Short Hair and Boys

nonamethanks said:

Just for the record, unless I'm misunderstanding you, male_focus is for posts where males are prominent, it's not for posts with only men, so (aside from a few mistags I see at a glance) most of the posts under the search you linked deserve the tag. Apologies if I misunderstood you.

I agree, but though the wiki says it is okay to have a female presence if there is an "overwhelming emphasis on male characters", it also begins with "Images featuring only male characters" with the word "only" in bold, and ends with "Do not use on [...] any image with an easily noticeable female presence."

That's the most restrictive tag (that I know) to get only pictures with character of one sex, but even those posts would need to be carefully edited in case we go to tag hair length by sex.

To clarify my thought, we cannot just take all the male_focus short_hair and apply -short_hair short-haired_male to them. The same way, adding long-haired_female to any ~1girl ~multiple_girls -1boy -multiple_boys probably won't work. We will need a lot of work.

Rignak said:

To clarify my thought, we cannot just take all the male_focus short_hair and apply -short_hair short-haired_male to them. The same way, adding long-haired_female to any ~1girl ~multiple_girls -1boy -multiple_boys probably won't work. We will need a lot of work.

Ah, I misunderstood you then. Yeah, it's going to be tricky to go through whatever solution is picked. It can be divided into groups however, something like doing male_focus 1boy solo -1girl -multiple_girls -short_hair and male_focus multiple_boys -1girl -multiple_girls -short_hair first, as that will remove the bulk of them. The ones that remain will have to be handled with an extra layer of attention, but there shouldn't be many (relatively) left afterwards.

I divided those two because "1boy solo" has less risk of having untagged females.

blindVigil said:

But that's already a problem with trying to search for long haired males because of how common it is for girls to have long hair. Why is that fine but the reverse isn't? You would need a full set of gender specific hair length tags to even this out, not just one or two.

I'd have no problem with us adding a tag for long haired guys as well, I agree that them getting swamped with the majority case of long haired girls is also a problem.

nonamethanks said:

It can be divided into groups however, something like doing male_focus 1boy solo -1girl -multiple_girls -short_hair and male_focus multiple_boys -1girl -multiple_girls -short_hair first, as that will remove the bulk of them. The ones that remain will have to be handled with an extra layer of attention, but there shouldn't be many (relatively) left afterwards.

I divided those two because "1boy solo" has less risk of having untagged females.

Consider adding -1other -multiple_others too. Some of the gacha games are big on ambiguous characters, so we’ve got quite a lot of others recently.

Zurreak said:
but I'd say the real solution to that is to fix the tagging on posts that need fixing.

This is kinda impossible by now. I fixed over 500 images of Rem's hair length images and after a few weeks the number was rising again, because alot of users don´t include the hair length for every image they upload. Just try to make the test I mentioned with known builders here instead of a character-tag to see on how many images they forget to add it to female images. It´s easier just to tag boys with every hair length, than to try to exclude them. This means we have: no hair length tag on an image or one that doesn´t fit. Both needs to be fixed for the system to work by now.

I also wouldn´t say that we should take option 2, because we would need the hair_length tag for three possibilities: girls, boys and others. enkidu_(fate/strange_fake) is for exampel a character with absurdly long hair, but he´s not a boy, rather tagged with 1other. This would mean we have to make a tag for those cases. I think it´s ugly and clunky. Generic tags should be as easy as possible for new users to understand, as BrokenEagle said. So personally I would go for option 1.

Another pracital exampel, of why our tags are faulty IMO:
post #3740609 this would be short hair
post #3997422 this would be very short hair

You can´t find both by now, even if this is clearly not the same. You can´t argue on both cases, that it´s "normal for boys to have short hair", because it´s clearly a difference. It´s not even an otoko no ko for the first case, so you can´t say "well he looks feminim, so you can tag it". It´s 'stupid' to take some images and tag the hair_length if the character looks feminim, if the same character doesn´t look like that in another image but with short hair. There´s no consistency real here.

Just like the others I would say, that very short hair and short hair should be unimplied.

I'm against the idea of boys not having the short hair tag, or to tag hair length by sex. If there's an agreement, the Wikis would need to be updated in this sense, as boys can have long, medium hair and short hair, and it is useful if someone is searching a male character that has different hair lengths and wanna see a version of the character with a specific hair length too.

An alternative approach would be to utilize tag names like boy's_short_hairstyle, which still indicates a length and gender classification, but doesn't necessarily indicate the person possessing the hairstyle is a specific gender.

