Aliasing <3 &rarr; heart

Reason:

Currently there is a mixed standard wherein some heart tags are spelled with a <3 and others are spelled with heart. Reversing this alias would be a first step to establishing some consistency among these tags. Also a tag that involves a symbol like this just seems out of place on the site.

Some might argue that this change might make it harder to differentiate the tag form heart_(organ) to that I say:

• heart_(organ) is a very small tag (111 posts) especially compared to the current <3 tag which sits at 80,000+. I don't think we should let this extremely rare need for disambiguation completely define how we handle the tag, especially considering how we name this main tag cascades into so many corresponding tags.
• with other heart-related tags this is a non-issue. For instance with <3_eyes never have I seen a literal heart in the eyes of a character...same goes for things like <3_censor, <3_marking etc.
• there will still be a mention of heart_(organ) on the heart wiki page to help people understand the difference.

yes, this

I'm going to -1 and then link to this thread where I make a fairly coherent argument why I believe that <3 should remain.

Furthermore just heart and not something like heart_(symbol) is just straight up bad, since a fairy reasonable user could add the tag to a post containing the organ and nothing would look wrong in the tag list.

darryus said:
I'm going to -1 and then link to this thread where I make a fairly coherent argument why I believe that <3 should remain.

Furthermore just heart and not something like heart_(symbol) is just straight up bad, since a fairy reasonable user could add the tag to a post containing the organ and nothing would look wrong in the tag list.

+1 to this.

Edit: To clarify, +1 to using symbol. I don't prefer <3 over heart.

+1 to heart. I haven't seen any good arguments for keeping <3, and it seems to break formatting in some applications (or maybe that was </3).

+1. It should use the word instead of "less than three".

-1.

I would say dealias the whole thing altogether. When I tag <3, I expect to see heart symbols; when I tag heart, I expect to see the organ itself.

If the purpose is to make the tag into a word instead of a bunch of symbols, I feel that it's better to do it this way.

• Dealias heart --> <3.
• Alias <3 to heart_symbol.
• Alias heart to heart_(disambiguation) for the other heart_* tags.

TheGreatWolfgang said:
-1.

I would say dealias the whole thing altogether. When I tag <3, I expect to see heart symbols; when I tag heart, I expect to see the organ itself.

If the purpose is to make the tag into a word instead of a bunch of symbols, I feel that it's better to do it this way.

• Dealias heart --> <3.
• Alias <3 to heart_symbol.
• Alias heart to heart_(disambiguation) for the other heart_* tags.

I think you have the correct idea

TheGreatWolfgang said:
-1.

I would say dealias the whole thing altogether. When I tag <3, I expect to see heart symbols; when I tag heart, I expect to see the organ itself.

If the purpose is to make the tag into a word instead of a bunch of symbols, I feel that it's better to do it this way.

• Dealias heart --> <3.
• Alias <3 to heart_symbol.
• Alias heart to heart_(disambiguation) for the other heart_* tags.

BlackLicorice said:
I think you have the correct idea

No, this is probably the least-correct idea of all of them. Did you read my original post? The amount of times you see an ACTUAL HEART vs. a heart symbol is negligible...it practically never happens. The standard heart tag should go to the symbol because of it's CRUSHING numbers advantage.

I mean lets say you have an animal...lets call it a snurf...and it's red. Then one out of every 1,000 snurfs is blue...do you start calling the all the other snurfs "red snurfs" because there's a blue one every once in a while? NO...you call that freakish blue snurf a "blue snurf" and you keep on calling the rest of the snurfs just "snurfs"!

Disambiguation is a joke...we don't need to run to disambiguation every time...when there is literally one heart_(organ) out of every THOUSAND heart posts you're making A LOT of disambiguation work for a very very rare occurrence. It makes no sense whatsoever.

darryus said:
Furthermore just heart and not something like heart_(symbol) is just straight up bad, since a fairy reasonable user could add the tag to a post containing the organ and nothing would look wrong in the tag list.

What's "straight up bad" is that we're using a dumb symbol that can't be applied uniformly. Are we supposed to tag heartbeat as <3beat? We need to ditch this 00's lolspeak and use a real word.

