While the idea of pokemon typing has already been shot down before, I believe enough time has passed and enough rules have changed to really consider pokemon types. It would simply be convenient to look up pokemon by types, and while there'd be 700 or so tags to change, I think implying a pokemon's types on its species tag would be a simple and appropriate change.
Even considering intensely humanized pokemon, they're still based on the original species, with its types.
I've considered this because I have actually had troubles trying to look up pokemon types before, trying to find good art of poison and grass types specifically. It's tedious to look up "~pokemon1 ~pokemon2 ~pokemon3" and it's just ineffective, and you can't even use further ~tags from there.
The one hiccup here is hybrid pokemon, but I believe since the pokemon forming the hybrid would already have their implied typing, that would be taken care of outside of fringe examples.

tl;dr it's simple, effective, and convenient, why not?

I’d personally be down for it. I have some types I’d like to just blanket search for all of the Pokemon. The only problem would be that some people draw Pokemon with swapped types so that might be a problem, since you can’t remove implied tags (which I feel like is a really weird technical limitation personally but I digress)

It'll never happen for the reason mentioned above (types are lore and that lore is routinely contradicted by artists, whose word is the only one that matters for lore around here), but also I don't understand people who claim to want this? How useful could a tag like water_type_pokémon possibly be? Who the hell wants to search for a subset of Pokémon that includes (in rough descending order of furry-ness) buizel, feraligatr, greninja, milotic, basculin and pyukumuku, but not lugia or bidoof?

lafcadio said:
Types (as separate from existing tags like elemental_manipulation) don't really work with TWYS. For example: what part of Absol's design suggests that it's a dark-type? What features would have to change for an Absol to be tagged as a ghost-type, fighting-type, flying-type, steel-type, fairy-type, or psychic-type?

Everything I've said here still stands, and it's not even limited to hybrids. People semi-regularly do mons with alternate typing, like the fire/fightingdex

Not to mention, it's not unheard of for pokémon to change their typing officially. Most notably, when the Fairy type was introduced a couple generations ago, a number of pokémon had their Normal type replaced with Fairy (which was retroactive; remakes of earlier generation games included the fairy type change), which would've created a mess with changing aliases and needing to clean up hundreds if not thousands of posts here. There's nothing saying that can't happen again. Nor is there anything preventing Game Freak from changing a single pokémon's type purely for balancing purposes in the competitive scene (and to be clear, a pokémon's type is selected largely for balance reasons, as their types determine what they're strong or weak to and by how much; even the two type limit is arbitrary... in lore, Arceus is supposed to be all types, for example, but in the games it's just Normal type by default and using different "plates" can make it change its type).

Then there's the issue of people regularly mistagging pokémon forms. It's not unusual for me to see instances of hisuian zoroark tagged as both the hisuian variant and normal zoroark. With type tags implied by pokémon, someone cleaning it up would have to not only remove zoroark, but also dark type pokémon, if they're aware the tag is there and Hisuian zoroark isn't a dark type (it's normal/ghost). Similar with mega charizard x erroneously being tagged along with charizard and getting additionally mistagged as a flying type.

Pokemon fangames who add in their own variants, such as the Delta variants, could mess with implications too.

I still don't believe the potential complications would outweigh the convenience. While the mis-tagging of variants and such would be an issue, I think it would be relatively easy to resolve.
In the case of alternate typing, either by a fanmade variant or otherwise, I think we should have original type tags, or species tags, for those who just wanna look up pokemon that fit the type, and then a fire_(type) type tag for types that are specified in the image or evident (for instance, a charmander breathing fire would obviously be a fire type since there is a flame on its body and emanating from it.) This rule would be more difficult to apply for types like dark and fairy, which don't always make sense, but I think it could be applied. There could, also, be issues where a character is specified to have alternate typing, but that isn't evident in other images. In this case, unless the change is drastic/evident, I think the species tags should at least be retained.
Take #1514381 for example:
post #1514381
Masquerain is Bug/Flying, so that would imply the tags bug_type_pokemon and flying_type_pokemon. But, the image depicts it being fire/fighting, so that would additionally be tagged with fire_(type) and fighting_(type).

its_seaman_not_semen said:
Take #1514381 for example:
post #1514381
Masquerain is Bug/Flying, so that would imply the tags bug_type_pokemon and flying_type_pokemon. But, the image depicts it being fire/fighting, so that would additionally be tagged with fire_(type) and fighting_(type).

