dissolving vs disintegration

Should there be a distinction between dissolving and disintegration?
I was about to just edit everything to dissolving, but I thought I'd ask first. I could see leaving it on post #534457, or maybe there's some other tag that fits there?

There's also a couple of posts at disintegrating, but I'm pretty sure that's just a mistake.

To me, "dissolving" would be turning to liquid, especially if combining with another liquid. "Disintegration/ing" would be falling to solid pieces, ala the famous image of the Touhou girl turning to maple leaves.

When I think of disintegration, I think of someone being reduced to dust or ash.

The yukkuri picture is definitely disintegration, I'd say. We do have digital_dissolve though, which is sort of in the middle.

I don't think that there's any need for a distinction and that we should just alias one to the other. Most of the posts are of people breaking into pieces. Disintegration seems more accurate a word than dissolving, but we do have digital_dissolve and dissolving_clothes, and the latter has more posts, too. So I'd say we make:

create alias disintegration -> dissolving
create alias disintegrating -> dissolving

EDIT: I'd also like to suggest having dissolving as a blanket tag and implicating both digital_dissolve and dissolving_clothes to it. So,

create implication digital_dissolve -> dissolving
create implication dissolving_clothes -> dissolving

Digital dissolve, sure. Dissolving clothes, no. Dissolving and disintegration are about entire physical presences breaking apart, not mere clothes.

Hillside_Moose said:
Digital dissolve, sure. Dissolving clothes, no. Dissolving and disintegration are about entire physical presences breaking apart, not mere clothes.

Dissolving to me would require the presence of a vehicle, such as water.

Hillside_Moose said:
Digital dissolve, sure. Dissolving clothes, no. Dissolving and disintegration are about entire physical presences breaking apart, not mere clothes.

What about objects besides people and clothing? That's why I think having a tag for all instances is needed.

z905844 said:
Dissolving to me would require the presence of a vehicle, such as water.

I agree that dissolving isn't really the best word choice, but I think it makes sense to use it for consistency with the other two "dissolving" tags. Or we could change both of those to "disintegrating" too, since they also don't include a dissolving agent.

Flippernino said:
What about objects besides people and clothing?

What about them? Do you even have any examples?

I agree that dissolving isn't really the best word choice, but I think it makes sense to use it for consistency with the other two "dissolving" tags. Or we could change both of those to "disintegrating" too, since they also don't include a dissolving agent.

"Consistency" is a poor reason if it ultimately destroys information.

Hillside_Moose said:
What about them? Do you even have any examples?

Admittedly, I don't. But then, should we just not tag non-human, non-clothes objects as disintegrating if they are? It doesn't seem right to me, although you are right in that there doesn't seem to be any posts to make that an issue so far.

Hillside_Moose said:
"Consistency" is a poor reason if it ultimately destroys information.

I'll concede this point. So then, is it worth it to change digital_dissolve and dissolving_clothes to "disintegrating" instead? Since they're both more accurately described by disintegrating.