After Samatoki's rejection, they contacted me to get further details on the wider costume tagging debate. Below will be the unabridged versions of our respective private messages.
Samatoki said:
I've seen some of your previous discussions about ONE PIECE and Steven Universe. Actually I previously requested some Costume Implications fewer than 10 posts (and they were approved). As it seems fairly common to create separate tags for many different outfits with few posts (e.g. Cloud Strife).
But honestly I'm not entirely sure whether to assign different costume tags to certain characters (especially those who frequently change outfits in the anime).
Since I don't frequent the forums much, I'm unsure where the current discussion on costume tags stands, especially whats nonamethanks' current stance on this. Could you tell me more?
Damian0358 said:
It's a complicated topic since it's split between multiple threads, but I'll try my best to help direct you where you can read some of the more important discourse. A fairly major thread recently was one regarding Mario, on the validity on some select tags (topic #32523). While the associated BURs in that thread were auto-rejected, both sides of the debate on whether the tags should exist or not brought up important points, with citations from past debates. My post in forum #370051 has me doing my best recounting the broader debate, at least as I saw it, and whenever I talk on the issue, such as in your thread, I try to reference either past debates or past times I've talked about the issue (so please make use of those, those aren't just there to make me seem right, those are there for people to also check for themselves).
I think in each of your approval's cases (topic #31223, topic #31322, topic #31517, topic #31830), I think they were approved because no one was really paying attention (including myself). The base presumption for costume BURs like this is that the user who made the tags is not pushing any boundaries, and that no one would be able to use the approvals to push boundaries later. For instance, I notice that several of the tags in these BURs are collaboration costumes, and those have gotten greater scrutiny in topic #33350. Some seem to be powered-up forms? The Dark forms, which could be argued on validity based on topic #32483. And the tags which exist to depict younger versions of a character could be justified via topic #18354, even if they didn't have any official names, but that's potentially stretching it. None of your BURs were questioned on whether or not they were valid, and by that virtue no one else decided to double-check validity.
Of course, this completely ignores approvals such as in topic #26682, which is one of several examples which don't exactly relate to the wider costume tag debate, since this is just giving characters with many posts smaller tags allowing one to search narrower designs that might otherwise be hard to search for (I'm trying to find when one of the admins explicitly said this of an approved BUR, but I can't currently find it, but trust me when I say that one of them had said something along the lines of "if a design is prominent enough it should get its own tag"). So it's very likely that your approvals actually fell under this argument instead, especially since the existence of the costume tags allows you to remove them from a search to find the character's default/normal designs (ex. ye_xiu -ye_xiu_(lord_grim)).
The reason why that point doesn't relate to the wider costume tag debate is because of scope. In the costume tag debate, something I continuously rail against is maximalism. Across the parts of the website relevant to the costume tag debate, the predominant attitude is "if the costume exists and it has an official name, it should be tagged no matter what", which is how you get situations like my common example of EM-2 (per forum #272658). This is why people are so reserved when it comes to spreading costume tags, because one wrong approval and suddenly you'll have users pushing maximalist tagging everywhere, from the most prominent characters to the most obscure. Like, imagine if some random user, noticing your costume tags for novel characters, decided to use your approved BURs as an argument for making chartags for Hercule Poirot or something. As unreasonable as that might seem, cases such as the Padme Amidala and Steven Universe BURs prove that something like that is possible.
Samatoki said:
First of all, thank you so much for your detailed response!
I noticed you've offered suggestions in many previous topic discussions about costumes, so I'd like to consult with you and discuss this in detail.
Personally, creating some costume tags was mainly to facilitate my editing or searching of previously uploaded images within those tags (since most of these copyrights' posts were uploaded by me). My earlier implications requests were rather disorganized since I was new and submitted whatever came to mind. Some approved items now seem unnecessary (ex. lan wangji (dark) its not an official costume but just some fan arts).