Dyrone said:
No, this is probably the least-correct idea of all of them. Did you read my original post? The amount of times you see an ACTUAL HEART vs. a heart symbol is negligible...it practically never happens.

I would say otherwise. There is definitely more posts under the 80000 that got mistagged and there is bound to be more in the future, considering the change from <3 --> heart will make new users less likely to notice its difference with heart_(organ).

The standard heart tag should go to the symbol because of it's CRUSHING numbers advantage.

I'm actually agreeing with everyone on changing <3 --> heart. I said dealias heart → <3 (in that order) because it is currently aliased that way and my subsequent alias suggestions would break if I didn't state that first.

I mean lets say you have an animal...lets call it a snurf...and it's red. Then one out of every 1,000 snurfs is blue...do you start calling the all the other snurfs "red snurfs" because there's a blue one every once in a while? NO...you call that freakish blue snurf a "blue snurf" and you keep on calling the rest of the snurfs just "snurfs"!

A "snurf" would still be called a snurf regardless of their color because their physical appearance would generally be the same. However, a vague tag like "heart" can mean either the symbol or the organ and having a specific tag for both (heart_symbol & heart_(organ)) does not seem like a bad idea.

Another example would be the tag organ itself (albeit very undertagged). Organ can mean the internal organs or the musical instrument. Having separate and specific tags to distinguish both of them would be better, like entrails and organ_(instrument).

Disambiguation is a joke...we don't need to run to disambiguation every time...when there is literally one heart_(organ) out of every THOUSAND heart posts you're making A LOT of disambiguation work for a very very rare occurrence. It makes no sense whatsoever.

We have been using disambiguation for the longest time now and it has been very useful when trying to differentiate between vague terms/tags. Having a disambiguation would let people know that they have to be more specific and actually check the wiki for the correct tags.

As opposed to just having heart mean heart symbols, because frankly when I first posted
post #1000027 which was mentioned in forum #259945,

I tagged heart with the assumption that it would be the organ and instead it got aliased to <3, causing a mistag that I did not catch.

Dyrone said:
What's "straight up bad" is that we're using a dumb symbol that can't be applied uniformly. Are we supposed to tag heartbeat as <3beat? We need to ditch this 00's lolspeak and use a real word.

It's like you didn't even read the entire sentence, which is something you seem pretty keen on doing, let me explain it slowly.

The word can mean "heart" two things, the symbol and the organ.
If we had a tag that was just heart it would look like it could mean both of these, and that'd be bad.
So if you want to get rid of <3 it should be moved to heart_(symbol), instead of heart.
And it would be clear that tag was only for the symbol and not the organ.
Therefore we potentially avoid some mistags.

Disambiguation is a joke...we don't need to run to disambiguation every time...when there is literally one heart_(organ) out of every THOUSAND heart posts you're making A LOT of disambiguation work for a very very rare occurrence. It makes no sense whatsoever.

I doubt many people would actually go from typing "<3" to tag the symbol to typing "heart"/"heart_(symbol)" if this change was made. In like how most people probably don't type out "dickgirl/dickgirl" every time, and I think I've seen people still use tags like gay rather than male/male or m/m when talking about searching and blacklisting.

Really the only thing that would change is that dedicated taggers wouldn't be able to instantly tell if a post with a heart symbol was missing the tag because it woudn't be at the top of the general list anymore.

darryus said:
It's like you didn't even read the entire sentence, which is something you seem pretty keen on doing, let me explain it slowly.

Speaking of not reading an entire sentence I doubt you've thoroughly read anything I've posted, or else you choose to outright ignore every argument I've made. Let me explain EVEN MORE SLOWLY because apparently you need a step by step refutation of everything you've said.

darryus said:
The word can mean "heart" two things, the symbol and the organ.

I've acknowledged that multiple times, you don't need to explain that again, you're just being a jerk here.

darryus said:
If we had a tag that was just heart it would look like it could mean both of these, and that'd be bad.

It wouldn't be that bad. I've said before the wiki would still explain the difference, and that heart_(organ) images are so rare it doesn't even matter.

darryus said:
So if you want to get rid of <3 it should be moved to heart_(symbol), instead of heart.

