Nuking Overly Specific Mario Costume Tags

BUR #43649 is pending approval.

All of these costume tags are easily handled by a "Character + Game" search (hence the mass update, which is mainly there to catch any posts missing their game tags). These are way too specific, and I doubt anyone actually uses them.

The exception to this is the striker outfits, which are very unique. I think the design change between games is for the most part noticeable enough for me to not wanna touch them? Not to mention Striker Daisy and Striker Peach already imply their base tags, so I wanna gauge opinions before doing anything.

Let me know if I missed any highly specific tags here.

I'll leave my personal opinions on this aside and just mention that these tags were discussed in topic #26254, specifically forum #338346 (and the subsequent discussion that occurred that went nowhere). These tags were born out of the fracturing of Luigi (Golf), Tennis Luigi, Mario (Golf), Tennis Mario, Princess Daisy (Golf), Tennis Daisy, Princess Peach (Golf), Tennis Peach, Golf Rosalina, Tennis Rosalina, Waluigi (Golf), and Wario (Golf), which @KalpacMuskoxen believed were dissimilar enough that they necessitated individual tags.

And as for me personally, I still stand by my passing remark in topic #26254: these are way too specific, and the difference is so subtle, that there's no point in having a tag for, say, Peach with ot without a wristband. I don't think the tags should've been split at all, the parent tag should've stayed with any subtle differences being noted on the wiki and carried by a game tag. When's the last time someone searched Wario (Tennis Aces), I wonder?

Also, aren't Princess Peach (Golf) and Princess Daisy (Golf) effectively in the same outfit as Tennis Peach and Tennis Daisy but based on their retro designs? I struggle to tell the difference beyond that, honestly.

Actually, their retro dresses would probably be more worth a tag than, say, Princess Peach (Super Rush), I think.

If nothing else, for fairness' sake, we should also include the alternate option of giving them more descriptive names, per pc88's suggestion in forum #340535, for those who insist on keeping the tags but also acknowledge that the current qualifiers suck massive ass.

Also, I'll just use this opportunity to complain about the wikis that were abandoned when Kalp fractured the tags to begin with. Don't do that shit.

Yeah, that's a fair option. My main goal here is to figure out what to do with them. If they're not being implicated, then they should either be nuked of reworked. I'm of the opinion that "Character + Game" works well enough, but if we want to keep them, they need some heavy reworks.

BUR #43700 is pending approval.

rename princess_peach_(golf) -> princess_peach_(classic_sports)
rename princess_daisy_(golf) -> princess_daisy_(classic_sports)
rename princess_peach_(summer_sports) -> princess_peach_(sports)
create alias princess_peach_(toadstool_tour) -> princess_peach_(sports)
create alias princess_daisy_(toadstool_tour) -> princess_daisy_(sports)
create alias princess_daisy_(hoops_3-on-3) -> princess_daisy_(sports)
rename rosalina_(ultra_smash) -> rosalina_(sports)

Here's the alt BUR Damian mentioned for the girls at least now that I'm at my computer. I still want to nuke the Tennis Aces and Super Rush tags from orbit (because "Character + Super Rush" will get you exactly what you want), but if this BUR is favored, I can do that in a separate BUR.

Sorry if I messed anything up here. A lot of these tags should ideally squished together.

While I appreciate the goal of tidying up tags, this proposal would unfortunately harm searchability. Copyright tags are not character tags. A "Character + Game" search is not a reliable substitute for a specific outfit tag.

For instance, post #5051069 is tagged with mario_tennis_aces because it contains the tennis-playing Fire Piranha Plant from that game. As a result, searching for "princess_daisy mario_tennis_aces" includes this in the results, despite Daisy not wearing her tennis outfit in this image. A copyright tag applies if any element from the source is present, making it unsuitable for identifying specific character costumes.

This isn't a new problem, and the site has a well-established philosophy on this, largely defined by evazion. The core principle is that specific outfit tags are a feature, not a bug, especially for series with many alternate appearances.

