Solo and Multiple Views

This was already discussed before, last time in topic #19378 I believe, but the discussion fizzled out; the subject came up on the Discord again and frankly I still think that stipulation doesn't really make sense and is pretty counter-intuitive.

Why are solo and multiple_views mutually exclusive with one another?
No real reason for it was given other than "it's like this because it is and people said that when the tag was made" or "I like the way it is", but in practice it makes it essentially impossible to search for all the art of just a singular character, a concept that frankly shouldn't be impossible to search for and that sounds like what the solo tag should be for on paper.

- solo focus does not solve the issue because solo focus is explicitly for "more than one character in the picture, but one is overwhelmingly the focus".
- chartags:1 is effectively useless for this purpose now for most characters featured in gachas (or even any video game with named skins) since each skin gets a chartag of its own, and that would exclude all those results from the search.
- ~solo ~multiple_views isn't really a good equivalent because multiple_views can include more than just the one character you're looking for - eg. post #3921065 showing up in an astolfo_(fate) multiple_views search.
- You can probably search for this with a strange, convoluted search with a ton of exclusions like astolfo_(fate) 1boy -1girl -multiple_girls -1other -multiple_others possibly maybe?

Basically, it's impossible as things are to search for a concept as straightforward as "all the art of a single character and only this character" without an extra convoluted search and/or false positives in the search.
solo should include multiple_views of one singular character (such as post #4750933), because that still falls under the definition of what solo sounds like it should be, and "only one view of one character" could still be searched as a result - either with solo -multiple_views, or with a tag of its own.

As far as concerns of diluting the solo tag go, it has 3.1M posts currently, compared to multiple_views's 64k, that's barely 2% of the solo count - and it can be excludedfrom the search, as opposed to the reverse search (all art of a single character) being essentially impossible to search for as things currently are.

I guess the reasoning was that solo amounted to single-subject illustrations making intersection tag searches straightforward e.g. solo leaning_forward closed_eyes will always ensure that the same subject that is leaning forward will also have their eyes closed (post #5293722), including multiple views would mean that both tags wouldn't have to apply to the same subject (post #5215889).

the replacement search for the alternative would be right now:
illyasviel_von_einzbern (solo or (multiple_views 1girl -multiple_girls -multiple_boys -1boy))
That's seven tags, I will have to agree that otherwise doing:
solo -multiple_views tag1 tag2
would be better.

A bigger problem is the fact that _(cosplay) tags add chartags and that breaks most searches including these.

Addendum

The search to yield the entire library of a character still doesn't account for characters with clones like dual_persona or multiple_persona though that's got little to do with multiple views

Don't forget that the current unintuitive definition of solo makes it the single most mistagged tag on the site, requiring constant gardening, because everyone assumes it just means "one character" and not "one subject".

This is the one thing that I've never understood about our tagging system. I still routinely accidentally tag solo to multiple_views uploads because brain sees one character -> brain thinks it's solo.

blindVigil said:

because everyone assumes it just means "one character" and not "one subject".

Maybe rename solo to one_subject then, and use solo to cover arts of only one character in general?

Renaming solo is the worst thing to do, because it's a long standing and (i guess) most used tag on this site. People won't suddenly start using it for something else, just because of a name change. It will only lead to confusion.

I am in favour of the current status quo. I think a tag for a single instance of a single character is useful and if the definition of solo were changed then this concept would become more of a pain to search for.

However, if somebody wants to make a new tag for the concept of a single character regardless of the number of instances in the image then I'm ok with that.

Obst said:

I am in favour of the current status quo. I think a tag for a single instance of a single character is useful and if the definition of solo were changed then this concept would become more of a pain to search for.

However, if somebody wants to make a new tag for the concept of a single character regardless of the number of instances in the image then I'm ok with that.

+1

I agree that the definition of this tag is confusing and not very intuitive, as we have to do mental gymnastics and try to figure out whether the animal present in the image is named or not or whether the doll in the image can act on its own or not, which is a info that sometimes can only be conveyed through canon, so we can safely tag solo on that image.

This bizarre search is what I've been using to garden posts missing any of the tags marked with with the minus prefix and it's still not complete, because you have solo images with chartags:>2, just as Astolfo said. That's how filled with exceptions and complex the tagging system behind this tag is, which of course I believe it's impossible to solve it completely but maybe we can make it simpler somehow.

Edit: On the other hand, including some of those exceptions in the solo search means someone searching for only one instance of the character would need to search "Solo -X -Y...", but as others pointed, the exceptions are very small compared with the solo tag, even multiple views, so regardless whether we keep the status quo or not, the net effect is negligible and one side will have to add a few terms to their search to add or exclude a small amount of posts in either case.