I still believe that option 1 isn't a good approach because of the inherent difference in the terms short, medium, and long hair for male and female hairstyles. Failure to acknowledge this means a failure to recognize a problem that will inevitably be a continuing cause of mistagging for posts. It can be argued to tag what you see, but that only works by expecting that there exists a consistent definition that is the same between male and female hairstyles. As there isn't, that means you'd only be able to depend on the wiki definition, but as that has been attacked as "nobody reads it", then that would mean that the only reasonable approach to resolve this issue would be to either have separate tags or maintain the existing system.

I'll just toss out two examples from the web that show what the expected definitions are and why lumping together will cause mistagging.

https://www.headcurve.com/hair/hair-lengths/

Breaks down women hairstyles into 5 groups:

• 1) Very short = Above the ear or shorter
• 2) Short = Chin and Above
• 3) Medium-Length = Shoulder-Length
• 4) Long = Armpit length
• 5) Very Long = Mid-back or longer

https://bespokeunit.com/grooming/hair/short-styles/
https://bespokeunit.com/grooming/hair/medium-styles/
https://bespokeunit.com/grooming/hair/long-styles/

Defines men hairstyle lengths as

• 1) Short: No longer than 2 in (5 cm) on top.
• 2) Medium: 2-4 in (5-10 cm) [However, they often featured a combination of cuts, which can be very short on the back and sides.]
• 3) Long: Not defined, but assumed longer than 4 in (10 cm).

NWF_Renim said:

I still believe that option 1 isn't a good approach because of the inherent difference in the terms short, medium, and long hair for male and female hairstyles. Failure to acknowledge this means a failure to recognize a problem that will inevitably be a continuing cause of mistagging for posts. It can be argued to tag what you see, but that only works by expecting that there exists a consistent definition that is the same between male and female hairstyles. As there isn't, that means you'd only be able to depend on the wiki definition, but as that has been attacked as "nobody reads it", then that would mean that the only reasonable approach to resolve this issue would be to either have separate tags or maintain the existing system.

It could be argued that all of these proposed solutions suffer from the "nobody will check the wiki" problem. If we use short_hair on both genders then yes, some people might use different standards for boys than girls. However, using a tag as neutral as short_hair for only one gender has already shown that it causes large amounts of mistagging because people (understandably) assume that it just means "short hair". I think we will encounter more mistagging by using a gender-neutral-sounding short_hair tag that's actually only for one gender than by using a gender-neutral-sounding short_hair tag that actually is gender-neutral and having people assume it works differently for different genders.

Hair is a feature present in almost all posts with a person regardless of gender, so if we continue to use the gender-neutral short_hair it needs to apply to all characters with hair. I'm very against using gendered hair tags (it looks bad, is unnecessary and causes problems when you consider ambiguous_gender and genderless "other" characters), but if that does end up being the solution then you can't leave short_hair as a female/feminine-only tag because we already have evidence that only using it for one gender causes problems.

Hair is a feature present in almost all posts with a person regardless of gender, so if we continue to use the gender-neutral short_hair it needs to apply to all characters with hair. I'm very against using gendered hair tags (it looks bad, is unnecessary and causes problems when you consider ambiguous_gender and genderless "other" characters), but if that does end up being the solution then you can't leave short_hair as a female/feminine-only tag because we already have evidence that only using it for one gender causes problems.

Agree. Hair tags are gender neutral per name and should apply to girls, boys and others/ambiguous gender. In general, creating gendered versions of these tags would complicate things more than help, when it would be more practical to update the wiki.

lamialover97 said:

I'm against the idea of boys not having the short hair tag, or to tag hair length by sex. If there's an agreement, the Wikis would need to be updated in this sense, as boys can have long, medium hair and short hair, and it is useful if someone is searching a male character that has different hair lengths and wanna see a version of the character with a specific hair length too.

If you're saying what I think you're saying, it's to make short_hair gender-neutral and not create any new gendered hair tags to replace its functionality. This option shouldn't even be on the table, IMO. If you make short_hair gender-neutral and stop there, it will work just fine for solo posts, but mixed-gender posts are another story entirely. It will become nearly impossible to search for images of short-haired females where one or more males are present. I don't see how this constitutes an improvement over the status quo.

For comparison, try coming up with a search that finds only hetero images in which the woman has visible pubic hair — without a female_pubic_hair tag, it simply can't be done, because the desired results are swamped by false positives, and adding -male_pubic_hair to the search just gives you false negatives instead. Your suggestion would do the same to short_hair.

