The bulk update request #1428 has been rejected.

change category ych_result (0) -> meta

Reason: Was originally a part of topic #31031 ("Coloring_Request" and Friends Meta-fication) but caused much drama and debate so I made it its own post

EDIT: The bulk update request #1428 (forum #318315) has been rejected by @bitWolfy.

As mentioned in the other topic, I don't see an image being a YCH result as at all relevant to tagging. It says nothing about the image, any more than commission or gift_art which are invalidated.

As stated in the previous thread, YCHs are premade pieces of lineart that characters are inserted into. I understand 5 alternate versions of a post is the limit and I'm fine with that, but by tagging YCHs as YCH content, it helps when moderating and approving these special alts and making sure the 5 alt limit can be mandated

cringebird said:
I understand 5 alternate versions of a post is the limit and I'm fine with that, but by tagging YCHs as YCH content, it helps when moderating and approving these special alts and making sure the 5 alt limit can be mandated

The same 5+ images can be created as non-YCHs. Being YCHs changes nothing about whether images do or don't look similar enough to count toward the alt limit. YCHs can also be (and more often are) single images, not multiple alts with different characters. Not to mention that most uploaders won't tag that an image was made as a result of a YCH, since an artist may not always mention it and many taggers won't care to go digging to find out, so you couldn't rely on the tag being there anyway.

I agree that YCH_Content should be a META tag. My reasoning is to know what artwork that
gets uploaded here was made with a YCH base. Especially if I see different characters with the same pose more than once.

Looking into the YCH list can potentially help find artists who have cheaper purchases than normal commissions, if said artists do routine YCHs. Beyond that, some buyers or artists might want to see if their images showed up, so searching the artist tag alongside ych_result can help narrow it down even in the event of characters not being tagged. It's not really something I'd be using, but it is something I can see get used.

Might as well. I don’t see the existence of this tag causing any trouble, and it can help to search for posts that have variants with different characters in the same position/background.

I still think we could maybe use a broader tag instead, however, that can include any situation where a different character is drawn on the same base image as opposed to situations where an artist specifically sold it as a YCH. There are some cases like this with gift art and stuff. Maybe we should name the tag alternate_character or character_alt or something.

By that same token, I think clothing_alt and color_alt and stuff can be useful.

furrin_gok said:
Looking into the YCH list can potentially help find artists who have cheaper purchases than normal commissions, if said artists do routine YCHs. Beyond that, some buyers or artists might want to see if their images showed up, so searching the artist tag alongside ych_result can help narrow it down even in the event of characters not being tagged. It's not really something I'd be using, but it is something I can see get used.

Same exact reasoning can be applied to commission or gift_art. But e6 isn't a place for people to look for commissionable artists or do price comparisons for them. And it wouldn't be reliable since it won't always be known if a piece is a commission, ych, gift, personal, or whatever else.

watsit said:
Same exact reasoning can be applied to commission or gift_art. But e6 isn't a place for people to look for commissionable artists or do price comparisons for them. And it wouldn't be reliable since it won't always be known if a piece is a commission, ych, gift, personal, or whatever else.

Some images don't have pussy on them despite it being very visible, but there's no way we would get rid of that tag for such a silly reason. Why get rid of this one because "it won't always be tagged"? That's just a flaw in the system, users forget or don't realize something so it doesn't get tagged, but it's still valid.

furrin_gok said:
Some images don't have pussy on them despite it being very visible, but there's no way we would get rid of that tag for such a silly reason.

Difference is, a pussy would be clearly visible, so anybody looking has the capability to tag it if they see it missing. That's the thing behind tag-what-you-see-not-what-you-know, that you don't rely on outside knowledge to properly tag things, anyone can see the same image and the things on it to tag. ych_result is not a visible trait that anyone can tag by looking at the image, so it's a lot less likely to be tagged properly, and given that it's also of minimal usefulness, I don't see it's worth it to have tags like commission, gift_art, ych_result, personal_art, etc.

watsit said:
Difference is, a pussy would be clearly visible, so anybody looking has the capability to tag it if they see it missing. That's the thing behind tag-what-you-see-not-what-you-know, that you don't rely on outside knowledge to properly tag things, anyone can see the same image and the things on it to tag. ych_result is not a visible trait that anyone can tag by looking at the image, so it's a lot less likely to be tagged properly, and given that it's also of minimal usefulness, I don't see it's worth it to have tags like commission, gift_art, ych_result, personal_art, etc.