No...you shouldn't have to qualify the rule...only the exception to the rule...read my animal analogy up top...oh hell lord knows you're too lazy to scroll up there so here it is again:

I mean lets say you have an animal...lets call it a snurf...and it's red. Then one out of every 1,000 snurfs is blue...do you start calling the all the other snurfs "red snurfs" because there's a blue one every once in a while? NO...you call that freakish blue snurf a "blue snurf" and you keep on calling the rest of the snurfs just "snurfs"!

darryus said:
And it would be clear that tag was only for the symbol and not the organ.

Again, very rare, don't care...not going to let a tag with 100 entries dictate how we handle a tag with 80,000 entries...it makes no sense.

darryus said:
Therefore we potentially avoid some mistags.

So we're going to qualify an 80k tag with (symbol) to avoid confusion with a tag that has ~100 entries...sounds completely stupid.

darryus said:
I doubt many people would actually go from typing "<3" to tag the symbol to typing "heart"/"heart_(symbol)" if this change was made. In like how most people probably don't type out "dickgirl/dickgirl" every time, and I think I've seen people still use tags like gay rather than male/male or m/m when talking about searching and blacklisting.

That's...fine? Aliasing means we can have it both ways.

darryus said:
Really the only thing that would change is that dedicated taggers wouldn't be able to instantly tell if a post with a heart symbol was missing the tag because it woudn't be at the top of the general list anymore.

I'm sure people can handle alphabetical order...H isn't exactly at the end of the alphabet.

-------------------------------------- Reply to TheGreatWolfgang ---------------------------------------------

TheGreatWolfgang said:
I'm actually agreeing with everyone on changing <3 --> heart.

At least we agree on something.

TheGreatWolfgang said:
A "snurf" would still be called a snurf regardless of their color because their physical appearance would generally be the same.

I think black sheep and blue lobsters would like a word with you. We change animal's names ALL THE TIME based on color. Get outta here.

TheGreatWolfgang said:
However, a vague tag like "heart" can mean either the symbol or the organ and having a specific tag for both (heart_symbol & heart_(organ)) does not seem like a bad idea.

Again...you are ignoring the numbers involved here...I guess maybe that's because that's the only way your arguement works? Sure, if the heart symbol and the heart organ appeared roughly the same amount or even 40/60 or even 30/70 I'd be in favor of this...however that is not the case by a LONG SHOT. It's 1/800. ONE OUT OF EVERY EIGHT HUNDRED. How many times do I have to say this?! the heart symbol WINS, OK? IT WINS. It gets to be called heart.

TheGreatWolfgang said:
We have been using disambiguation for the longest time now and it has been very useful when trying to differentiate between vague terms/tags.

I never said it wasn't useful I said "we don't need to run to disambiguation every time". My point is it's overused. It should only be used when the tags are relatively even...why is this hard to understand? If a tag is 99.9% of the time going to go a certain way then it's stupid to disambiguate it...it just clogs up the amount of posts that require disambiguation and devalues disambiguation as a whole because people aren't going to do the work of disambiguation if they notice that most of it is stupid, needless busywork.

Image you are a person who actually takes the time to disambiguate (here's where you say "I do dismbiguate" and I say to that...how many posts have you actually disambiguated? I'm guessing a laughably small amount)...and "heart_(disambiguation)" is a tag...this is going to be your experience with that: "heart_(disambiguation)? It's the symbol. heart_(disambiguation)? It's the symbol. heart_(disambiguation)? It's the symbol. heart_(disambiguation)? It's the symbol. heart_(disambiguation)? It's the symbol. heart_(disambiguation)? It's the symbol. heart_(disambiguation)? It's the symbol. heart_(disambiguation)? It's the symbol. heart_(disambiguation)? It's the symbol again. heart_(disambiguation)? It's the symbol AGAIN. heart_(disambiguation)? IT'S THE SYMBOL AGAIN. heart_(disambiguation)? IT'S THE FREAKIN SYMBOL AGAIN.

That will happen roughly 800 times before a heart_(organ) post will pop up in a paltry attempt to justify the existence of that (disambigution) suffix.

It doesn't matter how many tags it has heart is still a really ambiguous tag name. Like seriously if you went onto the street and asked people what a "heart" was i'd bet a grand majority of them would describe the organ.

