Danbooru

Pokemon critter naming policy

Posted under General

See forum #53259. We need to do something about this.

To fill in those unaware, the actual Pokemon creatures received are a rare exemption to the "use original names" policy beause the Japanese names (generally simple one-word names) are highly ambiguous and could conflict with a large number of other tags (especially artists). The English names are far less likely to be ambiguous given that a preponderance of names on Danbooru are Japanese(-ish).

This was all well and good for older Pokemon games that had English names established by the time we got around to setting a policy. But then newer games came out, and much fanart got posted before English names existed. So people used the Japanese names. The real killer here is that almost none of these names were qualified with _(pokemon) so now we have simple strings of Japanese syllables like giaru and shimama and mamepato (they'll be artists names some day, you just know it) to deal with.

Which unfortunately takes us back to the situation we wanted to avoid: a choice between 1) ambiguity concerns when aliasing to the English names for the sake of generally low-to-medium count creatures or 2) edits instead of aliases, leaving people stuck wondering which names to use and having to adjust as more English names trickle through.

Pokemon really, really need to be qualified, especially when we're using the Japanese names for new games. The extra typing is annoying but I can not see any way around this.

Updated by S1eth

Something unique is probably the best route, then the pokenerds can keep an eye on the pokemon themselves to find them in batches as the english reveals happen. This is assuming we don't want to wait for english releases entirely for tag moving.

unicogirl said: Can a qualifier be "_(pkmn)" or is that too close to pikmin?

Either way although pokemon seems simple enough.

And should this post transfer to wiki? It would at least not be lost among the forum postings.

We can transfer it over once we decide exactly what to do - I do want a change but am looking for more input first from the people who will use the tags.

rantuyetmai said: I'd like "_(monster)" - that's what they are.

I prefer copyright-specific qualifiers stay the copyright name. This way we know it's very specifically from pokemon. Otherwise you could end up with, in theory, something like ghost_(monster) which is pretty confusing.

reese said: Why not add a qualifier to the ambiguous names via mass editing and then when English names are available, alias the qualified name?

Well, almost all of them are ambiguous really. And the problem remains of people getting used to, say 'mamepato' and not knowing it's now mamepato_(pokemon) -> whatevertheenglishwas. If it's _(pokemon) from the start then rss feeds and tag subs and plain old memory transfers over to the new tag without interruption.

Log said: Something unique is probably the best route, then the pokenerds can keep an eye on the pokemon themselves to find them in batches as the english reveals happen. This is assuming we don't want to wait for english releases entirely for tag moving.

It would be nice if they could transfer in one go, since having some in Japanese and some in English is confusing. Seems like they're being announced a few at a time though.

_(pokemon) is what we do for the human characters. Mixing them up is not nice, since I'm oblivious to the series and thus have a hard time finding the right name to tag the uploads.

If we want to be obvious... _(pocket_monster)?

I would go with Option 2 and let people fend for themselves. Pokemon creature naming policy is quite old, and even the dimmest users should figure something's up when creature names are English while human characters are not.

As for a qualifier for future creatures in Pokemon Bismuth and Feldspar or whatever, I like unicogirl's "_(pkmn)" suggestion. It's an official abbreviation from what I can remember, and it's a good visual cue to differentiate between human characters and creatures. I don't think we need to worry about it getting confused with Pikmin though, "_(pikmin)" should be the qualifier for that series.

Whether I'm uploading the arts or not is not important. I don't care much about the pokemon but would like to browse the human characters from time to time.

Different qualifiers helps me to allocate the name of the human quickly in a picture, and makes the browsing experience better.

I don't understand the request to apply different qualifiers to the creatures and the humans. They're all from Pokemon, and unless a creature and human share the same name there would be no need to treat them differently.

Is that really a basis for tagging policy though...? It's just a piece of information we usually don't encode in copy qualifiers. I'm not completely shutting down the idea, but it just not seem like something we've seen the need to do before.

That's what we have always been doing for Pokemon characters - adding "_(pokemon)" to the humans - and I was very happy with it. Or else it'll be hellish to know their names when looking at, for example, post #812846 or post #761155.

Pokemon is a special case because it contains so many non-human characters. And I'm sure it's not only me having more interest in the people.

rantuyetmai said:
To put it simply, I'd like to know the name of the human in a given pic right away, instead of checking out wiki every time seeing Pokemon art.

Then you'll need to learn about the series. I'm oblivious to the series, cater to my needs, and I want to know X about the series, cater to my needs are two conflicting requests. Twisting our tagging in odd and unwieldy ways just so that you can have both is not reasonable. _(pokemon) is the only sensible qualifier, and the objections you've presented don't, IMHO, outweigh the extra work and disadvantages of coming up with another qualifier.

*raised eyebrow*

If naming the tags right can help with browsing experience, why do we NOT do it? Coming up with another qualifier is difficult? You can read several suggestions above again.

If I remember correctly, you're the one who suggested the changes in rating criteria so that it could help with looking through lightly-sexual-but-tasteful pictures without porn pollution. It made things more difficult to rate and difficult to get people do it right - but I'm happy because it does help with browsing, so I do it without objection.

Now because you don't care about looking through the picture of Pokemon series, doesn't mean other people also don't. What I asked is not difficult to do in anyway, so please come up with something better than outweigh the extra work and disadvantages of coming up with another qualifier.

1 2