Tagging cosplayers (if at all); artist vs character tag

Cosplayers are tagged erratically, from tag_group:people and a few I got to list:

• Alina Becker
• alisa-chan
• azami (cosplayer)
• blt
• Bunny Ayumi
• Candybunny 22
• Chocoball
• Enako
• ely eee
• gsotm mik
• Hane-Ame
• jenny_(littlekittymiau)
• Ki no ko yama
• Kipi-san
• M I L K
• Shirogane-sama // Shirogane-sama
• Swimsuitsuccubus
• totomi o kanjite sakurai

• Shirogane-sama // Shirogane-sama Is the most interesting case since in one she's featured as a model, and in the other the tagger interpreted she was featured as a character. I'd be more inclined to say she's an artist in both pictures since she's lending her likeness to the illustrator anyway.

Something similar happens with zun (artist) and zun photo_(medium) or mitsuki yuuya but arguably cosplayers are not part of the real life <lore> to warrant a character tag and in the practical sense it is more useful to have an artist entry for them gathering their social media links. In fact it could be said that while zun is portraying himself cosplayers are portraying another character by means of their likeness. A rebuttal would be: arnold schwarzenegger but well... practical reasons, I don't think he is going to start uploading art anytime soon :d.

Tying in to the earlier topic I think it would be useful having a qualifier for them. Opinions?

I'm not 100% clear about what is being suggested, but if we were to standardize everything... perhaps use artist tags for cosplayers when they're cosplaying, and character tags with a _(cosplayer) qualifier when they are being drawn or otherwise portrayed by someone else (including, say "nested cosplays", i.e. Cosplayer X cosplaying Cosplayer Y cosplaying as Character Z). Like what is being done for Shirogane-sama vs Shirogane-sama_(cosplayer).

That said, this does lead to an issue on what qualifier to use for an artist-tag cosplayer if the name is ambiguous to need one. We can use the name of the cosplay 'doujin' group like how we do for other artists, but I don't think most Western cosplayers have one. Perhaps use their social media ID as the qualifier instead in those cases.

Though this might potentially lead to ugly double qualifiers when such a cosplayer then gets portrayed in art by another artist... but those cases would be rare anyhow, and we'll probably deal with those on a case-by-case basis when it happens. If it happens.