Alright, so you'd propose we get rid of every single lore tag we went through the trouble of putting in? They're all about things you can't see and would have to know to tag. The tags might never end up on some images, but so what? They're still useful and harmless.

furrin_gok said:
Alright, so you'd propose we get rid of every single lore tag we went through the trouble of putting in?

I also said "it's also of minimal usefulness". Lore tags were added after years of complaints about characters being misgendered, or herms being tagged gynomorph, or characters changing between male/female/etc between posts in a series... there's an inherent usefulness to having the existing set lore tags to clarify what could otherwise be confusing (the admins are also open to more suggestions, but won't add every small little thing someone may think of). There hasn't been nearly as much of an issue with the lack of an image's commercial status being tagged, and given that some are already invalidated, I see no reason to un-invalidate them just because ych_result managed to get a few hundred uses over the years, nor do I see a reason for ych_result to stay valid while the others remain invalid.

I think you’re both missing the point. Commercial status aside, a tag could be useful for identifying when an image has alternate forms, and what kind of alternate it is. In the case of YCH, it’s the same image but with a different character in the same position. This is also Tag What You See, because you can see the alts on the site. This is not really a different concept from colored or edit.

scaliespe said:
Commercial status aside, a tag could be useful for identifying when an image has alternate forms, and what kind of alternate it is.

Which has nothing to do with being a YCH. YCHs are often single-image given to a single buyer, and an image having multiple alts (even with different characters) doesn't have to be a YCH. And even when it is, it says nothing about how different it is (it can be completely redrawn, or a simple recolor).

watsit said:
Which has nothing to do with being a YCH. YCHs are often single-image given to a single buyer, and an image having multiple alts (even with different characters) doesn't have to be a YCH. And even when it is, it says nothing about how different it is (it can be completely redrawn, or a simple recolor).

These are both true (hence why I suggested using a different name for the tag), but YCH pieces typically consist of multiple alts with different characters, so I think at least aliasing this tag to something with a better name would suffice. If you look through the current results for ych_result, most of them either have multiple alts with different characters, or other alts can be found at the source. It wouldn’t take too long to filter out the ones that don’t and retain the rest for aliasing to a new tag.

scaliespe said:
but YCH pieces typically consist of multiple alts with different characters, so I think at least aliasing this tag to something with a better name would suffice. If you look through the current results for ych_result, most of them either have multiple alts with different

By my estimation, they typically don't. They don't even typically have alts, but when they do, it's often the same character with something added or removed. Multiple alts with different characters are rarer. As it is, the only tags dealing with alts that e6 has are when there are alts at one of the sources that aren't here, generally suggesting those alts should be posted here if possible, and should not be tagged as such when those alts are here (e.g. alternate_version_at_source explicitly says to remove the tag when the alt is posted here). Alts are handled via the parent/child links, and I don't think the fact that an alt may depict a different character is relevant to tagging since it can be an easy tag to miss, violates TWYS, doesn't have much utility, and is subject to the 5 alt limit all the same.

It’s not rare at all from my experience, but that’s rather beside the point.

watsit said:
Alts are handled via the parent/child links,

Parent/child links don’t tell you much about the parent or the child, assuming you’re looking for certain things. In fact, many parents/children aren’t alts at all. Any two images that are related in some way can get parent/child status. It could be helpful to identify images that do have alts, and what kind of alt it is.

and I don't think the fact that an alt may depict a different character is relevant to tagging since it can be an easy tag to miss,

Being easy to miss doesn’t invalidate a tag. We have a ton of tags that are easy to miss, and the average uploader only seems to use a dozen or so tags even when many more clearly apply.

violates TWYS,

Kinda like cropped, alternate_version_at_source, edit, colored, story_in_description, year tags (2021 or 1995 or whatever), all the aspect ratio tags (4:3 and 16:9 and etc. - you can’t visually confirm the exact aspect ratio unless you want to count individual pixels on your screen), or uncensored (which is already one type of alt that we do identify)? TWYS can’t really apply to most meta tags due to their nature. It’s meant for things that can be identified in an image, like the gender or species of a character. Meta tags get their own category for a reason.

doesn't have much utility,

I can see some uses for it. Say, for example, you want to narrow your search results. Maybe you don’t want a bunch of different clothing alts of the same character. Could use -clothing_alt. I’ve heard some people claim that YCH alts tend to be of lower quality as the artist is reusing the same background/pose. It’s pretty subjective, but some people might have some use for a tag that identifies alternate characters.

