When starting a new tag, not everyone has the time to do massive tag gardening right away, yet some taggers feel the need to remove useful tags because they haven't been tagged often. This happens more often with useful tags only having 1 post, as sometimes users automatically equate 1-post general tags as mistakes when they are not always. I've seen it happen sometimes even when multiple posts are tagged, though. This is a pet peeve of mine because it's sometimes hard to spot and reverse these deletions.
I swore I had tagged a post cardigan_vest that I didn't see on my recent browse of the tag, and had to go back through my tag history (could have been frustrating if it was something I had tagged a very long time ago) to find the specific post (post #1260555). It turns out it was replaced with the less descriptive sweater. There are reasons for new tag creations, and I did this one because frankly it is difficult to find images of cardigans that do not cover the arms otherwise (cardigan sweater_vest will mostly get you group images with some characters wearing cardigans that cover the arms and other characters wearing pullover sweater vests).
I'm not really trying to single out this particular instance or user (I've actually thought of starting this topic a few times before), though, but rather trying to encourage all taggers to think twice about removing useful general tags. If someone thinks a tag is superfluous, my opinion is that they should bring it up on the forum for discussion rather than unilaterally removing it.
First of all, it occurs to me that creating wiki pages for your new tags would've helped your problem.
In the past, I've certainly considered "weed trimming" some tags (with the wiki's "find old tags rather than make new ones" on my mind) and your argument never occurred to me before. Now I see deleting tags is something to be more careful about (which means asking around before deleting).
Widdow's peak was a tag that clearly needed creating and started off very slowly before I brought it up on the forums and had deleting it for only having 6 uploads would have been almost obnoxious. ____
However, I'm much less sympathetic towards your cardigan_vest example. This is a separate issue that might be worth a separate thread.
My knowledge of clothing and fashion is not the best, but unless "cardigan vest" means something more specific than "sleeveless cardigan", I would say that there's likely a pre-existing combination of tags use to tag post #1260555.
The trouble with clothing is that the material is part of the definition and this is not always clear in the image. Wikipedia mentions cardigans being knitted; Cardigan adds "light" too the definition. I wouldn't say post #1260555 fits the light or knitted definition, but I can't tell. It's not detailed enough to see and a lot of images are like this.
Hairstyles, being always made out of hair, don't have this problem; everything else about the hair is usually pretty clear in the image. Other variables in hair like colour, thickness, curl/straight are usually clear in uploads.
I agree with EB here, with the only proviso being if it is an obvious typo or clearly and entirely synonymous with an existing established tag. In either of those cases people shouldn't hesitate to correct the tag. Otherwise new tags should be left alone or preferably gardened into existing posts where relevant.
In either the case where you want to coin a new tag, or remove one that isn't obviously an error, creating a forum thread would be a very good idea, so that people can discuss and come to an agreement on our use (or lack of need) of a particular tag.
Serlo said: First of all, it occurs to me that creating wiki pages for your new tags would've helped your problem. I've certainly in the past considered "weed trimming" some "one-post no-wiki from 3 years ago" tags and this side of things never occurred to me.
I will admit I don't do wiki creation on general tags much as I feel I'm not good with description. As with the issue of not being able to tag garden the new tag right away, it comes down to having the time to do it as well. I agree it's a good idea to do it, though.
The sweater thing should be discussed in a new thread if needed. We currently don't have any tag delineation between light and thick sweaters, but I'm not against new tags if we need to distinguish them.
Shinjidude said: I agree with EB here, with the only proviso being if it is an obvious typo or clearly and entirely synonymous with an existing established tag.
And I wouldn't disagree there either. If it's entirely synonymous, though, an alias thread should be made in case someone is unfamiliar with the established term.
I don't mean to discourage taggers from correcting clear errors. If things are not clear and more in doubt, I like erring on the side of searchability by not removing tags and bringing any issues up in the comments or the forum if need be.
I'd prefer having a forum post in the first place so we can all help with tag gardening immediately instead of stumbling accross that tag a month/year later.
