alias spiral_eyes -> @_@

BUR #4426 has been approved by @evazion.

create alias spiral_eyes -> @_@

Just as it was predicted in topic #16961, the two tags are still visually identical and aliasing al_bhed_eyes to spiral_eyes did not help with the already weak distinction.

Take for example a look at @_@ age:<5mo -hex_maniac_(pokemon) vs spiral_eyes age:<5mo -hex_maniac_(pokemon) (excluding hex maniac since she's being tagged based on canon). I genuinely cannot tell the difference between the two searches without looking at the search bar.

And in the case of hex maniac, spiral_eyes age:<5mo hex_maniac_(pokemon), it still looks like it's something induced by emotion more often than not (post #4178764, post #4289746, post #4211258, spiral_eyes age:<5mo hex_maniac_(pokemon) smile blush)

A "natural spiral eyes" tag implicating @_@ would be more preferable to having people tagging either of these two tags based on a coin flip.

Is there a plan following the alias to create a natural_spiral_eyes tag (or whatever other wording) that implicates @_@, so that you can still search for "comical @_@" exclusively?

I don't think the alias alone is a good solution because it conflates both things into one single undistinguishable tag despite being rather different things, and you then lose the ability to search for comedically-or-otherwise-induced @_@ eyes since the search will be full of character with naturally spiral eyes. Like BrokenEagle said in the other topic, if the two things were tagged correctly, there is a significant difference between (what should be tagged as) spiral eyes and (what should be tagged as) @_@.

Astolfo said:
Like BrokenEagle said in the other topic, if the two things were tagged correctly, there is a significant difference between (what should be tagged as) spiral eyes and (what should be tagged as) @_@.

"If" being the issue. We have to remember that ultimately whether a tag is used properly depends on its name, not on the wiki definition. Tags with obscure or confusing names always end up either being used wrong or not being used at all.

There are two main distinctions here, one of spirals inside the iris vs the irises themselves being spirals, and another based on whether the spirals are induced by emotions vs being natural.
For the first distinction, it's easy to tell the difference, and BE pointed out post #3723727 in the other thread which imo is a perfect example of this. For this kind of thing I think it's possible to have a tag specifically for the spiral irises, tough the big issue is coming up with a proper name for it, because even something like "spiral_irises" could also mean the spirals making up the inside of the irises.

For the latter, I believe it's impossible for us to keep the tags fully distinct, not unless someone monitors every single post being tagged with it over the years. The natural tag implicating the broader tag would be a better solution imo.

Note that the issue of spiral eyes vs @_@ is not a recent thing, even sorting by ID you can see a lot of posts like post #327322, post #482809, post #211379 on the first page alone that fit on @_@ instead, and the same goes the other way.

Astolfo said:

I don't think the alias alone is a good solution because it conflates both things into one single undistinguishable tag despite being rather different things

The alias is only the first step for fixing this. I'm willing to help in populating a natural_spiral_eyes tag or whatever else we decide to call it, and any other tags we want to create to differentiate full spirals vs spirals inside irises. The issue is, at the moment both tags are used for both things, so there's no real order being disrupted by this alias (for example @_@ hex_maniac_(pokemon) has a very close post count to spiral_eyes hex_maniac_(pokemon), 400ish vs 500ish). I don't think merging the tags will make it harder to then populate new specific tags.

We have to start from somewhere, otherwise it'll keep being the same mess that nobody wants to touch.

Oh, yeah for sure don't get me wrong, I absolutely want this to be fixed as well since as you said, both tags are pretty much used randomly which makes the distinction basically pointless at current.
I was just asking to make sure that this is in fact the start/first step since there's still a definite need to distinguish both. Beyond the alias, I don't know whether the best distinction to separate would be a separate tag for "natural spiral eyes" or a separate tag for "comical @_@ eyes" (probably the former) but one such tag is definitely needed so that you can exclude it from your search and get just which ones you want.
I'll change my vote now.

Perhaps the tag name for things like post #3723727 or post #245924 could be something like "spiral only eyes" and have it as a subtag of @_@. The definition should be where either the entire eye altogether has been replaced with a spiral or the entire iris & pupil has been replaced by a spiral.

NWF_Renim said:

Perhaps the tag name for things like post #3723727 or post #245924 could be something like "spiral only eyes" and have it as a subtag of @_@. The definition should be where either the entire eye altogether has been replaced with a spiral or the entire iris & pupil has been replaced by a spiral.

A name like spiral-only_eyes is a good idea, because it would show in the autocomplete right after this alias. If nobody has a better idea I'd go with this one.

NWF_Renim said:

Perhaps the tag name for things like post #3723727 or post #245924 could be something like "spiral only eyes" and have it as a subtag of @_@. The definition should be where either the entire eye altogether has been replaced with a spiral or the entire iris & pupil has been replaced by a spiral.

That wouldn't actually cover all "unnatural @_@ eyes" though, if that's the intent. post #4298684 and post #4283742 are clearly intended to be the @_@ expression, but the spirals only replace the pupils. So something like spiral only eyes wouldn't actually do much to stop a "natural spiral eyes" search from being noisy.

I'm not seeing any way to accurately distinguish these concepts without heavy reliance on context. post #211379 for example doesn't count as the @_@ expression, because spirals appearing in the iris is a naturally occurring phenomenon within the series, and not intended to represent what @_@ is typically used for. In the same vein, Hex Maniac probably shouldn't be tagged spiral eyes because hers, at least to me, are a representation of her being crazed, as she is a "maniac", and not a naturally occurring thing.

blindVigil said:
So something like spiral only eyes wouldn't actually do much to stop a "natural spiral eyes" search from being noisy.

If we do create a tag for natural spiral eyes, it would be another subset of @_@/spiral_eyes, existing along with spiral-only_eyes, so someone wanting to only see natural spirals could search for that.

But you summed up my main issue with it, which is that it heavily depends on canon and it's extremely hard to tell.
One example for such a tag would be post #318052, in which the spiral is clearly an eye feature, however this kind of post is very rare and I couldn't find many other examples (all the more reason to group them under a single well defined tag, otherwise they're just drowned by everything else).

Some other examples:
post #790722
post #2965614
post #2985019

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

The bulk update request #4426 (forum #178913) has been rejected by @DanbooruBot.

The bulk update request #4426 (forum #178913) has been approved by @evazion.

I've created spiral-only eyes as a first step. Will try to populate it a bit.

I agree that these tags are hopelessly confusing. I can't even remember which tag is supposed to be the natural spiral eyes tag and which is supposed to be the comedic spiral eyes tag without looking up the wiki definitions. If I can't tell which tag is which, then it's hopeless to expect other users to use them correctly.

I feel like if you want to tag the fact that a character has @_@ eyes because they have crazy eyes, or they're drunk, or dizzy, or hypnotized, or whatever else, you should just use those tags. At least that's understandable. I can understand what those tags mean. I don't understand something like when Hex Maniac's eyes are crazy enough to deserve one spiral eyes tag versus another.

This is like if we tried to split up the blush tag based on whether the girl has natural rosy cheeks, or she's expressing some emotion like embarassment or arousal, but the choices are just synonyms for the word blush, so you can't even tell which blush tag is which.

BUR #4977 has been approved by @evazion.

create implication spiral-only_eyes -> @_@

Managed to get it to a decent amount of posts.

The bulk update request #4977 (forum #182585) has been approved by @evazion.