I know that making the blacklist function as a minus/negative search (so it doesn’t just hide images but prevents them outright) will probably never happen. On the site end, at least. I’m not sure if the same rules apply, but I was wondering about the possibilities if the 40 tag/metatag search limit went limitless. To a certain extent, you could run searches that contain minus/negative versions of everything in your blacklist. You could -this and -that (for at least that search run) and you’d have full pages of images with no hidden space being used up by blacklisted ones, because you already prevented them with your -searches.

But then there’s the issue of exceptions in the blacklist, such as:

this -that
this that -the_other_thing

Because the search bar doesn’t think like the blacklist.

So my question is, when/if the 40 tag limit goes unlimited, would there be some way to just copy/paste your blacklist into the search and it creates a way to ‘imitate’ that particular blacklist feature some have requested in the past? At least just for that search run?

I don’t know any programming so all I can do is come up with ideas. But mine would be something like a checkbox below the search bar called ‘blacklist mode’ or something like that. When clicked, it changes the rules of the search bar to be all about exclusions with exceptions, just like the blacklist. Not the same exact coding of course; just a search bar version of how the blacklist thinks. So if you searched for the tag ‘whatever’ in this mode, it behaves like you actually typed ‘-whatever’ and only shows posts without the whatever tag like in the regular mode. The blacklist mode would also acknowledge the -exceptions you put next to tags and put commas where you had vertical spaces separating tags in your blacklist. For example in your blacklist, something like this:

whatever -stuff -things
whatever stuff -lots_of_stuff
whatever things -lots_of_things

Becomes, in the search bar…

whatever -stuff -things, whatever stuff -lots_of_stuff, whatever things -lots_of_things

So when you copy from the blacklist and paste to the search bar there’s no issue; a script did the work for you. If not commas, whatever else would make sense in a programming language. And then, forgetting the original goal for a moment, maybe you could use this feature as a faster way to test and work on your blacklist without going back and forth to the settings. Maybe even save your blacklist then and there, also under the search ba—you know what, nevermind.

I’ve got my images-per-page set to 250 so it isn’t that big of a deal; even when a page is cut in half from the blacklist doing its thing. Most folks don’t need to have all pages full to the brim (though it would be nice in some cases). Sure any of my default Posts pages are pretty barren most of the time, but I just use a bookmark with multiple ~searches for the most reach at once. I was just thinking about the things you could do with an unlimited search bar, and ‘put the whole blacklist in it’ was the first thing that came to mind.

The second thing, I suppose, would be using it to endlessly test for exceptions to tags and fine-tune your blacklist to perfection like some kind of choosy OCD fap dragon…

I dunno. Whatta you guys think? Programmers, tell us the things. All_the_things :P

I'm surprised we can even search up to 40 tags, the limit used to be 6.

But I'd doubt that it would be increased to unlimited, main issue would be server load.
Some mega-mind might put every single tag into the search bar and run a search query every few seconds.

There will always some sort of limit on the number of search terms. Mainly to prevent someone from copy-pasting seven quintillion tags into the search and hanging up the server.

40 is already quite a lot, especially compared to what it was before the update earlier this year. It opened up a lot of possibilities that were not available before. As far as filtering goes, dumping your entire blacklist into the search box isn't the greatest idea. I did add something more reasonable to RE621 - you can specify a string of "persistent" tags that will get added to your every search. So, you could put in, for example, -young in there, and it will be filtered out server-side, like you are describing.

What I would really like to see is more advanced search syntax. Being able to search for (a b) || (c d) (posts that are tagged as either both a and b, or both c and d) would be very welcome. Implementing something like this, however, is a lot of work.

An even more far-fetched wish would be to have tag relationships within the post. For example, if you search for dragon -> female, with that system you would get results that feature female dragons, instead of posts that simply have a female and a dragon (like male dragon and female human, for example). That would require an absolutely insane amount of effort, however, and would mean that millions of posts would have to have their tags fixed. All of that, for a marginally more accurate results. In other words, it will never happen.

@TheGreatWolfgang: Yeah it is pretty nice compared to how it used to be. I wonder how strained the servers are since the increase to 40, or what the next increase will be (if it happens)

@bitWolfy: Makes sense. I didn't know about RE621 but hey I'll have to check it out. You know your stuff; I'd love your take on the things I talked about in the Feature Requests forum recently if you ever have the time. Here or in those threads; assuming you even want to, haha

https://e621.net/forum_topics/27292
https://e621.net/forum_topics/27360

I must've been on an idea kick of late, but I don't know if any of them are doable. The one in this thread sounds like a no, but I'll definitely try out your tool set sometime and see what it can do.

human-shaped said:
@TheGreatWolfgang: Yeah it is pretty nice compared to how it used to be. I wonder how strained the servers are since the increase to 40, or what the next increase will be (if it happens)

From what I understand, there performance has actually been improved with this update, even with the increased number of searched tags.
The limit of 6 was imposed because of several different issues that effectively crippled performance in the old version.
I don't know if there are any plans to increase that limit right now. I would love being able to search for 100 tags at a time - mainly because that's how the tag subscriptions module of RE621 checks for updates.

human-shaped said:
@bitWolfy: Makes sense. I didn't know about RE621 but hey I'll have to check it out. You know your stuff; I'd love your take on the things I talked about in the Feature Requests forum recently if you ever have the time. Here or in those threads; assuming you even want to, haha

https://e621.net/forum_topics/27292
https://e621.net/forum_topics/27360

I must've been on an idea kick of late, but I don't know if any of them are doable. The one in this thread sounds like a no, but I'll definitely try out your tool set sometime and see what it can do.

The first one is, funnily enough, already a feature of RE621. Well, score is. I seem to have forgotten to add favcount. It'll be in the next patch. (edit: added it in v.1.4.16)
RE621's blacklist also supports range values for width, height, and filesize, which the regular site does not. Someone requested it a while back, and adding stuff like that is pretty easy.
You can also exclude posts that you have already favorited from a blacklist filter by adding something like -fav:bitWolfy it, which comes in pretty handy for me. Why this kind of stuff isn't a part of the normal site is anyone's guess.

The second one is pretty much the same exact thing that I talked in my first post in this thread - grouping search terms together. Whether it'll happen any time soon... who knows. It is a pretty big ask.

bitwolfy said:

That's interesting that it improved. Yeah, 100 would be great~

Awesome. Having more control via favcount is really gonna help! Well hey, thanks for humoring me with my long-ass threads of me taking shots in the dark. I'll make time in the near future to check out RE621 and maybe post in your thread what I think or if I need help with something :]