Which is wrong. It doesn't look like bug, it doesn't look like flying, so the implication wouldn't work.

-1. I don't see Pokemon type being any more important for tagging purposes then a Pokemon's egg group, or a Digimon's atrribute, or a zombie's method of reanimation or a World of Warcraft species' allegiance.

I think the vastly better solution for being able to sort through the hundreds of Pokémon species is to have them imply the closest existing non-Pokémon species tag. Nearly all other fictional species already do this. That way, you can search for all the scalie Pokémon or all the avian Pokémon or all the canine Pokémon or all the arthropod Pokémon and et cetera. This would be more useful for searching as they would actually be grouped according to their appearance rather than arbitrary type characteristics that people less familiar with Pokémon often couldn’t even guess at. Plus, this would actually agree with TWYS.

scaliespe said:
I think the vastly better solution for being able to sort through the hundreds of Pokémon species is to have them imply the closest existing non-Pokémon species tag. Nearly all other fictional species already do this. That way, you can search for all the scalie Pokémon or all the avian Pokémon or all the canine Pokémon or all the arthropod Pokémon and et cetera. This would be more useful for searching as they would actually be grouped according to their appearance rather than arbitrary type characteristics that people less familiar with Pokémon often couldn’t even guess at. Plus, this would actually agree with TWYS.

This also doesn't work. All of the following depict Pokemon, but not the "real" species they're typically portrayed as.
post #1521200 post #1470341 post #1558728
Review topic #26783 and topic #23438 for more on this topic.

lafcadio said:
This also doesn't work. All of the following depict Pokemon, but not the "real" species they're typically portrayed as.
post #1521200 post #1470341 post #1558728
Review topic #26783 and topic #23438 for more on this topic.

…and that’s what the hybrid tag is for. These are hybrids between the Pokémon and some other species.

scaliespe said:
…and that’s what the hybrid tag is for. These are hybrids between the Pokémon and some other species.

An image being tagged hybrid is dependent on it having characters who actually express features from multiple species. post #1470341 doesn't have any canine features. post #1521200 does not include an avian, hybrid or otherwise. post #1558728 does not include an amphibian, avian, rodent, or simian.

lafcadio said:
An image being tagged hybrid is dependent on it having characters who actually express features from multiple species. post #1470341 doesn't have any canine features.

That depends if you count Arcanine as a canine. If someone drew a cat with the fur patterns of a German Shepherd - a species of canine with a distinctive and recognizable fur pattern - it could hypothetically be tagged as a German Shepherd hybrid as it has at least one trait. Hybrid does not specify how much of a species has to be included to count as a hybrid. It can be a single recognizable characteristic borrowed from another species. In this case, the recognizable fur pattern of a fictional canine is added to a feline. If that’s not the case, then don’t even tag it as Arcanine in the first place.

post #1521200 does not include an avian, hybrid or otherwise. post #1558728 does not include an amphibian, avian, rodent, or simian.

Again, a single recognizable characteristic of a fictional avian species (the wings) was given to a non-avian character. This makes it a hybrid of that fictional species, an avian, and whatever else the character is. Hybrids often are not easily recognizable as one of their origin species. This is not new or limited to fictional species like Pokémon… this has always been the case with the hybrid tag. avian hybrid solo gives plenty of examples of avian hybrids that don’t really look avian. Here are a few examples from just the first page of results - none of these are identifiably avian, but they’re hybrids of something else which gives them a pass.
post #3193938
post #3182872
post #3127265
post #3126219
post #3098699

The only other alternative to this is to treat all Pokémon species as characters instead so that the alternate species tag can be used. However, this wouldn’t be ideal as there would be no way to identify Pokémon original characters of a particular Pokémon species. The closest you could get would be something like (let’s say it’s someone’s Arcanine OC) canine + Pokémon + fan_character , but no way to identify it specifically as an Arcanine if we are to make them character tags, since the tag belongs only to the canon representation of the “character” and not someone’s character based on the species.

