AngryZapdos said:
BUR #17431 has been approved by @nonamethanks.
Show
These are the tags qualified with individual games rather than the series itself. I figured any contentions over these qualifiers were more likely to arise from these tags' renames, so they're in a seperate BUR. There are, however, two tags that should keep their game-specific qualifiers:
There are two distinct NPC designs referred to as "fisherman" in the Zelda series, one being in Majora's Mask and the other being in Link's Awakening. As such, they should be qualified with said games rather than *_(zelda).
There are multiple beetles in the Zelda franchise, but this tag is specifically for the item in Skyward Sword (and Super Smash Bros.). To avoid ambiguity, its *_(skyward_sword) qualifier should be retained.
You know, there are not only multiple beetles in the Zelda franchise, but there are also multiple Beedles. Don't take what I'm about to say too personally, since I've seen many other people make this error as well, as I'm about to point out using actual examples from this site, but tl;dr, don't ever ask to add ambiguity to tags, and here's why:
The Zelda series has a strong tendency to reuse names, either for specific lore reasons or just as fanservice. While at a glance, nothing in this particular BUR seems to be a name that has been reused (unless you count stuff like Mido being a character in one game and part of the name of a place in other games.) However, you never know when the Zelda series will reuse a name to call back to a previous entry. For example, we have Rauru from OoT (rauru_(ocarina_of_time)) who, while sharing a name with a Zelda II town just like Mido and a bunch of other characters, didn't share a name with any other characters from past entries nor for several future entries and would have not needed disambiguation... until TotK, which introduced a new character with the same name (rauru_(tears_of_the_kingdom).)
Preemptively disambiguating tags in this manner is almost always a bad idea: not just in the Zelda series, but in many other series, names will get reused eventually, either for lore reasons, or laziness; it gets worse with localization, where characters will not share names in the original language, but will after lazy localization (or sometimes the localization goes out of its way to fix name reuse, sometimes ruining lore implications.) Let's take Fire Emblem for example, since it's a long-running series with a ton of reused names (or homophonic names which would romanize to the same thing were it not for specific localization efforts.) This is not intended to derail the thread from the Zelda series, I'm just using it as an example since I'm more familiar with that series and, like Zelda, it reuses names.
- There's a Hilda in Genealogy of the Holy War (hilda_(fire_emblem)) and another in Three Houses (hilda_valentine_goneril). Thankfully, the latter has a full family name that lets us disambiguate, but, in both the original Japanese and in localizations, both characters are named Hilda, with the same kana (ヒルダ.) If the latter didn't have a full family name, we would have had to disambiguate the former. Actually, it still probably causes some confusion for people not familiar with the FE4 character. If we had used the full title like hilda_(fire_emblem:_genealogy_of_the_holy_war) and someone like you had suggested an update like this, we would have had a headache to deal with in 2018/2019 when Nintendo released roster info (I don't remember which year it happened in.)
- There's a Selena in Sacred Stones (selena_(fire_emblem:_the_sacred_stones)) and a Selena in Fates (selena_(fire_emblem_fates)), but only in the English localization. In Japanese, the Fates character's name is Luna. But in Awakening, there's an awfully-similarly-named Serena in Japanese. Fortunately, there's a difference in kana between the two: Sacred Stones Selena's kana is written セライナ, which is unlike what you'd expect the kana do be for a Selena/Serena (i.e., セレナ), so they do have different names in the original Japanese; however, when you romanize the names, they end up looking awfully similar. It's an entire mess... and if someone had made a request like yours before either 2012 or 2015, depending on which Selena/Serena you want to go with, guess what, it'd be another headache later on down the road.
- There's a Kamui in Gaiden (kamui_(fire_emblem)) and a Kamui in Fates (kamui_(fire_emblem_if)), the latter of the two being the only one to be localized to have a different name (corrin_(fire_emblem_fates).) If we ever decide to change our policy on using localized names instead of the original names, someone making a request like yours for these characters would be unnecessarily adding amiguity. Another headache, but of a different variety. Also, in an alternate reality where we didn't use localized names, a request like yours would have caused a headache just like the examples above when the name reuse happened in 2015.
Renames/aliases like the ones you're proposing are myopic attempts at saving some typing, in a world with autocomplete and tag search, at the expense of either present or future ambiguity. Don't make requests like this. Even if the majority of people think it's fine, still don't make requests like this, because they're wrong to approve of such requests. You are only setting us up to have more headaches in the future. Really, what we should be doing is making a concerted effort to preemptively eliminate ambiguity by either creating implications where the more specific tag implications the ambiguous tag, or deprecating the ambiguous tag entirely. In the case of the same exact character, or different forms/incarnations of the same character that display the same main design characteristics and "character essence," such as the aforementioned Beedle, implications would be fine. But in the case of entirely different characters from the same series that just happen to share a name for whatever reason, which aren't already disambiguated like the Raurus, we should be deprecating the ambiguous tags, e.g., hilda_(fire_emblem) should be deprecated, with the current examples being retagged with hilda_(fire_emblem:_genealogy_of_the_holy_war). (That is just an example–I am not trying to hijack this thread about Zelda characters and turn it into a thread where we make debate changes for Fire Emblem characters.)
If I had the ability, I would downvote your request a million times. I would make it be a compulsory example of what not to do that everyone making an update request would have to read and acknowledge before they would be allowed to post their request. I would lock it in a pillory in the town square with a sign hanging around its neck saying "I tried to cause a future headache for danbooru moderators." Your request is bad, and you should feel... well, not bad, since I'm sure you were well-intentioned, and I'm not expressing all this negativity toward your request just to make you feel bad for doing something I don't like. However, you should definitely feel compelled to be more forward-thinking in your future contributions. Danbooru prides itself on being higher quality than other boorus and having more level-headed judgment in its moderation staff, but some of the aliases on this site really are powerful counterexamples of that claim, and BURs like yours will not help us achieve that goal (as well-meaning as I'm sure you are in making them. Seriously, don't take my post too personally; I'm not wishing ill on you at all over here.)
To re-iterate: no to this entire thread, please don't make things more ambiguous, please don't make things more likely to become ambiguous in the future, and have a good day.
