<p>This is not all that important; it will just make searches easier if most of us can mostly agree to some guidelines.</p>
<p>We will never be able to easily and perfectly categorise every single image to everyone's satisfaction, so there is no point defining every possible rule for every possible situation. If you do something that doesn't fit, fixing mistakes is not difficult.</p>
<p>If you are still not confident, just lurk for a bit. See how other people have tagged the popular images and do more of that.</p>
<p>The most important thing is: <b>if your tag is your opinion, don't add it</b>. 'beautiful' is an unhelpful tag because no one can agree on what it means. 'lingerie', 'blue eyes', and 'male' or 'female' are better since reasonable people can generally agree on what they mean. If someone thinks blue-eyed women are beautiful, they can search for that to find beautiful things.</p>
<p>You can start your own namespaces, categorisation systems, whatever. Just be aware that everyone else will see what you do.</p>
<p>Of course, if you are tagging a picture of someone holding a sign that says 'beautiful', then go ahead and tag it that. Otherwise, please keep your opinions to yourself!</p>
<p>Numbers should be written '22', '1457 ce', and 'page:3', unless as part of an official title like 'ocean's eleven'. When the client parses numbers, it does so intelligently, so just use '1' where you might before have done '01' or '001'. I know it looks ugly sometimes to have '2 girls' or '1 cup', but the rules for writing numbers out in full are hazy for special cases.</p>
<p>Nouns should generally be singular, not plural. 'chair' instead of 'chairs', 'cat' instead of 'cats', even if there are several of the thing in the image. If there really are <i>many</i> of the thing in the image, add a seperate 'multiple', 'comparison' or 'group' tag as apppropriate.</p>
<p>Ignore this when the thing is normally said in its plural (usually paired) form. Say 'blue eyes', not 'blue eye'; 'breasts', not 'breast', even if only one is pictured.</p>
<h3>acronyms and synonyms</h3>
<p>I prefer the full 'series:the lord of the rings' rather than 'lotr'. If you are an advanced user, please help out with tag siblings to help induce this.</p>
<p>I am not fond of putting a series name after a character because it looks unusual and is applied unreliably. It is done to separate same-named characters from each other (particularly when they have no canon surname), which is useful in places that search slowly or usually only deal in single-tag searches. I would prefer that namespaces say their namespace and nothing else. Some sites even say things like 'anna (disney)'. I don't really mind this stuff, but if you are adding a sibling to collapse these divergent tags into the 'proper' one, I'd prefer it all went to the simple and reliable 'character:anna'. Even better would be migrating towards a canon-ok unique name, like 'character:princess anna of arendelle'.</p>
<p>Importing all the many tags from the boorus is totally fine, but if you are typing tags yourself, I suggest you do not try to tag <ahref="http://safebooru.org/index.php?page=post&s=list&tags=card_on_necklace">everything</a><ahref="http://gelbooru.com/index.php?page=post&s=list&tags=collarbone">in</a><ahref="https://e621.net/post/index?tags=cum_on_neck">the</a><ahref="http://danbooru.donmai.us/posts?tags=brown_vest">image</a>--tag everything that you would search for. You will save a lot of time. Anyone can see what is in an image just by looking at it--tags are primarily for finding things. Character, series and creator namespaces are a great place to start. After that, add what you are interested in.</p>
<p>Please do add <ahref="advanced_siblings.html">siblings</a> and <ahref="advanced_parents.html">parents</a>! If it is something not obvious, please explain the relationship in your submitted reason. If it <i>is</i> something obvious (e.g. 'wings' is a parent of 'angel wings'), don't bother to put a reason in; I'll just approve it.</p>
<p>The correctness of a thing is in how it would describe itself, or how its creator would describe it. For instance, I usually prefer japanese names be written surname first and western names forename first. As I show in my siblings page, please go 'character:rei ayanami'->'character:ayanami rei'. Leave 'person:emma watson' and other western names as they are, obviously.</p>
<p>In general, if there is a more proper foreign name for something, correct any entirely anglicised version back to that, but stick to english letters. 'series:the melancholy of haruhi suzumiya'->'series:haruhi suzumiya no yuuutsu'.</p>
<p>I don't care about popularity as much as accuracy. If there are two things that mean the same 'series:pretty cure' and 'series:precure', I would prefer 'series:pretty cure' because it is the 'full and proper' rendering, even though there are more instances of 'precure' on the boorus.</p>
<p>Please <b>do not</b> go 'blah'->'character:blah' unless the name is popular and unique. No one is going to create a new character named 'ayanami rei', so that's fine, but going 'archer'->'<ahref="http://typemoon.wikia.com/wiki/Archer_%28Fate/stay_night%29">character:archer</a>' is going to create a lot of false positives.</p>
<p>In general, swap out slang for proper terms. 'lube'->'lubricant', 'series:zelda'->'series:the legend of zelda'.</p>
<p>Be shy about adding character:blah->series:whatever, but feel free to do it for main characters. 'character:harry potter'->'series:harry potter' seems fairly uncontroversial, for instance.</p>
<p>Please remember that parents are definitional, not incidental. Don't add a parent because it is usually associated with a child; add it because it is <i>always</i> associated with a child.</p>
<p>I recommend you only put your time into parents that will actually add a lot of tags. You can create a complicated tree like the firearms diagram on my parents page, but if it only adds seven tags, you probably wasted your time. Start with 'person:scarlett johansson'->'female' type stuff, which is guaranteed to make hundreds or thousands of changes.</p>