The much more convoluted solution is to have a character tag counterpart for every Pokémon species. So your Arcanine cat above, if you don’t want to consider it a hybrid, can receive the Arcanine_(character) tag along with alternate_species, but not the Arcanine_(species) tag; then, every Arcanine Donut Steel who is basically just a regular Arcanine but with blue fur, is anthro, and wears sunglasses can get the species tag without the character tag; meanwhile, the vast majority of Arcanine posts will receive both tags (assuming people actually remember to tag both instead of just tagging plain Arcanine, which would have to be aliased to Arcanine_(disambiguation), which would probably be regularly filled by people failing to recognize how the convoluted system works).

Not only is that complicated, but it would require a massive tagging project on the hundreds of thousands of Pokémon posts that would likely never be finished, and it’ll be the source of endless mistagging and (disambiguation) posts that would require ten times the current amount of staff to ever hope to keep up with. But if we really want to keep treating Pokémon like characters so they can get the alternate_species tag, well, there you go. But even so, my suggestion to have the species imply other species tags would still be valid.

The single simplest, easiest, and most consistent solution regarding how the rest of the site currently functions is to treat Pokémon as species tags, which they are. They can’t get some special status as half-species half-character without implementing something like what I suggested above. It doesn’t make sense, and that’s not how anything else on the site works. So, that means they cannot be alternate_species. Either it’s a hybrid of the Pokémon species plus something else, or it’s simply not the Pokémon species at all since they are not characters, and thus should not receive the Pokémon species tag at all.

scaliespe said:
In this case, the recognizable fur pattern of a fictional canine is added to a feline.

If this is the standard of proof we're using, then logically, all instances of Sonichu should be tagged with rodent, regardless of any apparent rodent-liness, because Sonichu is a Mobian/Pikachu hybrid, and Pikachu would necessarily imply rodent. But of course, that's absolutely ridiculous because the features that're lifted from Pikachu ultimately have nothing to do with making the character look like a rodent. He's yellow, and he's got longer ears and a longer tail. Big woop, Renamon's ears are practically the same, guess he's one color_edit away from being a fox too because Renamon is understood as being a fox.

scaliespe said:
Again, a single recognizable characteristic of a fictional avian species (the wings) was given to a non-avian character.

I already made the mistake of retreading upon things already demonstrated in the previous threads and now you're making me do it again. Wings do not an avian make. Winged equines are not avians. Feathered dragons are not avians. Feathered dinosaurs are not avians. Greninja-Lucario's long tongue (if that even is a tongue) doesn't make it a frog. Pikachu-Lucario lacks any rodent characteristics. Making Pokemon imply real-world species will not improve searching in the slightest.

For reasons already stated more eloquently, this doesn't seem terribly useful or practical. Searching by type would be less specific than blue_fur or wings - at least these guarantee a single shared *visual* feature. This feels strangely too general.

Are there type enthusiasts that would get a lot of mileage out of this? It doesn't seem like it would be an easy change to commit to the system without a good use case.

lafcadio said:
If this is the standard of proof we're using, then logically, all instances of Sonichu should be tagged with rodent, regardless of any apparent rodent-liness

Considering we can tag plushies, onesies, kigurumis, statues, and other designer objects with the species they're designed after, regardless of any apparent animal-ness, this isn't that far-fetched. Of course the problem is it's inconsistently applied. I find people are more willing to tag species for those things when it's a fictional species, but the same situation with a real species won't have the real species tagged. Even though, as I understand, they should be.

lafcadio said:
Winged equines are not avians.

But a winged animal can be an avian hybrid.
post #3144672 post #3134881 post #3098699
The only reason there aren't more winged equines tagged as avian hybrids is because pegasus (which only implicates equine, despite clearly not being a pure equine) co-opted the concept of a winged horse, so such characters often get tagged as a non-hybrid pegasus instead of the equine+avian+hybrid they are. Hippogriff is another such hybrid species, which causes such characters to be tagged as a non-hybrid hippogriff, which also only implicates avian (even though by definition, a hippogriff is a part-equine hybrid). If we didn't have or use the terms pegasus or hippogriff, there would be many more posts of winged equines being tagged equine+avian+hybrid.

