BUR #19493 has been rejected.
deprecate humanization
We currently use two different tags, personification and humanization, for the nebulous web of a concept that is "non-human thing, but more human". Personification is for when objects or non-humanoid characters are depicted as human or humanoid, and humanization is for when characters that were already humanoid are depicted as more human or completely human. However, these tags being synonyms means they've often used interchangeably, and because there's only two of them it also means some concepts that should be seperate are lumped together, making them unnecessarily difficult to search for on their own. On that note, I decided to poll some of the many helpful users on the Discord server (and Unbreakable) to see what the common consensus for these tags' definitions actually is.
The Poll
Here is a ZIP file containing screencaps of all 38 responses. I asked that they not refer to the wikis before answering because, as we're all well aware, a good chunk of our userbase do not read wikis.
Of the 38 users who responded, only 6 were able to correctly describe how the two tags should be used, and all 6 admitted to having prior knowledge of the wiki. The remaining 32 users gave varying degrees of incorrect or vague definitions (a couple of them had no idea), but a common sentiment among those who got close was that humanization was for humanoid characters depicted as humans. Additionally, while the other responses might have missed the mark by a wider margin, 13 of said misses also agreed that the end result of whatever humanization is for should be human. Only 4 of the misses mentioned humanoid rather than human.
To summarise, only 16% of users were aware of the correct usage, and they all had prior knowledge of the wiki. However, of the remainder, 69% believed that humanization was for "something -> human", and almost half of that 69% were aware that the "something" in question was humanoid characters.
The word "humanize" actually has a definition outside of Danbooru, but in true booru fashion it has nothing to do with how we define the tag. It means to make something's character more human, ie. how Thanos' relationship with his daughters makes him less brutish and more... human. This severe mismatch may be a large part of why nobody seems to have any idea what the tag is actually for.
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/humanize
https://www.britannica.com/dictionary/humanize
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/humanize
https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/humanize
Additionally, for most people outside of Danbooru (and quite a few of its users, too) personification is far broader, humanization being just a subset. Human version of a mecha? Personification. Furry Jiji? Personification. The Skibidi Toilet cameramen? Personifications. Human Gardevoir? Personification. Baniran Dorosu's weather girls? You guessed it, personification. Fighting against the norm here is folly of the highest order; several responses to the poll weren't even aware of humanization and thought personification covered the whole thing. It's far better to simply adopt the common meaning of the phrase and make personification a parent tag for all personifications.
The problem extends beyond just these two tags, however. Furrification, for example, is meant to be a tag for humanoid characters (humans, demon people, monster people etc.) depicted as furries - but if you look at the results for pokemon furrification or digimon furrification, you will find a slew of furry Pokémon and Digimon. Again, our very specific wiki definition clashes with the common definition, which is just "thing but furry".
tl;dr
It's quite clear that most of our "x-ification" tag network needs a severe overhaul, some sections more than others. The bare minimum at the moment involves the following:
- Expanding personification to be a parent tag for any kind of personification, including what was until now tagged as humanization.
- Deprecating and completely remaking humanization from the ground up with the more commonly acknowledged definition and a better name, which after much discussion on Discord was decided to be humanoid_to_human.
- Expanding furrification to be "anything depicted as a furry", be it a human, a demon girl, a mecha and so on. This obviously excludes regular animals like cats and dogs, with the exception of specific examples (ie. Grumpy Cat as a furry). It would count as personification unless the character being furrified is already a humanoid.