Speaking of tags for alts, I think cum_alt is one I would use a lot, probably as a blacklist term since I always prefer the clean version.

Besides, most meta tags are of pretty questionable utility as it is. Is anyone actually looking for specific aspect ratios or 3rd party edits? Maybe on rare occasions. Still, the tags exist.

scaliespe said:
Parent/child links don’t tell you much about the parent or the child, assuming you’re looking for certain things. In fact, many parents/children aren’t alts at all. Any two images that are related in some way can get parent/child status. It could be helpful to identify images that do have alts, and what kind of alt it is.

I think there are too many possibilities for why images have alts to tag those reasons. Clean/cum alts, flaccid/erect alts, clothing alts, color alts, character alts, character alts that are just color alts, character alts that have minor linework edits, character alts that are completely resketched, text alts, updated alts, etc.

scaliespe said:
Kinda like cropped, alternate_version_at_source, edit, colored, story_in_description, year tags (2021 or 1995 or whatever), all the aspect ratio tags (4:3 and 16:9 and etc. - you can’t visually confirm the exact aspect ratio unless you want to count individual pixels on your screen), or uncensored (which is already one type of alt that we do identify)?

alternate_version_at_source is quite useful though, since it indicates there are other versions of the image that aren't (and should be if possible) uploaded here. For an image archive, that's a very good thing to know, and the tag should be removed when the alternate version is uploaded here since it's no longer useful. cropped lets users know the post doesn't have the full image, which is also useful for an image archive too. edit is useful to indicate the image has been altered by a third party (otherwise, misattribution by tagging the original artist as the sole creator for something they didn't make can be a legal problem). colored, story_in_description, and aspect ratio tags are visible things you can see. The year can be visibly written on the image, though even when not, it's good to know when a piece was published for an image archive. uncensored is a type of third-party edit, something people inevitably ask for when the original version is censored and helps the moderators know it's not official so the censored one doesn't get mistakenly deleted as inferior, so is useful (the tag should not be used on uncensored images provided by the artist themselves).

scaliespe said:
I can see some uses for it. Say, for example, you want to narrow your search results. Maybe you don’t want a bunch of different clothing alts of the same character. Could use -clothing_alt.

Sometimes maybe, but the same can be said for any tag. It's not a question of if it can be useful ever, but whether it'll be useful enough to warrant being around (considering how often it'll be used to search or blacklist, how often it may be missing or misapplied, etc). When it comes to these kinds of alts, not only would it be missing often, there'd also be no distinction between the alt and the base. So something like -clothing_alt would mean you get none of the images that have a clothing alt, not that you get just one of them and not the extras.

scaliespe said:
Speaking of tags for alts, I think cum_alt is one I would use a lot, probably as a blacklist term since I always prefer the clean version.

Which raises other questions. Would a "cum alt" be considered such if it's part of an image series? It's not terribly unusual for a series to be built on a base image, which progresses from clothed, nude/flaccid, erect, sex/penetration, cum, then aftermath (or some subset thereof). Given that it depicts a sequential activity, I wouldn't consider them alts even if the individual images are built on a similar base, but others may. Or something like pool #25416, which is a series of pictures that have the same exact foreground elements copy-pasted, but a few minor elements and one character (the main focus) changing between images. I wouldn't consider them alts for the same reason, but others may. Someone (the admins) would have to set a standard for what counts as an alt for such tagging, something that not everyone will agree with, so even among the few people who would want to use such a tag, it will only be useful to a subset of those few.

watsit said:
I think there are too many possibilities for why images have alts to tag those reasons. Clean/cum alts, flaccid/erect alts, clothing alts, color alts, character alts, character alts that are just color alts, character alts that have minor linework edits, character alts that are completely resketched, text alts, updated alts, etc.