It's been explained already that the hybrid tag only needs the smallest characteristic from the component species to be tagged, and sometimes that will cause that species' base types to be tagged when it doesn't seem obvious that it should be. This goes for real species as much as fictional ones. Take a look through avian hybrid wings sometime, and you'll find plenty of posts indicating <species>+wings can be <species>+avian+hybrid. This is entirely consistent with the described use of the hybrid tag.

lafcadio said:
Making Pokemon imply real-world species will not improve searching in the slightest.

I disagree. Being able to find canine-based pokemon under a search for canine will vastly improve searching, as people would not have to search canine+whatever pokemon you can think of that's based on a canine. Or if someone wants to blacklist canines, but canine pokemon still come through because they're not tagged as canine despite being one (perhaps causing such users to blacklist all of pokemon because they can't be arsed to find and list out every individual canine-based pokemon and keep up with new ones, even though they'd be fine with non-canine pokemon). The same goes for feline, equine, insect, and other pokemon. As it is, these tags can be added manually by users, so they are valid to have on posts and a search/blacklist will handle some of them, but many posts will unnecessarily lack the tags because not everyone does add them and there's no implications to ensure they get added, causing many to slip through the cracks.

We're not asking for pokemon to implicate more specific species like "wolf" or "fox", but the "broad categories" the wiki already says can be tagged for them. This will not cause any more issues with hybrid or stylized characters than already occurs with real species, but will improve consistency in tagging and searchability. Additionally, this would also help reduce the number of instances where people think they need to tag pokemon with more specific species like "fox" or "badger" (which you're explicitly not supposed to do) if they can better rely on implications adding the appropriate species tags automatically, instead of leaving it manual like it is now. So not only would it improve searchability, to find canine pokemon under canine tags for example, but it would also reduce the number of incorrect tags people sometimes add to pokemon.

lafcadio said:
If this is the standard of proof we're using, then logically, all instances of Sonichu should be tagged with rodent, regardless of any apparent rodent-liness, because Sonichu is a Mobian/Pikachu hybrid, and Pikachu would necessarily imply rodent. But of course, that's absolutely ridiculous because the features that're lifted from Pikachu ultimately have nothing to do with making the character look like a rodent. He's yellow, and he's got longer ears and a longer tail. Big woop, Renamon's ears are practically the same, guess he's one color_edit away from being a fox too because Renamon is understood as being a fox.

If the character has even a single trait from a rodent, even a fictional rodent, it’s a rodent hybrid. If he doesn’t, then don’t tag him as the fictional rodent species. That’s not how species tags work. Again, have a look through rodent hybrid solo and see how many things you find that don’t even resemble rodents. Does post #2828670 look like a rodent? This is not new, and it’s not even specific to Pokémon. Either Sonichu is a rodent hybrid, or he’s not a Pikachu at all. There’s no other option. Pikachu is a species, not a character.

I already made the mistake of retreading upon things already demonstrated in the previous threads and now you're making me do it again. Wings do not an avian make. Winged equines are not avians. Feathered dragons are not avians. Feathered dinosaurs are not avians.

Perhaps some species could have feathered wings without being avians (though even this is disputable - as Watsit pointed out, a Pegasus is technically an equine/avian hybrid, and should probably be tagged as such. In the real world, only avians have feathered wings, so including that trait on a fictional or mythological species essentially makes it an avian hybrid. But, I digress). The wings in the example you gave, however, are not just any old feathered wings. That character specifically has ho-oh’s wings, as you can tell from the markings. So not only is that an avian hybrid regardless, it’s a ho-oh hybrid - which is an avian. If it isn’t, it shouldn’t even have the ho-oh tag. It’s not a character, it’s not alternate_species. If I gave the same character black wings, it would be perfectly acceptable for me to call it a corvid hybrid. Again, that’s how the hybrid tag works. You only need one recognizable characteristic from the constituent species for it to count. If that Pegasus had just any old wings, sure - but it doesn’t. It specifically has ho-oh’s wings, making it a hybrid.