And it's not like there's no precedent for adding disambiguators to fairly massive tags like most of the *_(artwork) tags have them despite the fact that most of them 3d_(artwork) for example is tagged ~100 times more often than what it's being disambiguated from (stereogram). There's also similar cases, like gold_(metal), and how all of the mlp characters have them to distinguish the pony versions (*_(mlp)) from the human versions (*_(eg)) even though the human versions are a pretty rare sights on here (and I don't think all the characters even have human versions).

It seems to me that having disambiguation suffixes is, in fact, the rule rather than the exception where as cases like mario not having one is the exception.

EDIT:

I'm sure people can handle alphabetical order...H isn't exactly at the end of the alphabet.

When you're trying to get through a large tagging project you're only going to be glancing at the tag list not reading through the whole thing. You're going to be looking for tags you know are commonly missing, general tags that have less than 10 or so posts, and tags that don't apply. It's really easy to glance and see tags at the beginning and end of the list, tags like the year tags (20xx), anthro, anus, <3, cum, and breasts are usually the fist few tags, so when they're not there it's pretty obvious, same thing goes for vaginal, white_background, transparent_background, sex, and solo which are always going to be the last few tags. Everything between F and R is going to be somewhere in the middle depending on how many tags a post has, it could be fewer than 10 tags from the top it could be more than 30 tags from the top. Mind you you're looking for tags that aren't there more than things that are which is usually a bit harder for the human brain. And you're doing all of this as fast as so you can get to the other 50+ tabs you have open filled with other posts that you're adding tags to for the tagging project you're doing.

I don't think this argument is going to serve any more purpose than for us to justify what we think is right and wrong for the tags.

I have already given my two cents and if people prefer to have an ambiguous tag to describe heart symbols because the mistags are negligible, so be it.

I would like to see a site staff's take on this.

darryus said:
It doesn't matter how many tags it has heart is still a really ambiguous tag name. Like seriously if you went onto the street and asked people what a "heart" was i'd bet a grand majority of them would describe the organ.

That context is horrible. Who fucking cares what the man on the street thinks about furry art? Are you for real? We're talking about hearts as they appear in furry art, and 99.9% they are THE SYMBOL. Doesn't matter what the layman thinks about this niche application of hearts. Also...it's all in how you ask the questions...if you said "how would you define a DRAWN heart" most would probably describe the symbol...not the organ.

darryus said:
And it's not like there's no precedent for adding disambiguators to fairly massive tags like most of the *_(artwork) tags have them despite the fact that most of them 3d_(artwork) for example is tagged ~100 times more often than what it's being disambiguated from (stereogram).

That's a funny claim to make...do you have ANYTHING that backs that up? At all? Because I just looked up the alias for 3d -> 3d_(artwork) and the "reason" field is BLANK. If I had to guess that suffix was placed PRIMARILY in order to standardize it with other artwork tags which all feature the (artwork) suffix.

darryus said:
and how all of the mlp characters have them to distinguish the pony versions (*_(mlp)) from the human versions (*_(eg)) even though the human versions are a pretty rare sights on here

Again...you're pulling this out of your ass...I've actually had several discussions as to why all the ponies all have the (mlp) suffix and the answer is almost always "eh, it just sort of happened, and now we just do it out of habit." Not once was differentiating them from their EG counterparts mentioned...which doesn't even make sense btw considering the full name of the Equestria Girls series is "My Little Pony: Equestria Girls"...IT STILL HAS "MY LITTLE PONY" IN IT.

After reading the aliasing reasons it seems to me the actual reason of adding the (mlp) suffix to all official characters is to denote them as official characters considering the absolute avalanche of fan characters that could easily pass as official to those who don't follow the series closely (like me).

darryus said:
It seems to me that having disambiguation suffixes is, in fact, the rule rather than the exception.

