Consolidating the "Vampire" and "Vampire_Costume" tag

This in hereby is a formal request of sorts to passeth onto thee the desire to reduce the redundancy of this foolishness.

Basically I find that the vampire_costume tag in question is redundant since the tag is often used without "vampire", leading to plenty of quality vampire pics not showing under the vampire tag. This leads to reduced exposure and a general lack of proper tagging...which considering that the full "vampire" is not only broad enough to encompass costumes but also older than the costume tag, I find it strange that the costume tag was ever created.

To be blunt, the costume tag only serves to create confusion and keeps good vampire pics from being tagged as vampire.

(Full personal disclosure: I'm not sure how big of an issue this is for most people. The "vampire" tag I'd wager is seldom even searched enough to warrant any attention in the first place. But when there's a picture of a vampire doing vampire things and its only tagged as "costume" ... it boggles my mind.)

I'll check back to see how this is doing after a day or two. Got things to do. Peace.

About what I expected. I'll keep my ears open if anyone wants to discuss this.

BUR #8106 has been rejected.

create alias vampire_costume -> vampire

BUR for above comment.

I agree that there seems to be a lot of overlap between both tags. The only differences I can see between the two tags is the setting (Halloween or not) and whether or not the character is a canonically a vampire.

An implication might instead be better.

I don't see why not to go through with this considering witch costume was aliased to witch fairly recently, though it could just mean its about time we go through all of the similar tags and alias them.

HeeroWingZero said:

I don't see why not to go through with this considering witch costume was aliased to witch fairly recently, though it could just mean its about time we go through all of the similar tags and alias them.

Not quite all of the similar tags. There's a pretty vast difference between ghost and ghost_costume.

Also, there should be a difference between mummy and mummy_costume, or at least there would be if anyone paid attention to the wiki. In practice, mummy is nearly all stuff like post #4178764 and barely anything like post #3106057.

Well, there are characters in the "costume" tag that aren't canonly vampires, though I do believe there should be a change to the tag. as mentioned before there are a lot of non-vampires doing vampire things. the way I always thought of the costume tag was in my opinion "overly vampire" as most commonly recent canon vampires don't seem to have a similar fashion like say, the OG Dracula vibe.

I think there's a big difference between post #4178213 (vampire costume) and post #4897680 (actual vampire). Merging these two tags would make it impossible to properly distinguish the two concepts, though I admit the tags are already muddied by people using vampire canonically.

Perhaps the vampire tag should really be called vampirism, to note that it's for actual vampiric features?

nonamethanks said:

I think there's a big difference between post #4178213 (vampire costume) and post #4897680 (actual vampire). Merging these two tags would make it impossible to properly distinguish the two concepts, though I admit the tags are already muddied by people using vampire canonically.

Perhaps the vampire tag should really be called vampirism, to note that it's for actual vampiric features?

I agree on both. Vampire costum and vampire shouldn't be merged, but I also think that vampire should get another name, that makes it more obvious, that it's about vampirism.

nonamethanks said:

I think there's a big difference between post #4178213 (vampire costume) and post #4897680 (actual vampire). Merging these two tags would make it impossible to properly distinguish the two concepts, though I admit the tags are already muddied by people using vampire canonically.

Perhaps the vampire tag should really be called vampirism, to note that it's for actual vampiric features?

I would not be opposed to a correction in terminology. "Vampirism" would allow the costume tag to remain relevant. Personally I'd rather keep it simple so that taggers don't have to worry about distinguishing between the two tags but making them more specific would help that either way.

BUR #8115 has been rejected.

create alias vampire -> vampirism

Let's put it to the vote. I realize it could be unpopular because most of our "species" tags are named after the species itself, not its traits (werewolf not lycanthropy, etc), but I think it makes sense to break from the cycle if it helps how the tag is used.
The tag will need a lot of cleanup afterwards, of course, since it's been abused for years.