As evazion stated:
"I think it's completely backwards that we spend 30 or 40 tags describing every detail of a character's appearance, but then balk at adding 1 tag for the character design as a whole. Distinctive character designs are more interesting and useful to search for than the buttons on someone's shirt... Nuking these tags would make searching infinitely harder." (Source: #forum #154636)

Knowledge_Seeker said:
create alias princess_daisy_(toadstool_tour) -> princess_daisy_(sports)
create alias princess_daisy_(hoops_3-on-3) -> princess_daisy_(sports)

This proposal makes no sense. These are entirely different costumes. Using that rhetoric, these should be aliased to the same tag:

Princess_daisy_(swimwear)_(mario_kart_tour)
princess_daisy_(swimwear)_(mario_kart_world)

Both costumes originate from a single game, and are not used outside of those games, and officially have the same exact name, and use their source game in the tag as a disambiguator.

The character_(outfit) tags are the standard solution for this exact scenario. Removing them would be a step backwards, creating the very search problems that this system was designed to prevent.

KalpacMuskoxen said:

While I appreciate the goal of tidying up tags, this proposal would unfortunately harm searchability. Copyright tags are not character tags. A "Character + Game" search is not a reliable substitute for a specific outfit tag.

When the qualifier in question uses a specific game name for the 'costume' qualifier, that lines becomes blurry. If you believe that the tags should remain, but you're willing to concede on changing the names, please make a BUR properly adapting pc88's proposal in opposition to Knowledge Seeker's adaptation of the proposal which, in your eyes, simplifies things in a problematic fashion. I would suggest (classic_sports), (sports_shorts), and (sports_dress) for those with more than one type, since (sports) would just be ambiguous in that case.

KalpacMuskoxen said:

While I appreciate the goal of tidying up tags, this proposal would unfortunately harm searchability. Copyright tags are not character tags. A "Character + Game" search is not a reliable substitute for a specific outfit tag.

For instance, post #5051069 is tagged with mario_tennis_aces because it contains the tennis-playing Fire Piranha Plant from that game. As a result, searching for "princess_daisy mario_tennis_aces" includes this in the results, despite Daisy not wearing her tennis outfit in this image. A copyright tag applies if any element from the source is present, making it unsuitable for identifying specific character costumes.

This isn't a new problem, and the site has a well-established philosophy on this, largely defined by evazion. The core principle is that specific outfit tags are a feature, not a bug, especially for series with many alternate appearances.

As evazion stated:
"I think it's completely backwards that we spend 30 or 40 tags describing every detail of a character's appearance, but then balk at adding 1 tag for the character design as a whole. Distinctive character designs are more interesting and useful to search for than the buttons on someone's shirt... Nuking these tags would make searching infinitely harder." (Source: #forum #154636)

But who exactly is searching for these tags, I wonder? You say it harms searchability, but would people actually be noticeably impacted by the tags being missing? For most these tags, I sincerely doubt it. I can't exactly think of an individual who's like "Man, I need to see Rosalina's Super Rush outfit specifically!" And if such an individual is out there, I'm sure "Character + Game" will be a suitable substitute.

Yes, the search in question will have a false positive, every once in a while. But the first page of "Princess Daisy Mario Tennis Aces" alone gives you exactly what you'd want to see. Any tag will have its false positives, no matter what you try to do. That is simply an inherent flaw in tagging systems, and while it is good to minimize those as much as possible, at the end of the day the search is so minimally impacted overall I sincerely doubt it'd hurt searchability overall.

Because here's the thing: a reoccurring outfit in a game or throughout several games is one I consider worth tagging. But tags for an official alternate costume that only appears in one game, and is only subtly different to a pre-existing official alternate costume is something I can't imagine the utility of beyond tagging for the sake of tagging. Why need all these game-specific tags when these outfits never appear beyond them? Look at how Project Moon does things. That series handles outfits through "Character + Game" (barring special E.G.O (Project Moon) and Identity tags) just fine. So I simply fail to see how nuking these tags really harms searchability.

This proposal makes no sense. These are entirely different costumes. Using that rhetoric, these should be aliased to the same tag:

Princess_daisy_(swimwear)_(mario_kart_tour)
princess_daisy_(swimwear)_(mario_kart_world)

Both costumes originate from a single game, and are not used outside of those games, and officially have the same exact name, and use their source game in the tag as a disambiguator.

