Topic: What to do about the teal tags... suggested BUR

The bulk update request #3914 has been rejected.

Reason: The teal_* tags are inconsistent, some (teal_fur, teal_tail) are aliased to green_ and some (teal_hair, teal_nipples) are used as their own tags and even implicated to other tags. They should be made consistent one way or the other.
I suspect this might be controversial. My hot take is that teal should always alias to green.

EDIT: The bulk update request #3914 (forum #354632) has been rejected by @gattonero2001.

cloudpie said:
My hot take is that teal should always alias to green.

I'm gonna put my vote in for Team Blue.

My hot take is that teal is distinct enough from both green and blue that it should remain its own color.

scaliespe said:
My hot take is that teal is distinct enough from both green and blue that it should remain its own color.

Considering cyan is about as different from green and blue that a color could be while still being related to them, and cyan is aliased away to blue, having teal aliased away to green (due being a bit more green than cyan) makes perfect sense to me. And even if cyan gets unaliased to be its own tag, the similarity to cyan/green would be worth aliasing it away too, IMO.

watsit said:
Considering cyan is about as different from green and blue that a color could be while still being related to them, and cyan is aliased away to blue, having teal aliased away to green (due being a bit more green than cyan) makes perfect sense to me. And even if cyan gets unaliased to be its own tag, the similarity to cyan/green would be worth aliasing it away too, IMO.

If cyan returns as a valid tag, I would support aliasing teal to cyan. The reason I was given for the current rejection of the cyan unalias is not because cyan isn't a distinct color, but simply because the admins generally think it will be too much work to maintain against rampant mistagging due to people not understanding what cyan is. I'm not seeing that being much of an issue with teal, though. Teal generally seems to be more widely known than cyan is. The results for teal_eyes all look pretty good to me, and I'm not seeing a lot of teal eyes mistagged as green_eyes, either.

Also, teal is technically not more green than blue. According to Wikipedia, pure teal has a hex code of #008080 and an RGB value of r0, g128, b128, meaning it's exactly halfway between blue and green. It is in fact just cyan at a lower brightness value. So aliasing it to green would be as wrong as aliasing it to blue, and many of the current teal tags that lean more towards blue would be mistagged by this alias. post #3776092 under teal eyes, for example, is closer to the blue end of teal, and would be mistagged by the alias.

scaliespe said:
Also, teal is technically not more green than blue. According to Wikipedia, pure teal has a hex code of #008080 and an RGB value of r0, g128, b128, meaning it's exactly halfway between blue and green. It is in fact just cyan at a lower brightness value.

Which would be an argument in favor of aliasing it away, as "it will be too much work to maintain against rampant mistagging due to people not understanding what cyanteal is". If it's just a dimmer cyan, it's cyan, just as dark blue is still blue. Color perception being what it is, though, the brightness of a color does influence how one interprets it, and it seems a dimmer cyan has people perceiving it as more green (given how some teal tags are aliased to green), as a brighter cyan has people seeing it as more blue.

scaliespe said:
So aliasing it to green would be as wrong as aliasing it to blue, and many of the current teal tags that lean more towards blue would be mistagged by this alias. post #3776092 under teal eyes, for example, is closer to the blue end of teal, and would be mistagged by the alias.

I'd say that looks closer to green_eyes than blue, which I would've tagged it as if I was the one that posted it.

-1

I feel like teal should remain as it’s own color and not be associated with green or blue. Additionally, tags like teal_fur, teal_tail, and teal_horn should all be dealiases from the green tags.

watsit said:
Considering cyan is about as different from green and blue that a color could be while still being related to them, and cyan is aliased away to blue, having teal aliased away to green (due being a bit more green than cyan) makes perfect sense to me. And even if cyan gets unaliased to be its own tag, the similarity to cyan/green would be worth aliasing it away too, IMO.

While I do agree with cyan being closely related to blue (considering it’s almost a neon blue), teal looks like it’s precisely borderline blue/green. Similar to turquoise, teal can either be interpretted as either blue or green, so an absolute alias would cause a huge debate among users and cause confusion with tagging.

scaliespe said:
My hot take is that teal is distinct enough from both green and blue that it should remain its own color.

scaliespe said:
Also, teal is technically not more green than blue. According to Wikipedia, pure teal has a hex code of #008080 and an RGB value of r0, g128, b128, meaning it's exactly halfway between blue and green. It is in fact just cyan at a lower brightness value. So aliasing it to green would be as wrong as aliasing it to blue, and many of the current teal tags that lean more towards blue would be mistagged by this alias. post #3776092 under teal eyes, for example, is closer to the blue end of teal, and would be mistagged by the alias.

I agree with scaliespe. In fact, when tagging posts, I really find the teal tags to be very helpful when it’s hard to tell if something is green or blue.