You could say this about many things. For example, there are too many possible colors of fur. Burgundy, chartreuse, lavender, azure. So, only the common colors are used. Cum alts, clothing and character swaps are quite common. Anything overly specific can be left out.

alternate_version_at_source is quite useful though, since it indicates there are other versions of the image that aren't (and should be if possible) uploaded here. For an image archive, that's a very good thing to know, and the tag should be removed when the alternate version is uploaded here since it's no longer useful. cropped lets users know the post doesn't have the full image, which is also useful for an image archive too. edit is useful to indicate the image has been altered by a third party (otherwise, misattribution by tagging the original artist as the sole creator for something they didn't make can be a legal problem). colored, story_in_description, and aspect ratio tags are visible things you can see. The year can be visibly written on the image, though even when not, it's good to know when a piece was published for an image archive. uncensored is a type of third-party edit, something people inevitably ask for when the original version is censored and helps the moderators know it's not official so the censored one doesn't get mistakenly deleted as inferior, so is useful (the tag should not be used on uncensored images provided by the artist themselves).

Oh, I agree that those are all (well, mostly) useful. My point is just that they technically violate TWYS, but that doesn’t matter since they’re meta tags. Most meta tags describe things entirely outside the image, and so must violate TWYS.

When it comes to these kinds of alts, not only would it be missing often, there'd also be no distinction between the alt and the base. So something like -clothing_alt would mean you get none of the images that have a clothing alt, not that you get just one of them and not the extras.

You have the same issue when deciding which of a number of versions should be the parent. There tends to be a certain logic to it; ie. a known character’s typical outfit would be the parent, or a fully clothed image with skimpier alts would be the parent. Ultimately, it’s probably not that important which one is chosen as the “base” image and which are the alts.

Which raises other questions. Would a "cum alt" be considered such if it's part of an image series? It's not terribly unusual for a series to be built on a base image, which progresses from clothed, nude/flaccid, erect, sex/penetration, cum, then aftermath (or some subset thereof). Given that it depicts a sequential activity, I wouldn't consider them alts even if the individual images are built on a similar base, but others may. Or something like pool #25416, which is a series of pictures that have the same exact foreground elements copy-pasted, but a few minor elements and one character (the main focus) changing between images. I wouldn't consider them alts for the same reason, but others may. Someone (the admins) would have to set a standard for what counts as an alt for such tagging, something that not everyone will agree with, so even among the few people who would want to use such a tag, it will only be useful to a subset of those few.

I think it would be safe to say that a sequence is not an alt. There may be similarities, sure, but they are distinct concepts. There are tons of images that are the exact same thing as another, but with white stuff drawn on.
post #2968506 post #2968508

scaliespe said:
You could say this about many things. For example, there are too many possible colors of fur. Burgundy, chartreuse, lavender, azure. So, only the common colors are used. Cum alts, clothing and character swaps are quite common. Anything overly specific can be left out.

Except with colors, the overly specific ones get aliased to the closest general one (e.g. azure_membrane -> blue_membrane), so you still get something from them. And there has been talk about expanding the color set precisely because some don't alias so well (e.g. cyan tags are aliased to the respective blue tags, even though true cyan is equal parts blue and green and can appear closer to one or the other depending on surrounding colors). I don't see the same system working for types of alts.

scaliespe said:
Oh, I agree that those are all (well, mostly) useful. My point is just that they technically violate TWYS, but that doesn’t matter since they’re meta tags. Most meta tags describe things entirely outside the image, and so must violate TWYS.

Some of them violate TWYS, right, but my point was that the TWYS standard is the default, so there needs to be a good reason to have tags that break it. The tags you mentioned have good reasons. "YCH" or <type_of>_alt tags may very occasionally be used by a few people (presuming they're defined in a way that's helpful to a given person's immediate use-case), but I don't think that's a good reason to get a TWYS exception.

scaliespe said:
You have the same issue when deciding which of a number of versions should be the parent. There tends to be a certain logic to it; ie. a known character’s typical outfit would be the parent, or a fully clothed image with skimpier alts would be the parent. Ultimately, it’s probably not that important which one is chosen as the “base” image and which are the alts.

