I'm not sure if there's been any discussion about it, and I can't really search it since it's such a common word, but why is by a tag? According to its wiki, it's for Creative Commons Attribution licenses, but it's also an extremely common word alongside the, of, a, with, etc. Given that there have been people uploading/tagging trying to write sentences of phrases with spaces, it's undoubtedly a mistag on some posts, falsely claiming such images are CC-BY when it's not. It doesn't look like very many images were uploaded by the artist themselves (at least as far as the site recognizes the uploader as the artist), making it impossible to tell if they're actually CC-BY, someone falsely or mistakenly saying it's CC-BY, or a mistagged word 'by'. But as long as it's a valid tag, it shouldn't be removed without knowing for sure it's incorrect.

What would be the best way to go about cleaning up and renaming the tag?

From a very brief at looking on the site, it seems to be technically called "Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License" or "Attribution 4.0 International" but thats lengthy... Maybe a suffix at the end? something like by_(Creative_Commons_License)?

Edit: some images claim to be under "3.0" "2.5" etc... so... uh...

The tag definitely should've been cc-by instead of being a common English word... and now we probably have a bunch of artwork that's falsely tagged as a freely reusable license when it shouldn't be. What a mess.

watsit said:
... But as long as it's a valid tag, it shouldn't be removed without knowing for sure it's incorrect.

This is the rare case where I believe we should actually do the opposite. Falsely claiming something is freely usable is a very bad idea, I don't think e6 is at any real risk but I'm pretty sure Wikipedia has been sued for that on multiple occasions.

I'd say if the sources don't obviously state the images' license as CC-BY it should just be removed from the image, missing information is 1000x less harmful than false claims. Everything that is definitely CC-BY should be moved to cc-by and by be invalidated instead.

who thought it was a great idea to alias a slightly less ambiguous word to a common word joiner?

...

https://e621.net/tag_aliases/40541 approved without a forum discussion

Maybe we should flip the other tags to be consistent?

The bulk update request #3752 is active.

remove alias cc-by (113) -> by (0)

Reason: Remove the alias first, I guess.

EDIT: The bulk update request #3752 (forum #352991) has been approved by @gattonero2001.

The bulk update request #3753 is active.

remove alias cc-by-nd (3) -> by-nd (0)
remove alias cc-by-nc-nd (1938) -> by-nc-nd (0)
remove alias cc-by-nc (777) -> by-nc (0)
remove alias cc-by-sa (276) -> by-sa (0)
remove alias cc-by-nc-sa (365) -> by-nc-sa (0)

Reason: for consistency

also, cc-by and cc0 should imply creative_commons, since the other tags do.

EDIT: The bulk update request #3753 (forum #352994) has been approved by @gattonero2001.

The bulk update request #3752 (forum #352991) has been approved by @gattonero2001.

The bulk update request #3753 (forum #352994) has been approved by @gattonero2001.

until we can agree whether cc-by-* is sufficiently unambiguous, I think this is a start.

1. I missed a few.
2. unimply
3. alias to the better tag

This will probably require a lot of work

I have retagged all non-deleted posts that were tagged with by. If I could not find the license in the source or description, I removed the tag. If I found it, I replaced it with cc-by.

cutefox123 said:
stuff

Remove

update by -> cc-by

I did this manually as stated above.

I've thought about this a bit more...

And I feel like licensing information should be in the meta category rather than the copyright category, because meta is for information about the image, copyright is at this point basically who owns the things in the image.

faucet said:
The tag definitely should've been cc-by instead of being a common English word... and now we probably have a bunch of artwork that's falsely tagged as a freely reusable license when it shouldn't be. What a mess.

This is the rare case where I believe we should actually do the opposite. Falsely claiming something is freely usable is a very bad idea, I don't think e6 is at any real risk but I'm pretty sure Wikipedia has been sued for that on multiple occasions.

I'd say if the sources don't obviously state the images' license as CC-BY it should just be removed from the image, missing information is 1000x less harmful than false claims. Everything that is definitely CC-BY should be moved to cc-by and by be invalidated instead.