Obst said:

I am in favour of the current status quo. I think a tag for a single instance of a single character is useful and if the definition of solo were changed then this concept would become more of a pain to search for.

However, if somebody wants to make a new tag for the concept of a single character regardless of the number of instances in the image then I'm ok with that.

It would literally only require adding -multiple_views to your search, nevermind that multiple views would only pollute 2-5% of the average solo search.

Astolfo_(fate) solo: 2636
Astolfo_(fate) ~solo ~multiple_views: 2767

That's a 5% increase. The first page features 3 multiple views posts, and the next one isn't seen until page 4, which is actually an example of solo mistagging (post #5025754 NSFW tagged solo but not multiple views)

General character count tags would be helpful because `chartags` doesn't work as OP mentioned.

I also instinctively tag solo on multiple_views images and think it's dumb we still use some 13-year-old clause made at a time when solo was also applicable to sex posts.

magcolo said:

Maybe rename solo to one_subject then, and use solo to cover arts of only one character in general?

This is probably the worst thing we could do, at that point we'd just have two tags with 3 million posts and 98% overlap (solo for what it currently is for, and one_subject for solo + multiple_views etc.).

Also chartags metatag is basically useless in the current Danbooru economy because of the frequency with which characters have multiple character tags. It's not just gacha outfits, but now things like Elden Ring with multiple classes implying tarnished.

Post count for chartags:>1 solo: 357820
Post count for solo chartags:0: 511964

Which combined total like a quarter of the solo tag.

Talulah said:

This is probably the worst thing we could do, at that point we'd just have two tags with 3 million posts and 98% overlap (solo for what it currently is for, and one_subject for solo + multiple_views etc.).

We wouldn't even be able to imply solo to the new tag, right, cause the cutoff for overlap is 95%? So all we'd really be doing is forcing users to manually tag solo and a second tag that basically means the exact same thing on every post. Because a few people can't handle a barely noticeable "pollution" in their "one subject" search.

Obst said:

I am in favour of the current status quo. I think a tag for a single instance of a single character is useful and if the definition of solo were changed then this concept would become more of a pain to search for.

However, if somebody wants to make a new tag for the concept of a single character regardless of the number of instances in the image then I'm ok with that.

+2, I also still stand by the posts I made in the last topic.

blindVigil said:

single most mistagged tag on the site, requiring constant gardening

Just wanted to mention, that this isn't only because of a (not IMO) "unintuitive definition", but because People are always to fast on tagging "solo" on their uploads. Gardening it opened my eyes for the amount of mistags where it's very obvious, that it's just wrong, like "solo + solo_focus" or "solo + multiple girls" "solo 1girl 1boy" and of course "solo multiple_boys".
I believe that some basic tags are just in your tagging flow when you're uploading, so it's of course pretty mistagged, because it's one of the most used tags. It's not only because people think that multiple_views and solo can be used together, but because they're just not thinking when uploading.

The way solo is currently used never made sense to me, for the reasons that have already been explained above. I see no downsides for changing the current definition to include multiple views.

Do you really want to dilute the solo tag?
Into a way in which you can't search for actually single instances of characters anymore, unless you want to do a negative search?
That would be a huge step back.

If you want to really change things, it's better to tackle the multiple_views tag.

Dilute it by increasing it by a tiny percentage? Multiple views is a tiny tag by comparison. And what exactly about it should be tackled?

Talulah said:

Dilute it by increasing it by a tiny percentage? Multiple views is a tiny tag by comparison. And what exactly about it should be tackled?

That's what I'm asking you.
The "solution" provided only creates more problems than it is trying to solve.

How did the solo tag not work?

Provence said:

That's what I'm asking you.
The "solution" provided only creates more problems than it is trying to solve.

How did the solo tag not work?

The problem as I view it is that there is not really any good way to search for a single character. "Solo" excludes multiple views, which is still a single character. chartags:1 is unreliable because it excludes untagged original characters and characters with more than one tag (outfit tags, for example). Allowing multiple_views in solo would mean you can still get the old behavior with solo -multiple_views if you really don't want it, while also being able to search for a single character easily. Currently if you want to search for a single character you have to do some shitty search like 1girl -1boy -multiple_boys -1other -multiple_others -multiple_girls -no_humans. The tiny dilution of solo with multiple_views doesn't seem like that big of a deal overall, and it's still logically one character.