Standardizing Costume/Skin Tags?

I brought up this topic in the Discord's tagging channel for a brief discussion, but I think it's worth bringing up in the forum as a proposed change. Looking through the tags for gacha games (Azur Lane, Fate/Grand Order, Arknights), there's a pretty clear convention of tagging alternate costumes as character_(costume)_(copyright) (eg. Bremerton (Kung Fu Cruiser) (Azur Lane) or Blue Poison (Shoal Beat) (Arknights).

However, if you look at the tags for western games with a plethora of alts (League of Legends, Overwatch, Apex Legends), they're primarily tagged as costume_character (eg. K/DA Akali or Cyber Punked Wattson), and even a rare few cases where the costume name is entirely different from the character name such as the Soldier: 1776 skin for Soldier: 76 (Overwatch). For the sake of uniformity, I think it may be better that we rename the skin tags for these copyrights (and any others I missed with tags like that) to match the other convention.

If the idea is overall favorably received, then I'll set up a BUR for the Apex tags later today and try to do as much of the Overwatch ones as I can. I'll leave LoL to someone more knowledgeable on the game since I really don't know much about it, plus it's going through its own tagging overhaul in topic #18782, so it'd probably be best to wait until those changes are done before updating.

I really don't like the F/GO-inspired altskin tag nomenclature because it has a tendency to clog up autocompletes with multiple tags starting off with the same name. Worse for Azur Lane because now it also makes Kancolle tagging harder for some of the less popular Kancolle characters (and Warship Girls too, though nobody cares about that game). It can also get extremely ugly when you have a *CHARNAME*_(*SKINNAME*)_(*COPYRIGHTNAME*)_(cosplay) combotag with THREE qualifiers (and even with two qualifiers I already want to cry when I'm writing a wiki where tag autocompletes aren't available).

This tag nomenclature can stay there (for F/GO and Azur Lane), as far as I'm concerned, because those are lost causes anyway, but for the above reasons I really, really don't want it to be the standard norm for all skintags and 'infect' all the other copyrights.

Edit: That, and most of the Western MOBAs tend to name their skins in the *DESCRIPTOR*_*CHARACTER NAME* style anyway, unlike the Eastern Gacha games where usually only the skin name is given, without the character name. So, using *DESCRIPTOR*_*CHARACTER_NAME* tend to fit better for Western MOBA skins, while *CHARACTER_NAME*_(*SKINNAME*) would come more naturally for the Eastern Gachas (as much as I despise it). Note that most of the Western wikis also use the *DESCRIPTOR*_*CHARACTER NAME* style, because that's what the skins' official names are anyway. Most of the time.

The "gacha game convention" makes it more obvious what outfits a character has, since searching "blue_poison" will show blue poison (shoal beat) in autocomplete, while searching "akali" won't show k/da akali. For those ones it would be sufficient to rename them to e.g., akali (k/da) or wattson (cyber punked). It also means, possibly, that it would be possible to do something like cosplay does, where the *_(cosplay) tags automatically adds the base tag.

The English wikis all use K/DA_Akali. Or KDA_Akali if they don't support the "/". This form is likely far more intuitive for people who are familiar with the game.

For those they aren't, they are likely going to look the name up online, in which case "K/DA Akali" will provide more pertinent results (compared to "Akali K/DA"). For tagging, if someone can't recognize K/DA Akali, they likely can't recognize the base Akali either (to even trigger the autocomplete), in which case it's best to just plop down character_request and move in.

(And ironically, K/DA itself is effectively a themed costume set for four different characters, so someone who recognizes one of the K/DA costumes but not the other characters can more easily find the others ones by typing K/DA_ instead of trying to figure out what character it is.)

As for something like blue_poison_(shoal beat)_(arknights), all it causes me is to say screw it, I'm not going to bother (because I have to look up the tag anyway) and just tag the base character and leave other people to sort it out.

Because personally, anyone who can recognize the skin at first glance can type out the full name anyway, with or without autocomplete. And with autocomplete they can type it much faster with just 3-6 letters instead of needing to type the entire character name first (or click the autocomplete tag list, which is error-prone).

Meanwhile, for someone who isn't familiar with the altskin? All those extra altskin tag are just meaningless noise, because they have to manually look down every single one of them until they find one that fit.

And for people who aren't tagging those copyrights, but tagging characters from other copyrights with similar names? Oh goody, now you have to type out the entire character name and the underscore, and probably 1-3 extra letters just to get the character you want. When previously it was a something short, or something clickable from a short 2-4 list after 2-4 letters.

Like all the other characters named after historical figures (thanks to F/GO) and ships (thanks to Azur Lane).