EB said: ... but rather trying to encourage all taggers to think twice about removing useful general tags. If someone thinks a tag is superfluous, my opinion is that they should bring it up on the forum for discussion rather than unilaterally removing it.
I have a different view on the situation. If tag has little to no posts, doesn't have a wiki or was only used by a singe user before, then I don't think it can be called useful. People won't know about it, therefore they won't search for it and they won't tag posts with it.
So approach most probably should be the opposite to what you are suggesting. Instead of starting the forum discussion before doing something with such tags (which is not necessarily a bad thing, but shouldn't be a rule), people should just start a thread when they are making new tags. This is especially true if you can't populate it by yourself for some reason or you need a hand with wiki, the chances are someone would be able to help with that.
I'm more inclined to start a thread for a new tag when I'm aware it will be a major undertaking (forum #68606 for instance). Perhaps we should have a single thread for new tag ideas that "tag gardeners" can look through to help out with?
EB said: I'm more inclined to start a thread for a new tag when I'm aware it will be a major undertaking (forum #68606 for instance). Perhaps we should have a single thread for new tag ideas that "tag gardeners" can look through to help out with?
A single thread would indeed be easier to follow. New tag ideas that require more discussion could then be moved to their own thread, like it happens with the Pointless Pools thread.
To get back on the topic of low-count general tags though, it would be really useful (for this and other issues) if each tag had its own history page, like notes and pools do, detailing who first created and populated it, when, on what posts, etc.
Something perhaps worth considering for Danbooru 2, though I don't know if it'd be worth the trouble.
Fred1515 said: To get back on the topic of low-count general tags though, it would be really useful (for this and other issues) if each tag had its own history page, like notes and pools do, detailing who first created it, when, on what posts, etc.
It's been suggested before, and I agree completely. I have no idea on the feasibility of implementing it (I'm clueless about that sort of thing), but I (and I'd expect many others) would most definitely make use of it.
A single thread could work, but only for very straightforward proposals and approvals. Any deep discussion really needs to go in its own thread. You see the same thing with the other monster threads here. Deep discussion with multiple things going on will either get confused, missed, or derail the thread. Unfortunately new tag coinage, definition, and usage discussion tends to get deep more often than not.
I brought up the tagging help issue before in forum #73975 and it seemed that the consensus was to make independent forum threads for each tag that needs to be populated.
As for the original issue of low-count tags being removed, I agree that it needs to be addressed before users get on reverting it. Any valid tag that isn't already covered by another multi-tag search or a pool should remain as-is, or at least be discussed here on the forums before a single user goes ahead and removes it, lest an edit war break out.
MyrMindservant said: If tag has little to no posts, doesn't have a wiki or was only used by a singe user before, then I don't think it can be called useful.
This goes a bit too far. Time would need to be considered. If something has one post after 6 months, sure it's probably useless. But if it was made recently, I'd pause before removing it.
jxh2154 said: This goes a bit too far. Time would need to be considered. If something has one post after 6 months, sure it's probably useless. But if it was made recently, I'd pause before removing it.
And I'm not arguing with this. I was speaking in general, obviously there are nuances that should be considered as well.
I very much confirm EB's experience. I don't have the energy or time to make a forum thread or populate a tag each time I coin something when I'm already in the middle of gardening a bunch of stuff (usually artists). Plus they're typically straightforward tags, either for being plain simple (flyswatter, multicolored_nail_polish, closed_umbrella), or for following the same pattern as existing tags (heart_tail_duo, frog_print, gradient_legwear). And finally, more often than not they're rare enough so that there isn't really anything to populate and worth catching attention on. There's also the issue of forum's activity. It's already difficult enough to get feedback on things you deem important without stacking up even more threads for minor tags.
Besides, I noticed on multiple occasions that users are reluctant to make tags, but fast to use them once created (the wonders of danbooruUp I guess). One more reason to skip the forum when not needed so.
Of course, I had some tags nipped in the bud as well, sometimes replaced like in EB's example, sometimes plain removed. I took the habit of noting the posts' IDs now.
