Singular or plural: firefly

From the singular/plural alias thread:

T5J8F8 said: fireflies -> firefly

NWF_Renim said: As a visual element though artists regularly depict them in groups though, and the only thing that so far is tagged that doesn't match showing them in groups is that one flash video under firefly.

T5J8F8 said: So, natural...group?

Shinjidude said: Unless it's a mass noun or a natural set, I'd say go singular. Swarm_of_fireflies would be a mass noun, and there is otherwise no defined set that a firefly is a natural part of (as far as I am aware). I don't think we want to be using "swarm" for fireflies.

NWF_Renim said: The visual effect that artists are typically after is only generated through the usage of several fireflies though, which is evident by the fact that there are ~132 images of "swarms" versus 6 of individual fireflies.

Shinjidude said: I agree that a single firefly doesn't incite the proper visual effect, and would be unusual to be depicted as an individual as opposed to being in a group, but the same argument can be said of cloud and star (both of which also feel slightly weird in most usages). Unless we are amending the rules again, I'd say to go for consistency.

NWF_Renim said: Firefly would in general give a feel that it has a lot less weight and impact on the image than fireflies. Fireflies in general are typically greatly impacting of the images they're in, and the usage of the singular in this case would give a false representation of the images. It would be like tagging rain as water drop or the ocean as simply water. Unlike cloud and star, where there are a variety of things that could make a singular occurrence more commonplace (such as star also being a shape, and cloud things like the one ridden on in dragon ball). Firefly though doesn't have anything but itself to be singular or not with. With the way fireflies are generally depicted as balls or blobs of light it is unlikely they'll be used singularly as other occurrences of balls of light (whether spirits, energy, or what not) are more likely to be depicted in groups (such as post #487614).

Personally I see where the argument for plural is coming from, but my gut reaction is that I don't see it as strong enough to reverse the trend toward singular. I'll let discussion continue here for a little bit before deciding though.

Well, can anyone provide an example of an image with A Firefly?

(and no, Wriggle does not count)

Also, there is a non-zero chance that we could need "Firefly" as a copyright tag...

My vote is certainly against everything going plural again, most things sound better singular, and this instance doesn't provide a good enough reason to reverse the general rule.

I'm less adamant about forcing fireflies to singular as there is a valid point being made here. If we do make it plural however, I think we need to amend the rules to allow for "natural groups" where the collection is more typically what is being tagged rather than the individual. If we go this route I propose we reverse cloud and star for the same reason.

If however we decide to not amend the policy, I think as the rules stand there is no reason to treat firefly differently, and it should be aliased to singular.

No one ever suggested moving everything back to plural.

We've made exceptions before, and this seems like a situation where an exception is warranted.

Fencedude said:
Well, can anyone provide an example of an image with A Firefly?

I had gone through the Wriggle_Nightbug tag earlier today and tagged a lot of the images that could be seen as having fireflies (for occurrences of more than one) and firefly (for those where it was singular). So currently under the firefly tag there are 5 images and 1 flash that can used as examples of A firefly. I figured since they're going to be aliased one way or the other might as well see how the spread was (untagged images under wriggle added around 80 for plural occurrences and 5 images to singular occurrences). As a side note for where the bug was actually apparent I also tried to remember to tag insect.

It strikes me that these are two very separate concepts, and it might be worthwhile to keep them separate.

So are we keeping these separate then? firefly if the insect is identifiable in physical detail, and fireflies if it's simply the
"lots of glowing lights" effect?

Or something else?

Thats my opinion on the matter.

If that's the consensus, should we split star / stars back out? Star for the shape, and stars for the night sky? I think it's basically the same idea.

I'd agree that that is also a very useful distinction.

Shinjidude said:
Star for the shape, and stars for the night sky? I think it's basically the same idea.

I was thinking about that at one point before. I think it would be useful distinction too, though it would take some time with so many images in the tag to sort through currently.

I agree with the star argument, and don't care either way about fireflies. Anyway the singular thing is a guideline, so there are exceptions (hands for example).

Shinjidude said: If that's the consensus, should we split star / stars back out? Star for the shape, and stars for the night sky? I think it's basically the same idea.

Mmmm... I don't want to open floodgates of split tags, because this argument could probably be used with varying degrees of success for quite a number of tags.

I agree there is merit to distinguishing in this case, but probably also a lot of not so obvious cases. Like, are post #511609 and post #509261 both? What are post #508763 or post #506162? That is, can stylized depictions of stars ever be considered as having an effect more similar to a night sky than to, say, the think Kirby rides on?

Maybe it just calls for changing the tags, as just "star" and "stars" doesn't tell you a lot on tag name alone. On the other hand switching to something like star_(shape) and starry_sky seems a bit overcomplicated. And we wouldn't be able to use any aliases here, which makes it difficult for people to adapt.

This is a case where I agree with the concept but am not sure how the execution should go.