Agreed with iridescent slime. Having gender specific hair tags will be inevitable even if we choose to make short_hair gender neutral.

iridescent_slime said:

If you're saying what I think you're saying, it's to make short_hair gender-neutral and not create any new gendered hair tags to replace its functionality. This option shouldn't even be on the table, IMO. If you make short_hair gender-neutral and stop there, it will work just fine for solo posts, but mixed-gender posts are another story entirely. It will become nearly impossible to search for images of short-haired females where one or more males are present. I don't see how this constitutes an improvement over the status quo.

On the other hand it would be a similar problem to find long haired boys as well, if it weren't for the male focus tag (long_hair male_focus). I think the main problem with gendered hair tags would be for other/ambiguous gender; as it could follow a pattern like short_haired_girl, short_haired_boy, short_haired_other (?), etc.

lamialover97 said:

On the other hand it would be a similar problem to find long haired boys as well, if it weren't for the male focus tag (long_hair male_focus). I think the main problem with gendered hair tags would be for other/ambiguous gender; as it could follow a pattern like short_haired_girl, short_haired_boy, short_haired_other (?), etc.

But who will garden over a million short hair posts?

Consider the implications for other searches as well: for instance, black hair + hetero. There's no way to ensure something like post #3996350 or post #3927144, where only the male has black hair, won't appear. Should we create black haired girl to exclude them? Girl wearing pants to exclude post #3997977? Boy wearing glasses to find post #3949987?

This is a systematic shortcoming that users already experience, not something limited to short hair. That being the case, I see no significant harm in relaxing the rules, especially in male focus posts that barely affect other searches anyway. If someone really can find the time to radically rewrite the tag system, though, I wouldn't be against it on principle.

NWF_Renim said:

An alternative approach would be to utilize tag names like boy's_short_hairstyle,

This Wiki would imply, that some users really act on that and define hair that way.
First: It would lead to the same problem, that users don´t read wikis often enough and we don´t know how many really think that short male hair should be around 2 cm while it´s for girls something else. I know where this argument is coming from, but I don´t think it really applies for us anymore. And.. I don´t really see what changed in those images between short and medium hair. Looks just short for me, while the third one is, yeah, long.

Second: It´s way to complicated to seperate those tags like that in (maybe) cm. I just checked some Boys-Medium hair and it´s sometimes the other way around. Some users tend to tag medium hair on obvious long hair that´s far beneath the shoulder.
Third: At least for me, "Style" implies that there is a specific style, not length. I would assume that style is about something like a bob_cut, flipped_hair or whatever Super_Saijans have as their "style". IMO this is no option as a name.
And the reason why I´m against option 2 is also following:

evazion said:
I really don't like how every time we have an ambiguous or misused tag, we end up renaming it to some worse-sounding alternative.

(on the topic about no_humans/furry, and I guess it would be the same here.)

iridescent_slime said:
...

And how does the status quo helps us, if users aren´t able to search for male characters with short hair, because the amout of medium and long hair not tagged on images is way to high? And even for girl images it´s not possible to get the results you want, because, and as I said, the "hair_lenght" test I gave shows, that some characters lack over hundreds and thousands of hair_length tags, which makes it kinda impossible to get the image you want with those tags.
Well, I kinda doubt that users really try to search for any multi-persona image with hair_length tags. I really guess, that the hair_length tags are most of the time searched for solo or 1girl/1boy. As I don´t have any data about that, I can only guess.

I would rather suggest, that if you really want to search for short_haired girls, you could also make a new tag just and only for short haired girls. It´s easier to apply and search; it´s exactly what you want to search, as you argue for it, and it´s less work for us all ATM, because you can still mass-update it. If you can seperate male_pubic_hair and pubic_hair in a tag, why not short_haired_girls as a single tag.

Guaro1238 said:

This Wiki would imply, that some users really act on that and define hair that way.
First: It would lead to the same problem, that users don´t read wikis often enough and we don´t know how many really think that short male hair should be around 2 cm while it´s for girls something else. I know where this argument is coming from, but I don´t think it really applies for us anymore. And.. I don´t really see what changed in those images between short and medium hair. Looks just short for me, while the third one is, yeah, long.