Perhaps...I am actually usually annoyed by this site's overuse of suffixes...however they are there, as I've stated above, not for the reasons you say.

darryus said:
When you're trying to get through a large tagging project you're only going to be glancing at the tag list not reading through the whole thing. You're going to be looking for tags you know are commonly missing, general tags that have less than 10 or so posts, and tags that don't apply. It's really easy to glance and see tags at the beginning and end of the list, tags like the year tags (20xx), anthro, anus, <3, cum, and breasts are usually the fist few tags, so when they're not there it's pretty obvious, same thing goes for vaginal, white_background, transparent_background, sex, and solo which are always going to be the last few tags. Everything between F and R is going to be somewhere in the middle depending on how many tags a post has, it could be fewer than 10 tags from the top it could be more than 30 tags from the top. Mind you you're looking for tags that aren't there more than things that are which is usually a bit harder for the human brain. And you're doing all of this as fast as so you can get to the other 50+ tabs you have open filled with other posts that you're adding tags to for the tagging project you're doing.

This is completely irrelevant which is funny because you wrote a mini-novel on it...who cares where a tag appears in the list? That should never be a reason not to change stuff...you're really scraping the bottom of the barrel here. The arguement is "oh no! It will be unfamiliar and it will throw people off for 2 seconds!" Well by that logic then nothing in this world should change ever.

------------------------------------------ Reply to TheGreatWolfgang -----------------------------------

TheGreatWolfgang said:
I don't think this argument is going to serve any more purpose than for us to justify what we think is right and wrong for the tags.
...
I would like to see a site staff's take on this.

That's kind of the point...present your arguments and dismantle other arguments so when the staff reads this (if ever) they hopefully make the best decision based on the most logical argument.

TheGreatWolfgang said:
I have already given my two cents and if people prefer to have an ambiguous tag to describe heart symbols because the mistags are negligible, so be it.

So be it? Did you read what I said before? You're only saying "so be it" because you have ZERO plans to put in the massive amount of work that your proposal would generate. That's like saying "we're no longer using buckets to gather these apples...and if it's a lot harder to transport them back to the truck...then so be it! I'll be sitting on the porch smoking my pipe and watching the clouds if anyone needs me." That's you right now.

I've said my piece, and even if I could think of more points it's futile since it doesn't seem like anything anyone might say could convince you that tag ambiguity is a bad thing. And the points you're making are so reiterative and banal it's like you're just saying them to have the last word. Just continuing the argument between the three of us is unproductive at this point, and unless another name comes in here to discuss this I'm done.

darryus said:
and how all of the mlp characters have them to distinguish the pony versions (*_(mlp)) from the human versions (*_(eg)) even though the human versions are a pretty rare sights on here (and I don't think all the characters even have human versions).

Dyrone said:
Again...you're pulling this out of your ass...I've actually had several discussions as to why all the ponies all have the (mlp) suffix and the answer is almost always "eh, it just sort of happened, and now we just do it out of habit." Not once was differentiating them from their EG counterparts mentioned...which doesn't even make sense btw considering the full name of the Equestria Girls series is "My Little Pony: Equestria Girls"...IT STILL HAS "MY LITTLE PONY" IN IT.

Actually, it was because there were a lot of characters who's names would otherwise be confused with other characters, objects, nouns, etc. (Rarity, Big Mac, Bonbon, applejack, luna, colgate, discord, gilda, snails, angel...)

When those aliases were initially conceived, Equestria Girls wasn't a thing yet.

Generally speaking, there were a lot of fan names for background characters, varying spelling (pinkypie, pinkie_pie, pinky_pie, pinkie_pie...) and missspellings (pinkamina, pinkamena)...

And quite bluntly, there are well over 1000 *_(mlp) tags -- trying to remember if it was razzleberry or razzleberry_(mlp) was futility, so the simple answer is that they are *all* *_(mlp)

source: Was admin, made aliases.

also, y'all calm it down. the salt in here is raising my blood pressure, and my doctor says that that is bad.

darryus said:
And the points you're making are so reiterative and banal it's like you're just saying them to have the last word.

Well when you never acknowledge or even attempt to refute my points, and keep repeating your own, I have to repeat mine AGAIN. This is literally how it went down:

You: dat tag is ambiguous doe.
Me: I don't care...the ambiguity hardly ever happens.
You: but dat tag is ambiguous doe.
Me: I don't care...the ambiguity hardly ever happens.
You: but dat tag is really ambiguous doe...and you repeat yourself a lot!