Making Pokemon imply real-world species will not improve searching in the slightest.

Here’s a use case for you. I actually use this search on a regular basis, or some variation thereof:
anthro solo female ~scalie ~dragon ~salazzle ~charizard ~tyranitar ~ekans ~arbok ~inteleon ~salandit ~serperior ~snivy ~nidoran ~nidorina ~nidoqueen ~dragonite ~dragonair ~scrafty ~dratini ~totodile ~venusaur ~ivysaur ~bulbasaur ~guilmon

It’s not because I’m looking specifically for Pokémon. It’s because I’m looking for scalies, and all these Pokémon (and Digimon - the same should apply to them, too) are unquestionably scalie. Yet, they don’t imply scalie, but I still want them to show up in my search results. So, I have to use this incredibly convoluted search to find them.

This “works,” kinda, but it’s still not ideal because there are far, far more scalie Pokémon than just these. I’m missing out on a lot. I just included my favorites/the most popular ones I could think of, but I’d much rather be able to search for all of them if it was feasible to do so. Not only are there far more species I’m missing out on, but more species are being created. Just a few days ago a new scalie Pokémon species was announced. So, yeah… this actually would be not just a little useful, but incredibly useful. Currently, there’s no other way to search through the hundreds upon hundreds of Pokémon species except to search each individual one by name as I’m currently doing, which is truly ridiculous.

scaliespe said:
Does post #2828670 look like a rodent?

That's actually a bad example. It's mistagged as solo, when it should be duo/solo_focus (there is a second character hiding in there, Mrs. Nibbly, which is a plain old tree squirrel, a type of rodent). A better example may be post #2991140, or post #3116082. These are solo rodent hybrids, but absolutely nothing says 'rodent' to me. Except maybe the long non-poofy tail? Hardly a rodent-exclusive trait, anyway. Much less so than feathered wings being an avian trait.

scaliespe said:
If the character has even a single trait from a rodent, even a fictional rodent, it’s a rodent hybrid. If he doesn’t, then don’t tag him as the fictional rodent species. That’s not how species tags work. Again, have a look through rodent hybrid solo and see how many things you find that don’t even resemble rodents. Does post #2828670 look like a rodent? This is not new, and it’s not even specific to Pokémon. Either Sonichu is a rodent hybrid, or he’s not a Pikachu at all. There’s no other option. Pikachu is a species, not a character.

If you want to talk taxonomy, then sure, Sonichu is always a rodent at all times, but that's just not how tagging works. Characters can identifiably be Pokemon without having the features of the species they're normally associated with. If you aren't willing to acknowledge this particular point, then there is genuinely no further point in discussing this with you, you're just wrong.

An extremely strong case can be made for post #991893 being a Spiritomb, but unless Sadako Yamamura is our TWYS yardstick for what a spirit looks like, she's just an ordinary pokemon_humanoid. You'd also struggle to convince people that post #295172 is an amphibian_humanoid without giving fallacious reasoning (there are several other characters with similar hairstyles who aren't frogs.)

Even if the TwoKinds example of yours was the "gotcha" you think it is, all that it proves is that somebody didn't tag duo correctly. The solution to bad tagging is not to add more bad tagging.

scaliespe said:
Perhaps some species could have feathered wings without being avians (though even this is disputable - as Watsit pointed out, a Pegasus is technically an equine/avian hybrid, and should probably be tagged as such. In the real world, only avians have feathered wings, so including that trait on a fictional or mythological species essentially makes it an avian hybrid. But, I digress). The wings in the example you gave, however, are not just any old feathered wings. That character specifically has ho-oh’s wings, as you can tell from the markings. So not only is that an avian hybrid regardless, it’s a ho-oh hybrid - which is an avian. If it isn’t, it shouldn’t even have the ho-oh tag. It’s not a character, it’s not alternate_species. If I gave the same character black wings, it would be perfectly acceptable for me to call it a corvid hybrid. Again, that’s how the hybrid tag works. You only need one recognizable characteristic from the constituent species for it to count. If that Pegasus had just any old wings, sure - but it doesn’t. It specifically has ho-oh’s wings, making it a hybrid.