What should be done in the cases of conflicting licensing information, with no other solid source?
post #3682241 deviant art states all rights reserved (aka no cc info), while new grounds states its cc-by-nc license

post #3487009 on the image it says that its cc-by, tags on FA also suggest its cc-by, but deviant art states it reserves rights

cutefox123 said:
What should be done in the cases of conflicting licensing information, with no other solid source?
post #3682241 deviant art states all rights reserved (aka no cc info), while new grounds states its cc-by-nc license

If there's a version that says it's CC-BY-NC, then that version is CC-BY-NC, regardless of what another version may be. Someone looking at the newgrounds post wouldn't be expected to see any other version, so wouldn't be expected to know it's licensed any differently elsewhere.

cutefox123 said:
post #3487009 on the image it says that its cc-by, tags on FA also suggest its cc-by, but deviant art states it reserves rights

I don't see where it says "All rights reserved" or anything. I see "© 2022 RAZARTHERAVEN2009", which is generic boilerplate text to the page. Though as I understand it, since the image itself explicitly says it's CC-BY, that generally takes precedence over information external to the image (i.e. the page the image is contained in) may say. So the image itself would be CC-BY, while the surrounding page separate from the image could be licensed differently.

cutefox123 said:
I've thought about this a bit more...

And I feel like licensing information should be in the meta category rather than the copyright category, because meta is for information about the image, copyright is at this point basically who owns the things in the image.

If I'm looking for licensing info, I'm going to look in the section labeled 'Copyright' not the section labeled 'Meta'.

The bulk update request #3782 is active.

create alias by (0) -> by_(disambiguation) (0)
change category by_(disambiguation) (0) -> invalid

Reason: All images with the by tag have been retagged, ready to change category and create disambiguation tag. See forum thread.

EDIT: The bulk update request #3782 (forum #353292) has been approved by @gattonero2001.

kyiiel said:

cutefox123 said:
And I feel like licensing information should be in the meta category rather than the copyright category, because meta is for information about the image, copyright is at this point basically who owns the things in the image.

If I'm looking for licensing info, I'm going to look in the section labeled 'Copyright' not the section labeled 'Meta'.

Petition to rename the "Copyright" tag to the "Fandom" tag, in line with other sites like AO3.

kyiiel said:
I have retagged all non-deleted posts that were tagged with by. If I could not find the license in the source or description, I removed the tag. If I found it, I replaced it with cc-by.

post #3392550 didn't have a source but you tagged it cc-by anyway. If you look at the uploader's edits, their first three uploads including that one were all tagged with "made", "by", and the artist's name. It's pretty apparent that user was doing the e621 equivalent of your grandparents typing please and thank you into Google.

The bulk update request #3782 (forum #353292) has been approved by @gattonero2001.

The bulk update request #3889 is active.

remove alias cc:by-nc-nd (0) -> by-nc-nd (0)
remove alias cc:by-nc-sa (0) -> by-nc-sa (0)
remove implication by-nc-nd (0) -> creative_commons (3656)
remove implication by-nc-sa (0) -> creative_commons (3656)
remove implication by-sa (0) -> creative_commons (3656)
remove implication by-nc (0) -> creative_commons (3656)
remove implication by-nd (0) -> creative_commons (3656)
create implication cc-by-nc-nd (1938) -> creative_commons (3656)
create implication cc-by-nc-sa (365) -> creative_commons (3656)
create implication cc-by-sa (276) -> creative_commons (3656)
create implication cc-by-nc (777) -> creative_commons (3656)
create implication cc-by-nd (3) -> creative_commons (3656)
create implication cc0 (110) -> creative_commons (3656)
create implication cc-by (113) -> creative_commons (3656)

Reason: 1. I missed a few.
2. unimply
3. alias to the better tag

EDIT: The bulk update request #3889 (forum #354387) has been approved by @gattonero2001.

The bulk update request #3889 (forum #354387) has been approved by @gattonero2001.

The bulk update request #3907 is active.

create alias by-nd (0) -> cc-by-nd (3)
create alias by-sa (0) -> cc-by-sa (276)
create alias by-nc-nd (0) -> cc-by-nc-nd (1938)
create alias by-nc (0) -> cc-by-nc (777)
create alias by-nc-sa (0) -> cc-by-nc-sa (365)
create alias cc:by-nc-nd (0) -> cc-by-nc-nd (1938)
create alias cc:by-nc-sa (0) -> cc-by-nc-sa (365)

Reason: ONCE AND FOR ALL

This should be it

weird, it says that alias by-nc-sa-> cc-by-nc-sa is unparseable...
figured it out, missing a space between the tag and the arrow lul.

EDIT: The bulk update request #3907 (forum #354587) has been approved by @gattonero2001.

The bulk update request #3907 (forum #354587) has been approved by @gattonero2001.