Danbooru

Pool: Touhou - Mages Guild of Gensokyo

Posted under General

I just noticed this pool today. (pool #5271)
The first images in the pool, the ones featuring Byakuren, were made by the artists with the theme of "Gensokyo's spellcasters/mages/witches" in mind (don't get me wrong, I still think those "character x + character y + character z" pools are redundant (covered by tag searches) and unnecessary), but the pool quickly devolved into MarisaXAliceXPatchouli harem/love triangle images which not only defeats the purpose of the pool, but is also against our policy for pools (no shipping pools).
Examples (nsfw):
post #418546 post #335533 post #106505
post #642277 post #366169 post #1001210

How could the pool be restricted to prevent it being overtaken by those images (there are A LOT on danbooru)?

Updated by jjj14

Nials said:
pictures depicting the three performing magical acts together is an idea.

exactly. Images depicting the girls working together on magic or studying more about magic or talking about magic theories is how the pool should be. like post #934118. that feels like a group of mages talking to one another, not just a punch of girls who happen to be magic users talking together.

Zekana said:
exactly. Images depicting the girls working together on magic or studying more about magic or talking about magic theories is how the pool should be.

I'd really like to stress the TOGETHER part, as it seems very important.
However, would a fight between the three of them using magic count as a magical act, and thus belong in the pool or not?

Nials said:

However, would a fight between the three of them using magic count as a magical act, and thus belong in the pool or not?

Of course it would, given the magic usage you stated. On the other hand, melee combat wouldn't count, unless somehow mixed with magic.

Wypatroszony said:
Of course it would, given the magic usage you stated. On the other hand, melee combat wouldn't count, unless somehow mixed with magic.

based on "using magic" it would yes, however, if you base it on "working together or studying more about magic", it makes a difference

The pool creator was most likely inspired by pixiv. As we know, pixiv creates a lot of specialized tags, and one of them is 東方四魔女, which means "Touhou 4 witches". That tag gathers images that contain Kirisame Marisa, Alice Margatroid, Patchouli Knowledge and Hijiri Byakuren, filtering out images in which they are not the focus of the image such as everyone.

Pixiv doesn't work for me right now, but you CAN search for 4 tags, right? A normal tag search would work if pixiv images were tagged as well as they are on danbooru, but AFAIK, an image on pixiv can't have more than 10 tags, tags are often used as comments and it is common there to "cut corners" and combine multiple tags to a redundant single tag.

We could restrict the pool to images about using or studying magic as a group or just all of the witches/magicians dressing up like in post #780066 and yes, it would make to pool better, but would the people currently managing the pool, or anyone else, use it?

To me, it looks like they just want to use the pool as an easy way to find Kirisame_Marisa Alice_Margatroid Patchouli_Knowledge Hijiri_Byakuren and Kirisame_Marisa Alice_Margatroid Patchouli_Knowledge, possibly with -eyeryone or chartags:<10 or something like that. Before I looked it up, I assumed that the pool users were all members, but the pool creator is actually a privileged user and he can make these tag searches without the need for a pool, so all it does for him is to combine 2 tag searches into one. I don't really get what he gains from managing the pool.

In post #656528, the creation of the pool was first suggested, comparing it to the old maid alliance pool.

Updated

I can think of two solutions.

1. Make it require all four of the girls like the pixiv tag. It would cut out a lot of the images and "off topic" nonsense.

2. Require magic use in the images even if it is sexual in nature.

As the creator of the pool, these suggestions will not be accepted and I will revert it to its original intent.

The inspiration was not (directly) pixiv, it was the Original Maidens Alliance pool and was designed to mirror that with a different set of characters. So unless you plan to extensively chainsaw the OMA pool too, DO NOT CHANGE THIS POOL UNLESS YOU HAVE A *REAL* REASON TO DO SO.

(And feel free to chainsaw other character collection pools too, like Stages Gathering.)

P.S. Not everyone who comes here has a Gold account or higher.

  • Don't get all defensive; you'll just embarrass yourself. Pools are not yours, in fact none of the work you do on Danbooru is 'yours'; we'll do whatever we want with any part of the site.
  • Those other pools either are on shaky grounds too or are more than just a collection of characters.
  • We are well aware that most cannot search for more than 2 tags, that doesn't stop us organising everything as if you can use 7 tags; the whole point of the 2-tag restriction is an incentive to upgrade your account via payment or contribution.

Updated

AyaReiko said:

As the creator of the pool, these suggestions will not be accepted and I will revert it to its original intent.

The inspiration was not (directly) pixiv, it was the Original Maidens Alliance pool and was designed to mirror that with a different set of characters. So unless you plan to extensively chainsaw the OMA pool too, DO NOT CHANGE THIS POOL UNLESS YOU HAVE A *REAL* REASON TO DO SO.

