Emoticon tags discussion & cleanup

Currently we have a lot of different emotes which share the same trait ("angled" eyebrows, for the lack of a better term), and we also have variations for cases that would instead be covered by a one eye closed tag.
Having all these different tags is pointless and overly complex, imo.
Compare this with this.

I thought of making a mass update request at first, something like
>:) -> smile, angled eyebrows
>:( -> frown, angled eyebrows
>;D -> :D, one_eye_closed, angled eyebrows
etcetera, but I'd like to gather consesus before doing so (and before nuking the smaller tags). What does everyone think about this? Should we keep them or kill them? Should they instead be implications rather than just updates (as I imagine people will still keep adding them after they're removed, so it'll potentially need gardening every once in a while)?

Pinging @evazion as well because he was the one bringing up the potential angled eyebrows tag on the discord - I think it'd work fine as a tag, though it probably needs a better name.

Well the >:) wiki says "A variation of smiling ( :) ) with furrowed brows and a closed mouth." so furrowed brows could also be considered as a name. I'll admit that I'd be a little sad to see them go but some tags like >;< (or every other tag with the >*< combination) are just plain ridiculous.

The problem I see is the definition of a so-called angled eyebrow tag.
I agree that it could be used much better than the current emote tags, but what would the difference between it and a furrowed_eyebrows or scowl tag?

Unbreakable said:

Well the >:) wiki says "A variation of smiling ( :) ) with furrowed brows and a closed mouth." so furrowed brows could also be considered as a name. I'll admit that I'd be a little sad to see them go but some tags like >;< are just plain ridiculous.

furrowed eyebrows already exists, so that would be a problem of confusing/overlapping tags, because its definition doesn't fit at all what some of those tags represent. Furrowed eyebrows "compress" the skin between them (not sure how to say it in english lol), whereas these emotes try to describe eyebrows pointing downwards, even in chibi posts or the like where the definition of furrowed eyebrows doesn't apply.

Example post: post #2911719
You can clearly see the eyebrows pointing downward, but there's no furrowed/creased parts shown.

nonamethanks said:

furrowed eyebrows already exists, so that would be a problem of confusing/overlapping tags, because its definition doesn't fit at all what some of those tags represent. Furrowed eyebrows "compress" the skin between them (not sure how to say it in english lol), whereas these emotes try to describe eyebrows pointing downwards, even in chibi posts or the like where the definition of furrowed eyebrows doesn't apply.

Well it wouldn't be the first time and I'm not totally against the angled eyebrows name, I just think it sounds stupid.

For reference, these are the tags under discussion:

I think most (if not all) of these tags should be nuked and replaced with angled eyebrows + base emoticon (e.g. >:o becomes :o + angled eyebrows). Rationale:

• There's no tag for the eyebrows themselves. Instead this trait is fragmented across 30+ tags, which makes searching difficult and leads to an excessive proliferation of new tags.
• These are all two-way or three-way combo tags: >;o = :o + one eye closed + angled eyebrows. Combo tags should be discouraged unless necessary, and I don't think these really are.
• Creating all the implications these tags should logically have would lead to deep implication hierarchies. >;D, for instance, should implicate 6 tags: >:D, ;D, :D, smile, open mouth, and one eye closed.
• Many of these tags are inscrutable gibberish when you see them in a tag list.

I suggested angled eyebrows for lack of a better name, but I think something like V-shaped_eyebrows or just V_eyebrows might be better. I'm not aware of any commonly known name for this specific style of eyebrows, so any name we use will have to be something made up.

With regards to the rationale, I definitely agree with the first point, and thus that a tag should be made.

I think any tag name should be such that people wouldn't think they should be using it on things angled the other way, though. Angled eyebrows would certainly have this problem. V eyebrows would be better but I'm not entirely sure that it sorts the issue.

As to the other points...

Firstly I don't see the third one as a point at all. So what? There are quite a few other tags with 4 or more things added through implications, which I'd be very opposed to getting rid of.

The second holds true for most of them, but there are two notable exceptions - >:) and >:(. :) is aliased to smile and :( is aliased to frown. But angled eyebrows (or whatever) plus smile or frown would give a whole load of other types of frown or smile like >:D, >:c, etc.

Conveniently these two are also among the more visually obvious ones (being as obvious as any emoticon tag is). They're also among the more commonly used ones.

