"Tag what you see, not what you know" is the mantra for dealing with how to tag things and in instances where things are unclear. I feel that this rule is well intended and the reasoning behind it makes sense, but it also causes various sorts of drama. I recently ran into this myself and got pretty mad over it, but instead of going and vandalizing the shit out of the site I sat down and thought: Why does this make me mad?

I (or my character is, if you prefer) am a herm so I got butt hurt over being labeled female or dick girl in various pictures of mine. I was mad because I'm not these things and felt insulted by it. After reading some similar complaint threads and understanding the reasoning of the admins I agree that TWYSNWYK is the right way to go about things, but I think it should be taken a step further even. All gender tags should be stripped out of the database entirely and/or altered into something else.

What I propose is that all instances of female or dickgirl should be instead "Feminine Figure". Male should be "Masculine Figure". Herms, Cuntboys, and things like that would have to be evaluated on a case by case basis to determine which they are. Aliases can be created to keep the ease of search up where Female actually searches for Feminine Figure, etc. Then on a properly tagged picture you can just search for whatever sexual attributes you're actually looking for and you've eradicated the problem of people complaining about not being tagged as the right gender.

The existence of the "Male" and "Female" tags, as uncontroversial as they probably ought to be, causes a lot of contention in some places. It seems to be particularly difficult to tag Feral or MLP art as male or female when not able to directly view tits, dicks, or vaginas. For example:

http://e621.net/post/show/227347 Been labeled Herm, Dickgirl, Male, and Female at various points in the tag history. Where is the female? I see no vaginas or breasts in the image at all. Tagged incest for no apparent reason. Short of the characters saying "It sure is fun to fuck my mom" how is one supposed to determine if an image should be incest with out outside knowledge of the subject?

http://e621.net/post/show/223278 Tagged "Male" with no evidence of a male in the picture. Even tagging it "Sex" is questionable.

http://e621.net/post/show/230050 Tagged "Male" but it could be a Shemale. Same for "Crossdressing" and "Girly". How do we know these things? All we really know is that the character has a penis and appears feminine.

http://e621.net/post/show/217094 Tagged as Male with no evidence as to what gender at all this character is.

http://e621.net/post/show/215690 Tagged as male, tag was deleted, retagged as female. No evidence of gender at all.

http://e621.net/post/show/231607 Tagged as "Female" with no supporting evidence. "Cunnilingus" is not inferrable. It could be rimming.

http://e621.net/post/show/229133 How do we know that penetration is going on here?

I like e621, but I'm hesitant to even bother with trying to to fix some of these images because in the past when I've done so, someone else comes along and just reverts it. I'd probably get labeled as a tag vandal if I went and just started stripping incest, male, female, or other similar tags out of images even if there's no direct visual evidence of them.

Why do you just want to make everything harder to search for and enjoy? By this logic, all images must be "ambiguous gender" no matter what. Since just cause we saw a dick doesn't mean its a dude, or pussy a chick, tits or no tits, etc... This doesn't help the site or make things "fair and balanced" all it does is create confusion.

*ignores blabbering* now don't be butthurt or you'll end up like the hundreds of people slaughtered by our fellow admins.

By the way, IF a character would be well known (as most of your examples doesn't apply here), just freaking TAG WHAT YOU SEE by any circumstance or get away with it.

This will be the hundredth time we've made a thread about this

and we have become exceedingly efficient at it

The problem that a lot of people seem to have is that they see tags as targeted at the characters.
This is not the case, the tag is not saying who or what the character is, the tag is simply a description of what is in a single picture.

No where in my post did I say I was against tagging what you see or demanding to be exempt from the rules. I explained why something made me all buttmad me for context only. Also because I feel better after saying it. :3

Azazial said:
No where in my post did I say I was against tagging what you see or demanding to be exempt from the rules. I explained why something made me all buttmad me for context only. Also because I feel better after saying it. :3

You'd been acting antagonistic over the tag what you see rules, but I see your sneaky little point there. But you still can't act all outrage toward the rules of e621 though...

Hammie said:
The problem that a lot of people seem to have is that they see tags as targeted at the characters.
This is not the case, the tag is not saying who or what the character is, the tag is simply a description of what is in a single picture.

How is it not targetted at the characters?

How is it not saying they are X Y Z?

I don't understand why its so hard to just tag what you see. Getting ass pain from someone misinterpreting your pony/wolf/otter/rhino fursona is pretty silly.

Rusteee said:
I don't understand why its so hard to just tag what you see. Getting ass pain from someone misinterpreting your pony/wolf/otter/rhino fursona is pretty silly.

Because people want to be know-it-alls.
Obviously.

Rusteee said:
I don't understand why its so hard to just tag what you see. Getting ass pain from someone misinterpreting your pony/wolf/otter/rhino fursona is pretty silly.

