Manga vs Comic.

Manga and Comic don't clearly indicate the distinction between when to use their respective tags on their wiki pages.

As near as I can tell, the distinction (based on the wiki pages) is supposed to be whether something is published on the web or actually in print, with web-published stuff going under comic (or at least it talks about that, while manga basically says nothing beyond defining the term.)

But it's not 100% clear, and even the line between published and unpublished can be unclear nowadays, with things high-quality enough to be published sometimes just appearing online (not to mention relatively low-quality or sketched-out doujin and eromanga, 4koma and other more specific tags that are not referenced in either the manga or comic pages, which also don't reference each other.)

Should manga and comic be separate at all? If so, what should be the distinction between them? I don't really care one way or the other, I'm just not sure which should be used where right now -- there's some hints of a distinction in comic, but the wiki should probably make it clearer when to use which, if they're going to be separate.

Should some of these tags imply others? Should doujin, eromanga, 4koma, etc imply either comic or manga?

In my humble opinion, manga could well be merged with comic. If so, then eromanga and *koma should imply comic.

Abstention regarding doujin, for I am not sure whether its current wiki definition is the best possible choice. Not going to argue about it, though.

I've cleaned up the doujin page, at least, and opened another topic (forum #43060) for that issue.

I feel like manga could be aliased to comic and lose nothing in the process.

If we must keep the manga tag, then I suggest:

• manga should refer to scanned pages of published comics. Independently-published ones would get the doujin tag.
• comic should be reserved for things published directly to the web, rather than printed, scanned, and uploaded material.

Um, I see a minor problem with that manga -- doujin -- comic trinity.

Suppose that someone scans a page of a western comic book (not at all manga-style) and that gets approved for some exceptional reason, such as being the inspiration behind some on-topic illustration(s). You could not tag that as comic any more, but calling it "manga" would be confusing as well.

(The devil's advocate steps up.) And what about people complaining that you cannot use the manga tag with any non-Japanese-made comics, regardless of their style?

I am sure both problems can be dealt with, but aliasing manga to comic just seems like the simple way.

I'm for aliasing manga & doujin to comic. Everything here is fan-made, so there's little point in distinguishing doujinshi from manga on that basis. As for the print/web distinction, just using the scan tag for printed comics should be sufficient.

Katajanmarja said:
I am sure both problems can be dealt with, but aliasing manga to comic just seems like the simple way.

I thought so too, but I felt compelled by some perverse impulse to present other options for discussion.

And since you've played Devil's Advocate (which I did myself, partially, by suggesting the details of the tag split), I might as well address those points.

And what about people complaining that you cannot use the manga tag with any non-Japanese-made comics, regardless of their style?

Those people are being dumb and should be quiet.
"Manga" and "comics" have been equivalent terms for a long time. Creating an artificial dichotomy like that to label them separately based on which side of an ocean they originated from is silly. This holds true especially on Danbooru, where things originating in Japan (and to a lesser extent, other Asian countries) is the standard and Western stuff is generally not accepted.

If we need a tag for Western comics specifically, then keep it simple and use a western comic tag. That should also make searching for that term much more efficient.

Suppose that someone scans a page of a western comic book (not at all manga-style) and that gets approved for some exceptional reason, such as being the inspiration behind some on-topic illustration(s). You could not tag that as comic any more, but calling it "manga" would be confusing as well.

"Manga-style" isn't a valid term, in my opinion.
Putting that aside, however, you've done a good job of illustrating a simple reason why there's no point in keeping the two tags separate.

The only reason (aside from arguing against my own position for the sake of discussion) that I suggested the split as an option was in order to go along with the idea that we need separate tags for web-published works and paper-and-ink published works which ended up on the web anyway. I don't really care much for that position, myself; there are thousands of comics published digitally these days, and the only difference between them and their dead tree cousins is whether or not you need electricity to view them.

My apologies for the double-posting, but the other one is too much of a wall-o-text to keep editing.

evazion said:
I'm for aliasing manga & doujin to comic. Everything here is fan-made, so there's little point in distinguishing doujinshi from manga on that basis.

pool #999 and pool #1292, at least, disagree with you there.

As for the print/web distinction, just using the scan tag for printed comics should be sufficient.

From the content of that tag, I gathered that it was used primarily for scans from artbooks, data books, Megami magazine, Nyantype, etc., rather than the comics themselves.

Aliasing manga to comic is fine with me. While I maintain a fairly strict personal distinction between the two, I don't think the distinction is necessarily relevant to tagging.

Of course I don't actually want to DO the alias because I guarantee it won't go through properly with the way aliases have been all screwy...

Aliases have been fixed recently, right? So we can alias them together now.

Just to add my two cents after the fact.

The manga vs comic issue had more relevance when Published works (manga as they were referred too) were still verboten via the ToS.

Since that rule seems basically dead the other use for manga vs comic is basically dead.

The manga tag needs some cleaning. I'm finding it used instead of manga (object), applied to non-comic-style illustrations from a manga (like post #1057081 and post #1174036), and on manga volume cover images like post #875675 and post #842518. And I have no idea why it was on post #834204.

jjj14 said:
The manga tag needs some cleaning. I'm finding it used instead of manga (object), applied to non-comic-style illustrations from a manga (like post #1057081 and post #1174036), and on manga volume cover images like post #875675 and post #842518. And I have no idea why it was on post #834204.

Honestly unless manga is specifically being used refer to complete manga I don't see the point of the manga vs manga_(object).

I think the main tag should represent the main purpose of the concept (a comic and everything included) as opposed to the style of multiple frames per page.

That just seems awkward when you are doing a search.

Bump. Can we finally alias comic and manga?

Yeah, did:
create alias manga -> comic