Danbooru

splitting looking_afar and looking_away

Posted under Tags

the wiki of looking afar includes posts where the character's gaze is "not at a subject that is visible in the image close-by". why? the reason to keep looking_afar as a standalone tag is that it includes some obvious distance in the image -- like in these kinds of scenery posts -- hence the word "afar". including things like post #6205768 in looking afar where the distance isn't known is silly, for all we know Anya is pointing at some sign quite possibly five feet away from her.

any image where characters are looking at some unknown distance should be given their respective directional look and perspective tags (looking_* and from_*), not put into looking afar... right?

also on the topic of directional looking tags would be looking away. this tag currently blankets two very distinct situations together, one where the subject is simply not looking at the viewer (literally the opposite of looking at viewer) and also instances of deliberate averted eyes due to embarrassment, dislike, frustration, and so on. averting eyes was aliased a long, long time ago in topic #11758 because of a perceived overlap due to the (still) incorrect wording of looking away's wiki. should post #6241819 or post #6241743 really be given the same tag as post #6235101? if the primary usage of "looking away" is going to be "character drawn to not make eye contact with the viewer for no particular reason" the name needs to contrast with looking at viewer, such as looking away from viewer. that way there is no more ambiguity, and averting eyes can safely come back to represent the posts it best describes.

sample BUR for my opinion on looking away:
unalias averting eyes -> looking away
alias looking away -> looking away from viewer

I used 'looking_away' when the character is looking away from the viewer (you) or other characters, and used 'looking_afar' when the character is looking elsewhere without paying attention to the viewer or other characters.
So, for '_away', I think it's essential that the character is aware of the viewer or other characters. That's the crucial difference between the two tags.

So rather than renaming the ‘_away’ tags, I think it would be better to separate them into "from viewer" and "from other" to distinguish them.
Idk ‘_afar’ needs to be modified.

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I tend to agree on what looking afar should be
For looking away i have the same habits as AkaringoP (basically i use it as if it was just averting eyes), so i would be in favor of renaming the tags to be more descriptive so the tagging finally gets more consistent, but not in the way you just proposed, would be more along the lines of making averting eyes the main tag (but ofc only after some thorough cleaning is done)
I really don't think we will ever need a tag for when the character is "not looking at the viewer" but also not averting eyes, that's just -looking_at_viewer , maybe one specifically for cases where the character is looking "in the same direction" as the viewer, as in a "real" more specific opposite of looking at viewer, if you get the idea

I have similar habits as mentioned above, but still, I'm always confused by looking afar and its examples, looking ahead and looking away. I keep checking the wikis and recent posts and sometimes I choose not to tag them because of this.

post #4225016 should be facing away IMO and post #2406093 is mentioned as looking ahead and looking afar, but looking_ahead looking_afar have only 154 posts (two mine, probably mistagged) and I fail to differentiate the two, looking at their individual posts. I don't support the rename btw.

Individual said:

post #4225016 should be facing away IMO

Why? It's not facing away from anything, this should be looking afar

EDIT: If you mean "Facing away from the point of view" (or, better put in this case, looking at the opposite side of the point of view), then from behind should suffice.

post #2406093 is mentioned as looking ahead and looking afar, but looking_ahead looking_afar have only 154 posts (two mine, probably mistagged) and I fail to differentiate the two, looking at their individual posts.

Looking ahead is used for when a character is looking in front of them (so the direction the head is facing and direction the chest is facing are the same). Looking afar is used for when a character is looking at the distance, at nothing in particular. They're not mutually exclusive. In post #4456176 he isn't looking straight ahead, but is still looking far away.

Username_Hidden said:

Why? It's not facing away from anything, this should be looking afar

EDIT: If you mean "Facing away from the point of view" (or, better put in this case, looking at the opposite side of the point of view), then from behind should suffice.

Looking ahead is used for when a character is looking in front of them (so the direction the head is facing and direction the chest is facing are the same). Looking afar is used for when a character is looking at the distance, at nothing in particular. They're not mutually exclusive. In post #4456176 he isn't looking straight ahead, but is still looking far away.

Yes, also because it's mentioned as facing away in the wiki. I have a hard time thinking what to tag because while not being mutually exclusive, with from side, looking at viewer and other angles included, they're not actively mutually tagged, I see looking ahead as kind of superfluous as well.

Individual said:

post #4225016 should be facing away IMO and post #2406093 is mentioned as looking ahead and looking afar...

Username Hidden said:

Looking afar is used for when a character is looking at the distance, at nothing in particular.

This is the problem. "Looking afar" implies some sort of distance, i.e. the subject is looking at a point that's far away. If we have no way of verifying that the point is indeed far away, this tag is useless and only serves to confuse people and pad posts. post #2406093 is a great example of this. like I said in the original post, she could be looking at something far in the distance, but she could also be looking at her neighbor in the tower a stone's throw from her window. only looking ahead should apply to this situation, because that's all we can prove. in my ideal world, looking afar would probably only apply to instances of scenery and from behind like post #6122910.

