help:tags (locked)
Tags are keywords used to describe posts, allowing you to easily search and explore posts based on their content. Consult the cheat sheet for a full guide on searching posts. See the tag groups for existing tags.
Basic tagging guidelines
Replace spaces with underscores within tags. For example, noticeable compression artifacts becomes noticeable compression artifacts. Spaces are used to separate tags.
Creating new tags
Sterlbooru is in its infancy; a lot of characters, concepts and actions have yet to be tagged. Regarding things that are best described as actions: prefer the gerund form, e.g. fighting as opposed to fight, or apologizing as opposed to apologize (or, as was once used, apologizing)). That, and, much to my chagrin, stick to U.S. English spelling rules.
Character or copyright collisions
As of writing, Sterlbooru is basically just an Animal Crossing shitpost repository, so characters can just be named as-is without suffixes without much chance of collision. In the chance of collision between an Animal Crossing-related tag and a non-related tag, add a suffix, e.g. celeste_(video_game) (c.f. celeste). If neither of the two colliding tags are Animal Crossing-related, add a prefix to the new tag, and submit a bulk update request to request a prefix be added to the original tag.
This section is particularly subject to change.
Tag name restrictions
- Must not be blank, i.e. must contain at least one character
- Cannot contain any asterisks (
*) or commas (,) - Cannot begin with a tilde (
~) or hyphen (-) - Cannot begin or end with an underscore (
_), or contain consecutive underscores - Must contain only printable characters
Tag categories
There are six types of tags: artist, copyright, character, species, general and meta. Artist tags are red; copyright tags are purple; character tags are green; species tags are orange; and meta tags are yellow.
Artist
Artist tags identify the creator(s) of a post, including editors.
Copyright
Copyright tags identify the television series, video game, manga, media franchise or other works with which the post is associated. More generally, copyright tags identify the source material from which the characters come.
Character
Character tags identify the character(s) present in a post.
Species
Species tags identify the species of the various animals in a post. (Please do not tag plants; this went poorly on e621 for the two days someone tried it.)
General
General tags are used for everything that doesn’t fall under one of the other tags. Avoid using vague subjective tags which can be biased by personal preferences (e.g. cute or aww).
Meta
Meta tags generally describe things beyond the content of the image itself. Examples include 2022, low res, pen on paper and noticeable compression artifacts.
Changing tag categories
You can change the category of a tag by prefixing it with artist:, copyright, character:, species:, general: or meta: when tagging a post. For example, tagging a post with artist:guywiththepie will make sure that guywiththepie becomes an artist tag, even if it was something else before.
You can also search the tags listing and use the Edit link next to the tag to change its category.
adapted from Danbooru wiki