Because they see "mistagging" as an attack on their identity rather than as a means for categorizing pictures of themselves so those unfamiliar with them can find them. After all, who likes being called names by complete strangers?

Yes, it does look silly to outsiders, but they aren't as emotionally involved with the character(s) in question. It can be difficult sometimes to take a step back and look at something objectively, especially when that something is, in your mind at least, you.

Moses said:
By this logic, all images must be "ambiguous gender" no matter what. Since just cause we saw a dick doesn't mean its a dude, or pussy a chick, tits or no tits, etc...

I've been thinking this ever since I first saw the "tag what you see" rule brought up in the comments of an image. Assuming tag what you see is to be taken literally, gender and sexual orientation tags wouldn't be able to exist. Even if taken slightly less literally, fully to partially clothed characters would still have unidentifiable genders. Tagging sexual organs wouldn't be possible anymore, either, since for all we know they're wearing fakes. Can't tag cum, because it might just be cake frosting placed erotically into the image! Many, if not most tags would become useable unless breaking the rule.

I think a "tag using words that people would associate with this image" rule makes a lot more sense (for example, tagging anal masturbation as gay, because someone looking for gay images would likely consider that similar).

But hey, I don't make the rules. It's just my opinion here. I don't expect to see changes any time soon, but maybe people will eventually see the problems with things as they are and decide to fix them. Who knows?

JustFrame said:
How is it not targetted at the characters?

How is it not saying they are X Y Z?

Because here at e621 we don't presume to say anything about anyone's character(s).
The only thing that we're concerned about when tagging, ever, is the picture that we're looking at.

Hammie said:
Because here at e621 we don't presume to say anything about anyone's character(s).
The only thing that we're concerned about when tagging, ever, is the picture that we're looking at.

Explain to me how tagging something X is not insinuating that it is X. If I tag a Ford F150 a car, it's because it's a car, not an airplane. It shouldn't be something other than what it is.

JustFrame said:
Explain to me how tagging something X is not insinuating that it is X. If I tag a Ford F150 a car, it's because it's a car, not an airplane. It shouldn't be something other than what it is.

Because again, we aren't tagging the character, we are tagging the picture.

viva la revolucion

Hammie said:
Because again, we aren't tagging the character, we are tagging the picture.

Tags are basically labels. What's the fucking difference?

Oh come on. Do we have to have this hair-splitting conversation every single week?

There is no such thing as logical extremism. Not getting butthurt (your word) over the rules you disagree with makes a lot more sense.

Here's the thing about the tagging rule: the admin decided TWYS is how they are going to run things on this site. If you want to be on this site, then you accept their rules. If you can't accept their rules, then GO THE FSCK AWAY.

No one appears to have attempted to address either of the two issues that I actually brought up. I can only assume that everyone who remarked on tagging what you see made it to about the second sentence of my post and assumed that's what the whole thing was about.

Mewizkuit's comments are along my lines of thinking.

#1 Do the gender tags - Male, Female, Dickgirl, Herm, etc. - represent the ideal system of searching for one's preferred gender? Could this be made better and less controversial by moving toward a system that describes body types rather than gender? Masculine, Feminine, Androygenous. Penis, Vagina, Breasts. From these base elements you can find what you want and not have the issue of people feeling their character or artists feeling that their art is mislabeled. If you think this is not an improvement, why so?

#2 TWYSNWYK does not seem to be getting enforced evenly across the site. Is this intentional or simply an oversight that needs to be cleaned up by those interested in it? Example topics: Incest; implied but not visible penetration being tagged as penetration; the apparent gender of all ferals, MLPs, pokemon, etc who do not have a visible sex organ.

There is an explicit documented exception to "Tag What You See" when it comes to tagging artists, characters, and dates. I would like a list of other exceptions or a statement that there are no other exceptions.

JustFrame said:
Tags are basically labels. What's the fucking difference?

The difference is people get pissy when you try to label their character "incorrectly".

Hammie said:
The difference is people get pissy when you try to label their character "incorrectly".

And you're saying they have no right to be annoyed? If you created something, poured hours of thought and effort into it, and it was misrepresented by someone, how would you feel?

JustFrame said:
And you're saying they have no right to be annoyed? If you created something, poured hours of thought and effort into it, and it was misrepresented by someone, how would you feel?

I was gonna say something shorter but seems legit!

I'll just throw in my two cents.. Let's use the gay/lesbian tag, alright? Not all gay men look like faeries. Some are gigantic bear.. men.. things. Not all lesbians are the stereotypical bulldyke. That is likely why the admins go for tag what you see, at least for those two.