The character_(outfit) tags are the standard solution for this exact scenario. Removing them would be a step backwards, creating the very search problems that this system was designed to prevent.

Now, you miss one very key difference between those two tag pairs: the two outfits you chose to compare are very visually distinct. The difference between Princess Daisy (Toadstool Tour) and Princess Daisy (Hoops 3-on-3) is contingent on whether or not she is wearing a shirt and shorts combo or a dress, and in this case that's a combo you can only really tell the difference between if you can see her legs (which basically screws you over on upper body posts). If we were to keep the tags, squishing them together and noting in the wiki the difference would easily give the tag far more utility over keeping them separate.

Also, it's like...A two tag search if the difference really matters to someone. The same of which cannot be said for her swimwear outfits, which feature so many differences (like headwear, the presence of a midriff, whether it'd be caught in a swimsuit search, etc.) that it'd actively be detrimental to the tags in a way that simply isn't the case for the sports outfits. That's why I think merging the sports tags, if kept, would be better merged together as opposed to kept separate.

(Besides, Mario Kart Tour and Mario Kart World both feature a lot of other official alternate costumes for Princess Daisy alone. Not tagging the swimsuits would be utterly foolish, as they cannot be replaced by a "Character + Game" search.)

I still believe nobody actually needs these tags when we have the games. It's not like they are all haphazardly thrown about in an overarching sports tag. forum #342987

Knowledge_Seeker said:

But who exactly is searching for these tags, I wonder? You say it harms searchability, but would people actually be noticeably impacted by the tags being missing?

This line of reasoning is contrary to the site's entire tagging philosophy. We don't tag things based on their perceived popularity; we tag them because they are factually present in the image. The goal is to create a comprehensive, searchable database.

A "Character + Game" search is a workaround that produces acceptable results for you, but it is not a substitute for a precise tag. The system is designed to avoid the very false positives you dismiss as acceptable. We shouldn't intentionally degrade search accuracy just because a more precise method requires maintaining a few extra tags.

zetsubousensei said:

I think it's incredibly frustrating and exhausting to have so many tags for various Mario characters when we already have such granularity with the games. ... it feels like tagging for the sake of tagging.

I understand the frustration with a large number of specific tags, but as the howto:tag guide states:

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.

Granularity is a feature, not a bug.

This isn't "tagging for the sake of tagging." As established, the copyright tag and the character outfit tag serve two completely different functions. The copyright tag answers "What series is this art related to?" The outfit tag answers "What is this specific character wearing?" Game-specific outfit tags have a high overlap with the game's copyright tags because the outfits come from that game. That's expected behavior; it doesn't make the outfit tag redundant.

I am not against renaming the tags for clarity. The current game-based qualifiers are confusing, and I concede Damian0358 and pc88's point that more descriptive names would be better. I would be willing to create a new BUR that renames the recurring outfits to better alternative names.

However, I remain opposed to nuking them or merging factually different designs into one ambiguous tag. That would be a step backward for the site's searchability.

This isn't "tagging for the sake of tagging." As established, the copyright tag and the character outfit tag serve two completely different functions

I've already argued about this in the Sonic thread that many series like Zelda have, and will continue to, exist just fine without this tag bloat. Costume tags should exist for a specific look that is otherwise hard to find in a two tag search. If there is 100% overlap with a costume tag and a specific game then for all intents and purposes that tag is the costume tag. We don't have Link_(Zelda II: The Adventure Of Link) because Zelda II: The Adventure Of Link already is that tag. This maximalist tagging only exists because someone made the tag and nobody cared to fix it. Ultimately I'm not going to fight hard since I think this battle is already lost, but what you are arguing for is Mario_(mario_odyssey).

