Topic: Is single foot or hand enough to tag the character?

Posted under Tag/Wiki Projects and Questions

If only a foot, hand, tail or other part of body is visible on the post (e.g., disembodied) - it can be the main focus of the post - and the character is mentioned by author in the description, is it enough to tag the character? If the tag was added by the artist, should it be kept or removed? Especially if this body part has a lot in common with others (a regular white paw, a brown furry digitigrade foot, red fox tail, etc.) and you can not recognize the character without additional context (description, story in comics).

TWYS says, that "E621's tagging system is intended to relay virtually NO ADDITIONAL INFORMATION or context about an image," and "all tags on a post are only claims as to what's visible in an image, not what "actually is" in an image".

For example, post #3403160 has multiple paws, but it is very unlikely to recognize characters without looking at their other works (character tags were added by community). Post #3130431 has single foot, and the artist claims that it's Candide's (the character tag was added by the artist), but it is hardly recognizable without any context.

IIRC character names can be freely tagged based on whatever the author says unless the visual information clearly contradicts it.

Tag What You See only strictly applies to tags in the General category.

As for character tags:

  • Tags in the Character and Species categories are partially dependent upon TWYS: that is, external information can be used to help identify what character or species is supposed to be depicted in the post in cases where it isn't obvious, but it cannot actively conflict with what is seen in the post. For example, you can tag character a if the artist claims that a disembodied hand in the post belongs to character a, unless the hand looks nothing like character a and instead looks exactly like it belongs to character b. In that case, TWYS overrides the artist's word.