[Survey] Tagging your art

• Do you personally tag your art? If not, why? Absolutely how else am I gonna get people to look
• Does the site you use to post your art affect the types of tags you use / how many you use? (for example tumblr only recognizes like 4-5 tags afaik) Yes Tumblr's horrible "first five tags listed then they dont care" is really terrible. I use quite a bit but since only the first five matter.... :')
• How do you personally feel if you see an art piece with more than just 1-3 tags attached to it? Do you jump into conclusions about the OP? I assume they're trying to get people to look at their stuff and no i dont judge
• Why do you think there are people out there who find tagging "cheap" and "embarrassing"? I bet they're the type of people who think using references to draw is "cheating" (it's not... just...btw) I mean I know sometimes when there's like a paragraph of tags its like well thats a lot and I think tagging in general can be less ugly (like on sites like instagram and twitter) but i dont think it's cheap or embarassing.... tag....do it....

Thanks TH for making me post the thread IC. Anyway. Here are my thoughts to start this off

Do you personally tag your art? If not, why?

A lot of the sites I use require at least 1-2 tags, so I always automatically tag at least that much! I generally do try to tag my art with the most relevant things too, but it depends on the site a lot. I'm pretty uncreative with tags though like even when I WANT to put a lot of tags I run out of ideas fast. 

Does the site you use to post your art affect the types of tags you use / how many you use?

It does! I tag the most on instagram where I try to come up with as many tags as possible, whereas on twitter I often don't use tags at all! I think people on IG are super supportive of tagging and the site heavily relies on that & all my mutuals use them a lot too, so I don't feel out of place or embarrassed by going all out either. On twitter however I rarely see anyone tagging things unless they're memes or some big fandom fanart, and as such I feel super, super embarrassed and ashamed of tagging anything there! Which is actually really silly considering hashags are the Thing on twitter, and it helps people to discover your work so much easier.

How do you personally feel if you see an art piece with more than just 1-3 tags attached to it? Do you jump into conclusions about the OP?

On IG I don't feel a damn thing since it's kind of given. On tumblr if it has more than like 5 tags I assume OP doesn't know tumblr only recognizes the first few tags and the rest are useless in terms of advertising yourself, because they won't show up on the tags anyway. 

In general on sites that make you manually insert your tags into a visible place (like twitter) I'm faster to pass a judgement on person even though I wouldn't like to: for example seeing a lot of tags on twitter posted art makes me immediately think OP is desperate for attention. And it's silly because almost ALL of us want attention we post art online to get attention and visibility!!! And how is anyone supposed to find your work if you don't tag it anyway?? But alas the negative and judgmental thinking and attitudes run in deep, but I usually can tell to myself this way of thinking is irrational, unneeded and petty. 

Why do you think there are people out there who find tagging "cheap" and "embarrassing"?

I personally feel like it's probably associated for desperation for attention, which in turn is generally considered cheap no matter if it's art or something else. A lot also comes to the "culture of humble" which especially in my own country is really visible: people are not expected to actually make a deal out of themselves, and all attention they might receive is just nice extra they shouldn't assume to get in the first place. As a result, I feel like especially a lot of Finns feel like tagging is desperate and egoistic lol even though it's totally not + how are you supposed to advertise yourself and get visibility if you don't or are not allowed to do anything about it? 

aska-ray Yeah I honestly feel like the layout of the site in general can affect tagging a lot. Like Nonstop also said, it looks kind of ugly on twitter for example if there are a lot of tags (although thankfully now with more letters it's easier to both tag AND put some thoughts on the tweet too), whereas on IG the tags are usually like... hidden under read more for the most part so they won't immediately jump at you as a wall of text. Tumblr now hides most of the tag section things too. 

Also Nonstop I feel like the circles you inhabit really do affect your stance on tagging (as a general thing I mean)! I know tagging is seen as pretty discouraged among Finns, and as a Finn myself I naturally have a lot of Finnish mutuals and whatnot that creates the environment where I personally come from  

Do you personally tag your art? If not, why?

• yes! i do it so that other people can see it, especially since when i do fanart its usually for things that dont have big fandoms. on tumblr i also have a "my art" tag for organization and in case people want to look through it :p

Does the site you use to post your art affect the types of tags you use / how many you use? (for example tumblr only recognizes like 4-5 tags afaik)

• yes. on deviantart im more likely to use general tags like #oc #kemonomimi or something if i do decide to tag it but on tumblr i just use #my art and the fandoms/characters if its fanart

How do you personally feel if you see an art piece with more than just 1-3 tags attached to it? Do you jump into conclusions about the OP?

• i just figure that they want more people to see their art. i see no problem with it. kind of sucks on tumblr though since i use xkit and have tag wrapping enabled, so i see walls of tags as well (rarely tho. ive only ever seen it for reposts, which suck too)

Why do you think there are people out there who find tagging "cheap" and "embarrassing"?