In this case would it not be a good compromise to have the gacha format naming aliased to the current tags?

I don't agree with this kind of forced uniformity. I'm not sure about all of them, but in LoL's case the tags are named that way because that's literally what they're called in game. Foxfire Ahri is the official name, and what everyone online calls it.

NNescio said:

It can also get extremely ugly when you have a *CHARNAME*_(*SKINNAME*)_(*COPYRIGHTNAME*)_(cosplay) combotag with THREE qualifiers (and even with two qualifiers I already want to cry when I'm writing a wiki where tag autocompletes aren't available).

I've said it before, but, costume tags should not have their own cosplay tags. If it's an outfit belonging to a specific character, then you're cosplaying that character. There's no reason to have a separate cosplay tag for every dozen costumes a character might have. It also screws up searching, dividing cosplays of one character into multiple tags when in the majority of cases just a single tag would be fine. Character_(costume)_(cosplay) is equivalent to a character_(cosplay) character_(costume) search, too, so it's totally superfluous.

Talulah said:

It also means, possibly, that it would be possible to do something like cosplay does, where the *_(cosplay) tags automatically adds the base tag.

That doesn't sound feasible at all. What system would possibly be able to recognize when a new costume tag was created? Why do we not just use implications? I've never understood why costume tags don't imply base tags, it isn't like it was ever established that a character wearing an altskin shouldn't be tagged with both tags anyway.

NWF_Renim said:

In this case would it not be a good compromise to have the gacha format naming aliased to the current tags?

This doesn't solve the issue of autocomplete list getting clogged up though. In fact it will further exacerbate it (because it now occupies "two names). Something like LeBlanc is going to be a common fantasy name, and now I have to scroll through multiple LoL LeBlancs just to get to other LeBlancs.

blindVigil said:

I've said it before, but, costume tags should not have their own cosplay tags. If it's an outfit belonging to a specific character, then you're cosplaying that character. There's no reason to have a separate cosplay tag for every dozen costumes a character might have. It also screws up searching, dividing cosplays of one character into multiple tags when in the majority of cases just a single tag would be fine. Character_(costume)_(cosplay) is equivalent to a character_(cosplay) character_(costume) search, too, so it's totally superfluous.

I agree strongly on this matter, and I'm pretty much annoyed when trying to search for cosplays of a character (needing to OR tag all of them) or when trying to rely on chartag:number searches (they will be noise in the usual case, but every single altskin getting their own separate chartag just makes things worse). But I've pretty much considered this a lost cause at this point because other people are adamant on insisting on this tag nomenclature for those copyrights.

(Even when it's an alt skin with less than 5 posts! That almost no artist draws!)

blindVigil said:

That doesn't sound feasible at all. What system would possibly be able to recognize when a new costume tag was created? Why do we not just use implications? I've never understood why costume tags don't imply base tags, it isn't like it was ever established that a character wearing an altskin shouldn't be tagged with both tags anyway.

That's not even a complicated thing to solve if tags were standardized. regex sub for char tags (.+) \(.+\) \((.+)\) -> \1 (\2) and check if it's a valid character tag. It literally already exists for cosplay tags. I'm guessing there are no implications for technical reasons, similar to how characters in a copyright do not imply the copyright tag (also potentially solvable with qualifiers...).

blindVigil said:

I don't agree with this kind of forced uniformity. I'm not sure about all of them, but in LoL's case the tags are named that way because that's literally what they're called in game. Foxfire Ahri is the official name, and what everyone online calls it.

Exactly, @Talulah 's solution is way too inflexible, and it goes against what the majority knows them as from memory, as well as the point that @NNescio raised on clogging up other autocomplete entries.

blindVigil said:

That doesn't sound feasible at all. What system would possibly be able to recognize when a new costume tag was created? Why do we not just use implications? I've never understood why costume tags don't imply base tags, it isn't like it was ever established that a character wearing an altskin shouldn't be tagged with both tags anyway.

We already do that for school_uniform and cosplay automatically FYI, where every *_(cosplay) or *_school_uniform tag implicates the main one. It's extremely trivial from a programming point of view. Open the wiki for tokiwadai_school_uniform for example and look at where the normal implication notice would be.

It's just a matter of making character_name_(skin_name)_(qualifier) automatically imply character_name_(qualifier).

The issue is that having such a system would make it impossible to search for the base form of characters with many skins, unless we automatically create _(all) tags (worst timeline).
But then again usually the "base" tags are the most popular, so it's not usually an issue, and if a character has a single very popular alt skin then it just becomes a matter of doing base_tag -popular_skin.
Not sure about western games specifically, but for asian gacha imo it makes sense to do it.