If this doesn't make sense.. I'm sleepy. Don't yell at me. ;-;

JustFrame said:
poured hours of thought and effort into it

Oh god, my sides.
Hot damn, that was funny; for a moment there, I thought you were serious.

https://e621.net/post/show/138271/absurd_res-blood-deity-dove-evil-eyewear-fastolf_s

And then I saw that again.

Azazial said:
No one appears to have attempted to address either of the two issues that I actually brought up. I can only assume that everyone who remarked on tagging what you see made it to about the second sentence of my post and assumed that's what the whole thing was about.

Mewizkuit's comments are along my lines of thinking.

#1 Do the gender tags - Male, Female, Dickgirl, Herm, etc. - represent the ideal system of searching for one's preferred gender? Could this be made better and less controversial by moving toward a system that describes body types rather than gender? Masculine, Feminine, Androygenous. Penis, Vagina, Breasts. From these base elements you can find what you want and not have the issue of people feeling their character or artists feeling that their art is mislabeled. If you think this is not an improvement, why so?

#2 TWYSNWYK does not seem to be getting enforced evenly across the site. Is this intentional or simply an oversight that needs to be cleaned up by those interested in it? Example topics: Incest; implied but not visible penetration being tagged as penetration; the apparent gender of all ferals, MLPs, pokemon, etc who do not have a visible sex organ.

There is an explicit documented exception to "Tag What You See" when it comes to tagging artists, characters, and dates. I would like a list of other exceptions or a statement that there are no other exceptions.

This entire thread is making my head hurt, so I'm just going to respond to you;

1; The "Gender" tags are given based on a rough statistical appearance of the character in the picture; things like masculine or feminine body structures, masculine/feminine faces; will generally imply to male or female {These two are top level and in all instances should be applied over any other when unsure on "Tagging" or if the character is intersex but does not show traits of the opposite sex.}; a dick-girl or Cunt-boy is slightly more complex, in that unless their is something to visible indicate them {A guy with pants on whos a cuntboy still looks like a guy, thus would be tagged "male" or a female with a skirt on and no bulge anywhere would still be tagged female}; and herms are only tagged if both genitals are displayed or their are indicators that are there to prove such things are there; again, such as dripping pussy lips and a bulge in the panties.

2; As for TWYSNWYK getting enforced every where, we're seven people on a site of almost 200,000 users or somewhere around that number. Uploads and tags slip through the net, and we simply cannot always deal with the sheer mass of uploads and tagging, it is for that reason we partially rely on you users to make good judgements and assist us with keeping this site clean.

3; Artist name, character name, and picture date are generally added {As are franchises and series} due to copyright and or trademark information, and are the really only "exception" to the tag what you see rule. Things like TV shows, movies, and video games; tend to get a more "Grey" area thats harder to define as most people know what they are, and so they tend to be tagged according to the shows cannon {Which is inaccurate and shouldn't be done "Anyways" because sometimes the show cant agree with itself on a characters gender *Coughrenamoncough*}

Addendum; most pokemon should be marked ambiguous gender- their not what I'm here to keep an eye on however

Addendum 2; the "MLP Ferals" do infact have visual indicators as to their genders "Most" of the time; other times one has to rely on sexual organs, and we've in several cases tagged them as "Ambiguous Gender"

Footnote; another user was going on about sexuality in pictures; long story short. We do not use a characters "Personal Sexuality" IN tags, we use sexuality tags to describe the type of sexual conduct {Gay, straight, bisexual} that is currently happening in said picture; "Gay" or "Lesbian" may be added if their are visual clues indicating that the character is that orientation, such as pete having a male-on-male tattoo, or bo-peep having a girl-on-guy emblem necklace; otherwise no. And as for the record; masturbation of ANY kind does not induce a "Sexuality" Tag, as it would always, or almost always be classified as solo;

Actini said:
Oh god, my sides.
Hot damn, that was funny; for a moment there, I thought you were serious.

https://e621.net/post/show/138271/absurd_res-blood-deity-dove-evil-eyewear-fastolf_s

And then I saw that again.

Sorry, what?

JustFrame said:
Sorry, what?

You say it like you expect people to be creative - and you expect them to take longer than an hour to make their "character."
That's hilarious.

Should I start linking you to the Sonic-character based fursonas next?

Yeah. No one has spent literal hours. Or days. Or months. Or even years developing characters. No one who is creative would do that.

And it's not like character development would happen for years even during the post-creation process. There is nothing like that in the whole world.

Also, all pictures ever drawn only took a MAXIMUM of twelve minutes. Everyone knows that.

JustFrame said:
Yeah. No one has spent literal hours. Or days. Or months. Or even years developing characters. No one who is creative would do that.

And it's not like character development would happen for years even during the post-creation process. There is nothing like that in the whole world.

Also, all pictures ever drawn only took a MAXIMUM of twelve minutes. Everyone knows that.