• they probably see it as desperate and "trying too hard" idk. "if you were good you wouldnt need to tag it" sort of mindset. people use tags in different ways though, like someone could have a million tags just because they like organization, like #pink hair #lineless #kfashion #blue etc

That's a good point; never thought about others influencing your tagging habit but obviously that makes total sense, haha.

That character limit on twitter has always bugged me so much but now that they expanded it I feel like I should probably post more over there, haha. AH and I just remembered, I'm pretty sure pixiv has a 10 tag limit... usually my stuff doesn't go over 10 but I always always use the 5 that tumblr gives me... (one day.... we'll get more)

I wish twitter could do something like detect hashtags and place them somewhere else within the tweet display... I mean I feel like that wouldn't be hard, they already can detect the hashtag. Oh well

aska-ray I think it's often pretty invisible, but having multiple different circles on different sites I do see a difference in tagging habits o/ 

You know those people tagging things? Like a small font under the image? I feel like they could do something like that with hashtags too, but on the other hand I'm afraid twitter's marketing thing is all about those #trendy hashtags in the middle of the text so not gonna happen rip.... 

• Do you personally tag your art? If not, why?

• Does the site you use to post your art affect the types of tags you use / how many you use?

• How do you personally feel if you see an art piece with more than just 1-3 tags attached to it? Do you jump into conclusions about the OP?

• Why do you think there are people out there who find tagging "cheap" and "embarrassing"? 

• Do you personally tag your art? If not, why? 

• Does the site you use to post your art affect the types of tags you use / how many you use? (for example tumblr only recognizes like 4-5 tags afaik)

• How do you personally feel if you see an art piece with more than just 1-3 tags attached to it? Do you jump into conclusions about the OP?

• Why do you think there are people out there who find tagging "cheap" and "embarrassing"? 

I'll answer this from the perspective of my tumblr blog:

• Do you personally tag your art? If not, why?
  • I definitely do. But at the same time I don't. Meaning, I've stopped adding "general" tags to my posts that would cause me to show up in the search or recommended blogs, but not because I think it's embarrassing or attention-seeking. I don't think that. There's a different reason: I tagged the posts with things like "object head" because I was hoping to gain some followers. After all I enjoy sharing my drawings with people. Maybe seeing one of my drawings makes someone happy. But here's the thing: Tumblr recommends random related blogs to other users.
    
    Since my art blog is dedicated to tank people, I used to add the name of the respective tank they are based on. And as it turned out, that was a big mistake. It was recommended to a popular history blogger, who was extremely weirded out by the concept. He reblogged one of the posts with a shocked reaction, and due to him having lots of followers who saw this, it triggered a whole avalanche of notes ... of people being outright disgusted or weirded out.
    
    Needless to say, this popularity made me seriously reconsider my wish for any kind of attention. In fact I was close to just deleting my blog altogether and never sharing anything on tumblr ever again. The blogger later apologized to me because he hadn't intended causing such a shitstorm, but I learned my lesson and changed the tags on literally every single one of my posts, replacing them with just the names of the characters. I only add tags for the purpose of being able to organize my blog anymore.
• Does the site you use to post your art affect the types of tags you use / how many you use? (for example tumblr only recognizes like 4-5 tags afaik)
  • As I said above, it does affect the type, but not the number. I use as many tags as I need for me being able to find older posts.
• How do you personally feel if you see an art piece with more than just 1-3 tags attached to it? Do you jump into conclusions about the OP?
  • No. Does it hurt anyone? I only get peeved when they add unrelated tags.
• Why do you think there are people out there who find tagging "cheap" and "embarrassing"? 
  • I have no idea. I guess people will always find something to criticize. I'm saying this without judgement: Maybe they don't have confidence in their own art and project this onto others? I can't think of any other explanation.

Do you personally tag your art? If not, why?

On tumblr, I use a few tags. I don't always tag my stuff on DeviantArt, I kinda forget it's a feature sometimes and idk I just feel like it doesn't really help my art get more exposure. I hardly ever post art to instagram, but I always tag my stuff there. 

Does the site you use to post your art affect the types of tags you use / how many you use? (for example tumblr only recognizes like 4-5 tags afaik)

On tumblr I usually only use the tags "myart" and "original character." The first is more for organizing my blog, the second is more for exposure (I want more friends to talk about OCs with). Sometimes I'll just use the tag as a place to put my thoughts that I don't really want to draw a lot of attention to. 

 DeviantArt, I tend to use a little more (when I do use tags) usually because another relevant tag will come up as I'm tagging it (a lot of my inktober drawings have tags like #inktober, #inktober2017, #inktoberchallenge) same kind of thing with instagram. 

