Suggested Tags Manual - Basic Guidelines

Suggested Tags Manual - Basic Guidelines [Version 1.03]

Update Notes
Version 1.03 [January 16, 2017]
- Uploaded to pastebin

If you have some time to kill, please help us tag. If nothing else, please tag your own card(s). Better tagging means your card(s) will have more exposure and all users will benefit in the long run. This also ensures that similar cards are properly grouped together under their respective categories/series.

Tagging is very dull work, but it's absolutely necessary (we need all the help we can get). Music helps tremendously. Or just put on a movie that you've seen before.

Basic Guidelines:

1. Use a single space to separate different tags (not a comma, a period, etc.)

2. Use an underscore for the same tag if it contains more than one word and you need to space the words (e.g. "my_mother_is_a_cow_and_I_have_the_udders_to_prove_it_2_you")

3. Unless you're tagging a scene from the studio or a card from another Illusion game (i.e. sbpr), the rule of thumb is to always add the "female/male", "honey_select" and "tagme" tags

4. [whatever is inside these square brackets] below further explain the tag - they're just there to provide an explanation as to what the tag is used for

5. There are basically two types of cards: a) cards that are original creations or b) cards that are based on preexisting work/people

5a. Because original creations don't have preexisting backgrounds, you can only really tag them by their physical features, their clothing/accessory and their species if they're non-human. More often than not you will be forced to load up the character model in the character creator just to see what clothing they are wearing and what accessories they're packing - if you really want to be anal about it. These are very time consuming to tag (and hence it's recommended that you just do a preliminary tag based on hair/eye color, body proportions and whatever else you can discern from a glance) -> card uploaders, please tag at least the eye and hair color (and less subtle moles) - sometimes it's very hard to tell from looking at the 252x352 size card, especially if the character is zoomed out (thank you in advance for your consideration)

5b) Cards that are based on preexisting work/people are easier to tag. You can tag them based on the series/medium that they're from, their character/real name, and their individual series if that same universe contains multiple series - if you want to go the extra mile you can always throw in physical features, clothing, etc. as well.

6. When in doubt, reference Gelbooru! We are a derivative board after all and they have a very good tagging system in place already

7. ALWAYS CHECK YOUR SPELLING! Please, this is very important. Incorrectly tagged cards - especially cards based on preexisting work - will quickly disappear into the sea of 4000+ cards (as of January 9th, 2017) and it takes a lot of work, time and luck to retrieve it again

8. Always check the number beside each tag. They denote how many cards are currently filed under that tag. If you're tagging a common enough physical trait for example and your chosen tag only shows 1-10 cards, consider alternative spelling/spacing to see if there's a more commonly used tag in place already (i.e. big_breasts/big_boobies/large_boobs/cow_udders/super_huge_titties/etc. should all use the tag "large_breasts" instead)

8a. Basically if you're going to introduce a new tag please make sure an identical/similar tag doesn't exist already

9. Please tag the mod(s) that you used if you are the card uploader (or include it in the reply section below/as a note). If you are unsure of the mod(s) used because you forgot/are not the creator of the card, please use the tag "mod_request"

10. If the card is not yours and you are unsure of the source of the card, please include the tag "source_request" as someone else may know (please remove this tag once the source has been added to the source section)

11. I've seen some contributors tag the names of their original creations. I don't think this is a good idea because a) there's already a section to put the original character's name, b) I can't imagine someone would visit this site and go "man I want to see all the original Janes/Cathys this site has to offer" and c) the name may overlap with a preexisting/soon-to-be-created character from some other popular series -> just tag the card with your username if you're the creator or maybe use a tag like "youroriginalcharactername_(username)" (of course this is just my opinion - suggestions/differing opinions are always welcome)

12. When tagging ____ try to keep it as generic as possible and don't consider shades for the most part (i.e. blue_skin instead of cyan_skin/purple_hair instead of magenta_hair/grey_eyes instead of hazel_eyes/etc.)

13. If the preexisting character appears in more than one medium/series please try to include them all (i.e. manga, anime, light_novel, etc.)

14. Please avoid standalone color tags (i.e. blue or green etc.) because they're not terribly descriptive - we have color_hair/color_skin/color_eyes/etc. tags already; if you need to describe people of a particular ethnicity there are alternative suggestions below (See "Original Character Tags" section)

15. Please consider tagging personality/character trait for your character(s) (e.g. perverted/tsundere/gentle/diligent/masochist/boyish and so on)

15a. Personality tags are recommended for preexisting characters (i.e. Misaka_Mikoto -> tsundere; Ayanami_Rei -> withdrawn and so on)

16. When tagging clothing/accessory it may be best/more efficient to narrow it down to whatever set is featured on the card itself - because that's the one the card uploader chose to showcase (although if you feel strongly about it you can always tag all three sets - normal/room/bath)