You mentioned not noticing my requests before but did so today. Was it because I submitted too many at once? Or were there specific requests in today's batch that you found particularly problematic?
(Please feel free to tell me—for example, which requests you think are acceptable and which you don't recommend.)
From my personal perspective, if a character's particular outfit is highly distinctive or has at least 30 related submissions, it maybe warrants its own tag. (ex. cheng xiaoshi (angel))
But I also noticed the issues from the One Piece BURs—if a character changes outfits frequently, should we avoid doing so?)
However, as you mentioned, if an outfit differs only slightly from the original or has few related images, a dedicated costume tag might not be necessary. (ex. cheng xiaoshi (s2))
Alternatively, may I retain existing tags without requesting implications? (This is why I avoided submitting requests for so long.) This may offer flexibility—if multiple users later find certain tags redundant, I can just remove them.
Btw there are actually some examples I don't quite understand. Take the Sonic (series), for instance: nearly every character has separate tags for each outfit, even if there are only one or two related images. (ex. rouge_the_bat_(elite_agent))
While I can see why the ONE PIECE and Steven Universe example was rejected, I don't get why cases like Sonic keep getting accepted (especially since it's not even a gacha game). Doesn't that seem a bit unfair to Steven Universe? (Just kidding
Damian0358 said:
Yeah, if it's just some fan designs and there is no unified design behind it, then that reduces validity. But otherwise, there is some arguments to be had on whether that's fine, since it can be argued that if Splatoon could have similar costume tags (topic #31002) then why not your preferred copyright, etc.
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I don't think it's because you submitted too many, but moreso that you didn't explain them. You just presented the tags matter-of-factly and I trusted your judgement that the BURs you had submitted previously were fine, since I have no familiarity in the copyrights in question. It's specifically because you labeled today's BUR as "Chinese Animations Costume implications" that warranted my intervention because the issue of whether or not anime characters should get costume tags on the same scale as gacha et al is still an ongoing topic. For every previous BUR of yours, if I had noticed them, I likely just assumed you were making BURs for a Chinese gacha or something (though that's just my perspective, I have no idea what the people who upvoted your BURs were thinking aside from "this seems like an easy approval" and not looking into what you're doing further).
Of course, there's also the point WRS raised, in that you had multiple copyrights represented in one BUR, but that's not a costume-related issue, that's just general practice to keep a BUR focused on a specific thing (that way you avoid something like "I think it's fine for this copyright, but not that one" and you're forced to make another BUR anyway).
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Yeah, I don't think you'll find people opposing this logic (except for maximalists who are like "if it has one post, it gets a tag already, no point in waiting or debating").
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One of the things to remember about the One Piece BUR is the fact that it did get prematurely rejected by its submitter. While the favgroups used are still filled and the BUR could be approved by one of the admins after the fact, that premature rejection did result in the discussion slowly dying out, leaving us only with what ifs. My main issue with the One Piece BUR is what it might imply for future practice, where now we're tagging the default appearance of the main protagonists for major franchises now, but whether or not we should avoid tagging just because a character changes outfits frequently is up for debate.
Cardcaptor Sakura is a great example of this (topic #27772), as Sakura has a ton of costumes from her source material, and in turn we still have a bunch of tagged costumes whose existence is technically not justified based on current discussion, but which currently exist in limbo because we now have a gacha from which names could be derived from (and with names, gacha rules ends up applying, and justifying their existence). We never really resolved the underlying tension of either BUR because one got prematurely rejected and the other got validated after the fact by a gacha. We never resolved under which terms we were debating on.
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Yeah, some folks would question the logic behind that (from both ends of the debate: "why does he have a costume tag that's barely different from his default, nuke it" and "why does he have a costume tag that's barely different from his default, let's broaden it and just make it his default costume tags).