Second: It´s way to complicated to seperate those tags like that in (maybe) cm. I just checked some Boys-Medium hair and it´s sometimes the other way around. Some users tend to tag medium hair on obvious long hair that´s far beneath the shoulder.
Third: At least for me, "Style" implies that there is a specific style, not length. I would assume that style is about something like a bob_cut, flipped_hair or whatever Super_Saijans have as their "style". IMO this is no option as a name.
And the reason why I´m against option 2 is also following:

(on the topic about no_humans/furry, and I guess it would be the same here.)

What I'm trying to explain to you, and yet you keep missing it, is that the natural expectation for what is short hair for men is different from what is short hair for women. The lengths I used as an example are just that, an example of showing that outside in the real world the definitions between men and women's hair do not match using the same terminology. Given that they do not match, you can not just lump the two together and call it a day. You can not just "tag as you see it" because the definitions known by the public at large are the not the same.

The specific length was not the definition I would use, but was merely to show how it is being defined and that you can easily see that that length does not match the length used for women's hair lengths. I'm using examples from outside the website, so in short what people coming to this site from outside the site would probably label and expect those terms to mean when finding those kinds of depictions. And this isn't some niche pornography term, this is basic hair terminology.

In terms of definitions this about is about what I would expect men's hair lengths would be defined if they were tags, at least in a manner trying to use visual appearance.
Very Short hair: Hair cut short enough that the scalp is visible
Short hair: Hair lengths above the ears or shorter
Medium hair: Hair lengths between the tip of the ear to the bottom of the ear
Long Hair: Hair lengths between the bottom of the ear down to shoulder length
Very Long Hair: Hair lengths that reach past shoulder length

As for the tag name, I'd much rather have a bad sounding tag name that actually is a useful tag than an nice sounding tag name that has become almost completely junk for use in searches. In terms of simplicity though having it in the ordering of short_hair_(male) would at least retain it appearing in autocomplete when typing in short_hair.

Guaro1238 said:

And how does the status quo helps us, if users aren´t able to search for male characters with short hair, because the amout of medium and long hair not tagged on images is way to high? And even for girl images it´s not possible to get the results you want, because, and as I said, the "hair_lenght" test I gave shows, that some characters lack over hundreds and thousands of hair_length tags, which makes it kinda impossible to get the image you want with those tags.
Well, I kinda doubt that users really try to search for any multi-persona image with hair_length tags. I really guess, that the hair_length tags are most of the time searched for solo or 1girl/1boy. As I don´t have any data about that, I can only guess.

I would rather suggest, that if you really want to search for short_haired girls, you could also make a new tag just and only for short haired girls. It´s easier to apply and search; it´s exactly what you want to search, as you argue for it, and it´s less work for us all ATM, because you can still mass-update it. If you can seperate male_pubic_hair and pubic_hair in a tag, why not short_haired_girls as a single tag.

Your same argument could be used to ask why aren't you creating a new tag for short hair boys instead though. Anyways, I'm surprised at this point that we're not simply proposing removing hair length tags from non-solo posts. After going with an Option 1 change the tag will pretty much be useless in searches outside of solo posts.

NWF_Renim said:

What I'm trying to explain to you, and yet you keep missing it, is that the natural expectation for what is short hair for men is different from what is short hair for women. The lengths I used as an example are just that, an example of showing that outside in the real world the definitions between men and women's hair do not match using the same terminology. Given that they do not match, you can not just lump the two together and call it a day. You can not just "tag as you see it" because the definitions known by the public at large are the not the same.

I´m not "missing" it, and I thought I made it clear, that I don´t think those "natural expectation" really apply to Danbo. Just take AngryZapdos, who was already tagging short_hair and medium_hair like there was no seperation between boys and girls. How would you know if not more users think like that already? I understand where you comin from, but I just see it as Zapdos. If the lenghts were already seen as different by nature here, there would already be alot of mistagging on 1boy medium_hair solo, tagged for short_hair. But goin through it, I only see a few cases of that problem.
And even if someone has another idea of what a boys short_hair means, it´s easier to fix that for us by now.

NWF_Renim said:

Your same argument could be used to ask why aren't you creating a new tag for short hair boys instead though. Anyways, I'm surprised at this point that we're not simply proposing removing hair length tags from non-solo posts. After going with an Option 1 change the tag will pretty much be useless in searches outside of solo posts.

Still better than what was already suggested. Go with that and take it as option 4. I don´t care if it´s for boys only or for girls only. I was suggesting that, because I saw that some ppl really cared for a short_hair girl search, while ignoring the fact that boys have different short hair lenghts too. Make a very_short_hair and a short_hair tag for one of the sexes but no complete seperation for all of them or you´ll have the problem with goin for 1others too.
Another reason why I suggested a short_hair girl tag is, that it´s pretty easy to add right now, because you can easily mass update it by now, without to many false negatives, if you nuke short_hair 1boy solo before.
The search is already useless, if you want to search for multiple_boys without short_hair.