KalpacMuskoxen said:

Notice how what is said here in response to me doesn't at all factor in my actual, practical notes about the tags' utility. All I have to say is "just because we can, doesn't mean we should".

zetsubousensei said:

I've already argued about this in the Sonic thread that many series like Zelda have, and will continue to, exist just fine without this tag bloat. Costume tags should exist for a specific look that is otherwise hard to find in a two tag search. If there is 100% overlap with a costume tag and a specific game then for all intents and purposes that tag is the costume tag. We don't have Link_(Zelda II: The Adventure Of Link) because Zelda II: The Adventure Of Link already is that tag. This maximalist tagging only exists because someone made the tag and nobody cared to fix it. Ultimately I'm not going to fight hard since I think this battle is already lost, but what you are arguing for is Mario_(mario_odyssey).

More seriously, this is exactly what I mean. The only reason I started making Mario alt costume tags at all was to deal with the overflow of alternate costumes of Mario Kart Tour and Princess Peach: Showtime!, as well as the power-up forms that are very much not the default that people would definitely want to search for. I never intended or desired to see this sort of tag bloat, especially when the Copyright tag serves its function just fine.

So while I may not have started the fire here, I definitely was the one to lay down the kindle for it to ignited. As a result, I'll be the one to step up and try to put it out.

BUR #43742 is pending approval.

create alias princess_peach_(golf) -> princess_peach_(classic_sports)
create alias princess_daisy_(golf) -> princess_daisy_(classic_sports)
create alias princess_peach_(summer_sports) -> princess_peach_(sports_shorts)
create alias princess_peach_(toadstool_tour) -> princess_peach_(sports_dress)
create alias princess_daisy_(toadstool_tour) -> princess_daisy_(sports_shorts)
create alias princess_daisy_(hoops_3-on-3) -> princess_daisy_(sports_dress)
create alias rosalina_(ultra_smash) -> rosalina_(sports_dress)

Here's the BUR, using Damian0358's suggested tags, which are much better alternatives to what we have now.

zetsubousensei said:

If there is 100% overlap with a costume tag and a specific game then for all intents and purposes that tag is the costume tag. We don't have Link_(Zelda II: The Adventure Of Link) because Zelda II: The Adventure Of Link already is that tag.

This comparison is based on a flawed premise. A copyright tag and a character tag serve fundamentally different purposes. The zelda_ii:_the_adventure_of_link tag is for any content related to that game. If an artist draws the Magician from Zelda II alongside Link in his Tears of the Kingdom outfit, a `"link" + "zelda_ii:_the_adventure_of_link"` search will produce a false positive. The copyright tag correctly identifies an element from the game is present, but it fails to identify what Link is actually wearing.

Furthermore, Link's tag structure is a poor model for standardization. His wiki page shows that most of his alternate costumes are classified as general tags, not character tags. This approach is its own can of worms and not a system anybody should be emulating.

zetsubousensei said:

Ultimately I'm not going to fight hard since I think this battle is already lost, but what you are arguing for is Mario_(mario_odyssey).

This is, respectfully, the best possible argument for my entire point. mario_(mario_odyssey) would be a uselessly ambiguous tag because Mario has dozens of visually distinct, official costumes in that single game, and they all have their own specific tags. No one would ever suggest merging mario_(hakama), mario_(tuxedo), and mario_(bridal_gown) into one generic game tag. The system works precisely because we tag for each specific design. Super Mario Odyssey is the prime example of why Character + Copyright is an insufficient substitute for dedicated outfit tags.

Knowledge Seeker said:
Any tag will have its false positives, no matter what you try to do... at the end of the day the search is so minimally impacted overall I sincerely doubt it'd hurt searchability overall.

There's a direct contradiction in advocating to "minimize [false positives] as much as possible" while simultaneously pushing to nuke the very tags that eliminate them. You are proposing we intentionally degrade search accuracy based on a subjective "doubt."

Specific outfit tags are the solution. Nuking them reintroduces a known problem for no discernible benefit. This is contrary to the site's entire philosophy. As evazion has stated, it's "completely backwards": (Source: forum #154636)

Knowledge Seeker said:
I never intended or desired to see this sort of tag bloat, especially when the Copyright tag serves its function just fine.

What you started with Mario Kart Tour and Princess Peach: Showtime! was the correct approach, not a mistake. The principle remains sound: a distinct design is a distinct design and deserves a tag, whether it's one of two alternates or one of fifty. A copyright tag is a blunt instrument; a dedicated outfit tag is a scalpel. They serve different, non-overlapping functions.

