:)

BUR #6349 has been rejected.

remove alias :) -> smile
create implication :) -> smile

:O is its own tag
:D is its own tag, implicates smile, open_mouth
;D is its own tag, implicates smile, open_mouth, one eye closed
;) is its own tag, implicates smile, one eye closed

:) being just an alias to smile is just bizarre. There is no tag for a simple closed-mouth smile. There should be one for all the reasons that we have :O, :D, ;D, ;), and every other emoticon-styled tag.

We also have :( -> frown alias, by the way.

Edit: You also need to be clearer about the title. Something like "Remove Alias :) -> Smile".

There's already a way to search for this. It's closed_mouth smile. I can understand the existence of something like :o for a specific shape but most of the emoticons tags are garbage that are applied arbitrarily.
If we remove this then we'll just have yet another padding tag that is inferior to the actual search.

nonamethanks said:

There's already a way to search for this. It's closed_mouth smile. I can understand the existence of something like :o for a specific shape but most of the emoticons tags are garbage that are applied arbitrarily.
If we remove this then we'll just have yet another padding tag that is inferior to the actual search.

Just search smile -closed_mouth -open_mouth -grin and you'll see how many posts aren't tagged with closed mouth.

And :) is just as much of a specific shape as any of the others, less "padding" than most.

Aqros161 said:

Just search smile -closed_mouth -open_mouth -grin and you'll see how many posts aren't tagged with closed mouth.

And :) is just as much of a specific shape as any of the others, less "padding" than most.

These tags will NEVER be used for a specific shape. Just look at :D grin (topic #18070), or people arguing that "^_^" refers to any kind of upturned eyes (forum #191966), or people routinely mistagging :q for :p.
Everyone has their own definition of what these tags stand for.
;D is supposed to be mutually exclusive with :D but :D one_eye_closed has 17k results. Same for ;) vs smile one_eye_closed -;) (which ironically has ten times the results as the combination tag). Also topic #19066.
The list goes on.

I also just noticed the wiki for :o says "Only widely open mouths should use the open_mouth tag.". This is yet another example of how dumb these tags are. :o parted_lips has close to 18k results.

nonamethanks said:

I also just noticed the wiki for :o says "Only widely open mouths should use the open_mouth tag.". This is yet another example of how dumb these tags are. :o parted_lips has close to 18k results.

I don't see any problem with that wiki and :o + parted_lips tag combination.

Circle-shaped mouth that's opened widely: :o + open_mouth
Circle-shaped mouth that's opened slightly: :o + parted_lips

MyrMindservant said:

I don't see any problem with that wiki and :o + parted_lips tag combination.

Circle-shaped mouth that's opened widely: :o + open_mouth
Circle-shaped mouth that's opened slightly: :o + parted_lips

I think :o should be for any kind of o-shaped mouth too. I'm just talking about how the wiki has a definition that's completely different from the actual usage of the tag.

nonamethanks said:

I think :o should be for any kind of o-shaped mouth too. I'm just talking about how the wiki has a definition that's completely different from the actual usage of the tag.

But :o wiki already allows for such usage, even if it's a bit unclear. The first sentence in the wiki says "Circle-shaped mouths of all sizes" and then it says that we should only add open_mouth if the mouth is opened widely. It doesn't say that we can't use parted_lips for expressions where it's opened slightly.

I guess the wiki could be updated to clarify this.

Welp, I must've had a brain fart and mixed it with the wiki definition for :d. Sorry, I retract that statement.

I guess the point i had in mind was that :D is for open wide smiles but it's used for all kind of smiles no matter the size simply because they're D shaped (and I'm guilty of it too, because when I'm tagging I'm not using active brain power to calculate which mouth size is adequate for a D shape).

Seems to me like gardening closed mouth would be a more practical solution than adding a new tag to hundreds of thousands of posts. The existing emoticon tags in the OP are massive from years of use, and the tag being proposed here would theoretically be even more common.

That's unless :) ends up meaning something more specific than that particular combination tag search, which I'm having trouble picturing.

nonamethanks said:

There's already a way to search for this. It's closed_mouth smile.

Won't that return a lot of false positives when the character smiling and the character with the closed mouth aren't the same one?

DownWithTheThickness said:

Won't that return a lot of false positives when the character smiling and the character with the closed mouth aren't the same one?

The same argument can be made for any combination tags. We don't have long black hair and yet long_hair black_hair could return wrong posts.

:) and smile closed_mouth are functionally equivalent. The results are the same, and false positives are drowned among correct results, so someone searching for the tag will always reliably see what they want, making the combination tag redundant.
In this case, this is mostly because for any given tag not focused on interactions there are on average more solo than multiple_* posts.

As much as I like the normal emoticon tags I don't think having :) (or :() would be useful, they are easily searchable already.

Rejecting for several reasons:

• I think emoticon tags are bad in general and should be avoided whenever possible. They're fraught with ambiguity, they're hard to discover, and they tend to be ugly and hard to understand. Tags should be regular words whenever possible.
• :) is ambiguous. If ;) is a one-eye-closed smile, then I would guess :) to be a both-eyes-open smile, not a closed-lips smile.
• We already have c: for a certain kind of closed-lip smile. "But I've never heard of that tag before," you say. Exactly; see my point above about emoticon tags being hard to find and hard to understand.
• I doubt we'd ever have a tag called closed-lip smile, which is what this is. If you can say a tag out loud and it sounds like a bad idea, then it probably is.

The bulk update request #6349 (forum #192023) has been rejected by @evazion.