When faced with a person in isolation, I concede it might be more common to see people use the term "short hair" for differing lengths on boys and girls - if my male friend had hair that reached past his ears I might tell him his hair looks long. However, in the context of Danbooru there is no single gender standard to fall back on as none of the posts exist in isolation - it is an imageboard with a robust tagging system that describes all kinds of characters. As such, features that are present on all kinds of characters (such as hair) should be tagged using definitions that apply to all characters, especially when the tag is something as generic as "short_hair".

If we continue to use the short_hair tag then it needs to describe a single length, regardless of whether the character being tagged is a girl, a boy or a genderless 20-foot tall fish person. If you want a hair length tag that describes what would be considered normal for a specific gender then said gender needs to be a part of the tag's name.

After reading a few replies here are my thoughts:

• Hair is hair. Instead of creating gendered characters tags that are absolutely unintuitive, Making it less likely to be tagged correctly.

• We should standardize hair lengths for both men and women. Very short hair on men looks the same on women than in men. The same with long hair in men and women. eg: sephiroth

• Saying that short hair in women and short hair is men is different is just nonsensical.

I propose a standardization of hair lengths. Not just how to far they fall to the shoulders, but the length of the hair itself. This is to accommodate for cases of spiked hair.

Have two scales in the wiki, first, a chart detailing proper tagging for hair lengths regardless of hairstyle (Something similar to breast size "1x the size of the face comes to mind). Second, a chart for typical straight hair sizing chart (above ears, just about shoulder length...etc)

This doesn't solve people not going on the wiki for clarifications on hair lengths, but,it is at least more intuitive that gendered tags.

.Dank said:

After reading a few replies here are my thoughts:

• Hair is hair. Instead of creating gendered characters tags that are absolutely unintuitive, Making it less likely to be tagged correctly.

• We should standardize hair lengths for both men and women. Very short hair on men looks the same on women than in men. The same with long hair in men and women. eg: sephiroth

• Saying that short hair in women and short hair is men is different is just nonsensical.

I propose a standardization of hair lengths. Not just how to far they fall to the shoulders, but the length of the hair itself. This is to accommodate for cases of spiked hair.

Have two scales in the wiki, first, a chart detailing proper tagging for hair lengths regardless of hairstyle (Something similar to breast size "1x the size of the face comes to mind). Second, a chart for typical straight hair sizing chart (above ears, just about shoulder length...etc)

This doesn't solve people not going on the wiki for clarifications on hair lengths, but,it is at least more intuitive that gendered tags.

I support this idea - using standardized length tags regardless of gender is necessary when the tags are named something like "short_hair". Such a phrase has a very clear meaning, so any attempts to have the tag actually mean something else will continue to be ignored because users will naturally assume "short hair = hair that is short".

.Dank said:
I propose a standardization of hair lengths. Not just how to far they fall to the shoulders, but the length of the hair itself. This is to accommodate for cases of spiked hair.

I´m in favor of the standarization. I already saw the hair_tags as standarized, but I already stated that. The best solution by now is, if no one else has another opinion, to make at least 2 single seperate hair tags.

Tl;dr for the problem by now: You won´t be able to search for very short haired boys or short haired boys, even if it´s not the same. As a user, who doesn´t know that, will get alot of false results, searching for "male_focus short_hair" as only the girls are tagged like that. But there´s a difference between the hair lenght of short_haired boys like Alexander and Ouma Kokichi. And not everybody is searching for otoko no ko, just look at the new influx of bara.

The solution so far would be, to create two gendered tags that should be aliased to the known hair lenghts:
very_short_haired_girl or very_short_haired_boy
short_haired_girl or short_haired_boy

That way, the thing you want to search can be excluded by search. You want short haired girls, just search for "short_hair -short_haired_boy" or "short haired girl".

Personally I´m in favor for "short_haired_girl", because right now we can just mass update it. Only a few boys are tagged with short_hair by now.
Keeping the status quo like that will make the problem even bigger, because the influx of new images won´t stop.
Only standarizing short hair will lead to the problem that slime and renim stated (even if I don´t actually agree with it.)

That it´s possible to make those new tags is clear, because we already have gender specific tags, for example male pubic hair.