How do you personally feel if you see an art piece with more than just 1-3 tags attached to it? Do you jump into conclusions about the OP?

No, it makes no difference to me, really. You could have 100 tags for all I care. 

Why do you think there are people out there who find tagging "cheap" and "embarrassing"?

 I don't know. My best guess is that maybe they think it's kind of attention seeking, especially when there's like a million tags and most aren't really relevant. Or maybe they just see it as like advertising and self promotion and they don't really like that? But let's be real, there's way more obnoxious ways you can self promote. 

Do you personally tag your art? If not, why?

Absolutely! I wish I had statistics on it, but I feel like tags really help me with my artwork being found. Especially on IG and Tumblr.

Does the site you use to post your art affect the types of tags you use / how many you use? (for example tumblr only recognizes like 4-5 tags afaik)

Yes. 

On Tumblr, I have limited tags so I tend to tag smart. Usually I tag with #demon oc and #monster boy/girl because I know there are two feature blogs that track those tags and they tend to get a lot of traffic as well. Tags like #oc, #original character, #artists on tumblr, #demon, and general tags are ones I like as well. When I have my five tags, I always tag with #art, #(medium of art), #art by me, [#art for others in case of comm], #ocs, and the names of the OCs shown just for my blog's organisation purposes. I place them last so that they're not wasting the 5 tags I have.

On DeviantART, I try to use relevant tags. Any tags about OCs, humanoids, demons, monster people, medium, colours used, special features like horns, a tail, or a special hairstyle showing, and the genre of the piece get tagged. I tend to have around 20 tags on there, but they're all relevant.

On Instagram, I use tags my friend gave me that I know get attention, but that are still relevant. The tags are different from dA's for some reason, I guess because IG's userbase looks for different things!

I know this thread is about art, but I'll use this opportunity to talk about my characters' tags as well on here. My tags for my characters are almost purely for classification, not for them to be found. 

For the following two questions, you should know that I run an OC group with 200 submissions a day where one big rule is that to be accepted, the piece needs to state in the title, description, or tags that it is an OC, and usually this is found back in the tags, so I've come across thousands of tag habits and different taglines looking for that #oc and #originalcharacter tag. I've seen quite a few of them, and my group experience colours my opinion ;v;

How do you personally feel if you see an art piece with more than just 1-3 tags attached to it? Do you jump into conclusions about the OP?

1-3 is very, VERY few tags on most sites. I draw the line at 'too many tags' when the person starts tagging irrelevant shit. It happens so often that when I open a tagline, there are like 10 fandoms tagged in it (usually popular children's anime like Pokemon, DBZ, Fairy Tail, etc.) and when I request them to resubmit to our Fan Characters folder they say it's not a fan character or related to those fandoms. Yeah, man, then don't abuse tags to get more views. It's not just rude to the people you're showing it to, but also to the people who are trying to browse art for something and who keep getting irrelevant results from tag abuse. But I'm going off on a tangent lD

Tag abuse does happen. If I open a tag section on dA and have to recover from the amount of almost identical tags there are, I usually don't even bother looking for an #oc tag and leave it to someone else who won't be blinded by the barrage of tags. I get that artists want to be seen, but sometimes it gets a little annoying as a group admin, you know? 

On Tumblr, I assume people simply don't know how the tags work if the tags aren't categorical tags, but I don't assume they're petty or anything.

Why do you think there are people out there who find tagging "cheap" and "embarrassing"? 

I think that mostly ties back to tag abuse. I'll never understand people who are against tagging artwork properly. Maybe they want to keep up a certain aesthetic on their page as dislike the looks of tags under their art? I've seen people who never wrote tags and descriptions to seem cool and collected, but it ends up looking cold, like they just threw their art onto the web without too much of a care to tell people what it is.

Oh, and we've been attacked multiple times for requesting them to tag their artwork to be accepted. Something something you should look into my gallery's folders and you'd instantly see that these are OCs. That's how badly people want to keep up their tagless look it seems. I'll never understand it.

I dun no for me, if anything, it would be presumptious to think that anyhting of mine is even worth tagging like as if I'm expecting anyone to actually look at it or be interested in it
I couldn't care less if anyone else tags their stuff honestly, if that's one way to get more people to see their stuff then it only makes sense to put tags, if they don't wanna put tags then don't put it, it's not really something I would think about

• Do you personally tag your art? If not, why?

• Does the site you use to post your art affect the types of tags you use / how many you use? (for example tumblr only recognizes like 4-5 tags afaik)

• How do you personally feel if you see an art piece with more than just 1-3 tags attached to it? Do you jump into conclusions about the OP?

• Why do you think there are people out there who find tagging "cheap" and "embarrassing"?