This is our site, these are our rules; if they don't want to follow our rules that's their problem but we don't give artists or character owners any special treatment over any other user who decides to break our rules.

I swore I would stop caring about these kind of threads, but geez, people really have a short memory.

forum #22963

Princess_Celestia said:
This is our site, these are our rules; if they don't want to follow our rules that's their problem but we don't give artists or character owners any special treatment over any other user who decides to break our rules.

Essentially this.

I'm not an admin, but this:

Princess_Celestia said:
This is our site, these are our rules; if they don't want to follow our rules that's their problem but we don't give artists or character owners any special treatment over any other user who decides to break our rules.

Is pretty much it. Don't like it? Pack it up and leave.

Princess_Celestia said:
This is our site, these are our rules; if they don't want to follow our rules that's their problem but we don't give artists or character owners any special treatment over any other user who decides to break our rules.

Very true.

So getting back to my original point: Essentially you guys ARE misrepresenting their creations, regardless of how they feel about it.

At least you're honest about it.

JustFrame said:
And you're saying they have no right to be annoyed? If you created something, poured hours of thought and effort into it, and it was misrepresented by someone, how would you feel?

Well, seeing as how I have a picture on here one one of my characters that isn't tagged based on the character, but on what the picture actually shows, and I'm not bitching and crying about it because I understand that the tags are of what is visible in the picture not what the character is "supposed" to be, and I'm capable of logical thought which allows me to separate the two from each other.
I feel pretty good about it, how bout you?

JustFrame said:
Yeah. No one has spent literal hours. Or days. Or months. Or even years developing characters. No one who is creative would do that.

And it's not like character development would happen for years even during the post-creation process. There is nothing like that in the whole world.

Also, all pictures ever drawn only took a MAXIMUM of twelve minutes. Everyone knows that.

Myahmyahmyah.
I was telling you to stop being so entitled about it; not everyone cares about your precious work, snowflake.

Besides, I was also saying...well, let's not pretend everyone's art is worth the same - some people's art isn't worth squat.

I dunno what personal stake you have in this, but apparently, it's pretty intensive.

JustFrame said:
Very true.

So getting back to my original point: Essentially you guys ARE misrepresenting their creations, regardless of how they feel about it.

At least you're honest about it.

So much passive-aggressiveness contained in this post.

post #110495

Princess_Celestia said:
This entire thread is making my head hurt, so I'm just going to respond to you;

1; The "Gender" tags are given based on a rough statistical appearance of the character in the picture; things like masculine or feminine body structures, masculine/feminine faces; will generally imply to male or female {These two are top level and in all instances should be applied over any other when unsure on "Tagging" or if the character is intersex but does not show traits of the opposite sex.}; a dick-girl or Cunt-boy is slightly more complex, in that unless their is something to visible indicate them {A guy with pants on whos a cuntboy still looks like a guy, thus would be tagged "male" or a female with a skirt on and no bulge anywhere would still be tagged female}; and herms are only tagged if both genitals are displayed or their are indicators that are there to prove such things are there; again, such as dripping pussy lips and a bulge in the panties.

2; As for TWYSNWYK getting enforced every where, we're seven people on a site of almost 200,000 users or somewhere around that number. Uploads and tags slip through the net, and we simply cannot always deal with the sheer mass of uploads and tagging, it is for that reason we partially rely on you users to make good judgements and assist us with keeping this site clean.

3; Artist name, character name, and picture date are generally added {As are franchises and series} due to copyright and or trademark information, and are the really only "exception" to the tag what you see rule. Things like TV shows, movies, and video games; tend to get a more "Grey" area thats harder to define as most people know what they are, and so they tend to be tagged according to the shows cannon {Which is inaccurate and shouldn't be done "Anyways" because sometimes the show cant agree with itself on a characters gender *Coughrenamoncough*}

Addendum; most pokemon should be marked ambiguous gender- their not what I'm here to keep an eye on however

Addendum 2; the "MLP Ferals" do infact have visual indicators as to their genders "Most" of the time; other times one has to rely on sexual organs, and we've in several cases tagged them as "Ambiguous Gender"

Footnote; another user was going on about sexuality in pictures; long story short. We do not use a characters "Personal Sexuality" IN tags, we use sexuality tags to describe the type of sexual conduct {Gay, straight, bisexual} that is currently happening in said picture; "Gay" or "Lesbian" may be added if their are visual clues indicating that the character is that orientation, such as pete having a male-on-male tattoo, or bo-peep having a girl-on-guy emblem necklace; otherwise no. And as for the record; masturbation of ANY kind does not induce a "Sexuality" Tag, as it would always, or almost always be classified as solo;

If you were to say this in place of telling people to tag what they see, it would eliminate the confusion over how far it's meant to be taken. Really, "tag what you see" isn't entirely applicable, it's more just "follow the rules". That, I can understand.

