Donmai

Snake hair classification

Posted under Tags

Musaran

The issue

snake_hair says:
For characters whose hair starts as normal hair at the scalp and takes the shape of snakes or turns into actual snakes at the end of the hair.

  • The subtelty is non-obvious from the name. And indeed the tag contains many full-snake hair.
  • This is kinda inverted, as "snake hair" means in fact partially snake.
  • There is no tag for full-snake hair, despite being common.

Again cases missing here:
gorgon aliased to snake_hair.

medusa_(mythology) says:
For generic gorgons/characters with snake hair, use snake hair.

So I…

1) Started to review the images and retag some as snaky hair. (will complete in a few days)

2) Created/Updated the wikis accordingly:

snake_hair:
For characters whose hair is (or has) clearly snake(s), from skin (or near) to tips.

It can be snake tails (post #5808853), and not on the scalp (post #6161746).

If there are also other kind(s) of hair, they must be easy to tell apart.

Use Snaky hair if it only resembles or is partially snakes.

(removed the メデューサ (medusa) "Other names" as non-compliant with help:translated_tags)

snaky_hair:
For characters whose hair only resembles or partially is snakes.

Typically any of:

  • Hair/snake transition.
  • Stands or behaves like snakes.
  • Looks like snakes.
  • Snake-like. (eel, lizard…)

Use Snake hair if full snakes.
Use Prehensile hair if it has no discernable "body".
Use Medusa (Mythology) for specific references to the legendary character (and petrification when her power is shown).

Previously…

topic #9137
topic #18968

Caveats

There are a lot of edge cases, so far as best "snake" cutoff I settled on:

clearly snake(s)
from skin (or near) to tips.
must be easy to tell apart.

But I am not entirely sure, it could include partial snakes with hair transition.
I am not even sure 2 tags are necessary, nor why "snake" was so strict to begin with.

Once done I will probaly suggest related changes.

Anyways, is this ok?

Reply
Mayhem-Chan

My take is that there is no point trying to separate them , snake hair is snake hair, maybe the "snaky hair" (this is a bad name tbh, it's not more intuitive) could be a sub-tag if someone really wants to be able to find hair that's only partially snakes, but i'm not in favor of that.

And looking at the wiki history of snake hair, just looks like medusa was the "full snake hair" tag at first and then became more about the mythical character (i suppose when it got converted into a chartag), but without updating snake hair wiki accordingly. I would guess it was just overlooked and you could just have updated it to no longer be limited to partial snakes, even the medusa mentions:

For generic gorgons/characters with snake hair, use snake hair.

No mention of it being limited to a sub-set of snake hair, the wikis were conflicting and snake hair was the one needing an update

Reply
John Fantasy XIV

yeah, this is a distinction we don’t really need to make. besides, snaky hair in its current form is not a great tag as you’re trying to blend too many different things together like partial snake hair (post #6001459) with real, detailed snakes, and hair that “looks like” snakes which I don’t agree with (and see no examples of in the tag), if there are no actual snakes it’s not snake hair or a subset. also, partial snake hair is probably a better name than snaky hair, but if you can see me glaring at you through your screen you can probably guess my opinion on either of those being a tag.

imo here the path of least resistance is also the best one, which is to just alter the wiki clause and usher in these subsets.

Reply
Musaran

Mayhem-Chan said:
"snaky hair" (this is a bad name tbh, it's not more intuitive)

It makes easy to edit "snake" into "snaky". :P
(the edit interface remembers recently added tags, but not recently removed ones)

And easy enough to see the tag when searching "snake".

Anyways renaming is easy if/when done.
"Snakelike hair"?

could be a sub-tag

That exists? Or do you mean tag group with implication?

And looking at the wiki history of snake hair, just looks like medusa was the "full snake hair" tag at first and then became more about the mythical character (i suppose when it got converted into a chartag), but without updating snake hair wiki accordingly.

Ah yes, that makes sense.

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BobTheBuilder_v1 said:
you’re trying to blend too many different things together like partial snake hair (post #6001459) with real, detailed snakes, and hair that “looks like” snakes which I don’t agree with (and see no examples of in the tag), if there are no actual snakes it’s not snake hair or a subset.

There is a broad spectrum…
post #6072628 clearly snakes, but maybe not right from the scalp.
post #3484216 clearly not snakes, but behaving as.
post #5646968 barely looks like snakes.
post #5657518 eels, but still a medusa.
…but I see no boundary that makes sense and is unambiguous.

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I will wait for more feedback before continuing (or not).

Updated

Reply
nonamethanks

You shouldn't have removed snake_hair from those posts without discussion, I've readded that tag.
Trying to keep these concepts mutually exclusive is a pointless effort: both partial and fully drawn snake hair are "snake hair" for the average user, who is not going to care for the fine details. If we want to distinguish these cases, they should be subtags of snake hair.

As for the subject of this thread, a better name for this tag would be "partial snake hair", but even then it's pretty much impossible to distinguish average snake hair from partial snake hair, because snakes melding into hair is the default of how artists draw this kind of thing, simply because it's easier than drawing the snake body all the way to the scalp.

It makes more sense to have a tag for "full" snake hair, where you can actively see that there's no normal hair, rather than having a tag for potentially partial snake hair where every post is left to the subjectivity of the tagger.

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