KalpacMuskoxen said:

This comparison is based on a flawed premise. A copyright tag and a character tag serve fundamentally different purposes. The zelda_ii:_the_adventure_of_link tag is for any content related to that game. If an artist draws the Magician from Zelda II alongside Link in his Tears of the Kingdom outfit, a `"link" + "zelda_ii:_the_adventure_of_link"` search will produce a false positive. The copyright tag correctly identifies an element from the game is present, but it fails to identify what Link is actually wearing.

Furthermore, Link's tag structure is a poor model for standardization. His wiki page shows that most of his alternate costumes are classified as general tags, not character tags. This approach is its own can of worms and not a system anybody should be emulating.
[break]

This is, respectfully, the best possible argument for my entire point. mario_(mario_odyssey) would be a uselessly ambiguous tag because Mario has dozens of visually distinct, official costumes in that single game, and they all have their own specific tags. No one would ever suggest merging mario_(hakama), mario_(tuxedo), and mario_(bridal_gown) into one generic game tag. The system works precisely because we tag for each specific design. Super Mario Odyssey is the prime example of why Character + Copyright is an insufficient substitute for dedicated outfit tags.

There's a direct contradiction in advocating to "minimize [false positives] as much as possible" while simultaneously pushing to nuke the very tags that eliminate them. You are proposing we intentionally degrade search accuracy based on a subjective "doubt."

You're missing the point entirely. What you are doing is basically overcorrecting for a problem that is inherent in the system, as you'd still get false positives even with the tags, because of a figurine in the background with the costume or something. The Legend of Zelda tags are perfectly fine, and people are tagging the exceptions as opposed to the default there because that's how the tags are intended to work. The Mario tags bear no real difference outside the games with actual different costumes in the same game.

You seem to be misinterpreting my arguments as an abolishment of searchability, when in reality what I am against is tagging simply for tagging's sake. And that's exactly what these tags are. For all intents and purposes Princess_Daisy Mario_Tennis_Aces is the intended way to search for that costume. It doesn't show up outside Mario Tennis Aces, and unless people start having serious trouble finding it in a search, I don't see a point in having a tag for it. This has been the general policy for years. What you are proposing is essentially pad tags for completely unnecessary shortcuts to get around something that was never an actual problem to begin with.

Next thing I know, you're going to be proposing, say, Princess Peach (Princess Dress) to search for Princess Peach's default costume. Because that is effectively the sort of tagging logic you are arguing for here, because of "false positives" like (the very NSFW) post #9487293 popping up in a princess_peach pink_dress search. These are "Character + Game" searches, as has been normalized for years, and having tags for them causes nothing but trouble and bloat for us, because I seriously doubt anyone not tagging Mario costumes actually searches for them. Which in this case, is not a call to kill the tags because "who searches for unpopular outfits?", but as a "I don't think anyone actually uses them beyond taggers tagging them for tagging's sake".

(Like, I created all the Infinity Nikki outfit tags in that list on the wiki page. Because while the copyright is unpopular, finding even Nikki's default outfit there is nigh-impossible without tags, which I'm sure benefits someone out there. The unpopularity counter is so strange to me, like I am pretty low on the list of people actually about to argue a tag should be nuked solely on "Waluigi unpopular on Danbooru", but whatever.)

...As evazion has stated, it's "completely backwards": (Source: forum #154636)

Also, you completely missed the point with forum #154636. What Evazion is arguing for is for creating a character tag for a gacha character's official alternate costume that is hard to find without the tag, and also something even people offbooru tag for. You will not find people going out of their way to tag Rosalina (Ultra Smash) outside Danbooru. You find people going "#Rosalina #Mario Tennis: Ultra Smash". Because Rosalina Mario_Tennis:_Ultra_Smash is how you find the costume if you really care about that sort of thing, in most circles. They're simply not the same scenario at all, especially since Azur Lane is a single copytag, whereas Mario has hundreds, making the costumes actively difficult to search for normally otherwise.

