The bulk update request #352 is active.

Reason: Standardization of *_text tag categories

If any moderator is reading this, please look into

https://e621.net/forum_topics/27748

and

https://e621.net/forum_topics/27764

as well.

EDIT: The bulk update request #352 (forum #298511) has been approved by @Millcore.

Should fictional languages really be included here?

strikerman said:
Should fictional languages really be included here?

In the case of things like unown_text or hylian_text, since there's official alphabets and usages for them, I don't see why not. What I'd be apprehensive about is vague ones like alien_text, which should probably be invalidated and disambiguated. elvish_text also, since there's multiple types of elves (Tolkien, D&D, etc) that aren't the same.

gattonero2001 said:
Is there any way to edit the script now? I also forgot to include alternian_text.

You can edit it from here: https://e621.net/bulk_update_requests (there should be an Edit link on the right side of your BUR).

gattonero2001 said:
"Tantalog" (a fictional language in Lilo and Stitch) is already meta.

https://e621.net/wiki_pages/23540

Lilo & Stitch stuff tends to get a lot of attention via BooruHitomi, so this is likely a good example of how things should be.

I support the swap to meta, but should the *_text standard be split? There are two distinct use-cases I'm seeing for these tags:

• Distinct languages written in a shared script/writing system: english_text, dutch_text
• Distinct scripts which are merely used to mirror existing real-world languages: braille_text, daedric_text, hylian_text, tantalog_text, wingdings

I don't know if we have tagged examples of latin(or other)-script ciphered text^*, but they should probably slot into the former category, possibly alongside a cipher_language tag.

*eg. Al Bhed from Final Fantasy X, Dino from Star Fox Adventures

magnuseffect said:
I support the swap to meta, but should the *_text standard be split?

That is an interesting observation, but the line between those use cases (at least for fictional languages) can be blurry sometimes.

magnuseffect said:
I support the swap to meta, but should the *_text standard be split? There are two distinct use-cases I'm seeing for these tags:

• Distinct languages written in a shared script/writing system: english_text, dutch_text
• Distinct scripts which are merely used to mirror existing real-world languages: braille_text, daedric_text, hylian_text, tantalog_text, wingdings

I don't think it needs to. Distinct fantasy scripts, like unown_text, are backed by specific languages, like English. If someone were to write something in Japanese using Unown, for example, you'd have the issue of needing someone to recognize the unown characters, but then also recognize the deciphered text as Japanese (or more specifically, Romaji) instead of English. At the same time, someone searching for japanese_text or english_text wouldn't like getting results written in unrecognizable Unown or Wingdings or whatever. Treating distinct fantasy scripts as their own pseudo-language seems to be the least problematic approach.

I kinda feel like having alternate scripts like unown_text, wingdings, hylian_text etc. as meta would be like having comic_sans as meta; with those you're tagging something that you can determine just by observing the existence of the text without knowing the content of the words.
whereas to determine english_text, french_text, etc. you need to actually read the words to be able to determine what language it is.

darryus said:
I kinda feel like having alternate scripts like unown_text, wingdings, hylian_text etc. as meta would be like having comic_sans as meta; with those you're tagging something that you can determine just by observing the existence of the text without knowing the content of the words.
whereas to determine english_text, french_text, etc. you need to actually read the words to be able to determine what language it is.

If unown_text, hylian_text, etc, are treated as fonts separate from the language, would something like post #2447267 need to be tagged with both unown_text and english_text? Someone searching for english_text probably wouldn't like seeing results like that show up. Further, if someone used unown_text to write in romaji, that's using an unown font to write roman/english characters to produce japanese words. Someone searching for japanese_text probably wouldn't like seeing those kinds of results either. That seems like it could get messy fast. At least for things like unown and hylian, I think the scripts are distinct enough to be treated as their own pseudo-language, which is how they're normally used as well, rather than a purely stylistic choice as with comic sans vs times new roman or something.