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I mean, you can, but what's important in my eyes is that you actually bring them up in the forum if you think they might cause issues for later debate. As I was writing, this just happened in topic #29460. One user earlier this year, without discussion and without telling anyone, just suddenly made costume tags for Sengoku Nadeko from the Monogatari series, calling into question the validity of those tags due to the fact that she falls outside of the current acceptable boundaries of costume tagging as it pertains to the gacha/VTuber/etc. space. Sometimes people forget to bring things up for discussion in the forum, but other times people deliberately avoid mentioning anything to anyone because they believe that if they did their tags would get nuked, effectively through subterfuge normalizing the tag(s)'s existence, allowing someone else to notice the tag(s) after god knows how much time and doing the hard work of implications and all for you (ex. forum #343368 and forum #343400).
Now people in topic #29460 are going to go back and forth based on the points that I had mentioned to you here, debating whether this is a Steven Universe/Padme Amidala situation or if this is a Dungeon Meshi situation, and with that decide the fate of Nadeko's tags.
Bringing things back to your BUR, I think it would make sense for you to bring up your past approvals and bringing forth discussion on whether or not their approvals were valid in retrospect. If they were (if not all of them, then at least some), then that could give you enough justification to resubmit your earlier proposal, at least as separate BURs accounting for copyright. And it's important to discuss why they were valid if they were, and whether that has implications to the wider costume tagging debate as it pertains to gacha/VTubers/etc or whether it falls under the older mentality of "if it has a lot of posts and it's a distinct design, it should get a tag", thereby explicitly avoiding any implications in the process.
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I mean, if you noticed with the Sonic BURs, you can see topic #27846 and topic #31158 and see the results of that discussion yourself. As I mentioned in forum #370051, in-game named costumes are currently in the realm of permissibility, something that anime, manga, and cartoons don't fall under, unless they have video game adaptations.
Samatoki said:
First, thank you for your detailed response.
Sorry my English is not very good, I may not have fully grasped some of previous discussions, and not very familiar with forum code usages. I'm concerned that posting again directly might not convey my points clearly, so I'd like to ask you for more details.
1. In forum #292585, Admin stated that costume tags were intended solely for gacha characters and VTubers.
However, many other costume tags are frequently approved. The forum's current stance on costume tags seems ambiguous. I may need to reference more specific examples from past posts.
First, what was the original intent behind allowing costume tags for gacha games? Was it intended for in-game named skins for playable characters? (e.g., ganyu_(twilight_blossom)_(genshin_impact))
But now it seems any character outfit change can get its own tag—including different ages, events, collaborations like KFC, or even just an official art.
(e.g., ganyu_(winter_olympics)_(genshin_impact))
You mentioned that game characters can have costume tags (like Final Fantasy, Sonic, Mario, etc.), and their original intent also seemed to be for “in-game named costumes” (e.g., amy_rose_(summer_sports)).
But in practice, many more of their outfits have separate tags, even if they only come from an official art (e.g., amy rose (kimono), amy_rose_(raincoat)).
If the rule is “all outfits for game characters can have separate tags, but not for anime/novel characters,” this seems unreasonable. If an outfit isn't “from a game,” it shouldn't depend on whether the character is a “game character.”
2. Is there currently a clear policy regarding whether non-gacha/VTuber characters can have outfit tags created for them, and if so, how many? I'd like to know if this is specified in the forum rules.
I suspect some of my previous requests were approved not only because moderators or others overlooked them, but because I only requested one or two outfit tags per character (e.g., topic #31322).
Perhaps there are unspoken rules, like what we discussed earlier: creating costume tags for an anime or novel character within three is acceptable? But creating too many tags might cause resentment.
Additionally, for different identities of a single character (like alternate universes, hero transformations, etc.)—not just outfits—are separate tags generally allowed by default? (For example joker_(persona_5), like topic #31830 I requested for previously)
3. You mentioned an admin once said, “if a design is prominent enough it should get its own tag.” Could you show me the relevant post? I believe this statement supports some of my previous BURs. Also, I'd like to see what specific cases this statement was applied to.