That said, I have a question about how other things are tagged. For example, objects in images. Sometimes it hard to tell what they are, and two people could think its something entirely different. Would you tag it based on previous knowledge of the picture if it helped you identify the object, or would you simply put tags for all the things that people think the object is? Currently, I think people just keep swapping the tags back and forth to what they think it really is, which really isn't helping anything.

Princess_Celestia said:

2; As for TWYSNWYK getting enforced every where, we're seven people on a site of almost 200,000 users or somewhere around that number. Uploads and tags slip through the net, and we simply cannot always deal with the sheer mass of uploads and tagging, it is for that reason we partially rely on you users to make good judgements and assist us with keeping this site clean.

try 5 million users. anyhow. To those who have an issue. Think about it this way. The tags are NOT for the image. they ARE for the search system. What do you think this image should pop under?

Thank you for the helpful responses Princess Celestia and Aurali. That was the sort of information that I was looking for.

Aurali said:
Think about it this way. The tags are NOT for the image. they ARE for the search system. What do you think this image should pop under?

This in particular was the conclusion that I reached before posting this thread about how the rules were structured in regards to the 'tag what you see' rule.

Hopefully some solution will crop up in the future to make everyone happy, but for the moment this suffices I guess.

Princess_Celestia said:
we partially rely on you users to make good judgements and assist us with keeping this site clean.

I think that tagging MLPs or other ferals as male or female is silly with out direct evidence, but I guess that trying to apply TWYSNWYK here would just wind up in a lot of silly edit wars. It's not really an area that I care strongly about anyhow and was primarily using it to illustrate some of my frusteration because I know that thousands of MLP fans would be out for blood if you took all of the "Female" tags off Pinkie Pie or Rainbow Dash. ;3

I suppose I'll just blacklist and move on.

JustFrame said:
Essentially you guys ARE misrepresenting their creations, regardless of how they feel about it.

That's pretty much what Aurali said and due to the nature of the site it makes sense, though that makes me no less in favor of wanting a solution that can meet both goals. Maybe better use of the wiki can factor into this some how. I made several clarifications of my own character there so I think that's how I'll handle it for now.

So basically you want everyone to be a robot. To make no thoughtful judgement about what they see? If a character has no genitalia then we should label it as "ambiguous gender". If a character has a dick we should label it as "has a dick" and if it has a pussy "has a pussy"? You are being pedantic. People here use their judgement to tag images and overall it doesn't have the horrible faults other sites do with less strict or more strict tagging guidelines.

Its ridiculous to completely remove the human equation from what is inherently a human process. If someone sees tits and a dick they will think "herm" or "dickgirl", but under your regime you would have us label it strictly on what is seen.

Art is as much about interpretation as it is about creativity. It is the artists curse that they suffer their art to be misinterpreted. Artists like Georgia O’Keeffe, her pictures of orchids and lilies were constantly interpreted as being symbols of sexuality and the feminine, however flowers are androgynous, they contain both sexes. What Georgia O’Keeffe was really painting was a flower.

Just a little question for those whining:

What do you hope to achieve? What's your angle? Do you expect the administration to just throw up their hands and go 'SURE OKAY DO WHATEVER'? You know what happened last time the administration did that?

The site went away.

So just wondering, what are you hoping to achieve? Because all you're doing is making yourselves look like complete chucklefucks.

Blaziken said:
Just a little question for those whining:

What do you hope to achieve? What's your angle? Do you expect the administration to just throw up their hands and go 'SURE OKAY DO WHATEVER'? You know what happened last time the administration did that?

The site went away.

So just wondering, what are you hoping to achieve? Because all you're doing is making yourselves look like complete chucklefucks.

Please get off your high horse for a moment and stop including needless insults into your posts.

What I would like to achieve is a system which serves the purpose of the site: to make images (and other data) easily searchable and accessible to everyone. Along with that I would also like the site to properly index meta-data about characters. The reason for this is what when I search for "herm" I do actually expect to see characters which are not visibly a herm in that particular image. I suppose that in the end, down the road several years, I envision a database by which I could search nearly any conceivable fragment of a picture I once saw or a theme within the image and find results based on that.

Azazial said:
Please get off your high horse for a moment and stop including needless insults into your posts.

What I would like to achieve is a system which serves the purpose of the site: to make images (and other data) easily searchable and accessible to everyone. Along with that I would also like the site to properly index meta-data about characters. The reason for this is what when I search for "herm" I do actually expect to see characters which are not visibly a herm in that particular image. I suppose that in the end, down the road several years, I envision a database by which I could search nearly any conceivable fragment of a picture I once saw or a theme within the image and find results based on that.