Here are some examples of posts tagged with teal-something.

post #2797229 post #1437707 post #836067 post #1786740

Some might say that these look more blue, while others perceive them as green. To prevent confusion, it would be a more functional benefit to keep the teal tags.

zenith-pendragon said:
Some might say that these look more blue, while others perceive them as green. To prevent confusion, it would be a more functional benefit to keep the teal tags.

However then you get the same problem that cyan would have; you'll have blue-looking things split between blue and cyan, so a search for blue won't get you blue-colored things tagged cyan, and a search for cyan won't get you cyan-colored things tagged blue. Same here, you'll have green-looking things split between green and teal, so a search for green won't get you green-colored things tagged teal, and a search for teal won't get you all teal-colored things tagged green. That some people may confuse teal for blue sometimes and tag teal/green when it's more blue I think would be limited enough that it's manageable, and better than having green and teal a mixed up mess. As it is, I see people tagging black for grey, grey for light blue, blue for purple. An occasional blue for green won't cause that much of a problem, IMO.

FWIW, I'd be fine with those examples being tagged green.

You have to admit, it is kinda weird that we have two standard colour tags for the space between red and blue, and another two for the space between red and green, but not a single one for the space between blue and green.

We need a damn color wheel when trying to use color tags. :D

Often, there are standard angles on one that correspond to a primary or secondary.

wat8548 said:
You have to admit, it is kinda weird that we have two standard colour tags for the space between red and blue, and another two for the space between red and green, but not a single one for the space between blue and green.

It's not terribly weird when you consider blue/green distinction tends to develop later (both biologically and culturally), so people generally have a harder time distinguishing colors between blue and green. Just look at these topics about cyan/teal with some people saying "it looks more blue, green is wrong" and others saying "it looks more green, blue is wrong". People just have a hard time with these in-between colors.

wat8548 said:
You have to admit, it is kinda weird that we have two standard colour tags for the space between red and blue, and another two for the space between red and green, but not a single one for the space between blue and green.

I figured it's because e6's color tags are based on r/b/y. We have the primary and secondary colors with that color system: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple (+ black, white, grey). Teal is a tertiary color which is why I thought it didn't belong. Not that our current tags are exact though, since we also have pink, brown, and tan, so I can see the argument for teal.

watsit said:
However then you get the same problem that cyan would have; you'll have blue-looking things split between blue and cyan, so a search for blue won't get you blue-colored things tagged cyan, and a search for cyan won't get you cyan-colored things tagged blue. Same here, you'll have green-looking things split between green and teal, so a search for green won't get you green-colored things tagged teal, and a search for teal won't get you all teal-colored things tagged green. That some people may confuse teal for blue sometimes and tag teal/green when it's more blue I think would be limited enough that it's manageable, and better than having green and teal a mixed up mess.

Like I said, I agree with cyan -> blue. How I understand it, cyan is a very vibrant shade/tint of blue. Being specific with the shades and tints of blue (cyan, navy, cerulean, azure, lapis, Prussian, etc.) is very complex and unnecessary, since they all are basically blue.

Teal, on the other hand, is a whole different hue right in between green and blue. It’s also a very disputable color, since people perceive it differently. We can already see conflicting opinions in this thread alone. You associate it with green while wat8548 associates it with blue.

I can’t speak for others how a post is tagged, so if you want to be certain that you are seeing all ‘green’-related posts, you can type ~teal_... and ~green_... in the search bar.

watsit said:
An occasional blue for green won't cause that much of a problem, IMO. ... FWIW, I'd be fine with those examples being tagged green.

I beg to differ. If I want to search for characters with green hair, then I expect to see characters with green hair, not with blue hair (unless there are more characters in a post). If posts are tagged inaccurately, they can be edited to include more accurate tags. If something looks green, use green tags. If something looks blue, use blue tags. If something looks in between green and blue, use teal tags.

watsit said:
Just look at these topics about cyan/teal with some people saying "it looks more blue, green is wrong" and others saying "it looks more green, blue is wrong". People just have a hard time with these in-between colors.

That is exactly my point! If something can be perceived as both green and blue, it’s best to simply use teal. Getting rid of teal-related tags will not solve this problem. Instead, it will cause more confusion.

Teal is way too distinct to be flat out aliased with green or blue.

zenith-pendragon said:
Like I said, I agree with cyan -> blue. How I understand it, cyan is a very vibrant shade/tint of blue. Being specific with the shades and tints of blue (cyan, navy, cerulean, azure, lapis, Prussian, etc.) is very complex and unnecessary, since they all are basically blue.

Teal, on the other hand, is a whole different hue right in between green and blue. It’s also a very disputable color, since people perceive it differently. We can already see conflicting opinions in this thread alone. You associate it with green while wat8548 associates it with blue.