At the very least I'd like these two to be kept, unless the aliases mentioned above are removed and the tags populated.

kuuderes_shadow said:

The second holds true for most of them, but there are two notable exceptions - >:) and >:(. :) is aliased to smile and :( is aliased to frown. But angled eyebrows (or whatever) plus smile or frown would give a whole load of other types of frown or smile like >:D, >:c, etc.

> + :) can be distinguished from > + :D through the open mouth tag, which is fortunately already aliased to :D (along with the smile tag).

All results of >:) minus >:D = smile v-shaped_eyebrows -open_mouth; or even smile v-shaped_eyebrows -:D, since the base tags like :D or :o would still be retained.

As for the :c tag, is it really that important or even worthy to keep around? It seems to me just like another way to write :(, and the results (like post #2706493, post #2782976, post #2635556) are very inconsistent.

But there is indeed a problem of finding a correct name for the tag that most people can immediately think of. I am not a native speaker so I can't immediately think of anything good, but v-shaped_eyebrows seems more intuitive than angled_eyebrows.

smile v-shaped_eyebrows -:d would include cases of >;d, >:3, >;3, >=3, >|3, >:>, >:o, >;o, >:p, >;p, >:q, >;q...
Changing this to -open_mouth would only get rid of the first of those. To get rid of all of them you'd need smile v-shaped_eyebrows -open_mouth -:3 -:o -tongue_out, and several new implications to be made. This then uses up all of a gold level user's search tags, thus removing their ability to refine it any further, as well as relying on these tags being applied far more reliably than they currently are, and also removing a lot of images that the user might want to see that happens to have someone with any of the other emoticons in it.

As I see it, the :c tag is meant for cases where the mouth is in an actual downward c shape, like post #100527. Of your examples, the first one is this (although small), the second is sort of borderline, and the third isn't.

kuuderes_shadow said:

smile v-shaped_eyebrows -:d would include cases of >;d, >:3, >;3, >=3, >|3, >:>, >:o, >;o, >:p, >;p, >:q, >;q...
Changing this to -open_mouth would only get rid of the first of those. To get rid of all of them you'd need smile v-shaped_eyebrows -open_mouth -:3 -:o -tongue_out, and several new implications to be made. This then uses up all of a gold level user's search tags, thus removing their ability to refine it any further, as well as relying on these tags being applied far more reliably than they currently are, and also removing a lot of images that the user might want to see that happens to have someone with any of the other emoticons in it.

As I see it, the :c tag is meant for cases where the mouth is in an actual downward c shape, like post #100527. Of your examples, the first one is this (although small), the second is sort of borderline, and the third isn't.

I can concede that >:) and >:( are enstablished enough and perhaps it'd be counterproductive to remove them.
Though I feel like having them would encourage people to create similar tags again, I'd rather have only two of them than the current mess. Perhaps if I ever find the spare time I'll try to garden them thoroughly enough that they may be split/moved.

It seems there's no opposition to the split of the minor tags, so I'll wait another day or two to allow anyone else who missed this thread to speak their mind, and then I'll create a bulk mass update request.

By the way, while we're talking about this, should said mass update also request the adding of "frown" and "smile" to posts tagged respectively with >:( and >:) ? I mean a normal adding, not an alias.

kuuderes_shadow said:

Firstly I don't see the third one as a point at all. So what? There are quite a few other tags with 4 or more things added through implications, which I'd be very opposed to getting rid of.

When a single tag implicates four, five, even six other tags (as some of these tags would) then I think it should be strongly questioned. It's tagging creep and it's one of the reasons why tag lists get more and more bloated every year. When you have several dozen tags implying 2 to 4+ tags each, as we'd have here, then I think it's an even stronger sign we're doing something wrong.

Going to agree with going ahead on creating the new tag and mass editing/nuking most of these, though I'm fine with retaining >:) and >:(. Can determine later if that was the wrong choice or not.

I like the idea of v-shaped eyebrows as a tag; it's specific and to the point, and it avoids the "creased skin" baggage associated with furrowed eyebrows. But this highlights the need for a way to tag eyebrows slanted down and away from the face, like post #2384235. A-shaped eyebrows? Chevron-shaped eybrows, perhaps?

iridescent_slime said:

I like the idea of v-shaped eyebrows as a tag; it's specific and to the point, and it avoids the "creased skin" baggage associated with furrowed eyebrows. But this highlights the need for a way to tag eyebrows slanted down and away from the face, like post #2384235. A-shaped eyebrows? Chevron-shaped eybrows, perhaps?

