Fixing french_braid

BUR #25692 is pending approval.

deprecate french_braid

After realising just how severely french_braid is mistagged, almost to the point of parody, I've gone to the effort of drafting up four new wikis based on what these styles actually are.

The first two reflect true French braids, and are as follows.

• french_braided_ponytail: "A style of braid that begins above the neck on the scalp, ending in a single tail."
• french_braided_twintails: "A style of braid that begins above the neck on the scalp, ending in two tails."

The second two reflect the style currently being (incorrectly) mass-tagged as French braids, and are as follows.

• half_up_braid: "A style of braid that loops around the back of the head."
• half_up_half_down_braid: "A style of braid that loops around the back of the head, with a tail hanging from the center of the loop."

I decided on french_braided_ponytail and french_braided_twintails because repurposing french_braid itself at this point is a lost cause, given how heavily ingrained the incorrect definiton is in many of our users. However, even when just seeing them in a taglist, french_braided_ponytail and french_braided_twintails visually describe what they're actually for and, more importantly, what they're not for.

As for the other two, if you search Google Images for "half up half down braid" you'll find results for both half_up_half_down_braid and half_up_braid because Google sucks major ass. However, if you check the link titles under each image, you'll notice that those with and without tails are consistently referred to as "half up half down braid" and "half up braid", respectively.
...all this is to say I didn't just pull these names out of my ass.

If this BUR is rejected, then the wikis I made and the four (4) posts I tagged can be reverted very easily. However, I'm fairly confident this will be a reasonable solution to most users. If this BUR is approved, then we can begin by making some character-specific mass update BURs following the format of "mass update french_braid chartag solo -> -french_braid half_up_braid".

Would half up half down braid want to imply half up braid? There are a lot of images where you can't tell which of those two it would fall under.

Not entirely sure I agree that french_braid is a lost cause - the fact that those mistags currently don't have anywhere else to go is likely a large part of the cause of the problem, and I get a distinct feeling that there will be examples that can't be neatly placed into the new tags when it comes to gardening them. But it definitely needs a lot of fixing.

skylightcrystal said:

Would half up half down braid want to imply half up braid? There are a lot of images where you can't tell which of those two it would fall under.

I was also wondering myself whether french_braided_ponytail should imply braided_ponytail, but any implications these tags might need can be discussed after they've been approved for use.

Not entirely sure I agree that french_braid is a lost cause - the fact that those mistags currently don't have anywhere else to go is likely a large part of the cause of the problem, and I get a distinct feeling that there will be examples that can't be neatly placed into the new tags when it comes to gardening them. But it definitely needs a lot of fixing.

Maybe in the future (if we really think it's necessary) we could undeprecate french_braid and have these new French braid tags imply it. Right now, however, most users are under the complete wrong impression of what a French braid is, so leaving it active is just going to accumulate more mistags. Deprecating it will give taggers a very obvious warning when they try to use it, hopefully making them actually read the wiki.

Every 2 hours that passes by is another half up braid that parades through calling itself a french braid.

post #7520588: french braid lite without the braided ponytail

Could half up braid be confused with crown braid?

nonamethanks said:

Could half up braid be confused with crown braid?

It's possible, but I think it'll be fine since it's being created now, with clear guidelines, and not 10 years ago, with word salad for a wiki. I can add a disclaimer in said wiki, if you'd like.

This is a pretty big tag. Start populating the subtags. When they're enstablished (a couple thousand posts or so each) I'll approve this and we can start mass removing it from the populated posts.

Also, french braided ponytail imo has the same pitfalls as braided ponytail, and I would've assumed that name would've been for half up half down braid, because it's literally a ponytail with a (by our CURRENT definition) french braid. We probably need more brainstorming on these names, or will need a myriad utility aliases to catch the stragglers.