Contributing to the PTR

The Hydrus Public Tag Repository is a shared, community-maintained tag database. monloader can sync a copy of it to answer tag lookups offline (see the PTR guide). Once you have a personal PTR account, monbooru also lets you contribute: push tags your images carry that the PTR lacks, and petition tags that are wrong.

Everything here reaches the PTR through monloader, so nothing shows unless monloader is paired with its PTR sync turned on. While the index is still catching up, a note warns that the diff may overstate what is new, and the contribute… button stays disabled until the sync finishes. Sending anything also needs a personal contribution account created on monloader’s PTR page.

From an image#

The Public Tag Repository contributions panel under the tag editor tells you how many of this image’s tags are new to the PTR, and how many tags the PTR holds that the image does not. For the second case the panel also offers Pull tags, covered in Lookup.

contribute… opens a dialog with two lists:

• add lists the tags the PTR does not have yet. A row notes “PTR spelling: …” when the tag goes up under a different name than the one you see: because of how monbooru and hydrus handle tags (the PTR stores creator:1nupool where monbooru says artist:1nupool), or because you have aliased the tag to a spelling the PTR uses and it goes up under that rather than under your own. A row noting “not a PTR tag” is a spelling the PTR holds nowhere, not just missing from this file: sending it creates a brand new PTR tag, so check first whether the PTR already knows the thing under another name (the tag’s detail page can tell you, see below). Tags the PTR already has, and tags it cannot take, fold away under one-line summaries.
• petition removal lists tags the PTR carries for this file that your image genuinely lacks. Tags your image shows through an implication are filtered out, and so are spellings of tags you already carry: the PTR’s own alternates, plus any spelling you declared as an alias, so a tag you and the PTR simply spell differently reads as neither extra here nor new above. What remains really is extra. An absent tag can still just mean you have not tagged it locally: tick one only if it is factually wrong for the image, and give a reason. One reason covers everything you tick, and petitions have no [all] on purpose: each one is an individual claim. Shift-click ticks a range.

send to PTR contributes it under your account, and the dialog turns into a receipt: what was staged, and what was refused with the reason. Tag adds apply to the PTR right away; petitions go to the PTR’s volunteer moderators (janitors) with your reason, and cannot be taken back once sent.

A manga or archive row shows no panel: its file hash is unique to the bundle monloader built, so no other PTR user’s files could ever match it.

From a tag#

A tag’s detail page carries the same panel, but for relations instead of tags, in both directions of both kinds: aliases pointing at the tag or the tag resolving to another, implications out of it or into it.

The PTR may know your tag under another name. You might have named a character samus_aran_(metroid) where the PTR files her as character:samus aran. So the panel also asks about every alias pointing at the tag, and when one of those is what the PTR knows, the panel says so (“known to the Public Tag Repository as samus_aran, an alias here”) and works through that name: Pull aliases and implications brings that cluster in, and the petition list shows the PTR’s relations for it. When neither the tag nor any alias is known, the panel says “the Public Tag Repository does not know this tag” first. Contributing new relations would start a new PTR cluster beside one that may already exist. In between those two there is a third case: the repository has your spelling but nothing filed under it, which reads “the Public Tag Repository holds no relations for this spelling”.

[look up as…], top right of the panel, is for the case where the PTR files your tag under a name you have not declared as an alias yet. It opens on a list of the spellings the PTR actually holds near your tag’s name, each with what its cluster carries, so you can pick one. Pick a row, or type a spelling and press Enter, and the dialog shows what the PTR holds under it and what a pull would do: + rows are aliases and implications that would land on your tag, dim rows are already declared, ! rows are left alone (a name that is already a tag of its own here, or an alias of another tag). The two actions at the bottom are the same pull in either direction, each named by the spelling it keeps: pull and keep files the repository’s spellings under yours as aliases, while pull and keep moves your images onto the repository’s name and leaves yours behind as an alias. Take the second if you would rather carry the name the PTR uses. After either one the whole cluster is aliased together, so from then on the panel finds the PTR on its own. When the looked-up name is already a tag of its own here, keeping your own spelling leaves it alone and the panel then says the repository files your tag under that other one - the two are the same subject under two names, and the second action is what merges them.

Its contribute… dialog works the same way:

• suggest lists the relations you declared, written as arrows - blond_hair -> blonde_hair for an alias, tohsaka_rin => fate/stay_night for an implication. The ones the PTR does not know get a checkbox; the ones it already holds fold away, and anything awaiting review shows as “already suggested”.
• petition removal lists relations the PTR holds for this tag that you have not declared, and only when you also hold the tag on the other end; tick the ones that are wrong.

Suggestions and petitions both need a short reason; the janitors read it when they review. The dialog only syncs what your catalog declares: manage the tag in monbooru first, then contribute the result.

What happens after#

monbooru hands your contribution to monloader, which uploads it and keeps the record. To see the history - what was applied, what a janitor approved or removed, what is still pending - open monloader’s PTR page; each row links back to the image or tag in monbooru. Tag adds you made can be rescinded there (monloader petitions them back off); suggestions and petitions cannot, which is why the dialogs warn you before you send.