*facepalm*

Dyrone said:
That's kind of the point...present your arguments and dismantle other arguments so when the staff reads this (if ever) they hopefully make the best decision based on the most logical argument.

While I was writing my argument for the previous points, I realize that all of my refutations are just me repeating myself. But if you want to read it, here it is.

We are not here to force our opinions on one another, but rather to discuss which method is better for general tagging on the site.

So be it? Did you read what I said before? You're only saying "so be it" because you have ZERO plans to put in the massive amount of work that your proposal would generate. That's like saying "we're no longer using buckets to gather these apples...and if it's a lot harder to transport them back to the truck...then so be it! I'll be sitting on the porch smoking my pipe and watching the clouds if anyone needs me." That's you right now.

I appreciate that you have helped the site in clearing out some of the disambiguation tags and I will personally look over the new heart_(disambiguation) if it becomes a thing.

TheGreatWolfgang said:
-1.

I would say dealias the whole thing altogether. When I tag <3, I expect to see heart symbols; when I tag heart, I expect to see the organ itself.

If the purpose is to make the tag into a word instead of a bunch of symbols, I feel that it's better to do it this way.

• Dealias heart --> <3.
• Alias <3 to heart_symbol.
• Alias heart to heart_(disambiguation) for the other heart_* tags.

This. So much this.

===

Also, Dyrone, it doesn't matter how few of something there is, it's NEVER irrelevant. There's relevant tags that only have a couple of instances of them because no one ever tags it or, in some rare cases, no one makes content of it. That doesn't make them irrelevant or too few too matter. This site has a long and sordid history of having relevant tags that number in the single digits and that isn't going to change unless someone decides to make enough art of each to have them reach double-digit territory.

Your entire point of "it not being good enough to have its own tag because numbers" is not something that's ever been considered. Hell, a few years ago I got a neutral record for doing what I thought was cleaning up tags with barely any instances BECAUSE I was thinking exactly like you, there weren't enough instances of them for them to be anything but trash tags. It's gone now because they go away after a year or something these days yet that doesn't take from the fact that I was wrong and that's why I can safely say that you are, too.

TheGreatWolfgang said:
We are not here to force our opinions on one another, but rather to discuss which method is better for general tagging on the site.

That's a weird way of framing it...I really don't know how I would "force" my opinion on anyone through a forum where we are literally users of equal status and I have no control over you. I'm not forcing anything, merely defending my stance.

TheGreatWolfgang said:
I appreciate that you have helped the site in clearing out some of the disambiguation tags and I will personally look over the new heart_(disambiguation) if it becomes a thing.

I haven't done shit, in fact I'm surprised I even have 1,000 tag edits, but I don't advocate for useless disambiguations either. Also, nice to volunteer, but it still doesn't matter because this is the internet and if you ever decide to dip out and never come back we'd still be living with the legacy of your horrible disambiguation with no one around to actively tackle it.

AnotherDay said:
Your entire point of "it not being good enough to have its own tag because numbers"

That's not what I said at all. heart_(organ) already has its own tag...the tag is heart_(organ) (fancy that). Never have I advocated folding that tag into heart.

That said if we miss a few of them because <3 becomes heart I don't really care...we miss a few of them with <3 as I've shown.

-1 for aliasing to heart with or without _(symbol/organ/disambiguation).

Personally, I liked ♥ because it told me exactly what was tagged at a glance, was part of the standard ASCII set (ALT+3), and matched the other card suits – ♦, ♣, and ♠. (There are also other symbols used as tags – ♂, ♀, and ⚥, to only be used when the symbols themselves appear in the picture.) Then someone changed it to <3. True, it's a common smilie, but it breaks the pattern and doesn't match the other symbols. I said nothing because— well, who cares what I think? :\ But I don't really go for heart_(symbol), myself. Why go with two words (or a text picture) when it's simpler for users to just read the very symbol being tagged?

Furthermore, numbers is less important than preventing confusion. To the average user of e621, heart can refer either to the symbol or the organ. That <3 is on thousands of posts while heart_(organ) is on less than 100 posts is irrelevant. Because it's easy to confuse which subject heart might refer to, it's best to clarify.