I noticed that people mentioned wingdings a few times, but I did not include it in the BUR. Should I?

Additionally, should I create an alias to wingdings_text?

gattonero2001 said:
I noticed that people mentioned 'wingdings' a few times, but I did not include it in the BUR. Should I?

Additionally, should I create an alias to 'wingdings_text'?

IMO, no. Wingdings isn't a text script/language, it's just a font containing various symbols and pictographs ("emojis") in place of text characters, from a time before Unicode was a thing. It's not really meant as a text cipher or pseudo-language or anything.

watsit said:
In the case of things like unown_text or hylian_text, since there's official alphabets and usages for them, I don't see why not. What I'd be apprehensive about is vague ones like alien_text, which should probably be invalidated and disambiguated. elvish_text also, since there's multiple types of elves (Tolkien, D&D, etc) that aren't the same.

Would it be a good idea to alias alien_text and elvish_text to fictional_language?

gattonero2001 said:
Would it be a good idea to alias alien_text and elvish_text to fictional_language?

IMO, alien_text should be invalidated, because there's no way to know what's meant by it and there can be no consistency to it, and elvish_text should be disambiguated since there's different types of elves with different languages. As for fictional_language, I'm not quite sure what that's for, and it has no wiki for guidance. What's the difference between fictional, constructed, and pseudo languages?

Wait, there's a fictional_language tag? So should something like this post #2406782 be tagged fictional_language, even though it's really just Japanese with all the kana swapped with fictional characters?

watsit said:
IMO, alien_text should be invalidated, because there's no way to know what's meant by it and there can be no consistency to it, and elvish_text should be disambiguated since there's different types of elves with different languages. As for fictional_language, I'm not quite sure what that's for, and it has no wiki for guidance. What's the difference between fictional, constructed, and pseudo languages?

By "invalidated", do you mean "aliased to invalid_tag"? I would do that, but apparently invalid_tag itself was discontinuated.

How exactly does one disambiguate a tag?

All fictional languages are constructed, but Esperanto is a constructed language that is not fictional, for example. pseudo_language is not a tag as far as I know.

crocogator said:
Wait, there's a fictional_language tag? So should something like this post #2406782 be tagged fictional_language, even though it's really just Japanese with all the kana swapped with fictional characters?

I would tag that "digicode_text". "unown_text" is similar to it, but instead of representing kana it represents the latin alphabet.

gattonero2001 said:
By "invalidated", do you mean "aliased to invalid_tag"? I would do that, but apparently invalid_tag itself was discontinuated.

How exactly does one disambiguate a tag?

By aliasing it to some *_(disambiguation) tag in the Invalid category, with a wiki explaining the possible valid tags it could refer to.

gattonero2001 said:
All fictional languages are constructed, but Esperanto is a constructed language that is not fictional, for example. pseudo_language is not a tag as far as I know.

What's the difference, though? Tolkien's Elvish, for example, is a complete usable language that he constructed, complete with its own rules and structure. Klingon is also a complete usable language. A pseudo-language is what I'd think of by fictional language; something that doesn't really exist, it's just something simple like a character cipher for an existing language, but is treated by its source material as a distinct language.

gattonero2001 said:
I would tag that "digicode_text". "unown_text" is similar to it, but instead of representing kana it represents the latin alphabet.

Makes sense. I added the tag.

watsit said:
By aliasing it to some *_(disambiguation) tag in the Invalid category, with a wiki explaining the possible valid tags it could refer to.

I will edit the BUR, but I have never written a wiki page before. If someone could help, that would be great

What's the difference, though? Tolkien's Elvish, for example, is a complete usable language that he constructed, complete with its own rules and structure. Klingon is also a complete usable language. A pseudo-language is what I'd think of by fictional language; something that doesn't really exist, it's just something simple like a character cipher for an existing language, but is treated by its source material as a distinct language.

