Shades of brown hair

I've been populating the chocolate_hair tag (3716 posts) over the last few days and am browsing through the *_hair tags for similar tags. However, I'm running across various shades of brown-colored hair that have tags, in particular the following:

light_brown_hair (8290 posts)
auburn_hair (531 posts)
maroon_hair (180 posts)
beige_hair (97 posts)

Since light brown hair is well populated, that really isn't an issue. I also think auburn hair has some merit if we want to cover brown hair that has a coppery tint, yet is too dark to be really considered red or orange (post #2340057 for example). The wiki for auburn_hair though is rather contradictory however;

"A cross between brown_hair and red_hair.

"Figure which one it's closer to and use that hair tag instead."

So what is the wiki trying to say? That it's an acceptable tag to use, or that it's ambiguous and should be avoided?

I also wanted to ask if there's any merit in keeping maroon and beige as shades of brown hair, and how they should be defined if kept.

So chocolate_hair is basically dark_brown_hair, maybe it needs an implication so the tag is more used.
"Chocolate" isn't exactly a color I would think of.

auburn_hair is a red-brown shade, making it kind of ambiguous with red_hair and brown_hair, I can't see the lighter hair colors currently tagged auburn as being auburn hair.

maroon_hair is a dark red-brown shade and looking at the posts tagged it seems unique enough to deserve a tag, maybe it's just under tagged in favor of red?

beige_hair definitely needs cleaning, there's a lot of different colors tagged as it, from light brown to blonde to white, the color seems too ambiguous.

Is this tag really necessary?
What does it cover what dark brown hair doesn't?

E: We don't have this tag? Well, then I ask this question:
What does it cover what brown_hair doesn't? For lighter shades of brown, we have light brown hair.

I feel like brown hair and light brown hair are good enough to cover brown hair, not to mention the name chocolate hair sounds silly to me, more like someones hair is made of chocolate instead of being that "colour".

I agree with the others on chocolate hair, however I think maroon is a distinct enough color from all the other examples that I've been using it myself. It feels wrong to tag it as brown or red, and it's not really purple either. Example: post #2836032

I feel it's a case similar to lavender hair.

Didn't we do this already?

topic #13860

I maintain my position from topic #13860. I think we should limit ourselves to the well-established set of basic colors (aqua, black, blue, brown, green, grey, orange, pink, purple, red, white, and yellow), and if we absolutely must have more colors than that, use light_<color>_hair and dark_<color>_hair.

Allowing colors beyond the basic set leads to confusion, both in searching and in tagging. How can anyone know beforehand that chocolate is the name for dark brown hair, not chestnut or coffee? Or that lavender is the name for light purple hair, not lilac? How can we expect taggers to maintain subtle distinctions like auburn or maroon versus brown or red consistently?

Why should auburn and chocolate get their own tags to begin with, and not other colors? Just looking at pink hair, for example, I see everything from strawberry blonde to bubblegum pink to hot pink to magenta. We can play the "I think this hair color is unique enough to deserve its own tag" game all day, but at some point we have to draw a line.

evazion said:

I maintain my position from topic #13860. I think we should limit ourselves to the well-established set of basic colors (aqua, black, blue, brown, green, grey, orange, pink, purple, red, white, and yellow), and if we absolutely must have more colors than that, use light_<color>_hair and dark_<color>_hair.

And silver.

With the rest, I agree completely.

evazion said:

I maintain my position from topic #13860. I think we should limit ourselves to the well-established set of basic colors (aqua, black, blue, brown, green, grey, orange, pink, purple, red, white, and yellow), and if we absolutely must have more colors than that, use light_<color>_hair and dark_<color>_hair.

Chiera said:

And silver.

I can agree to that. Silver is such an iconic hair color in fantasy that it seems weird to not have it just because it's not a "common color name".

The question is then about how to tag mix of colors such as in post #1940562, post #2836032, post #2870664.
What color is that? Dark red, dark brown, dark purple?

hazknight said:

I can agree to that. Silver is such an iconic hair color in fantasy that it seems weird to not have it just because it's not a "common color name".

The question is then about how to tag mix of colors such as in post #1940562, post #2836032, post #2870664.
What color is that? Dark red, dark brown, dark purple?