But the "base" is still part of a set of alts. Deciding which should be the parent is often arbitrary; you can apply logic to it (e.g. prefer the SFW variation as parent for male/female and "clean"/messy alts), but it ultimately doesn't matter, because the functionality of linking related images is there regardless and it doesn't affect the tags, so it's not too important that some people do it differently or that the logic can break down on some image sets. But when it comes to tagging, if you exclude the alt tag from the "base" alt, you'll be arbitrarily dictating what a user will or won't see by searching or blacklisting the tag. Not to mention there can be cases where a person wants all of the alts (including the "base") with the tag.

scaliespe said:
I think it would be safe to say that a sequence is not an alt. There may be similarities, sure, but they are distinct concepts. There are tons of images that are the exact same thing as another, but with white stuff drawn on.
post #2968506 post #2968508

Which would further reduce the tag's usefulness for people who would consider similar images/poses to be alts regardless of being a sequence. And some people may consider two images like that a sequence, or have a different threshold for how different two of such images need to be to be considered a sequence, instead of an alt.

Huh, so it turns out OP and cringebird were the same person. Believing that it can be cheated with sockpuppet accounts is a whole new level of completely misunderstanding the alias request process.

As for the tag, meh, doesn't pass the vibe check for me. There's no reason to get into a huge debate about alts when the practice of awarding a single YCH to multiple characters is a very fringe one, as far as I can tell. It doesn't have an administrative use, a searching use or a blacklisting use, and even if it is implemented it is likely to be chronically undertagged due to the amount of external knowledge required. Besides, what's next - uninvalidating commission?

wat8548 said:
Huh, so it turns out OP and cringebird were the same person. Believing that it can be cheated with sockpuppet accounts is a whole new level of completely misunderstanding the alias request process.

Wow, I did not see that coming

The bulk update request #1428 (forum #318315) has been rejected by @bitWolfy.

The bulk update request #2359 is active.

change category ych_result (0) -> invalid

Reason: I stand by everything I wrote in the post above, and now that the request to change it to a different category has been rejected, this seems the only possible outcome.

EDIT: The bulk update request #2359 (forum #333101) has been approved by @NotMeNotYou.

wat8548 said:
The bulk update request #2359 is active.

change category ych_result (0) -> invalid

Reason: I stand by everything I wrote in the post above, and now that the request to change it to a different category has been rejected, this seems the only possible outcome.

Better to alias to invalid_tag if you’re just getting rid of it. There’s no valid replacement for it, so it doesn’t need to remain on any posts.

wat8548 said:
Reason: I stand by everything I wrote in the post above, and now that the request to change it to a different category has been rejected, this seems the only possible outcome.

Some more that are or have been used: ych, ychresult, ych_commishes, furry_ych, furryych, open_ych, freeych, comic_ych, ych_format, seasonal_ych, ych_free, ... (people are really intent on advertising their YCHs with the tags here, it seems).

watsit said:
Some more that are or have been used: ych, ychresult, ych_commishes, furry_ych, furryych, open_ych, freeych, comic_ych, ych_format, seasonal_ych, ych_free, ... (people are really intent on advertising their YCHs with the tags here, it seems).

Spotted a new one today: ychsale

All in favour of aliasing everything YCH-related except ych_(character) to ych and making that invalid?

wat8548 said:
All in favour of aliasing everything YCH-related except ych_(character) to ych and making that invalid?

+1

wat8548 said:
Spotted a new one today: ychsale

All in favour of aliasing everything YCH-related except ych_(character) to ych and making that invalid?

I don’t think any of these need to stick around, so it would make more sense to alias them all to invalid_tag. Tags like commission, gift_art, and art_trade have already gone that way. What valid replacement is there for these tags? If my earlier suggestion about having an alternate_version tag were to be adopted, I could possibly see keeping these as invalid and using the ych wiki page to suggest that tag to the user, as YCHs are very often just multiple versions of the same image with a different character drawn in. But unless that tag comes into existence, I don’t see any other possible meaning for these YCH tags that we may want to direct people towards. Better in that case to alias it to invalid_tag so it can just be cleared rather than leaving this extra invalid tag hanging around.

The bulk update request #2359 (forum #333101) has been approved by @NotMeNotYou.