The same logic I think can be applied to the other tags mentioned in this thread, for example mummy -> mummified in order to distinguish it from mummy costume.
As for witches, it doesn't make sense to distinguish witch vs witch costume because the only way to distinguish a witch from some random character IS the costume.

Just so we're clear, vampirism means vampires in the act of feeding, right? Because if all we have with a tag for characters in vampire costumes, and a tag for vampires drinking blood, that'll make it a lot harder to tag posts where they're doing neither, like post #1943909.

iridescent_slime said:

Just so we're clear, vampirism means vampires in the act of feeding, right? Because if all we have with a tag for characters in vampire costumes, and a tag for vampires drinking blood, that'll make it a lot harder to tag posts where they're doing neither, like post #1943909.

I don't think NNT said anything about limiting it to feeding, that was just an example. Having no reflection is also a common trait of vampirism, so I don't see any reason why it would be excluded from the tag.

Well vampirism is the acts or practices of a vampire, so it applies to anything that shows someone is a vampire (drinking blood, turning into a bat/mist, being invisible to mirrors, even just looking pale with fangs and red slitted eyes). I can understand the confusion however, which is why I'm not too sure myself about it. The term somewhat implies active behavior, and standing in front of a mirror is not exactly active.

Most forms of media, games being the easiest to reference, treat vampirism as a "thing", rather than a "practice." Craving blood, being unaging, burning in sunlight, ect. are traits of "vampirism", be it a disease, curse, or what have you. I don't think trying to define our usage by a dictionary definition that I honestly don't think anyone using Danbooru would be more familiar with than, say, Skyrim's use of vampirism, will work out all that well.

People are going to try to tag posts featuring characters without reflections, sleeping in coffins, and being staked with vampire. Trying to exclude passive vampirism seems like it would just make more of a mess.

I'd say adding a good, concise definition to the term "vampirism" for what Danbooru would consider applicable for the tag would sort out any confusion.

Stuff like what is similarly present for the current "vampire" tag though including things like clear physical traits of vampirism, the "act" of vampirism, possibly even clear indications the individual is a "natural" vampire so to speak. The tag could even still apply to existing "costume" pics if its obvious the individual is portrayed in a costume yet is still acting the part of vampirism. If a destinction at this level is still required then I'd still go for the consolidation of the tags since "less moving parts" equals less chance for people miss tagging pics.

Either way, the proposed update to the tag sorts out my personal gripes. I'm now just concerned about how others will interpret it.

i dunno, i feel like people that look the vampire tag aren't looking for them in the act of vampirism but....for vampire pics in general (and not everyone reads the wiki page) i understand you don't want to add the tag for any vampire or it would be infested by the scarlet sisters tho.
Changing it to vampirism would just feel confusing, maybe merging vampire and vampire costume into the vampire tag and adding a new tag vampirism along with the former to specify the traits? basically filtering the vampirism pics while including them all in the vampire tag.

Now he/she(Tyraneo) raises an excellent point which, convinces me to double down on why I initially created this thread.

The "Vampire costume" tag is plainly redundant while the vampire tag itself is already specific enough to encompass all vampire related pics be they costume or not. Changing the OG vampire tag to "Vampirism" would likely cause more confusion than merging it with costume since if someone is looking for vampire, they'd likely search for just vampire and expect to get get anything vampire related...costume or no. The existence of the costume tag is keeping vampire related pics from showing under vampire; even if it is intended to be a costume its still portraying a vampire.

Perhaps a generic tag for costumes could be made to apply context but otherwise there is no real need to specify whether a pic was a costume or not, especially not one so specific. A generic tag could encompass all costumes and would allow those wanting costumes of specific creatures to simply use two tags. Possible shot in the foot for free users but *shrugs* as free boy myself I would rather the tags be clean than overly specific and potentially keeping things I want to find out of the tags I can search for.

Vampirism could still be added to specify the "acts" or vampirism, but at this point I'd argue the vampire tag is good all on its own.

Edits: Punctuation/Grammar

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The bulk update request #8106 (forum #201475) has been rejected by @DanbooruBot.