There seems to be issues with the general usage of the tag colored, so I have decided to move the discussion from specific tag alias threads to a bigger, more general thread.

Many users have talked about either:

• Invalidating the tag;

because if we were to use the colored tag on every post containing color, the tag would become too common and invalidates itself, because -greyscale already does the job.

OR

• Sticking to the old meaning of the tag;

by which the tag should only be applied to colored versions of an uncolored (black and white or greyscale) post.

It would be nice to collect as many opinions as possible to try and figure out what to do.

I’d like to add some additional information:

• Monochrome does not exclude color, for example there can be a monochrome artwork in different shades of green.

• Color edit is used when a post is a third-party edit adding color to the uncolored parent post.

• Colored version is very rare, but fills the role of the original colored tag meaning while having a more precise name.

• Colored sketch refers to the a colored sketch, however, in many instances there is no uncolored parent post, and the definition stays vague.

• Colored line art is used when the lines themselves is colored.

• Colored in currently only has 2 instances, but can potentially be used as "color inside the lines", as opposed to "color of the lines" (colored line art).

• Flat colors is used when there is no shading.

• Uncolored is currently aliased to monochrome. It is unknown wether it should instead be aliased to black_and_white, greyscale, or if these two tags should be aliased to uncolored.

Relevant topics about the colored tag:

topic #40266
(Imply colored_line_art -> colored)

topic #40257
(Imply flat_colors -> colored)

topic #37439
(Invalidate colored)

topic #36742
(Redefine or preserve the ‘colored’ tag?)

See also topic #37439

I guess the idea of only bothering to tag it when colored version would apply makes sense.
It's one thing when you have full-colo(u)r on some sites where that's rare. Here it barely makes sense, since we have tags like restricted palette, monochrome (and greyscale), sepia (tones), dithering, screentone, splash_of_color/spot_color, etc. and color is the default.

I'm for sticking with the old definition and making it so that it is purely for parent-child posts.
To avoid mistags though, we'd either need to alias it to colored_version or invalidate/disambiguate it (i.e., topic #37439).

thegreatwolfgang said:
I'm for sticking with the old definition and making it so that it is purely for parent-child posts.
To avoid mistags though, we'd either need to alias it to colored_version or invalidate/disambiguate it (i.e., topic #37439).

Wouldn't we need to nuke it first before we alias to colored_version?

zenith-pendragon said:
See also topic #37439

Thanks for the heads up, I added topic #37439 and topic #36742 to the main post.

I'm against having a tag meaning what colored originally did, since it violates how we do tagging on the site. We tag what's relevant to the given image, not based on the contents of parent/child posts, and people get in trouble for doing the latter. It's also not useful since it depends on the content of a parent or child post rather than the post itself; the tag becomes valid or invalid based on a completely separate image, while the image with the tag being added/removed doesn't change at all, making it unreliable.

watsit
Maybe it would be more reliable if TagBot was tweaked?
Like, ischild:true + color tag would imply the colored version tag. Then, if ischild:false, TagBot would remove the implied colored version

However I do not know how TagBot works and if this is possible.

dimoretpinel said:
watsit
Maybe it would be more reliable if TagBot was tweaked?
Like, ischild:true + color tag would imply the colored version tag. Then, if ischild:false, TagBot would remove the implied colored version

A post being in color and having a parent doesn't mean the parent in uncolored. The order can also sometimes be switched, with the parent being the colored version and the child being uncolored. In some cases, there may even be daisy-chained posts, where for example the original sketch can have a child post that's flat color, and that flat color post has a child that's fully colored/shaded and more detailed (parent-child chains are supposed to be avoided, but people do it anyway even if they shouldn't, and there can always be a rare exception where it's allowed).

snpthecat said:
Wouldn't we need to nuke it first before we alias to colored_version?

Typically, you'd do that with tags that have been largely misused to the point it has completely lost its original meaning.
In this case with colored, I feel an invalidation would be more appropriate since we'd be able to start with a clean slate using colored_version.

The bulk update request #5567 is pending approval.

change category colored-in_version (25) -> meta
change category has_colored-in_version (25) -> meta

Reason: Colored-in version would be the new tag serving the original purpose of the old colored tag, to be a meta tag designating posts that are the colored version of an other existing artwork.

Has colored-in version would refer to line art, shaded line art or colored line art posts that have a colored-in version.

Not invalidating colored because it is currently needed to find posts eligible for colored-in_version. I’m not done cleaning up the tag yet, it will take a lot of time to do this alone!

dimoretpinel said:
Reason: Colored-in version would be the new tag serving the original purpose of the old colored tag, to be a meta tag designating posts that are the colored version of an other existing artwork.

Has colored-in version would refer to line art, shaded line art or colored line art posts that have a colored-in version.

They should be invalidated for the reasons I mentioned earlier, as they don't fit how site tagging works and would be too volatile. I don't see anything special about color versions of images that makes tagging them a good idea anymore than "sketch version", "line art version", "shaded version", "monochrome version", "greyscale version", "night version", "male version", "cum version", etc.