(And while I could take the time out to analyze the shifting opinions on chartags since then that can and has resulted in people going too far and creating bloat tags like these, I'm going to spare everyone that dissection, because I'm not really interested in putting on the analytics cap for the sake of winning an argument over whether or not Mario chartags I find redundant should exist or not.)

Context is key, and while I wouldn't know Evazion's exact opinion on these tags, I don't think this is exactly what he had in mind when he made the argument about Azur Lane official alternate costume chartags six years ago.

What you started with Mario Kart Tour and Princess Peach: Showtime! was the correct approach, not a mistake. The principle remains sound: a distinct design is a distinct design and deserves a tag, whether it's one of two alternates or one of fifty. A copyright tag is a blunt instrument; a dedicated outfit tag is a scalpel. They serve different, non-overlapping functions.

Oh no no, you misunderstand. My regret is not in making the tags I made. My regret is in effectively enabling the creation of tags like these through my own frustration at the then messy alt tags that actually serve utility but were poorly organized due to missing implications. This has been my regret ever since the first implication attempt at them, when I realized my efforts effectively gave the go-ahead to create them in the minds of people eager to have just one more tag.

And even if I can't put the fire out, I will do my damn best to hose it down as much as I can here. That is simply my responsibility, as the person who started the chain of events leading up to this point.

Thank you I was too mentality fatigued by the whole thing to try to respond, but you're absolutely right @Knowledge_Seeker and I want to thank you for so articulately laying it out. The tags for Princess Peach showtime serve an entirely different purpose than ones from a game with a single costume in it. Context is key and as much as I hate gacha costume tagging there is a big difference between Fate having a billion costume tags that are otherwise impossible to search with FGO + Char_name and Princess Peach_(game_name) + the_only_game_that_costume_appears_in.

No worries. I've noticed every copyright/fandom on here, especially bigger ones like Mario, have their own unique quirks and such, things I feel like are missing in the argument for the tags' remaining. If anything, I now understand the gacha costume tag haters' perspective much better now lol.

Anyway, arguing this is exhausting. This is why I don't like to Get Serious in the forums, but I was left with no other choice. Time to go back to doing Nikki organizing and uploading before I go to bed like I wanna.

I understand the perspective that this feels like tag bloat. However, the core of this disagreement seems to stem from a misunderstanding of the site's foundational tagging principles. This isn't about gacha games versus Mario; it's about whether we want a precise, predictable database or one that relies on workarounds.

Knowledge_Seeker said:

You seem to be misinterpreting my arguments as an abolishment of searchability, when in reality what I am against is tagging simply for tagging's sake. And that's exactly what these tags are. For all intents and purposes Princess_Daisy Mario_Tennis_Aces is the intended way to search for that costume.

This isn't "tagging for tagging's sake"; it's tagging for precision. A Character + Copyright search is not the "intended way" to search for a specific costume. It's a blunt instrument that happens to work most of the time. Our system is designed to provide a scalpel: the specific character outfit tag. The goal is to eliminate false positives, not to accept them as an unavoidable nuisance when a solution already exists.

You're arguing that because a workaround is "good enough," we should abandon the more precise method. This is a reversal of the site's entire purpose. I'm going to tap the sign again:

howto:tag said:

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.

zetsubousensei said:

Context is key and as much as I hate gacha costume tagging there is a big difference between Fate having a billion costume tags that are otherwise impossible to search with FGO + Char_name and Princess Peach_(game_name) + the_only_game_that_costume_appears_in.

The principle is not context-dependent. Evazion's stance is clear: "If a character has multiple distinct versions, then each version should get its own tag." (Source: forum #172656) He doesn't add a caveat like "...but only if the game has more than five alternates." The logic applies universally because the problem is universal: a copyright tag identifies the source material, not the character's appearance. Whether it's one alternate outfit or fifty, the Character + Copyright search is vulnerable to the exact same type of false positive.

The argument isn't about the number of costumes, but the predictability of the system. Evazion has also argued against the "let's decide on a case-by-case basis" approach because it leads to inconsistency and endless debate—exactly what is happening here. Qualifying distinct designs with their own tags is the consistent, predictable solution.