Cyan is equal blue and green (#00FFFF). Teal is equal blue and green, but dim (#008080). It's the same hue, just different brightness (which also affects how people perceive it).

zenith-pendragon said:
If I want to search for characters with green hair, then I expect to see characters with green hair, not with blue hair (unless there are more characters in a post). If posts are tagged inaccurately, they can be edited to include more accurate tags.

Exactly. So if someone thinks a blueish thing is close enough to teal and tags teal, which gets aliased to green, someone else can come along and see a blue thing is tagged green and fix it. I do the same when someone thinks a purple or blue thing is grey, or a grey thing is black, I fix the tags. Heck, I've even fixed it when green things were tagged blue, likely due to the cyan->blue alias.

zenith-pendragon said:
If something looks green, use green tags. If something looks blue, use blue tags. If something looks in between green and blue, use teal tags.

But when people get blue/teal/green mixed up (as they do with blue/cyan/green), that causes a problem as the same thing will be tagged differently by different people, where the only way to solve it is to get out an eyedropper tool.

zenith-pendragon said:
That is exactly my point! If something can be perceived as both green and blue, it’s best to simply use teal.

People aren't going to think "I perceive this as green, someone else could perceive it as blue, so I'll tag teal." They'll think, "this looks green, I'll tag green" or "this looks teal, I'll tag teal". When you can have people look at the same color, and not have a consensus for if it should be tagged teal or green (as shown to happen with cyan and blue), that's a problem, and not one that's solved by leaving the teal tags alone.

zenith-pendragon said:
Getting rid of teal-related tags will not solve this problem. Instead, it will cause more confusion.

On the contrary, if people can't agree if something is tagged teal or green, with a few insisting it's blue, aliasing the ambiguous tag to the closest likely tag will go a long way to avoiding confusion for why the same color can be found under different tags.

it looks like a washed out green, I hate pedantic tags so I'm for streamlining colors.

We'll just name it oxidized copper and cover blue, green, black... :D

watsit said:
Which would be an argument in favor of aliasing it away, as "it will be too much work to maintain against rampant mistagging due to people not understanding what cyanteal is".

That was the issue with cyan, which is linguistically considered a type of blue (even the dictionary app on my phone redirects “cyan” to “cyan blue”) though color theory regards it as a distinct color. Teal specifically does not seem to have that linguistic barrier, though, and generally seems to be regarded by people as a midpoint between blue and green (despite the fact that it’s no more green than cyan is, only darker; yes, perception is weird). Most people probably would not consider teal to be a type of green or a type of blue, but as a distinct color, which would probably solve the mistagging issue that cyan faced.

watsit said:
However then you get the same problem that cyan would have; you'll have blue-looking things split between blue and cyan, so a search for blue won't get you blue-colored things tagged cyan, and a search for cyan won't get you cyan-colored things tagged blue.

You could argue the same for orange. you'll have red-looking things split between red and orange, so a search for red won't get you red-colored things tagged orange, and a search for orange won't get you orange-colored things tagged red. It’s not like there’s a clear distinction between any color. There are always ambiguous areas.

Teal, however, has the advantage of being regarded as a distinct color from both blue and green. If you show the average person a perfect teal color, they’ll most likely say it’s teal. It’s distinct, easily recognized and commonly known. Cyan, on the other hand, has the unfortunate situation of being regarded unambiguously as blue by almost everyone. That’s why it was mistagged so often; not because it’s between blue and green, because every color is between two other colors. Ambiguous zones are something we always have to deal with. It’s simply because most people don’t even know that it’s a distinct color.

cloudpie said:
I figured it's because e6's color tags are based on r/b/y. We have the primary and secondary colors with that color system: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple (+ black, white, grey). Teal is a tertiary color. Not that our current tags are exact though, since we also have pink, brown, and tan, so I can see the argument for teal.

I hate RBY, it’s wrong in several ways and schools need to stop teaching it. :3

scaliespe said:
Cyan, on the other hand, has the unfortunate situation of being regarded unambiguously as blue by almost everyone. That’s why it was mistagged so often; not because it’s between blue and green, because every color is between two other colors. Ambiguous zones are something we always have to deal with. It’s simply because most people don’t even know that it’s a distinct color.