Damian0358 said:
1. The start of costume tagging, at least as it pertains to gacha, VTubers, etc. can be traced back to two topics: topic #15938 and topic #17300. evazion himself was the one to kick off the trend of costume tagging (at the time more specifically referred to as 'skin tagging', due to focusing on gacha skins in Azur Lane's case) because, fundamentally speaking, it wasn't easy to find a specific gacha skin in a search, especially if there's no one feature of said skin that gets consistently tagged. As evazion himself would explain in the former topic, at the time, there was already precedent, most relevant being the Overwatch and League of Legends skins. Once people began debating having costume tags generally, that's when evazion pulls the gacha card out and how we have to adapt to account for the multitude of designs these games have, which from that point out establishes the original boundary of skin tagging as "MOBAs and gacha". The latter topic has evazion clarifying his stance.
Now, as I mentioned in my previous messages, something that complicates this entire discussion is that we're technically dealing with multiple debates; the debate on whether to give a prominent design its own tag, and the costume tagging debate. They overlap, but they are not the same, and a lot of the debating is functionally about preventing the former from becoming the latter (preventing the normalization of maximalist costume tagging). The Sonic costumes you just mentioned are a great example, because as I said, those were fiercly debated over in topic #27846 and topic #31158. But now we're dealing with one of the reasons why the maximalists always win: when would making a tag for Amy Rose (Kimono) be acceptable if it never became a gacha costume? It's a specific kimono design, there's a chance that it could be referenced in other material or be made playable like other costumes originating from Sonic Channel official art, and searching amy_rose kimono gives us false positives. So why shouldn't it get a tag? If we're focusing strictly on whether it has an official name (whether as a result of it being obtainable or not in-game), which a lot of gacha costume tag debating focuses on, then it wouldn't be valid, but then we get into situations like topic #33144 or topic #26671, where we have prominent gacha costumes which do not have names, but instead appear in specific contexts only (whether it be the former's dorms, or the latter's seasons), which brings us to something the "tag it if it is prominent" debate introduced: descriptive qualifiers. A lot of VTuber costumes also use descriptive qualifiers because most don't have official names and people really hate the nth_costume qualifier format (forum #249727), and you also have official art-only costume tags made for specific designs. So, does Amy Rose (Kimono) fall under that? It obviously doesn't have an official name, and just describes the specific costume she's wearing. You can see how this 'official name' principle has effected Sengoku Nadeko in topic #29460 since I last mentioned it, as the tag creator was able to find the official name translations and argue his case, prompting even the user who originally complained about the tags to upvote it, being convinced of his argument of "the forms [being] clearly identifable enough to warrant their own tag," including the two which have descriptive qualifiers as opposed to official names. But does that fall under the costume tagging debate, or does that fall under the older debate of "tag it if it is prominent"? The fact the complainer couldn't tell shows how ambiguous it can be, and why I ultimately focus on the existing boundaries, because whether something gets approved or not beyond them depends greatly.
Note, I didn't mean to imply that "all outfits for game characters can have separate tags, but not for anime/novel characters" is the rule. topic #24078 is all about attempting to standardize gacha skin copyright qualifiers for characters who got skins as a result of a gacha crossover, which falls under the costume tagging debate because "if they got an officially named skin because of the crossover, then I have to tag it!!!" Rainbow Six Siege characters got costume tags because of Arknights, Elphelt Valentine got costume tags because of Girls' Frontline, etc.
2. No, there aren't, otherwise we wouldn't have the debates we have to begin with (they'd be focused on the policy instead).
Hm, I hadn't thought of that, but perhaps that could be the case. Perhaps it also depends on whether searchability for said costumes could be replicated using other means (ex. something like son_goku_(gt) not being considered valid because you can search son_goku dragon_ball_gt for that instead, though that argument is based solely on copytags).