As I understand, tags are designed to describe "what is actually on the image not what you know" (probably you hear it every time). What are you saying here (again, at my understanding) is that the tagging system should contain everything, from what is in the image and what people know. That'll be ok in a perfect world, but unfortunately, this isn't it. If you want, you can talk to an admin about it. But if you're going to get mad and throw lemons to everybody about your characters, please calm down and think like a normal user. For example, I don't know many artists and can barely recognize styles (mainly because I don't pay much attention), but I can search what I remember (or what I like) just by using simple descriptive tags (like female dragon or female green_scales solo), and then narrowing down to what I wanted in first place.

Please ignore the following, sorry if someone read it before the edit:
That's why we have character tags, that people don't know or fill them themselves is other thing
There, I said it!! *walks happily*

Azazial said:
Please get off your high horse for a moment and stop including needless insults into your posts.

I will when you and the others spewing 'VIVA LE REVOLUTION' bullshit stop.

Azazial said:
What I would like to achieve is a system which serves the purpose of the site: to make images (and other data) easily searchable and accessible to everyone. Along with that I would also like the site to properly index meta-data about characters. The reason for this is what when I search for "herm" I do actually expect to see characters which are not visibly a herm in that particular image. I suppose that in the end, down the road several years, I envision a database by which I could search nearly any conceivable fragment of a picture I once saw or a theme within the image and find results based on that.

So what you're asking for is a search system that does not return what is searched for. If I sat down with your 'ideal' system and searched for 'orc male gay anal', I do not want to see a solo orc who someone decided was gay and likes buttsex in some backstory I don't even know and/or give a single fuck about, or two orcs jacking off in the same room with each other and one happens to have a finger near his asshole. I don't want to see either of that; I want to see two orcs buttfucking. I don't give a fuck about fiction behind the character, I don't even care if it's 'official' canon.

Tags are not for character identification. We have a character tag for that, like xLuna said. Tags are for the individual identification of the individual picture with no bearing on any other canon or fiction around it. Nothing more, nothing less. If people would quit freaking out because they like to pretend their character that's so precious to them is being 'mislabeled' then the system would work fine. But recently we've had an influx of people demanding that their viewpoint be respected as the holy grail when the entire site[/i] has been set up in a working order contrary to it and has been functioning perfectly fine for four plus years. Guess what? The whole thing isn't going to change because some people dislike it. It works now, it does its exact intended purpose[/i], and I see no point in the future that it should change.Users come and go. The people complaining that the search function doesn't do everything they want will get bored/go back to school/go to another site and the search will still function the exact same way: well enough. No, it's not fucking perfect. Nothing ever is. However, this 90% accurate thing is what we've got. Quit trying to reinvent the wheel and instead work with how it's set up.Create, don't destroy. Do that and our entire problem will solve. Don't scream and holler for 'reform' when 'reform' isn't needed. You're seeing a problem that doesn't exist in a practical sense: no, not everything about everything in the picture is tagged. Great, some people would LOVE to know that the characters are gay. However, unless it is shown in the picture beyond a doubt (no, dress and nonsexual actions are not enough) then, for the intents of the picture, it does not exist. What you're trying to do is insert something into the piece that doesn't exist, you're trying to mislead and fool a system that is perfectly objective to involve things that have no real bearing on the content involved inside the picture itself[/i] to conform to the bigger piece.Guess what? The bigger piece doesn't exist. What you have when you're tagging an image is the little slice of the bigger piece. You're tallying up what exists in the microcosm, not the macrocosm. Sure, Character A might be sucking dick in another microcosm, but in this one he isn't. So there's no reason to slap a label on something that does not contain that content. You're putting the 'almonds' label on the peanut can because the almonds and peanuts were in the same room at one point in time.End cathartic rant.

There is no problem with TWYS. Use the character tags and other features to accomplish everything you wanted.

Blaziken said:
[Things that make perfect sense to everyone.]

IAWTC.

Blaziken said:
I will when you and the others spewing 'VIVA LE REVOLUTION' bullshit stop.

I think I was pretty reasonable in my OP and follow up and did my best to post in a respectful manner.

Blaziken said:
So what you're asking for is a search system that does not return what is searched for. If I sat down with your 'ideal' system and searched for 'orc male gay anal', I do not want to see a solo orc who someone decided was gay and likes buttsex in some backstory I don't even know and/or give a single fuck about, or two orcs jacking off in the same room with each other and one happens to have a finger near his asshole. I don't want to see either of that; I want to see two orcs buttfucking. I don't give a fuck about fiction behind the character, I don't even care if it's 'official' canon.

If you searched for "orc male anal_penetration -solo -breasts" instead you'll find more actual buttfucking non-solo orcs. ;)

I was imagining a system that would support both points of view some how. Perhaps there would be a toggle for extra meta information to be searched. If I'm trying to find all characters who are herms regardless of if they have their cock and pussy showing then I'm unable to do that.