This is like the inanity over using 'megabyte' to mean 8 million bits or 2^23 bits. MB is a depreciated term, anyways, with cloud storage, but it was hilarious to read the fight at Wikipedia when they changed it back to decimal (1000000) megabits/bytes. Sometimes, it's better to just create a new term when old one is so polluted, but egos prevailed. Someone suggested MiB and MdB to make sure to not have any confusion over which of the two it was, but that was laughed at. It's even better when Mi could be shorthand for Million. :D

I agree that antagonistic color theory (red/orange/yellow/green versus blue/violet/cyan) is bad to be in dictionaries as default. You normally want to deal with positive and negative colors (additive like RGB monitors) (subtractive like photochemical processes?). Interestingly, that's one of the most common forms of colorblindness, BTW. Being able to tell blue apart but not red and green. The eye effectively sees what color it ISN'T to determine how much red and green there is.

scaliespe said:
You could argue the same for orange. you'll have red-looking things split between red and orange, [...]

Teal, however, has the advantage of being regarded as a distinct color from both blue and green. If you show the average person a perfect teal color, they’ll most likely say it’s teal.

Orange is easier to pick out as a distinct color separate from red than teal is from green, in my experience. People generally deal specifically with orange more than teal, at least as far as being able to distinguish them from red and green respectively. Not to say it's impossible for them to figure out, but an immediate response for a teal color is more likely to get a "green" or "green-ish" at first than "teal", unlike orange which is likely to get an quick "orange" or "orange-ish" response, rather than "red" (unless it's that close to pure red that it wouldn't be wrong to tag).

Seems like the majority are pro-teal - in that case we need to unalias teal_hair/etc and implicate a lot of the other teal tags to link them up properly. I can make another BUR later if i remember, unless someone else wants to do it?

watsit said:
Orange is easier to pick out as a distinct color separate from red than teal is from green, in my experience. People generally deal specifically with orange more than teal, at least as far as being able to distinguish them from red and green respectively. Not to say it's impossible for them to figure out, but an immediate response for a teal color is more likely to get a "green" or "green-ish" at first than "teal", unlike orange which is likely to get an quick "orange" or "orange-ish" response, rather than "red" (unless it's that close to pure red that it wouldn't be wrong to tag).

Kind of what I was getting at with detecting what color something is "not". There's a huge overlap of actual wavelengths that get detected, so the eye has to detect the edge of a range more selectively to counteract that. And yeah, for most people, orange is probably not nearly as hard to tell apart as stuff like the 'green' traffic lights in Japan (which are highly blue!).

Ah, here it is: Opponent Process Theory That is part of why we have Red/Yellow/Blue taught.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impossible_color That spread on the right image is a great example of that overlap effect.

I'm thrilled to learn that the restoration of teal is finally getting some traction, although finding all the pictures that need retagged is going to be an ordeal. This site logs tag history, right? I wonder if there's a way to make it spit out a list of all posts that were previously tagged with a specific tag. That would get us at least most of the ones that are older than whenever these aliases were added.

Then we can just go through and do all the pictures of Artica Sparkle or Artik Ninetails, and that's half the work right there. :P

scaliespe said:
The reason I was given for the current rejection of the cyan unalias is not because cyan isn't a distinct color, but simply because the admins generally think it will be too much work to maintain against rampant mistagging due to people not understanding what cyan is.

It doesn't help that even the official definition changes depending on what field you're in. Most of us computer nerds know it as #00FFFF and anything else with equal blue and green in the RGB space, but if you're working in print (whether it's at a printing press or on the inkjet printer on your desk), cyan means the primary ink color that is definitely a bright blue (close to #0099FF). It also doesn't help that the word "cyan" literally comes from a Greek word for the color of lapis lazuli, which is about as close to pure blue as any natural pigment gets.

watsit said:
But when people get blue/teal/green mixed up (as they do with blue/cyan/green), that causes a problem as the same thing will be tagged differently by different people, where the only way to solve it is to get out an eyedropper tool.

The eyedropper tool too, it is a valid option, but not absolutely correct. For example, in a very good picture, where the setting is lit by a blue light, something that the viewer('s brain) sees as yellow can easily result as green by eyedropper tool.

urielfrys said:
For example, in a very good picture, where the setting is lit by a blue light, something that the viewer('s brain) sees as yellow can easily result as green by eyedropper tool.

Yeah, then you get into the weeds of do you tag a color as you perceive it, or as it actually is measured? A red light can cause something to look purple which was blue, something our eyes and brain tries to account for (we can "tell" it's blue with a red light even if it's very measurably purple), so would you tag that thing blue or purple? What about when it's more ambiguous, that some people perceive it as blue with a red light but others perceive it as purple with a white or purple light? Which will just add more ambiguity and cause more instances of teal and green to be tagged as the other, given they're perceived as so close to each other already (if not one being a shade of the other), making it impossible to properly search for green or teal things.

The bulk update request #3914 (forum #354632) has been rejected by @gattonero2001.

Staff decision: we're keeping teal

Specifics are still being discussed

Teal tags need to be fixed for consistency. a few of them still alias to green.

Linking this here for visibility: topic #37305