Donmai

howto:tag (locked)

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Tagging is the second most important job on Danbooru, and should be done meticulously.

By tagging an image with keywords which describe the content, users are able to search for images featuring a specific character or theme. Detailed and specialized tagging is what made Danbooru become an anime-art database, instead of just a huge collection only good enough for casual browsing.

Users at Member level can be invited to become Builder when their prominent tagging efforts are noticed.
(See Help:Users#Getting_Promoted for more information.)

If you have any trouble or issue with tagging, please create a thread in the Forum to ask, or consider using an already existing tag help thread.

Existing tag help threads:

  • How do I tag this? (topic #12251) is for help on tagging things specifically.
  • Wiki Requests (topic #12858) is for questions on the definition of a tag.

Rule of Thumb

Tag what you see, not what you know. In other words, only tag the visual and factual elements in the image. For example, images where the full moon is prominently depicted will have a full_moon tag. Ideally you should use an existing tag on Danbooru.
This means you should not tag what you know about a character. For example Remilia_Scarlet is supposed to be a vampire, but don't tag every picture depicting her with the vampire tag. Only use the vampire tag if the characteristics are clearly visible.

Do not use subjective tags (such as sexy, cute, hot, etc.). These tags are problematic because they are based on personal opinion, and different opinions can conflict. Images based on a subjective theme can be collected into a pool instead.

Examples of pools for subjective themes:

Please consult help:pools for more information on creating pools.

Minimal Tagging Criteria

Artist. See howto:artist for more information.

Character. All featured characters must be positively identified.

Copyright. Indicate from which series the characters came from.

  • The original tag is used for art that is not based on any established works (anime, game, manga, movie).
  • See howto:copyright

Source. The original URL the image was taken from must be provided. If there's no URL, indicate by words from where the material came from (i.e. name of the artbook, name of doujinshi, imageboard, scan etc)

Rating. Sexual material must be indicated according to howto:rate.

Spoilers. Some images are spoilers themselves, and must be declared with the spoilers tag.

General Tags

Describing the image in simple keywords - What objects are in the image (gun, jacket, etc.)? Is there a particular theme to the image (is it Christmas? Is there a war? etc.)?

Remember: There are a lot users who are not familiar with a character or a copyright, so using the following basic tags will enable those without such knowledge to recognize and search for images easily:

Please consult tag groups for more ideas. See also list of commonly misused tags.

Commonly Blacklisted Tags

The following must be tagged to allow viewers to blacklist images on demand:

Missing Information

Source_request, if the source of the image (URL) is not known.

Tagme*, if anything else (including copyright) is not known. This includes items and weapons characters are seen wielding, or exotic accessories they are wearing. Do not intentionally use tagme as an excuse for being too lazy to tag own uploads.

Note: This part of the guide only applies to the built-in tag editor on the Post Full View. If you are using DanbooruUp or any third party tools, please also consult the tools' own documentation for help.

Danbooru's Related Tags features are a great help at finding suitable candidates among the tens of thousands of tags already in use on Danbooru. If, for example, you are having some difficulty coming up with a new tag for the likes of that seemingly exotic accessory that character is wearing on her forearm, Related Tags may help you find the tag you have been looking for.

When you call on one of the Related Tags features, you will get a list of commonly accompanying tags for the tag that the cursor is currently on. It will also list the tags that are linked from its wiki page.

Add related tags by clicking on a tag from the lists that appear. Tags that have been added will be highlighted in blue. Clicking on a highlighted tag removes the tag from the image.

For the tag that your cursor is currently on, you will get a list of tags which commonly accompany it.

Consider the tag witch. Calling on Related Tags will reveal that images with witch also tend to contain broom, ribbon, witch_hat, and dress. Owing to the fact that the black witch Kirisame_Marisa, a character from Touhou is very heavily featured on Danbooru's collection, both tags will also appear on the list.

For the tag that your cursor is currently on, you will get only artist: tags which commonly accompany it. This feature might find limited use most of the time, as uploaders should have identified the artist when they uploaded the image.

However, it gives an insight to what artists have drawn on. Consider the Hatsune_Miku tag. Calling on Related Artists will show the artists with a high amount of Hatsune Miku fanart in their portfolio, as far as Danbooru is concerned.

