko_no_ko -> trap

If not all otoko no kos are traps and users want to search for non-trap otoko no kos, then otoko no ko should not be aliased to trap. This may also help reduce pollution of trap.

If necessary, we can implicate them instead after cleanup.

Isn't that what girly boy is for?
I don't think we're ever going to completely agree on the name of this tag, but we could at least do some gardening and start using the the girly boy tag more (and maybe alias femboy to that instead because the term has less to do with passing as female).

blindVigil said:

I'm not sure you properly understand what's been done here. "otoko no ko" was not replaced with "trap". The tag was always trap. That's what it was called when it was created, and it has always been intended for use on male characters that convincingly passed as female. It was never meant to be used to broadly cover any effeminate or androgynous males.

The problem is that over a decade ago, an admin changed the name of the tag to "otoko no ko" because they believed "trap" is offensive, and did so without allowing people to discuss it. We never had a tag for "otoko no kos", we had a tag for "traps" that was incorrectly named.

If you want a tag for otokonokos, it needs to be its own tag.

What are you even talking about? 'otoko no ko' tag existed, and I could search images by it. But recently, all images tagged 'otoko no ko' were all changed to 'trap' and now when I type 'otoko_no_ko' in the search bar, it change to 'trap'.

m4rs said:

Isn't that what girly boy is for?

That’s for characters that are still easily identifiable as male, which excludes others from the broader okoto no ko category if I understand correctly.

Pixiv users stretching the definition of otokonoko has little to do with the actual stated definition of otokonoko. JP Wikipedia has the most comprehensive intro on the subject, and its definition starts out with this quote:

The first prerequisite to being an "otokonoko" is to have an appearance complimented as "looking just like a girl" or "looking better in women's clothes than a girl".
[...]
It is a word that says someone "looks just like a girl", from the standpoint of a viewer.

And a few more paragraphs driving the point home that this is the most widely-agreed definition. The artist we've been talking about should really be in the mesu-danshi tag*, but otokonoko gets way more traffic, so there will always be a few people trying to throw adjacent content in there.

Assuming we can differentiate between typical Pixiv errors and standard use, I would consider otokonoko to be the "least resistance" option as far as the tag's scope is concerned. The umbrella definition is the closest to how the tag gets used in practice. The main issue that we have is that proponents of both English terms are much more likely to consider type B to be out of scope entirely, and keeping it in with no explanation would only exacerbate the problem.

*A related "feminized guy" tag that focuses on sexual submissiveness instead of visually looking like a girl.

sa2ko said:

What are you even talking about? 'otoko no ko' tag existed, and I could search images by it. But recently, all images tagged 'otoko no ko' were all changed to 'trap' and now when I type 'otoko_no_ko' in the search bar, it change to 'trap'.

The aliases were reversed. Before, if you typed “trap,” it would be changed to “otoko no ko”. The two tags have always been linked ever since “otoko no ko” was first created.

sa2ko said:

What are you even talking about? 'otoko no ko' tag existed, and I could search images by it. But recently, all images tagged 'otoko no ko' were all changed to 'trap' and now when I type 'otoko_no_ko' in the search bar, it change to 'trap'.

So you're just not listening, then. Or do you just not understand how tag renaming works? Look at the tag's history. The tag was called trap. It was renamed in this thread. You haven't been searching for otokonokos, you've been searching for traps this whole time, and you never knew it.

m4rs said:

Isn't that what girly boy is for?

Blank_User said:

That’s for characters that are still easily identifiable as male, which excludes others from the broader okoto no ko category if I understand correctly.

Building on this, unless the original creator of the tag or any regular maintainers of it step forth to clarify, it's been long since recognized per topic #16818 that girly boy is, in fact more complicated then that, because it's covering an overlap between the male version of tomboys (or tomgirls, which is used elsewhere as a synonym for femboy/trap/otokonoko, as mentioned in topic #32140), the Japanese concept of the male 'onee' or 'okama', specific depictions of fabulous and crossdressing, and more. That's part of the reason why the tag is underused.

Saying that a tag with many wiki changes in the long period of being named "otoko no ko" is a tag with unchanged meaning is disingenuous. Even with the current name matching the tag from 11 years ago, I think you would be perceived as generally incorrect for relying on the "can you tell from the thumbnail" test proposed in that tag's wiki

feline_lump said:

Pixiv users stretching the definition of otokonoko has little to do with the actual stated definition of otokonoko. JP Wikipedia has the most comprehensive intro on the subject, and its definition starts out with this quote:

And a few more paragraphs driving the point home that this is the most widely-agreed definition. The artist we've been talking about should really be in the mesu-danshi tag*, but otokonoko gets way more traffic, so there will always be a few people trying to throw adjacent content in there.

Assuming we can differentiate between typical Pixiv errors and standard use, I would consider otokonoko to be the "least resistance" option as far as the tag's scope is concerned. The umbrella definition is the closest to how the tag gets used in practice. The main issue that we have is that proponents of both English terms are much more likely to consider type B to be out of scope entirely, and keeping it in with no explanation would only exacerbate the problem.

*A related "feminized guy" tag that focuses on sexual submissiveness instead of visually looking like a girl.

This entire point to me seems moot. It doesn't really matter how Pixiv defines it if the average person isn't sticking to that definition. If users both here and on pixiv are misusing the tag to the point that people sincerely believe the tag is much broader than it's supposed to be, then us using the misunderstood term will just continue to invite people to misuse it.

tamuraakemi said:

Saying that a tag with many wiki changes in the long period of being named "otoko no ko" is a tag with unchanged meaning is disingenuous. Even with the current name matching the tag from 11 years ago, I think you would be perceived as generally incorrect for relying on the "can you tell from the thumbnail" test proposed in that tag's wiki

The wiki still says that, what are you talking about? That line has persisted for the entire time the tag was called otoko no ko. Why are you trying to disingenuously argue as if the wiki doesn't say that anymore?

Also on wikis: Having a list of a bunch of characters on the tag's wiki is certainly not helping its scope: mizuki (arknights) is on there, while most of his posts never had the tag (and I would say should not be/have been tagged with either tag or the related tags discussed in this).