They are, but now you're involving a third type of debate, magical girl/superhero costumes... it's not relevant here, but topic #13004, topic #27298 and topic #31650 are your primers for that debate. Generally, you are right that different identities are tagged by default, but then you have to debate the relationship that different identity has with the original identity as tags, whether they should be kept separate, imply, or just aliased completely (topic #19098/topic #19101 as an example of the last via Boku no Hero Academia), both dependant on in-story context (ex. Jackie Chun is an alt-persona of Muten Roushi, which the reader knows about, and it's made clear it's his disguise) and tag accessibility (do we want to flood Tsukino Usagi with tons of Sailor Moon (cosplay) posts? topic #32924). I'm already complicating things by explaining we have two debates relevant to costume tagging, so let's try to avoid involving a third.
3. The earlier mentioned topic #17300 has evazion saying "If a character has multiple distinct versions, then each version should get its own tag" (post #172656), but that's not actually the quote I was thinking of. Still relevant to you though, but not the exact one. I'll keep looking for it because I somehow haven't kept this organized.
On a related note though, would it be fine if I shared our discussion in your thread? I think having more people express their thoughts on the situation, and potentially questioning my interpretation of things, would help broaden your understanding somewhat.
Samatoki said:
Thank you again for your detailed response.
I'm not sure if I'm understanding this correctly: First, the current rules are indeed somewhat ambiguous. Since there was a general agreement earlier to create costume tags for game characters, this later evolved into “creating tags for every outfit they've ever worn,” leading to many redundant non-game tags (the very hyper-minimalism you dislike).
Your objection to this approach—especially preventing its expansion into anime and novel adaptations—stems from not wanting to see “every character's every outfit tagged, resulting in an overly cluttered and cumbersome tag system,” correct?
Personally, I partially agree with your perspective. I believe special outfit tags can be created for non-game characters, but not excessively—
For characters with numerous images, limit costume tags to two or three at most maybe. These should represent their “most common official alternate costumes” (e.g., I believe Nami's post-two-years look warrants a separate tag since both her hairstyle and clothing changed).
For characters with fewer images, like padme amidala, costume tags may be not necessary.
Therefore, I removed some anime costume tags from Shiguang Dailiren, retaining only those with the most images or the most representative looks.
Today I submitted several requests based on different copyrights. I'm unsure if you approve:
In topic #33430 for Aotu World , since I found it has two mobile games, I may request costume tags for its characters.
In topic #33433 for Shiguang Dailiren, since there's no game, I plan to apply for only two costume tags.
In topic #33432 for tianguan cifu, I misused age-related tags and revised it later. By the way I'd like to ask: when making minor changes to tags with few related images, should I directly use the codes on the forum posts, or is it acceptable to manually modify and replace tag names like I did before?
I welcome you to share your perspective or stance (e.g., support/opposition) on my submitted requests. However, I plan to post a new request soon that seems more suitable for us to discussing these views—
Regarding MoDao ZuShi. I discovered it also has a mobile game, so I wonder if creating costume tags for non-mobile game skins might be okay or not. I intend to split that request into two BURs:
First: Remove the tag “lan_wangji_(dark)” (or maybe I just delete it manually)
Second: Request tags for other new Pop-Up Shops and Cafes outfits.
Personally, I don't think these outfit tags necessarily need to be kept, since there aren't many related images. But since this copyright also has a gacha game, maybe we could use it as a thread to discuss our views. What do you think?
Damian0358 said:
Hyper-maximalism, but yes, that's my primary objection. As I mentioned with the example of EM-2 from Girls' Frontline, she's an example of someone that doesn't need costume tags but because it's acceptable for gacha, she got as much as she could get.