Another use of artist: tags, to check on other artists who have participated in collaborations.

For the tag that your cursor is currently on, you will get only character: tags which commonly accompany it. This is intended to be used with copyright: tags. Consider the tag K-On! (full: copyright:K-On!). The list for K-On! will mostly feature names of characters from K-On!.

Beware that characters from other copyrights may creep up into this list. This happens because there is a considerable number of crossover K-On! art. Verify this with this search K-On! crossover.

For the tag that your cursor is currently on, you will get only copyright: tags that commonly accompany it. This is intended to be used with character: tags. Consider the infamous miko with detached sleeves, Hakurei_Reimu. Calling on related copyrights will list Touhou related copyrights, and crossovers featuring Touhou characters.

Find Artist

This feature is intended to check your artist: tags
and verify if they have been previously featured on Danbooru. However, due to limitations, this feature may not work correctly. You may find using the related artist feature more reliable. Check if artist names have been highlighted.

Favorite Tags

This is a list of tags which have been entered into your Uploaded Tags list in you Settings screen under your My Account control panel.

Beware of Limitations

The Related Tags lists are arranged alphabetically, instead of by relevance, or by number of posts. This may cause complete confusion to taggers who are completely new to the copyright or characters featured on the image they have just uploaded.

For this reason, it is always advisable to research copyrights and the associated characters before tagging.

Tag Consistency and Integrity

Please double-check your tags on the left side of the screen after applying them. If you have any tags with a total count of 1, a new tag has been created. Often, tag creation on Danbooru is not necessary. If this happens, please check that your tags have been correctly spelled.

To ensure that your tags are correctly spelled, it is best to pick your tags from the Related Tags lists, as doing this automatically enters the tags for you.

Use Danbooru's Existing Tags

Please use Danbooru's existing tags whenever possible, but do create a new tag if you are sure that it is not covered by existing tags or pools. If you aren't sure about which tag to use, don't be afraid to ask on the forums. Danbooru most often uses the original language's title when naming copyrights and characters, so always double check. See howto:copyright and howto:romanize for details.

Creating a New Tag

Only ASCII characters are permitted in tag names. Tags must be romanized if they're coming from Japanese or another language that uses non-ASCII characters. See howto:romanize for details.

Name restrictions

Tag names carry several restrictions, either for technical reasons or simplicity:

  • Tags cannot contain non-ASCII characters. This includes Japanese letters. Replace them with their appropriate romanization if necessary.
  • Tags cannot contain asterisks. They are used as a wildcard in searches.
  • Tags cannot contain spaces. Replace them with underscores instead, as spaces are used to delimit tags.
  • Tags cannot contain commas.
  • Tags cannot end with an underscore.
  • Tags cannot contain consecutive underscores.
  • Tags cannot contain unprintable characters.
  • Tags cannot exceed 170 characters in length.
Tag types
  • Artist names carry the prefix ''artist:'' or ''art:''
  • Character names carry the prefix ''character:'' or ''char:''
  • Copyright titles carry the prefix ''copyright:'' or ''copy:''
  • Meta tags carry the prefix ''meta:''
  • General tags are normally not prefixed at all, because all tags without a prefix are by default automatically assumed to be ''general:'' or ''gen:''
Naming a tag

Use singular nouns. This especially concerns tags about objects which appear multiple times in an image. Under all circumstances, use the singular for the object. If an image contains a bin full of wispberries, tag it wispberry. This greatly simplifies searching and tagging.

Resolving Ambiguities with Qualifiers. If the tag you are going to use had already been taken up for another purpose (other character with the same name, character with the same name as an object, character and series have the same name, etc.), add a qualifier between () to distinguish them.

For example Black Rock Shooter is both the OVA name and the female protagonist's name.

See help:qualifiers for further reading.

New Character Tags. Always use the character's full name in your tags. Name order should appear the same as in the original materials. Commonly:

  • SurName_FirstName for Asians. Example: Shameimaru_Aya, where Shameimaru is her surname.
  • FirstName_SurName for Westerners, and most other ethnicities. Example: Ken_Masters.

See Also

Further Reading

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