Furthermore, I don't expect the admins to immediately jump up and suck my dick because I made one thread on the topic. I simply wanted to get my thoughts out into the open because otherwise no one would know about them. This does seem like the proper forum for such things.

Azazial said:
I simply wanted to get my thoughts out into the open because otherwise no one would know about them. This does seem like the proper forum for such things.

Well, that's wonderful and great, but this isn't new information for us. It's a near constant thing for people to whine about it. Yes, it is the 'right forum', but there's a certain number of times people can stand being bitched at without lashing out.

Azazial said:
Furthermore, I don't expect the admins to immediately jump up and suck my dick because I made one thread on the topic.

You sure acted like it. I apologize, but this thing is very much old hat and very much annoying to constantly hear. Three threads in as many days whining about something that won't change and many many MANY more people going thermonuclear in comments and tags becomes very wearing.

Azazial said:
If I'm trying to find all characters who are herms regardless of if they have their cock and pussy showing then I'm unable to do that.

That is not something the e621 tag system can help you with, sorry.

Blaziken said:
I will when you and the others spewing 'VIVA LE REVOLUTION' bullshit stop.

Don't be such a Yes-Man.

Systems do not improve until obvious errors in them are identified and then brought to attention. Even you admitted the tagging system is not perfect.

Anyway, I know that until E621 changes this policy some how the threads about it will never, ever end. They've been showing up for years, and I imagine as the site's userbase gets bigger they will only come all the more often.

JustFrame said:
...

No.

But here's a solution. Make a wiki entry for every herm, etc. mentioning that they are a herm, then use a search to find them all: http://e621.net/wiki?query=herm

Bonus for an option to search only character pages.

Stupid problem fixed.

JustFrame said:
Don't be such a Yes-Man.

Systems do not improve until obvious errors in them are identified and then brought to attention. Even you admitted the tagging system is not perfect.

Anyway, I know that until E621 changes this policy some how the threads about it will never, ever end. They've been showing up for years, and I imagine as the site's userbase gets bigger they will only come all the more often.

The problem is, you're more of a tool then he is; he's a suck up. The "Revolution" the "Problem" you claim is there? A very very VERY small minority of users {Our some 5 million user base, only 15-16 users speak up about it?}

the problem is you're blowing it far more out of proportion then anywhere near nessecary, and we're not going to fix whats not broken just for a few small vocal groups who got their panties in a twist because something wasn't tagged exactly as they think it should be; that starts us down a damn slippery slope into a chaotic hellhole.

Don't discount silent majorities.

These threads crop up so often, it might give you pause to consider.

JustFrame said:
Don't discount silent majorities.

These threads crop up so often, it might give you pause to consider.

"Every so often, generally from the same 3-5 people", and we dont count the silent majority; if that much of a majority had a problem with our tagging system and spoke up; we'd consider changing it. As it stands the "Vocal" majority doesnt care, and the vocal minority are the ones throwing fits, and those without a voice aren't counted either way.

JustFrame said:
Don't discount silent majorities.

These threads crop up so often, it might give you pause to consider.

Ooor it gets old after the first sixty times we've seen it.
So instead of saying "No" after some deliberation, many users prefer to say "No, go die in a fire" immediately - because no one shuts up about it.

I had a problem with the Tag What You See rule when I first joined. Guess what; I got over it.

JustFrame said:
Don't discount silent majorities.

These threads crop up so often, it might give you pause to consider.

At this point, I think you're just vying to get the last word in.

JustFrame said:
Don't be such a Yes-Man.

So you WANT to break the search.. Is that it?

JustFrame said:
Systems do not improve until obvious errors in them are identified and then brought to attention.

You assume TWYSNWYK is an error, which is incorrect in and of itself. In spite of many arguments against it by many people, you insist on holding onto that belief as Gospel Truth. TWYSNWYK is a decision made to support the tagging system, because the tagging system cannot determine context or artistic intent. To that end, tagging what you "know" instead would be just as wrong.

JustFrame said:
Don't discount silent majorities.

You assume the silent majority are in your favor. While this is not provably false, this is not provably true, either. I think the more likely scenario is that they are moderates on the issue and don't care either way. I believe that because there are millions of users on this site, and if there were really millions of people out there who believed this site would be great but for TWYSNWYK, then there would be a competitor to e621 with more than zero users (to within experimental error).

I agree with the proposal to tag as masculine/feminine body type rather than male/female. After all we're supposed to tag what we actually see (ie. a masculine or feminine body).

