Add a "character:" tags?

I often look at tags of pictures to see if I could get more pictures of OCs that I like. But currently the names can’t be easily searched for just by glancing at the tag section, so it can be sometimes hard to know if some tag is a name of a character (especially with OCs that can have names that sound like they could be an obscure name of something that actually exists).
 
There already is an example of this ambiguity with lamia, who/which is an artist with tag “artist:lamia”, their character under the same name with the tag “lamia (oc)” and actual lamias, which are snake girls afaik, with tag “lamia”.
 
This makes it harder to look for images, because for some OCs you will just have to input their name, but for some others that have overlap in tags you’ll have to input their name and “(oc)” after it to get to them.
 
This could easily be avoided if characters had a “character: <name>” tags instead and it would make it much easier to search for them inside the tag section too.

Barbecue had suggested in the “Tag Discussion” that, in tagging OCs, we use the tag oc:(name here).

Namespacing is a thing we may do, but we also have plans for tag categories that would affect ordering/location of character (and other) tags in the tag list, and maybe color (though probably just minor difference from normal green, we don’t want to the tag list to look like a rainbow).

Yeah. As opposed to OC’s, there are only so many canon characters. We’re still not sure how exactly we’re gonna do it though, and even if we did, there are other (more pressing) issues.
 
Last I checked, the idea for oc’s was to use oc:<name> (and have the current big OC’s like fluffle puff or lamia (oc) aliased to that form), because then oc: would be a namespace (like artist:). I actually did ask if encouraging that form would screw with some technical stuff or not, but there has been no definite answer on the matter yet.

Funny thing is, I was wondering about this yesterday. “Maud Pie” is both an episode and a character. If I want one or the other, how does that get indicated?

@Ferrotter  
“Maud Pie (episode)”, and “Maud Pie”.

@soundtea  
I wound up noticing that while catching up on images tonight. After posting that question of course. But thank you.
 
And I notice it’s actually contrary to the suggestion above. Per the start of the thread, it should be “character:maud pie” and “maud pie”. If we assume we’ll ever do the above.

@Ferrotter  
It’d be kind of strange to do it with all the canon characters. Makes more sense to reserve it for OCs.

I also think it could work with characters that share their names with items (ie, the pony Parasol and the umbrella of the same name) or an earlier generation of of a character (though the latter is a maybe).

@EPPony
 
But instead of OC (I thought Parasol was a canon pony?), it would be character:parasol, right?
 
Whereas an OC would be oc:parasol

@And Brother I Hurt People  
I did mean that, forgot to add that to my post (I was tired when I typed that out).

Then there’s the G1 pony named Parasol, to confuse matters.

Was there ever an official ruling on this?

I keep meaning to check this in my devbox, and I keep forgetting it :( Remind me of it this friday evening and I can probably do it this weekend.

@barbeque
 
Will do; would you like me to contact you via PM or this thread?

Something that should be kept in mind if this is done is to keep the extra word short. “character:” is awfully long, especially when it gets repeated on the same image. This never became a question so far because there is only the “artist:” tag and there is usually only one of that, but when it is widely used it is worth keeping as short as possible.
 
For example, perhaps show characters could have this tag:  
c: (eg: c:applejack)  
which in fact wouldn’t be far from an OC tag, was that to be implemented:  
oc: (oc:kimmy sparkle)
 
(Not really liking the idea myself btw - but if it needs to be then this way could be more workable.)

@And Brother I Hurt People  
A post here would suffice.
 
@Vree  
I’ve already reasoned that I only want to do this for OC’s, so that:  
-> They’re always in a logical place in the current taglist  
-> No matter what names people come up with  
-> Because they’re prefixed oc: they can (should be able to) be auto-classified as “oc” when that becomes a thing  
-> All OC’s ever would just be tagged as oc:name (aliases for a few very well known ones like fluffle puff can be arranged)
 
I think that is also what OP meant (though he proposed to use character: which is a bit confusing); there are only so many canon characters so when we get actual tag categories, we can just set those as “character” and show them nicely in taglists etc. But OC names can be really strange, and new ones pop up all the time.
 
I can see your point for doing it for canon characters as well, but I think it will just cause more confusion than it will do good, and it will be kinda pointless once we get tag categories anyway (OC’s would never be set as “character” if that’s what you’re afraid of)
 
In slightly related news: I did an update for the tagbox (the fancy tag autocompletion thing), so that if you start typing “john” it will find both “john de lancie” and “artist:johnjoseco”. Typing “artist:john” will also pop up just artists starting with that. This is kinda why I am so for the oc: form, because then people can actually find them regardless of whether they’re prefixing with oc or not.

It’s Friday.

@And Brother I Hurt People  
And now it’s Sunday!
 
In all seriousness, I did actually check it this weekend, and using oc:name of oc doesn’t seem to have any problems. In fact, even though I said it shouldn’t get deployed yet, the upload page now says  

I’ll alias some of the bigger OC tags later today, put up a thread, maybe also a sitenotice, etc. I saw some are already getting tagged this way (go to the Tags page and search for oc:)

@barbeque
 
Yup, I’ve been doing it, and some uploaders have caught on.
 
When you say big, do you mean monster tags like Fluffle Puff, or would tags with, say, eighty images and up (ex: Madmax, Blueberry Blitz) count?

@And Brother I Hurt People  
When I say big in this case I mean probably anything people might have filtered. I don’t know how much OC’s there are that have over 50 or 80 or whatever images, but yeah, also things like kydose or lamia or the one by an artist (I think it was a greenish OC, by rwl or rawrchierawr or something, but I might be mixing things up here). I’d setup an alias for zephyr (I recall someone commenting “finally! he’s tagged so I can filter him out!”) but that also has a non-oc meaning, apparently.
 
Just use a bit of common sense; if there’s just a dozen or so pics I’m not aliasing it that’s for sure.

@barbeque
 
Alrighty, I’ll get to work tagging the numerous smaller ones, then. Thanks!

It’s gonna be fun adding a few more hundred oc tags to my filter list.

@dt  
Well at least you’ll have something to filter, rather than nothing and see images you didn’t want to.

Really, trying to bunch OCs in their own namespace is tantamount to discrimination against them. Suppose you consider Alicorn Faust or Littlepip. Both are so popular that they have become part of the common character base everypony knows about - they deserve dignity!
 
We live in a world of ambiguity and we can’t avoid having to decide the correct meaning of some word. If Wikipedia-style disambiguation works, why should we have to go through the pain of reassigning tags to OC pictures? I’ve reversed the tag changes on some of the OC pictures.