Tolkien's Elvish and Klingon are part of a fictional world and their origin is fictional as well. The existence of grammar and vocabulary do not influence their classification as fictional or not. If Esperanto had been invented as a language spoken by fictional beings, it would be considered fictional as well, even though it can be spoken in the real world.

The pseudolanguage/character cipher that you are thinking of would be something like unown_text/digicode_text? I don't see much of a point in having a specific tag for that, to be honest.

Something went wrong with the

'alias alien_text -> alien_text_(disambiguation)'

and I do not know exactly what. Could someone explain the error message?

# duplicate of has blocking transitive relationships, cannot be applied through BUR

gattonero2001 said:
Tolkien's Elvish and Klingon are part of a fictional world and their origin is fictional as well. The existence of grammar and vocabulary do not influence their classification as fictional or not. If Esperanto had been invented as a language spoken by fictional beings, it would be considered fictional as well, even though it can be spoken in the real world.

That doesn't seem like a useful distinction to tag to me. Fundamentally, all languages are made up. With real-life languages, people think of a new way to say something, and over time the changes accumulate and separate it from its parent language. Constructed languages are similar, but usually done intently by a smaller group of people in a much shorter time frame. By this definition, fictional languages are just languages for someone's IP. But then, wouldn't the Saurian language from Star Fox (a latin-to-latin character cipher over English) and Unown/Digicode (a custom-to-latin/kana character cipher over English/Japanese) also count as fictional languages? I don't see a point in having a tag for "IP languages", as there's already copyright tags to indicate a copyright owner.

gattonero2001 said:
The pseudolanguage/character cipher that you are thinking of would be something like unown_text/digicode_text? I don't see much of a point in having a specific tag for that, to be honest.

They can be fun to play with, and may be easier to help translate since it's just glyph substitution.

But then, wouldn't the Saurian language from Star Fox (a latin-to-latin character cipher over English) and Unown/Digicode (a custom-to-latin/kana character cipher over English/Japanese) also count as fictional languages?

I believe so.

They can be fun to play with, and may be easier to help translate since it's just glyph substitution.

The only "cipher languages" that I know that are on the site are unown and digicode. Could you contribute with a list so I can edit the BUR?

Also would you happen to know what is the error with

alias alien_text -> alien_text_(disambiguation)

?

Also should fictional_language/constructed_language/cipher_language be meta?

gattonero2001 said:
The only "cipher languages" that I know that are on the site are unown and digicode. Could you contribute with a list so I can edit the BUR?

Hylian and Saurian are also a pseudo-languages. There's also one in the Xenoblade franchise, though I don't recall its name or know if it's ever been used here.

gattonero2001 said:
Also would you happen to know what is the error with

alias alien_text -> alien_text_(disambiguation)

?

I don't, unfortunately. The errors given by the site are kind of hard to understand. Maybe it has to do with alien_text implicating text, but I don't know.

gattonero2001 said:
Also should fictional_language/constructed_language/cipher_language be meta?

I would say fictional_language should be disambiguated, in favor of constructed_language (real distinct languages created for the purpose of being a different language; for example, Esperanto or Tolkien's Elvish) or pseudo_language (those created as a stand-in for a different language, but is really just an existing language under a simple guise like a character cipher; for example, Saurian or Unown).

watsit said:
Hylian and Saurian are also a pseudo-languages. There's also one in the Xenoblade franchise, though I don't recall its name or know if it's ever been used here.

I don't, unfortunately. The errors given by the site are kind of hard to understand. Maybe it has to do with alien_text implicating text, but I don't know.

I would say fictional_language should be disambiguated, in favor of constructed_language (real distinct languages created for the purpose of being a different language; for example, Esperanto or Tolkien's Elvish) or pseudo_language (those created as a stand-in for a different language, but is really just an existing language under a simple guise like a character cipher; for example, Saurian or Unown).

fictional_language cannot be disambiguated either. I'm going to drop both error makers and leave them for another BUR.

The bulk update request #352 (forum #298511) has been approved by @Millcore.