(And feel free to chainsaw other character collection pools too, like Stages Gathering.)

P.S. Not everyone who comes here has a Gold account or higher.

If we were going to use the pool as you seem to want it to be used, then I would vote for its deletion. It seems completely pointless except as a way of circumventing the two-tag limit, which is not a valid use for pools.

It seems marginally more useful if it is limited to actual magic-related images with those characters in them, and that seems to be what the decision reached in this thread was. Just because you made the pool, it doesn't mean you have the final say in its usage over everyone else who gave their opinion.

As far as other pools such as Old Maids Alliance, I agree with Serlo that they are also of questionable usefulness, and are in no position to be used as the sole justification for this pool.

Also, it seems S1eth recently removed a number of off-topic posts from the pool. I think you were too eager to add all of those posts back and give S1eth a negative record, as I believe he did it in fitting with the "magic-related only" definition made earlier in this thread.

@AyaReiko
What Serlo has said is all correct.
You can participate in this discussion and provide any constructive feedback/ideas if you want, but don't try to just force your opinion, it won't get you anywhere.

Pyrolightold said:
1. Make it require all four of the girls like the pixiv tag. It would cut out a lot of the images and "off topic" nonsense.

This sounds reasonable, I would support it.

Alternative idea about restricting it to images where characters are studying/using magic is not bad either, but I think it's too restrictive. At least I don't remember many images that would fit.

Oh, and I don't really mind just deleting it too. But reforming it into something useful (more useful than now, at least) is probably better.

Toks said:
But how would this differ from the alice_margatroid kirisame_marisa patchouli_knowledge hijiri_byakuren chartags:4 search or similar?

What I had in mind was "At least 4 of the characters" currently mentioned in the pool #5271 description, rather than exactly those 4 characters.

But I guess we can also include "At least 3 of them and some magic/witch related theme" as an alternative requirement.

Alternative, and not sole, because each one of them separately would be a bit too narrow IMO.

Updated

Just noticed that Aya Reiko actually bumped this thread (I did send him a link here).
So, what are we going to do with this pool?
Just a quick reminder, we have around 2000 images of alice_margatroid kirisame_marisa patchouli_knowledge images and around 700 for chartags:..4 that could possibly land in the pool, and seeing how post #483744 somehow made it in there, I don't question that a lot of unrelated images will make it in there as well.

>Stages Gathering
This isn't a good comparison.
Just counting the 8 main Windows games, and counting only 1 boss character per stage (they have up to 4), you get
(8 choose 3) * 7 = 392
possible tag searches you would have to do.
The most popular 3 character makes up about 40% of them. (flandre, nue, koishi).
It was a decision made here to merge the extra stage with the other stages to 1 pool instead of 2.
Having a pool for the extra stage alone didn't make much sense when over 90% of the images were just flandre, nue and koishi.

And looking at pool #5271, 192/192 are marisa, alice, patchouli.
Can you find even a single image of 3 touhou magicians excluding these 3?
Your pool is overwhelmingly dominated by a 3 character combination.

In short: Just use a tag search

The ratio of which character combination is dominant of a pool is irrelevant. If anything, that should only encourage to add more alternate combinations, but not the constant vandalism of the pool.

Not all of us can search with three tags so closing a pool solely for that is not a reasonable idea. If a pool can be summed up in two tags, then it should be closed as it is redundant. But to accommodate all members it should stay as is.

Now the description of the pool states that it is the magicians in a group, and warns that Marisa, Alice, and Patchouli is the common combination. Removing pictures because of a small gripe when it meets the basic criteria is very petty and should stop.

Zetroic said:

Not all of us can search with three tags so closing a pool solely for that is not a reasonable idea. If a pool can be summed up in two tags, then it should be closed as it is redundant. But to accommodate all members it should stay as is.

The reason pools exist still isn't to bypass the tag limit.

Zetroic said:
Not all of us can search with three tags so closing a pool solely for that is not a reasonable idea. If a pool can be summed up in two tags, then it should be closed as it is redundant. But to accommodate all members it should stay as is.

Now the description of the pool states that it is the magicians in a group, and warns that Marisa, Alice, and Patchouli is the common combination. Removing pictures because of a small gripe when it meets the basic criteria is very petty and should stop.

Danbooru rule: Not being able to search for more than 2 tags is not a reason for making a pool. It's an incentive for making you contribute or pay to get privilleges.

Anyway, this thread has gone on for more than a year and the suggestion had been repeated in Pointless Pools many times. Can a mod or admin finally give a comment, instead of ignoring your contributors like this?

I'm with S1eth, that this pool is nothing more than a combination search. Either it needs a deletion, or repurposing into a pool for "more than 3 magicians/witches/wizards collaborating in magical research". There's no reason to limit this topic to Touhou.

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