Danbooru

pointy_ears versus elf_ears

Posted under General

I disagree. elf is a larger character design type than merely the ears, thus it should remain on its own.

My suggestion is for the elf earself alias be changed to elf earspointy ears, since pointy ears - although commonly called elf ears, even if the character in question is not an elf - are not uncommon in non-elf characters as well.

edit: Additionally, someone will need to go cleaning up the elf tag.

"I disagree. elf is a larger character design type than merely the ears, thus it should remain on its own."

Then, we should gather all these features that make an elf, as there most likely will be controversy if some set of criteria isn't found.

There is no universal criteria for elves, with the exception of pointy ears and things that do not have anything to do with their physical appearance, and are thus untaggable. For the most part, elves are humans with pointy ears.

Elf is not an untaggable concept. While it is true that "elf" itself can have plenty of different appearances, there are elf types that are truly taggable. For example wood elves are a very taggable concept, as they tend to have similar themes for their outfits and images of them typically have other aspects that would suggest them being a wood elf (such as being in a forest). Some taggable elf types are: wood elves, dark elves, night elves, and blood elves. The one that is the hardest to tell is what is usually called a high elf.

In short, the elf tag can still exist because tagging of elves shouldn't rely simply on whether the character has pointy ears, it is dependent on other factors that should be present in the image. There isn't a single criteria for "elf" because elf is composed of several different sub-types, but those sub-types themselves have their characteristics that are usually taggable.

The wiki for elf currently says "Usually, this tag simply refers to an image of a character with pointy ears.", and that's the way tag seems to be being used.

Unless someone's willing to go through and remove elf from all the posts that don't have any reason to be labelled elf besides pointy ears, I'd suggest aliasing elf to pointy_ears after all.

mock said:
Unless someone's willing to go through and remove elf from all the posts that don't have any reason to be labelled elf besides pointy ears, I'd suggest aliasing elf to pointy_ears after all.

I don't think an alias is a good idea. As NWF Renim said, elf can be a valid tag under certain circumstances. It would be worth clarifying what those circumstances are though, otherwise there's no way to have a useful definition and clean up the tag properly based on that.

It's all about whether we can come up with a set of characteristics elf images usually have (like demon_girls, that often have pointy ears too, tend to have horns, tails, bat wings, etc.) Personally, I can only think of things like fair skin, blond hair and blue eyes though.

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