Someone keeps setting Myon as a character tag

NWF_Renim said:
Because this is a site run predominately by western fans and used predominately by western fans. The terms that are used are those that should be understandable by "us."

Are you saying that western fans couldn't possibly comprehend what "konpaku_youmu_(ghost_half)" means?

I'm not saying that, I'm saying that if the user bases' usage of Myon is one way in comparison to another way, then we could be setting ourselves up for problems as there could be a mismatch in definition from the normal western user base and our own use. Too radical a difference in definition can cause problems.

I'm not sure how you can argue isolationism, given that it hasn't been uncommon for misunderstandings in a term to result in a different usage of a term in the west from the usage in Japan. I also find it somewhat astounding that you have the gall to make an argument about making ourselves different from the "rest of the fandom" when you willing choose to ignore or cite any western sources. How can you represent the "rest of fandom" when you're ignoring a large portion of it as well.

What I am trying to say is that "western fandom" should just man up and learn to use the name right. Fixing the tag on danbooru would help a lot for a start.

I really don't understand this attitude of "Oh, if we got it wrong once we should just keep getting it wrong forever! Because we are WESTERN!"

I would support an alias from myon to konpaku_youmu_(ghost) -- it replaces a somewhat arbitrary nickname with a more standard moniker, and fits the Danbooru standard of aliasing to the Japanese usage.

I would not support a mass edit without the alias, because the primary goal of Danbooru's tagging is usability for a primarily Western userbase. Your opinions about the illegitimacy of the Western Touhou fanbase are doubtlessly wonderful opinions indeed, but they really have no bearing on Danbooru practice.

WAHa_06x36 said:
Why not try to correct the mistake?

Right, like convincing people to stop saying "could care less" when they mean "couldn't care less", "beg the question" when they mean "raise the question", and "infer" when they mean "imply". How are those fights going, by the way?

It is truly a sad thing that these mistakes have been ingrained on the public consciousness, but again, the goal of Danbooru is usability, not social reform.

WAHa_06x36 said:
I really don't understand this attitude of "Oh, if we got it wrong once we should just keep getting it wrong forever! Because we are WESTERN!"

Oh, yes, this sort of mistake is entirely confined to us silly Westerners, with our Manifest Destiny and our rap music. Surely the Japanese would never allow mistakes like these to be perpetuated.

What the hell are you even talking about Waha?

glasnost said:
Right, like convincing people to stop saying "could care less" when they mean "couldn't care less", "beg the question" when they mean "raise the question", and "infer" when they mean "imply". How are those fights going, by the way?

I was thinking more like not using "hentai" to refer to anime porn, which seems to be going pretty well here on Danbooru, no?

Oh, yes, this sort of mistake is entirely confined to us silly Westerners

I don't recall claiming anything of the kind.

A standardized character_(ghost) could be used for both Konpaku_Youmu and Konpaku_Youki, for whom we don't have a myon tag, since that one is reserved for Youmu.

An alternative would be 半霊　(はんれい, hanrei), which is general, not bound to a character and possibly ambiguous.

半霊 is indeed the term usually used to refer to Youmu's ghost half. It does have the problem that nobody knows it, though.

WAHa_06x36 said:
I was thinking more like not using "hentai" to refer to anime porn, which seems to be going pretty well here on Danbooru, no?

Is it, really?

Trying to enforce "correct" use of language is a fool's errand -- at best, you may succeed in getting people to talk how you want when they know you're in earshot, and even that comes at the cost of resentment over your supposed authority.

But that's all irrelevant: again, Danbooru's place is not as a language authority, it's as a search engine, and if lots of people type something in expecting a certain result and they don't get that result, it means you're doing a bad job as a search engine. This is why an alias to a tag like konpaku_youmu_(ghost) (which would still allow people to search for myon and receive what they expect) would be a good idea, whereas a mass edit (which would remove all results for myon) would be a bad idea.

WAHa_06x36 said:
I don't recall claiming anything of the kind.

WAHa_06x36 said:
I really don't understand this attitude of "Oh, if we got it wrong once we should just keep getting it wrong forever! Because we are WESTERN!"

My mistake, I suppose.

Edit:

S1eth said:
An alternative would be 半霊　(はんれい, hanrei), which is general, not bound to a character and possibly ambiguous.

We do have hitodama for floaty ghost things in general, and I don't think we have enough half-ghosts to make a generalized tag like that necessary.

glasnost said:
Is it, really?

It's not used in tags or anywhere else in the interface, is it?

