Thanks, Trop. You're probably on to something there: a search of "dave solo" (which aren't the only qualifying pics, but to keep it simple) returns nearly the same number of results as "rose solo" despite her being substantially behind him in tags altogether. They're both narrowly beaten by Jade, and then totally trounced by John, who has the solo market cornered despite trailing very slightly behind Dave in images overall.
So yeah Dave's solo offerings are actually quite out of proportion to his appearances on the booru altogether. Still, there are more very worthy images I'll try to nudge into his featured pool.
Anyway, to Pie: I know I've got some nasty tagging habits, to which you're alluding. I could defend some and admit others to be dreadful, but since this is the pool thread and I got blasted last time I let tag-dominant discussion take over here, let me stick to your pool-related argument:
I make pools because I'm not really keen on making tags and never finishing them
while pools being unfinished are kind of less of a big deal as obviously more people use tags as a means of grouping and searching, the pools are kind of an added benefit.
because again the lack of completion in pools kinda feels less of a problem to me, maybe because it's out of sight and not so visibly messy idk
Quite honestly, I feel like night time should be a tag, and I really have no issue with school_uniform being a tag or whatever, but I don't have the energy to make it happen properly, so I don't push it right now.
What this boils down to is that you're laying aside the long-term benefits of a tag, especially searchability and blockability (the latter of which isn't an idle consideration for "undergarments"!), for one single short-term benefit of a pool: the fact that you're less uncomfortable with a pool that's not exhaustive than a tag that's not exhaustive. (There are obviously other benefits to pools, but not for things like "undergarments" and "school_uniform", and you didn't mention any of them.)
But this creates a self-perpetuating cycle. One's noticed a recurring theme and wants to make it either a tag or a pool; one doesn't have any strong arguments for making it a pool, but does so anyway because it's less uncomfortable for the pool to be incomplete; the pool eventually accrues hundreds of images to the point where it would be much more useful as a tag (as, again, there's no other good reason for it to be a pool); but by that time it's so large that one can only say "I just don't have that much energy to give, whatever, keep it a pool."
That cycle's been broken at least once before. It was with the pool FRECKLESTUCK, now the tag "freckles". I didn't contribute to the decision there or the workload that followed (not sure I was active in booru politics yet), but I'm really happy that was able to happen and it would absolutely be me shouldering the burden if we resolved to convert "undergarments" and "school_uniform" as well. (And, Pie, I'll even throw in "nighttime" if you want. Other than the poetic pool name, I don't see any reason why that couldn't be a tag, too.)
Again, there's a lot of other meat in your post that touches directly on some of my shall we say "tagging problems", and I want to get into that, but this probably isn't the place. Let me finish by reaffirming that I'm prepared to take complete responsibility for making every conversion I propose here, if we accepted them. I'm not looking to foist work off onto anyone else. (Except upvoting Dave pics
let's do it guys)