Raised_eyebrows?

Chiera said:

Raised_eyebrows?

No, I'm talking about eyebrows that are angled rather than merely "raised". Raised eyebrows is no better than furrowed eyebrows for this, since the eyebrows may or may not be angled: see post #2021394, post #2847216, post #2882269.

iridescent_slime said:

No, I'm talking about eyebrows that are angled rather than merely "raised". Raised eyebrows is no better than furrowed eyebrows for this, since the eyebrows may or may not be angled: see post #2021394, post #2847216, post #2882269.

They don't really look raised in the example posts, though.
Actually, I wouldn't even use these on posts where the eyebrows are both on the same side and don't turn upward, like on any of the example posts. The skin doesn't really look like it makes that movement.
I mean more stuff like post #2910898 where you can notice a notable raise upwards.

mass update >:) -> >:) smile v-shaped_eyebrows
mass update >;) -> >:) ;) smile v-shaped_eyebrows one_eye_closed
mass update >:( -> >:( frown v-shaped_eyebrows
mass update >;( -> >:( ;( frown v-shaped_eyebrows one_eye_closed

mass update >:3 -> :3 v-shaped_eyebrows
remove implication >:3 -> :3

mass update >:c -> :c v-shaped_eyebrows

mass update >:d -> :d v-shaped_eyebrows
remove implication >:d -> :d

mass update >:i -> :i v-shaped_eyebrows

mass update >:o -> :o v-shaped_eyebrows
remove implication >:o -> :o

mass update >:p -> :p v-shaped_eyebrows
remove implication >:p -> :p

mass update >:q -> :q v-shaped_eyebrows
remove implication >:q -> :q
remove implication >:q -> tongue_out

mass update >:s -> :s v-shaped_eyebrows

mass update >:t -> :t v-shaped_eyebrows
remove implication >:t -> :t

mass update >:x -> :x v-shaped_eyebrows

mass update >:< -> :< v-shaped_eyebrows
remove implication >:< -> closed_mouth

mass update >:| -> :| v-shaped_eyebrows

mass update >:> -> :> v-shaped_eyebrows

mass update >:/ -> :/ v-shaped_eyebrows
remove implication >:/ -> :/

mass update d:< -> d: v-shaped_eyebrows

mass update 3:< -> 3: v-shaped_eyebrows

mass update dx< -> dx v-shaped_eyebrows

mass update >xd -> xd v-shaped_eyebrows

mass update >|3 -> :3 =_= v-shaped_eyebrows

mass update >x3 -> :3 >_< v-shaped_eyebrows

mass update >=< -> |_| :< v-shaped_eyebrows

mass update >=3 -> |_| :3 v-shaped_eyebrows

mass update >:0 -> :0 v-shaped_eyebrows

Link to request

Wewlad, this took a while to do. Hopefully I didn't mess anything up.

@NWF_Renim how does this look?

Also, should I request an alias to replace the implications for the most populated, like >:D -> :D ?

Also also, i'll eventually go through the =3 and |3 tags and garden them into |_|/||_||/=_= + :3. >|3 and >=3 are few enough that they all fit in one category, but I didn't want to make the move myself because we previously discussed about them here.

Edit: removed the variants like >;p >;D etc because they are a mess worse than expected. This will suffice for the brief moment

The bulk update request #1370 has been approved.

Looks good at first sight.
I'm in support of it.

mass update >;3 -> ;3 v-shaped_eyebrows
mass update >;d -> ;d v-shaped_eyebrows
mass update >;o -> ;o v-shaped_eyebrows
mass update >;p -> ;p v-shaped_eyebrows
mass update >;q -> ;q v-shaped_eyebrows
mass update >;t -> ;t v-shaped_eyebrows
mass update >;< -> ;< v-shaped_eyebrows
mass update 3;< -> 3; v-shaped_eyebrows
mass update d;< -> d; v-shaped_eyebrows

Link to request

And this is the second set, as it seems some people don't agree that ";D" is just ":D one_eye_closed" and I don't want to drag this topic into a different discussion

The bulk update request #1371 has been approved.

The bulk update request #1370 has been approved.