This is why an alias to a tag like konpaku_youmu_(ghost) (which would still allow people to search for myon and receive what they expect) would be a good idea, whereas a mass edit (which would remove all results for myon) would be a bad idea.

I don't see a problem with that solution nor have I said anything to oppose it.

WAHa_06x36 said:
I really don't understand this attitude of "Oh, if we got it wrong once we should just keep getting it wrong forever! Because we are WESTERN!"

My mistake, I suppose.

Perhaps it wasn't clear there that I was mocking the counter-argument people were presenting: That we should keep using the name wrong, because danbooru is a site for westerners?

What the fuck, are we defending a retarded, inaccurate Western-only nickname here? We have ryuu_(street_fighter) and (thank fuck for this) gouki, despite those characters being referred to constantly (and officially) as Ryu and Akuma in the west. We consistently tag Japanese artists with their real, properly romanized names, and yet now we're going to be practical at the expense of accuracy? That's seriously not our style, guys.

I think the alias is the best solution here, as well, as much as I'd like to just stamp out this mistake entirely (the edit and Myon->Youmu alias isn't completely out of bounds in my book). But at the very least, renaming the tag goes a long way to fixing this annoying mistake.

We're not some public free-for-all, and we don't have to cater to the lowest common retard. I thought you guys were on board with this.

WAHa_06x36 said:
It's not used in tags or anywhere else in the interface, is it?

Right, and even so, it's had very little appreciable effect on how actual people actually use the word; that was my point.

But this all falls outside the bounds of this discussion (and Danbooru at large) anyway, so, y'know, just food for thought.

WAHa_06x36 said:
I don't see a problem with that solution nor have I said anything to oppose it.

Well, yeah, but you didn't say anything to support it, either, so I figured I'd keep going just in case.

スラッシュ said:
What the fuck, are we defending a retarded, inaccurate Western-only nickname here? We have ryuu_(street_fighter) and (thank fuck for this) gouki, despite those characters being referred to constantly (and officially) as Ryu and Akuma in the west. We consistently tag Japanese artists with their real, properly romanized names, and yet now we're going to be practical at the expense of accuracy? That's seriously not our style, guys.

I think the alias is the best solution here, as well, as much as I'd like to just stamp out this mistake entirely (the edit and Myon->Youmu alias isn't completely out of bounds in my book). But at the very least, renaming the tag goes a long way to fixing this annoying mistake.

We're not some public free-for-all, and we don't have to cater to the lowest common retard. I thought you guys were on board with this.

Now that's the danbooru I know. What the hell was all that bullshit before, people?

Mostly you being a massive dick about it.

Fencedude said:
Mostly you being a massive dick about it.

I'd have to say that this is my sentiment on it.

But I'm not sure how this is an inaccurate nickname in this case, however. We use it differently than the Japanese fandom but I see no reason to use their usage just because they do.

Wait? Myon (as applied to the thing following the human around) is just a nickname made up by English-speaking fandom?

Well, okay, this is easy then. Myon should no longer be used for Youmu's ghost half. Slash is completely correct (though the wording could be toned down a bit, doubly so for Waha), although for practicality's sake we should alias the existing tag t a new one rather than to konpaku_youmu.

So the only question we really need to discuss is if it should be konpaku_youmu_(ghost) or konpaku_youmu_(ghost_half). I assume the former is fine?

I'd vote for the former, it's concise and understandable.

As for tone, I'd claim I attempted to start out mostly reasonable, but after encountering such resistance for what seems like an open-and-shut case of danbooru policy (for the second time, even), you'll have to excuse me for losing patience just a little bit.

I agree we should be practical and alias Myon to ghost_half (or ghost, either one of which is totally fine by me, so ghost has slight preference since it's shorter).

Although I would love to alias Myon to Konpaku Youmu out of principle, I think it'll cause problems (especially since the vast majority of images with the ghost will also have Youmu herself, so it'll just look like the tag disappeared for no reason to an unsuspecting tagger).

I don't have any illusions that we'll create a paradigm shift in the western Touhou fandom, but if that does happen even a little bit, then we should maybe reverse and redirect the alias in the future.

EDIT: and +1 what glasnost is saying below this post (ie non-character tag).

I prefer konpaku_youmu_(ghost) as well, along with konpaku_youki_(ghost) (not on the alias, of course) as S1eth said.

Also, just to put it in writing, these should be non-character tags, like kaenbyou_rin_(cat) and reiuji_utsuho_(bird).