Because of my limited knowledge (don't know maroon_hair exists) I'd use purple hair for all 3 posts.
It seems to fit...

I do agree with drawing the line with hair colors lest we wind up creating confusion and massive subjectivity. I actually did think about making a chocolate_hair -> dark_brown_hair alias request since the term 'chocolate' doesn't really fit well with hair, but I wanted to see everyone's stances first. I was just concerned because I kept running across these shades of brown being used as hair tags and wanted to help define the limit to the number of acceptable shades used here. I wasn't involved with topic #13860, so maybe it's redundant to visit this for many of you, but it's a refresher for someone like me.

nonamethanks said:

I agree with the others on chocolate hair, however I think maroon is a distinct enough color from all the other examples that I've been using it myself. It feels wrong to tag it as brown or red, and it's not really purple either. Example: post #2836032

I feel it's a case similar to lavender hair.

I would've tagged it as purple myself, since that's what I perceive on my monitor.

So what would the consensus be to eliminate this problem with brown hair so it doesn't get out of control? I would nuke beige, maroon and auburn and move them to appropriate tags. If different people perceive a color like maroon as purple versus brown, then maybe use both brown_hair and purple_hair to cover for it? Then for chocolate_hair, I would want to make the alias request to dark_brown_hair and get rid of the wiki I made for chocolate.

Benit149 said:

I do agree with drawing the line with hair colors lest we wind up creating confusion and massive subjectivity. I actually did think about making a chocolate_hair -> dark_brown_hair alias request since the term 'chocolate' doesn't really fit well with hair. I was just concerned because I kept running across these shades of brown being used as hair tags and wanted to help define the limit to the number of acceptable shades used here.

I would've tagged it as purple myself, since that's what I perceive on my monitor.

So what would the consensus be to eliminate this problem with brown hair so it doesn't get out of control? I would nuke beige, maroon and auburn and move them to appropriate tags. If different people perceive a color like maroon as purple versus brown, then maybe use both brown_hair and purple_hair to cover for it? Then for chocolate_hair, I would want to make the alias request to dark_brown_hair and get rid of the wiki I made for chocolate.

One doesn't tag one solid hair color with two tags.
This character above has purple hair, but the point is different: It is up to the uploader to judge the correct eye/hair color in the first place. If they tag it purple, ok.
But it still has to be reasonable, but that applies to every tag. But for something in between, that can go either way, it's first up to the uploader to decide.

Chiera said:

One doesn't tag one solid hair color with two tags.

I thought so. That's only for multicolored hair. Tagging solid colored hair like that would just create noise.

Benit149 said:

I thought so. That's only for multicolored hair. Tagging solid colored hair like that would just create noise.

I strongly disagree. Color tagging is inherently a subjective thing, and there are grey areas between different color tags where two or more tags would arguably be correct. For borderline colors that appear to fall along the boundaries of tags, like post #2280984 or post #2461660, there's nothing wrong with using multiple color tags. The response in forum #128897 appears to concur with this sentiment.

iridescent_slime said:

I strongly disagree. Color tagging is inherently a subjective thing, and there are grey areas between different color tags where two or more tags would arguably be correct. For borderline colors that appear to fall along the boundaries of tags, like post #2280984 or post #2461660, there's nothing wrong with using multiple color tags. The response in forum #128897 appears to concur with this sentiment.

This doesn't seem to be right with just one color tag, though.
The first post needs the help of gradient hair and the 2nd one probably, too. Although shiny hair is more suitable there.

Is this the right place to ask about the 200+ posts with greyscale brown_hair or should I start a new thread for that?

ion288 said:

Is this the right place to ask about the 200+ posts with greyscale brown_hair or should I start a new thread for that?

Those seem all to fall under either a case of mistag, or partially colored/spot color examples.

ion288 said:

Is this the right place to ask about the 200+ posts with greyscale brown_hair or should I start a new thread for that?

There are some people who routinely tag monochrome images with the colours that would be there if they weren't monochrome for some reason.

create alias chocolate_hair -> dark_brown_hair

Link to request

The bulk update request #1320 has been rejected.

kuuderes_shadow said:

There are some people who routinely tag monochrome images with the colours that would be there if they weren't monochrome for some reason.

Jup, don't understand, too.
The only color I add is the background color. Well, it's mostly white_background, though.