My suggestions:

Alias: <3 —> ♥ (Matches the other symbols and is more obvious as to what it refers to than heart_(symbol), even if by a little bit.)
Alias: heart —> heart_(disambiguation) (Because different sorts of hearts exist.)
On heart_(disambiguation) page: heart can refer either to ♥ (Press [ALT + Numpad 3] or type <3 ) or to heart_(organ).
___________

To me, it seems the primary issue mentioned in the opening post is the lack of consistency between <3_(whatever) tags and heart_(whatever) tags, so a +1 to fixing that up. I'd suggest shifting anything which is in the shape of or in some way displays the symbol over to ♥_(whatever). Anything that has nothing to do with the symbol goes over to heart_(whatever).

Clawstripe said:
Personally, I liked ♥ because it told me exactly what was tagged at a glance, was part of the standard ASCII set (ALT+3), and matched the other card suits – ♦, ♣, and ♠. (There are also other symbols used as tags – ♂, ♀, and ⚥, to only be used when the symbols themselves appear in the picture.) Then someone changed it to <3. True, it's a common smilie, but it breaks the pattern and doesn't match the other symbols.

Actually I'm wondering, why were the symbols kept as opposed to their word counterparts (e.g. male_symbol --> ♂)? It seems to just be more difficult to tag, especially on mobile devices. Some symbols were more favored as tags while others got aliased to word combinations (like ☭ --> hammer_and_sickle).

TheGreatWolfgang said:
Actually I'm wondering, why were the symbols kept as opposed to their word counterparts (e.g. male_symbol --> ♂)?

Those are from year zero, some of the very first aliases ever made.

Should've been reversed long ago. Tags should be easily typeable.

TheGreatWolfgang said:
Actually I'm wondering, why were the symbols kept as opposed to their word counterparts (e.g. male_symbol --> ♂)? It seems to just be more difficult to tag, especially on mobile devices. Some symbols were more favored as tags while others got aliased to word combinations (like ☭ --> hammer_and_sickle).

How is it hard to tag? All you type in is male_symbol and boom, it's tagged. That's the beauty of aliases.

Furrin_Gok said:
How is it hard to tag? All you type in is male_symbol and boom, it's tagged. That's the beauty of aliases.

There's currently no way to tag the suit_symbols without having a numpad or copy-paste.

Furrin_Gok said:
How is it hard to tag? All you type in is male_symbol and boom, it's tagged. That's the beauty of aliases.

That requires either checking, or remembering what's aliased to what. Either way, it makes things unnecessarily complicated. Not to mention that a lot of users have no idea about how aliases work.

And ⚥ was aliased to *_symbol last year, so there's the matter of consistency too.

TheGreatWolfgang said:
♥ ... ♦, ♣, and ♠.

I feel like the we should probably get rid of these, they're so tiny and at a glance it's kinda hard to tell them each apart since they're all just kinda black blobs (or light blue blobs or white blobs depending on where you see them), but especially spade/club.

Some other post-ASCII Unicode symbols like ☭ have a similar problem with the suit symbols and are just really difficult to tell what they're supposed to be because they're not really meant to be viewed at sub 12pt font sizes (e6 uses somewhere between 9pt and 10pt).

Some of the ASCII symbols like ♂ or ♀ actually look fairly distinct and you can tell which is which somewhat easily even at smaller font sizes because of the way they're rendered.

Dyrone said:
Aliasing <3 &rarr; heart

Reason:

Currently there is a mixed standard wherein some heart tags are spelled with a <3 and others are spelled with heart. Reversing this alias would be a first step to establishing some consistency among these tags. Also a tag that involves a symbol like this just seems out of place on the site.

Some might argue that this change might make it harder to differentiate the tag form heart_(organ) to that I say:

• heart_(organ) is a very small tag (111 posts) especially compared to the current <3 tag which sits at 80,000+. I don't think we should let this extremely rare need for disambiguation completely define how we handle the tag, especially considering how we name this main tag cascades into so many corresponding tags.
• with other heart-related tags this is a non-issue. For instance with <3_eyes never have I seen a literal heart in the eyes of a character...same goes for things like <3_censor, <3_marking etc.
• there will still be a mention of heart_(organ) on the heart wiki page to help people understand the difference.

Umm yeah I don't think that's gonna happen