@evazion what do you think about it? In the end you're the only one who can decide on this.
I can see it being an issue with tags like artoria where we went with an (all) tag instead, and I'm not sure that adding more hardcoded exceptions is what you want, but it would be the solution to end all bickering and constant BURs for this or that franchise. Given how popular gacha are I can't see the issue going away any time soon otherwise.
Also these tags are so popular that hardcoding is not that bad of an idea anyway.

(Also, pretty much all _(all) tags save for artoria's should be nuked)

blindVigil said:

I don't agree with this kind of forced uniformity. I'm not sure about all of them, but in LoL's case the tags are named that way because that's literally what they're called in game. Foxfire Ahri is the official name, and what everyone online calls it.

I don't play LoL so I'm not familiar with how their skin naming conventions are (which is why I mentioned I'd leave anything regarding that franchise to anyone more knowledgeable in it)

In Apex's case, the character's original name isn't even part of the skin names. You scroll down a skin select menu that only has the skin's names. So using Wattson for example, the list would look like this:

• Cyber Punked
• Haute Drop
• Kawaii Voltage
• Wired for Speed

The Apex wiki follows the same convention, the skins don't have their own pages, they're simply listed out with images on the character's page (see Wattson's page here). It's been a while since I last played Overwatch but I believe they treat their skins the same way.

Either way, it seems like the consensus so far is a negative, so I won't be posting a BUR unless there's an overwhelming majority or a convincing argument in favor of it.

As a side note I am a little worried about what's gonna happen if any Valkyrie (Apex Legends) skins end up popular with fanartists, since valkyrie_* is already bloated to all hell to begin with.

nonamethanks said:

We already do that for school_uniform and cosplay automatically FYI, where every *_(cosplay) or *_school_uniform tag implicates the main one. It's extremely trivial from a programming point of view. Open the wiki for tokiwadai_school_uniform for example and look at where the normal implication notice would be.

No, that I understand. But all cosplay and school uniform tags have _(cosplay) and _school_uniform in common, respectively, at which point all that needs to be checked is if a matching base tag already exists.

What I don't understand is how the same thing could recognize costume tags that are always different and won't necessarily always have copyright qualifiers. It doesn't sound trivial to make a system that can distinguish every single different costume tag and know who exactly it belongs to, even when new copyrights and characters appear, with no additional human input. I'm not a programmer though, so I'll just take your word on it.

The issue is that having such a system would make it impossible to search for the base form of characters with many skins, unless we automatically create _(all) tags (worst timeline).
But then again usually the "base" tags are the most popular, so it's not usually an issue, and if a character has a single very popular alt skin then it just becomes a matter of doing base_tag -popular_skin.

Isn't that already a problem for most copyrights? FGO is its own stupid problem, but users already add the base character tags when tagging costumes from games like Azur Lane or Arknights. Like I said, no one ever said not to do that, and it doesn't make much sense to not do it. I don't see how an automated system would make things any worse if that's actually a real concern.

basedheero said:

I don't play LoL so I'm not familiar with how their skin naming conventions are (which is why I mentioned I'd leave anything regarding that franchise to anyone more knowledgeable in it)

In Apex's case, the character's original name isn't even part of the skin names. You scroll down a skin select menu that only has the skin's names. So using Wattson for example, the list would look like this:

• Cyber Punked
• Haute Drop
• Kawaii Voltage
• Wired for Speed

The Apex wiki follows the same convention, the skins don't have their own pages, they're simply listed out with images on the character's page (see Wattson's page here). It's been a while since I last played Overwatch but I believe they treat their skins the same way.

Either way, it seems like the consensus so far is a negative, so I won't be posting a BUR unless there's an overwhelming majority or a convincing argument in favor of it.

As a side note I am a little worried about what's gonna happen if any Valkyrie (Apex Legends) skins end up popular with fanartists, since valkyrie_* is already bloated to all hell to begin with.

If that's how those games do it, then I wouldn't have any problems with changing their tags to the character_(skin) format. I'm only against cases like LoL where it would directly conflict with how the skin appears in game. If Cyber Punked Wattson is how it's actually written in most places, then I would want to stick with that, but if that's not the case then there's no reason for us to write it that way.

basedheero said:

As a side note I am a little worried about what's gonna happen if any Valkyrie (Apex Legends) skins end up popular with fanartists, since valkyrie_* is already bloated to all hell to begin with.

Name them *SKINNAME*_Valkyrie_(Apex Legends) and the problem goes away. Like how it's currently being done for Winged Victory Mercy (and Pink Mercy, Witch Mercy, etc.). See? Doesn't clog up me—/mer—/merc—/mercy— lists.