Knowledge_Seeker said:

Next thing I know, you're going to be proposing, say, Princess Peach (Princess Dress) to search for Princess Peach's default costume.

This is a strawman argument. Alternate costume/official alternate costume tags exist to differentiate alternate costume designs from the character's default appearance. Nobody is suggesting we create a tag for the default when the base character tag already serves that function. These tags solve the problem of finding, for example, Daisy's sports dress specifically, without also getting results for her default dress in images that happen to be tagged with mario_tennis_aces.

Knowledge_Seeker said:

My regret is in effectively enabling the creation of tags like these... And even if I can't put the fire out, I will do my damn best to hose it down as much as I can here.

Your work on the Mario Kart Tour and Showtime! tags wasn't a mistake that started a "fire." It was the correct application of Danbooru's tagging philosophy. The problem isn't that a fire was started; the problem is that you're now trying to "hose down" a library that is being correctly cataloged. The principle—a distinct design gets a distinct tag—is sound. Applying it to Tour was right, and applying it here is also right.

My BUR #43742 remains the correct path forward. It keeps these functionally necessary tags, preserving search precision, while improving their names for clarity as per Damian0358's suggestion. Nuking them entirely would be an intentional degradation of the database's quality based on the flawed premise that a "good enough" workaround is better than a precise, established system.

Knowledge_Seeker said:

If anything, I now understand the gacha costume tag haters' perspective much better now lol.

Anyone who has followed my forum posts would know how much I've argued against the maximalist approach for costume tagging, and why it ultimately wins out (topic #26611). Of course, there has been pushback, ala forum #312105, and topic #27772 was only approved once the tags in question became available in a gacha. However, Kalp has topic #31002 which he can leverage to further justify his point, since if Splatoon alt-costumes could get tags (and not just alt-costumes too, their defaults got tags too), why not apply that with Mario too? And that's not getting into the fact that forum #337450 onward inspired topic #31153, or topic #26001 converting gentags to chartags, or the fact that topic #27552 was approved and inspired topic #28100 without considering the implications of that approval.

However, I'm with Knowledge and Zets on your misapplication of evazion's words: he did not say those things in the context of every copyright on Danbooru, it's why forum #154636 starts with him comparing Azur Lane with other gachas, and how forum #172656 is focused squarely on gacha-tagging practice; forum #357922 has Ylimegirl talking about how we don't have tags for a bunch of Fate costumes due to the fact that they are from the visual novel, not the gacha; forum #343992 has NNT rejecting a technically valid BUR due to search redundancy, the very thing Knowledge and Zets were pointing out.

The main thing we're dealing with right now is boundaries. The traditional domain for costume tags has been gachas/MOBAs, then that got spread to VTubers, and then we had vocal synths getting in on it due to topic #28832, idols in topic #27717 and topic #30660 and at some point in-game named costumes ala Final Fantasy VII Remake and Tales ended up getting tags too. It's functionally the same issue as with the debate in the Classic Sonic thread, topic #31158, except, unlike there, there is no gacha to leverage. The general attitude on site has been to avoid the spread of these sorts of tags as much as possible (with only particularly popular costumes otherwise getting tags as the exception), keeping them contained to their own specific corners, because otherwise you're going to see people making costume tags for obscure visual novel characters from 2004 and only three posts. The current permissibility is allowing costumes with official names to get tagged (that's why gachas/MOBAs got them to begin with), so, using Luigi per your latest BUR as an example, Luigi (Golf) would be fine even if it weren't for Mario Kart Tour, but not Luigi (Mystery Land) or Luigi (Tennis Aces).

To quote NNT from one of the above: "... I hate this, because it's just going to open the door to more messes of costume tags for non-gacha games..." (forum #347337)

I think one thing that forum #347337 points out is that those characters are much harder to search with a two-tag search, but ultimately it's good they never got made as anime tagging based on episodes would have been the precedent set. I would argue that mentality was same with Splatoon tags, there are only 3 copy tags but 10s of costume tags. While I disagree with the choice from a search utility the tags make sense. In this instance (Mario) no utility is gained that isn't already found via the copyright tags since Mario copytagging is so granular.