Is idol_clothes needed?

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mass update idol_clothes -> idol

I've been tagging idol_clothes because it sounds more specific than idol, but it has far fewer images and doesn't seem to be used differently. Should we merge it?

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EDIT: The bulk update request #2839 (forum #167805) has been rejected by @DanbooruBot.

Well, when would you tag idol_clothes but not idol? What about cosplay? Does one become an idol by wearing idol clothes? If not, keeping the tags is useful.

The current wiki for idol doesn’t say much about its use. If it gets defined as “an idol wearing idol clothes” or basically “clothes make the idol”, there’s no point in keeping the tags separate. I guess the question is if we want “idols not wearing idol clothes” to be searchable, such as post #3829626.

I think idol_clothes could be useful for characters wearing an idol outfit (eg frills, skirt, etc) who aren't typically idol performers. And idol seems like it should be a generic-copyright tag similar to virtual_youtuber. Implementing either of these would be difficult and possibly not useful though.

Personally I've sporadically been using the idol clothes tag for the idols themselves, actually, as '(idol name) -casual' and such returns much more than the idols in idol outfits. I don't always remember to use it, though.

As for merging the tags, I could see why it would make sense given the overlap, but if the idol tag were made into a categorical 'type of person' tag then it could be useful to keep the idol_clothes tag.

Another tag to use for reference is the magical girl/magical boy tag. Which I suppose is also a tag we could ask questions about, but still.

Usually we treat the name of the profession as shorthand for the uniform. So we have things like maid, miko, waitress, nurse, teacher, office lady, stewardess, idol, magical girl, etc, not maid clothes, waitress clothes, nurse clothes, idol clothes, magical girl clothes, etc. We use these tags by appearance only, not by canon. Maid means "someone wearing a maid outfit" not "someone who is canonically a maid". Therefore the correct tag would be idol and it would be for characters who are dressed or who look like idols.

We should really write down and link to some of these undocumented standard practices, instead of having to rely on searching hundreds of thousands of forum posts. We have the [[List of Commonly Misused Tags] wiki (which could use some more attention), but it doesn't feel right going there. This might be better in a different thread or on Discord if anyone's interested.

I think it'd be fine to document it in the idol wiki page.

BrokenEagle98 said:

We should really write down and link to some of these undocumented standard practices, instead of having to rely on searching hundreds of thousands of forum posts.

If you want to try to codify a list of best practices for tagging, the most logical starting point is howto:tag. Forum threads are easily ignored and quickly get buried; if you create one for this, the only useful purpose it would serve is as a convenient citation in an argument, and anyone looking for citations is probably going to link to the original forum post rather than one that just reiterates old discussions.

Also, regarding the practice of tagging occupations versus uniforms, I don't think that there's really a "standard" in place. While @evazion offered plenty of examples that could be construed to imply the existence of such a standard, there are also a number of tags that suggest otherwise. Besides the idol and idol_clothes tags, we also have astronaut and spacesuit tags, chef and chef_uniform tags, pilot and pilot_suit tags, and policeman, policewoman, and police_uniform tags. I think it's fair to say that these decisions are still made on a case-by-case basis rather than according to a general rule.

iridescent_slime said:

Also, regarding the practice of tagging occupations versus uniforms, I don't think that there's really a "standard" in place. While @evazion offered plenty of examples that could be construed to imply the existence of such a standard, there are also a number of tags that suggest otherwise. Besides the idol and idol_clothes tags, we also have astronaut and spacesuit tags, chef and chef_uniform tags, pilot and pilot_suit tags, and policeman, policewoman, and police_uniform tags. I think it's fair to say that these decisions are still made on a case-by-case basis rather than according to a general rule.

We also have tags for every individual article of a maid outfit, for what that's worth, and enmaided for use when a character that isn't canonically a maid is dressed as one. I assume that's because there's just so many canon maid characters that they end up flooding any sort of search you're trying to do for non-maid characters cosplaying as maids. Which seems like a possible argument in favor of idol_clothes when it's also such a common cosplay with a significant number of canon representatives.

Keeping it as a separate tag seems like overkill when "idol clothes" is such a vague concept. At a glance, there's not a lot obviously separating post #3969427 or post #3947201 from arbitrary characters like post #3981277 or post #3977202.

If we aren't using the idol tag for people, then it could work alright to merge the tags together since non-idols wouldn't be tagged idol for cosplaying an idol's casual outfit. I'd been meaning to make a list of music series or list of idol series or something, maybe I could make that to cover what series have idols to broadly cover the other concept.

The only thing I wonder about is what to do about stuff like swimsuits and plain school uniforms in the cases where those are idol outfits.

feline lump said:
Keeping it as a separate tag seems like overkill when "idol clothes" is such a vague concept. At a glance, there's not a lot obviously separating post #3969427 or post #3947201 from arbitrary characters like post #3981277 or post #3977202.

There are certain types of designs and elements common to idol outfits, so much that people can tell it's supposed to be an idol outfit even without reading the description.
Still, even when it's hard to tell, if the tagger is familiar with the character then they could objectively tag a post with "idol" when they're in such an outfit.

Anyway, you would run into this whether you merge the tags or keep them separate.

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I made list of music-related series in an attempt to somewhat cover the ''people who are idols'' concept in case we're going to merge the tags and use idol for just outfits.

This bulk update request has been rejected because it was not approved within 60 days.

The bulk update request #2839 (forum #167805) has been rejected by @DanbooruBot.