1; The "Gender" tags are given based on a rough statistical appearance of the character in the picture; things like masculine or feminine body structures, masculine/feminine faces; will generally imply to male or female {These two are top level and in all instances should be applied over any other when unsure on "Tagging" or if the character is intersex but does not show traits of the opposite sex.};

So we should tag all pictures that don't show explicit gay sex as "straight"? Because the characters are after all statistically likely to be straight, even though a few of them may be gay. (For not to tackle the problem that sex and sexual identity are not equal - gays may engage in sex with the opposite gender and straight may engage in sex with the same gender.)

fflukst said:
So we should tag all pictures that don't show explicit gay sex as "straight"?

No, because "straight" as a tag does not refer to the character's orientation, but rather to sex between a male and a female in the image.

fflukst said:
I agree with the proposal to tag as masculine/feminine body type rather than male/female. After all we're supposed to tag what we actually see (ie. a masculine or feminine body).

So we should tag all pictures that don't show explicit gay sex as "straight"? Because the characters are after all statistically likely to be straight, even though a few of them may be gay. (For not to tackle the problem that sex and sexual identity are not equal - gays may engage in sex with the opposite gender and straight may engage in sex with the same gender.)

It helps to at least know how the system works before you scrutinize it, buddy.

Okay, yep, that example seemed to backfire. :p

But I hope you still see my point: By labelling as masculine/feminine we come closer to the TWYSNWYT ideal and do away with the "see no dick/vagina" problem, because a masculine-looking body is masculine-looking, no matter the presence of a penis or not.

But it's less usable. Because, you know, some people care if a dick is attached to a masculine or feminine body.

With the new proposed system, you need to search feminine_body penis to find dickgirls.

Except, whoops! That also gets every straight image! That's no good. How about feminine_body penis -straight? Sure, but then you can't find images like post #208696, or images with dickgirls improperly tagged straight. And now you're using fully half of your search (6 tags per search max for Members) on what used to be only one tag. (This would have been even worse before the search limit for members was upped)

fflukst said:
Okay, yep, that example seemed to backfire. :p

But I hope you still see my point: By labelling as masculine/feminine we come closer to the TWYSNWYT ideal and do away with the "see no dick/vagina" problem, because a masculine-looking body is masculine-looking, no matter the presence of a penis or not.

Except then you get into the issue of male characters with feminine figures and...

look at it this way.

Most people are males, or females. most of the time, you see someone, you presume they're male, or female.

Clothed, breasts and face (and body shape) are the best indicators. as a general rule of thumb, boobs = female. no boobs = man If you can't see boobs, then we go off of faces. If you can't see boobs or face, then going off of body shape or dress is not a bad idea.

if they are topless, flat chest = guy, boobs = girl, mostly.

we assume the simplest -- male, female, then go down to dickgirl,cuntboy, and then to herm.

So unless you can see proof of it being more complicated, assume the simpler answer.

if you can see genitalia, or heavy suggestion there of (camel_toe or a throbbing penis inside of a pair of jeans, or what have you):

boobs + vagina = girl
noboobs + penis = guy
boobs + penis = dickgirl
noboobs + vagina = cuntboy
boobs + penis + vagina = herm
noboobs + penis + vagina = herm

simple as that.

If your'elooking for effeminent buys, there is the girly tag, or the crossdressing tag.

Adrian_Blazevic said:
No.

But here's a solution. Make a wiki entry for every herm, etc. mentioning that they are a herm, then use a search to find them all: http://e621.net/wiki?query=herm

Bonus for an option to search only character pages.

Stupid problem fixed.

Aurali said:
try 5 million users. anyhow. To those who have an issue. Think about it this way. The tags are NOT for the image. they ARE for the search system. What do you think this image should pop under?

I like this method.

Just fucking tag what you see. Thats what the staff wants as a tagging guideline. If you feel you can't do that than leave the image alone and someone else will do it for you.

It shouldn't be this hard, or this big a thing were we need multiple topics with multiple pages on the subject.

Moses said:
Just fucking tag what you see. Thats what the staff wants as a tagging guideline. If you feel you can't do that than leave the image alone and someone else will do it for you.

It shouldn't be this hard, or this big a thing were we need multiple topics with multiple pages on the subject.

People just like causing problems. 'Some men just want to watch the world burn', after all.

Blaziken said:
'Some men just want to watch the world burn', after all.

That's why I bought this

Silent majority dictates that this system works, its simple and efficient. I love it even though its not perfect(nothing is or ever will be) but it functions on visual cues and that is great when cataloging images. I've been on too many sites, many a booru and many a Chans and this site is the most efficient of any I've been on. I'm glad you wont change. I normally avoid posts like this since the sparkle herm debate a long time ago, its settled it works good and thus is one of the best image boards on the net. Keep up the great work guys/gals!

Oldest forum

arisi-furi said:
Oldest forum

Nope.

Also, don't necro old threads.

thegreatwolfgang said:
Nope.

Also, don't necro old threads.

Not unless you have something to contribute to the thread itself.