I don't know if you can firmly establish rules like the ones you just suggested because, outside of the costume tagging debate, it's all on a case-by-case basis. The ONE PIECE example would likely be perfectly fine, if not for the concern that it'd inspire similar cases elsewhere, so unless you firmly state "I do not think that this ONE PIECE proposal should be used as precedent for similar proposals for other shonen copyrights or otherwise" and have the admins firmly stand by that, it probably wouldn't get approved. Unhelped by this is that we have several costume general tags that could be turned into costume character tags; that's how we've got idol and Vocaloid costume tags now, with tags such as Danganronpa 10th Anniversary costume likely being looked at as viable in the same way as illustration-only costume tags.
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For Aotu World, if you have a source for those names and a mobile game to source from, then you'd good to go in the same way as Cardcaptor Sakura. I don't have any strong opinions on Shiguang Dailiren, but you have the precedent of topic #31517 in your favor to ensure they get approved, so I think communicating what the source material is important, since you didn't do so in that topic, and communicating that now would signal what its potential approval would mean.
For Tianguan Cifu, you can update BURs to change their contents, but you should only do so if it doesn't change the intent of the BUR (and if it does, that you communicate that, so that people who had voted previously can update their votes), but if you aren't certain that everyone will see the updated BUR, it is safer to just reject it and make a new one. In regards to updating tags with few tagged posts, that depends; if the tag already has an implication, then you have to handle that through the forum; if it doesn't, then that depends on context. If you were the only user to have handled that tag, if the tag is ambiguous in one way or another, if the tag can be substituted reliably with a two-tag search, etc. then it's probably fine to handle manually.
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For Modao Zushi, you can't delete Lan Wangji (Dark) because it has an implication due to topic #31517, so you have to unimply and nuke it through a BUR (so that you don't have an empty implied tag), while for the illustration-only costumes you already have past precedent elsewhere you can argue on, assuming you want to do so.
But just because something has a gacha game doesn't mean now every costume has to get tagged. Ylimegirl has talked about how Fate doesn't have any costume tags for stuff that only appeared in the original visual novels because they haven't appeared as skins in F/GO. Elphelt's GFL skin didn't result in tons of Guilty Gear costume tags. The attempt at making Street Fighter costume tags (topic #28159) hasn't resulted in an explosion of tags yet because, without the approval, the main user proposing it didn't see the justification to start tagging more. All Modao Zushi's gacha would result in, if it has skins, is that the skins in the gacha would get tagged, and likely nothing else if no one pushed for it (ex. how no one until recently pushed for Azur Lane dorm tags, despite it having skin tags). That's the bare acceptable minimum when involving gachas.
Regardless, I think it's important that this conversation be made public, just so other people can share their thoughts, especially if there's something they managed to remember that I had forgotten.
Samatoki said:
Thanks for your reply!
Actually, I just edited the tags for modao zushi and removed the Pop-Up Shops costume tags—I generally think that unless it's a game skin, costumes with fewer than 30 images don't need separate tags. I think you'd agree with that too.
Also, I noticed another outfit for Wei Wuxian seems to have enough images. While it's somewhat similar to the default one, it might be eligible for its own tag. Because this character in the story has undergone rebirth (meaning that while the souls of the characters in these two costume tags are the same, their bodies are different).
Therefore, I won't use Modao zushi as an example to justify that all non-game outfits for gacha game characters should have separate tags. I'll request later to nuke the lan wangji (dark) tag.
Just feel free to reference our discussion in any of my previous posts or share your own thoughts!
I may hold two main viewpoints:
1. We don't need excessive tags, but it's acceptable to create one or two costume tags for non-game/VTUber characters when appropriate.
2. Even for gacha game characters, I think there's no need to tag every single piece of clothing they wear outside the games. In fact, if any outfits for a game character could get its own tag, while non-game characters struggle to get tags for their outfits, it would indeed feel unfair to fans of non-game copyrights and image searchers.
I think you could even request to nuke some of the less reasonable tags from old requests? (like amy rose (kimono)) That way we may gauge everyone's current stance.
The new threads mentioned by Samatoki are at topic #33430, topic #33432, topic #33433, and topic #33434.