Anyone who can recognize the specific skin can type the skin name. And do it faster in some of the cases, as opposed to if the skin name is on the right (where they have to type out the whole character name first).

Anyone who doesn't can just tag the base character and character_request and move on. Or maybe we come up with a (official_)alternate_costume_request tag. Maybe we can list all the skins a character has under their base character wiki, for people who want to look through all the skins (for tagging or for searching).

And everyone who isn't trying to tag Mercy (or Valkyrie) can breathe a collective sigh of relief at not having their autocomplete lists clogged up. And people writing wikis have an easier time typing names and also using a single pipe "|" to eliminate a single qualifier (for [[wiki]] links) instead of needing to retype the whole name because the character name has two or three qualifiers.

(Note also the above argument can also apply to, say, using forbidden_feast_taihou as opposed to the current taihou_(forbidden_feast) tag. But like I said, AzLane is currently a lost cause for me.)

NNescio said:

Maybe we can list all the skins a character has under their base character wiki, for people who want to look through all the skins (for tagging or for searching).

I've been doing this every now and then for the Apex characters already, there's just a few that I have to go through tagging missing skintags and double checking the others for any skins I've missed. Not sure if that's been kept up for the other franchises I mentioned before though .

nonamethanks said:

[...]
It's just a matter of making character_name_(skin_name)_(qualifier) automatically imply character_name_(qualifier).

[...]

(Also, pretty much all _(all) tags save for artoria's should be nuked)

Agreed.

blindVigil said:

I'm only against cases like LoL where it would directly conflict with how the skin appears in game. If Cyber Punked Wattson is how it's actually written in most places, then I would want to stick with that, but if that's not the case then there's no reason for us to write it that way.

Also agreed.

Pokemon Masters EX is the only gatcha game I care/know anything about. There, a character has, at most, one extra costume and maybe a recolor or two. These can be found by using the official_alternate_costume and alternate_color tags. For example, if I want to find May's Easter seasonal unit I can search may_(pokemon) official_alternate_costume. I'd rather not make a tag like may_(spring 2021)_(pokemon) unless it strictly becomes necessary by possible later unit releases muddling up searches. Even then, I'd prefer to just make the tags as they're described in game (summer_steven, not steven_stone_(summer_steven)_(pokemon)).

I think that adding excessive qualifiers in the name of standardisation to this game's tagging isn't necessary. I'm sure there are also other copyrights out there in a similar situation to the one I described which also don't require it.

Obstetrics said:

Pokemon Masters EX is the only gatcha game I care/know anything about. There, a character has, at most, one extra costume and maybe a recolor or two. These can be found by using the official_alternate_costume and alternate color tags. For example, if I want to find May's Easter seasonal unit I can search may_(pokemon) official_alternate_costume. I'd rather not make a tag like may_(spring 2021)_(pokemon) unless it strictly becomes necessarily by possible later unit releases muddling up searches. Even then, I'd prefer to just make the tags as they're described in game (summer_steven, not steven_stone_(summer_steven)_(pokemon)).

I think that adding excessive qualifiers in the name of standardisation to this game's tagging isn't necessary. I'm sure there are also other copyrights out there in a similar situation to the one I described which also don't require it.

Kantai Collection being the giant elephant in the room.

NNescio said:

Kantai Collection being the giant elephant in the room.

Kantai seriously needs costume tags really badly. I don't know how Kantai fans find anything when we refuse to tag anything over there except with extremely unreliable gentags.

blindVigil said:

Kantai seriously needs costume tags really badly. I don't know how Kantai fans find anything when we refuse to tag anything over there except with extremely unreliable gentags.

Usually only one additional gentag is all one needs to narrow down the search. Sometimes two. Hairstyle, eye color, or specific element of a costume. Using Yuudachi_(kancolle) as an example one can get pertinent results with red_eyes/green_eyes or hair_flaps or scarf.

Could say the same about altskins from other copyrights too, for that matter. Most of them are just chartag + swimsuit or chartag + Chinese_clothes or chartag + sportswear... and so on.

You want Taihou_(forbidden_feast)_(azur_lane)? Taihou_(azur_lane) cocktail_dress immediately gives you pertinent results. Because Forbidden Feast Taihou is basically Taihou in a cocktail dress! Only reason why some are missed is because cocktail_dress isn't consistently tagged.

The overall issue is trying to create what are effectively compound tags to cater to users who can only search for two. In which case, well, maybe they should pony up a bit to help support the servers. Or maybe we can allow more tag searches for basic users (two was fine back then, now maybe not so much). Like one free chartag or something, and then another tag on top, enabling 4 tag searches. And Gold and Plat can get more.