Blue/Cloudy sky

Maybe a short question and maybe better suited for the Wiki request topic, but these are pretty big tags with a very big overlap.
blue sky cloudy sky has nearly 3.000 results and I wanted to ask if that's correct usage.
Until now, I thought those tags shouldn't be used together and occasional clouds on a blue sk should just be tagged with blue sky + cloud: post #2850481, post #2849496, post #2847122 are all posts where cloudy sky makes few sense to me.
I'd expect to find post #2850443 or post #2848629 when looking for cloudy sky and not the three posts above where, like I said, blue sky + cloud would be sufficient.

I agree with the last two posts not qualifying. The first one has in my opinion just enough clouds to qualify for both tags.
Searching for cloudy sky on Google shows plenty of such photos.

We could make a separate tag for scattered clouds but it would be quite the effort to populate it.

I usually only tag cloudy sky when the clouds cover most of the sky and are a prominent part of it. I don't know if removing the tag would be a good idea, as it would make impossible to distinguish between actual cloudy skies like post #2850724 impossible to distinguish from the posts you linked (besides for the sunlight of course, but that's not the pint).

But those posts you used as example have no place in the cloudy sky search. Maybe there needs to be some tag gardening done?

The definition of cloudy sky is pretty vague (how much is a "significant amount"?), but for the examples above, particularly the second two, there's really no excuse for misusing the tag in this way. Perhaps it's time we adopt a more rigid definition, like a minimum of 50% cloud coverage, for instance.

Another problem with this tag is the sky implication. Sky should be used "if the sky is used as a focal point or the actual subject", yet there are images tagged cloudy sky like post #2758095 where the sky is of zero significance. If this implication is to be kept, we should apply the same restriction to cloudy sky, lest sky automatically get tagged on posts where it doesn't belong.

Personally I wouldn't have even tagged post #2758095 as cloudy sky, it looks more like some stray clouds. But yeah, 50% of the sky covered by clouds seems like a pretty good stance for the tag.

iridescent_slime said:

Another problem with this tag is the sky implication. Sky should be used "if the sky is used as a focal point or the actual subject"

I'm not sure how accurate the implication is in the case of cloudy_sky. I understand that sky is meant to be differentiated from the general concept of the tag similar to eyes, hair ect, but the usage behind it seems more specific then what cloudy_sky seems to be used for, i.e. the presence or absence of numerous clouds in the sky.

For that definition there are plenty of images such as the ones discussed that apply for cloudy_sky but not sky.

I don't really see the overlap being strong enough for tag implication, but that's just my thoughts.

There's also the somewhat underused overcast tag. I'm favour of defining cloudy sky as over 50% of the sky covered in clouds, and overcast as the entire sky cover in clouds.

Slysheen said:

For that definition there are plenty of images such as the ones discussed that apply for cloudy_sky but not sky.

I think the same is true for pretty much all of the tags that implicate sky, such as starry sky, red sky, night sky. Would it be better to kill all the implications and purge sky as needed, or to redefine sky?

Blue_Trident said:

Would it be better to kill all the implications and purge sky as needed, or to redefine sky?

I like sky's use as it currently stands, I'm in favor of purging. It's been a while since I had an expansive tag project anyway.