Username_Hidden said:

Forgive me, I was the one who misunderstood the purpose of looking away.
Looking away is basically from_behind + looking_ahead. It should probably be nuked.

looking away shouldn't be nuked -- it contains two valid concepts -- but it does need clarification. at the moment it blankets two things, from as simple as "not looking at viewer" due to a lack of awareness to "averting gaze deliberately" out of a certain emotion. the rename was my first idea for clarity, but if people aren't on board with that looking away could be deprecated, turned into a disambiguation, and direct users to either averting eyes and whatever name is chosen for "not looking at viewer". point is, like Mayhem-Chan stated above, looking away in the majority of uses is synonymous with -looking at viewer and should be split up.

Individual said:

Keep in mind facing_* tags and facing away exist.

bob14234657 said:

in my ideal world, looking afar would probably only apply to instances of scenery and from behind like post #6122910.

In theory facing away is different from the suggested use of looking afar, a character could very well be seen from side or mostly facing viewer but also looking back at the scenery
or alternatively facing away (btw what's the practical difference between this tag and from behind?) in the direction of the scenery but looking back at the viewer like post #5923157

bob14234657 said:

going off of the wiki, facing away is a specific offshoot of from behind that should be used only when the subject's eyes aren't visible. whereas from behind can include any image where the perspective is behind the character, looking at them or not (i.e. post #6231983 from behind and facing away, post #5936070 just from behind).

seems like there's a bit of a mess with the names of most of this group of tags and how unintuitive they tend to be compared to their intended use according to their wikis then

Updated

Mayhem-Chan said:

so basically facing away = from behind+looking away

"facing_*" tags are the response to situations where the subject's body is positioned in a certain direction, but their eyes aren't visible. take post #6227648 for example, for it to be facing away, from behind and not looking away, from behind her head should be turned about 90 more degrees to the right.

seeing this image is reigniting my hatred for looking away (thanks UNB) and I'm going to renege on my previous statement -- I wouldn't oppose a looking_away nuke. having such a tag on posts like the above mentioned and post #6212045 is completely inane when they both already have valid directional looking tags: looking to the side and looking ahead respectively.

bob14234657 said:

"facing_*" tags are the response to situations where the subject's body is positioned in a certain direction, but their eyes aren't visible. take post #6227648 for example, for it to be facing away, from behind and not looking away, from behind her head should be turned about 90 more degrees to the right.

seeing this image is reigniting my hatred for looking away (thanks UNB) and I'm going to renege on my previous statement -- I wouldn't oppose a looking_away nuke. having such a tag on posts like the above mentioned and post #6212045 is completely inane when they both already have valid directional looking tags: looking to the side and looking ahead respectively.

Again, i'm more in favor or making averting eyes the main tag, because a nuke would just make it a bigger chore to actually tag all the posts that would apply to averting eyes; but the worst part of the current state of looking away is that it would already inevitably be a huge chore to separate the posts that should fall under averting eyes from the ones that should fall under the other cases you mentionned like looking ahead & co.; especially since the only tag referring to where a character is looking that consistently gets tagged is looking at viewer, and the facing_* tags are very underused to a worse degree (i only learned about their existence recently), one can't even rely on specific searches to try and clean looking away, so i feel you

BUR #16678 has been approved by @nonamethanks.

deprecate looking_away

Our looking/facing tags are very old, and come with a host of problems because they were all created in a time when ambiguity wasn't a problem due to the site being a fraction of the size that it is today. We group together a lot of things that shouldn't be grouped simply because they sound similar semantically, and due to their size it's really hard to fix them now. And it doesn't help that is that it's really hard to condense concepts like these in a few words that won't break our sidebar for being too long.

An example that always comes to mind is facing viewer, which is actually "character with closed eyes and the face straight-on towards the viewer", but is routinely used for characters looking at the viewer. Just look at the amount of mistags that are constantly cleaned up.

Unfortunately, more than a decade of bad usage means that there's thousands of mistags in each of these tags. I don't know if aliases are the best way to fix this, because it just means moving the problem to a different tag and it becomes really hard (and not really motivating) to fix it.

In the specific case of looking away, for example, there's stuff like post #6268841, looking afar, looking up (in a thinking way, to look at cats, to the ceiling...), looking away from the viewer, looking away from another character, averting eyes, facing away (looking_away facing_away has hundreds of posts and they're almost all wrong for both tags)... It's a complete mess.

I'm thinking it makes more sense to deprecate this tag, so that it can be cleaned up at our own pace and we can keep track of the moved posts. It's simply too ambiguous a term.

It's a big tag, and we don't like churning those around, but in this case there's just so many random concepts that it's completely useless for the purpose of actually searching for posts.

The deprecation will automatically remove the averting eyes alias, so that can be populated if this is approved. A proper wiki needs to be written though, that lists the appropriate tag for each case that this tag is being used as a dumping ground for.

Updated

is there any way to see how many taggers arrive at looking away through the averting eyes alias? my fear, and why I'd prefer an alias, is that people used to typing looking away to describe "averting eyes" or those who naturally think of the term looking away in that situation will see the deprecation and either not know/not care enough to go back and add averting eyes. this is normally what gardeners are for, but if looking away is murdered harder than a pimp in a Chicago alley I can't think of another accessible tag that can be piggybacked off of to conveniently fix these instances. maybe an alias can be done after looking away is properly cleaned up and disambiguated?

however an immediate deprecation is still two paths to the same goal, so +1.

nonamethanks said:

A proper wiki needs to be written though, that lists the appropriate tag for each case that this tag is being used as a dumping ground for.

I'm up for that.

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