Universally treating anything with wings as an avian (angels, pegasi, etc.) is madness. In the ideal world where each and every post has absolutely every relevant tag applied, people who want to find angel humanoids (the stereotypical moeblob kind, not the "be not afraid" kind), birds, and pegasi all at the same time search for something like feathered_wings, not avian.

scaliespe said:
Here’s a use case for you. I actually use this search on a regular basis, or some variation thereof:
anthro solo female ~scalie ~dragon ~salazzle ~charizard ~tyranitar ~ekans ~arbok ~inteleon ~salandit ~serperior ~snivy ~nidoran ~nidorina ~nidoqueen ~dragonite ~dragonair ~scrafty ~dratini ~totodile ~venusaur ~ivysaur ~bulbasaur ~guilmon

It’s not because I’m looking specifically for Pokémon. It’s because I’m looking for scalies, and all these Pokémon (and Digimon - the same should apply to them, too) are unquestionably scalie. Yet, they don’t imply scalie, but I still want them to show up in my search results. So, I have to use this incredibly convoluted search to find them.

This “works,” kinda, but it’s still not ideal because there are far, far more scalie Pokémon than just these. I’m missing out on a lot. I just included my favorites/the most popular ones I could think of, but I’d much rather be able to search for all of them if it was feasible to do so. Not only are there far more species I’m missing out on, but more species are being created. Just a few days ago a new scalie Pokémon species was announced. So, yeah… this actually would be not just a little useful, but incredibly useful. Currently, there’s no other way to search through the hundreds upon hundreds of Pokémon species except to search each individual one by name as I’m currently doing, which is truly ridiculous.

post #1346049 is a dragonite, but it's not scalie. Same goes for post #2250120, it's a furred_dragon and not a scalie.
Literally the most important principle behind implications is that they're not valid unless they apply in 100% of cases. What you really want is for people to apply tags like scalie on images where they make sense, not to automatically add them on posts where they don't make sense.

lafcadio said:
If you want to talk taxonomy, then sure, Sonichu is always a rodent at all times, but that's just not how tagging works. Characters can identifiably be Pokemon without having the features of the species they're normally associated with.

As can any species. Pokemon are not unique to hybridization messing up normal taxonomic groups like that. Accepting this reason means no species can ever implicate their base taxonomic groups because they can be drawn without the features they're normally associated with.

lafcadio said:
An extremely strong case can be made for post #991893 being a Spiritomb, but unless Sadako Yamamura is our TWYS yardstick for what a spirit looks like, she's just an ordinary pokemon_humanoid.

That's either a human or a "spiritomb humanoid", depending on whether you consider those extraneous bits to be part of her person or part of her costume. If she is "just an ordinary pokemon_humanoid", what other pokemon would she be a humanoid of if not spiritomb? And being that those extra bits are part of her and not her costume, the spirit tag wouldn't be out of place.

lafcadio said:
You'd also struggle to convince people that post #295172 is an amphibian_humanoid without giving fallacious reasoning (there are several other characters with similar hairstyles who aren't frogs.)

I'd call that a straight up human, honestly. Not a pokemon_humanoid, thus not a froakie_humanoid nor an amphibian_humanoid. The only froakie in that picture is the feral one in the background, which is an amphibian. The tags bear all that out.

lafcadio said:
Even if the TwoKinds example of yours was the "gotcha" you think it is, all that it proves is that somebody didn't tag duo correctly. The solution to bad tagging is not to add more bad tagging.

What about my alternatives?

lafcadio said:
Universally treating anything with wings as an avian (angels, pegasi, etc.) is madness.

What we're saying is that feathered wings can be an element to identify the "component animal" of a hybrid. An identifiable element doesn't need to belong exclusively to the animal it identifies, just that the animal being identified has that element, otherwise it would be impossible to tag the majority of hybrids as anything other than just "hybrid". Even if avians aren't the exclusive haver-of-feathered-wings, avians do have feathered wings, so a hybrid with feathered wings can use that as an identifier for being part avian.

lafcadio said:
post #1346049 is a dragonite, but it's not scalie.

The joys of hybrids. Anyone can draw anything like anything. By this logic, nothing can ever imply scalie because a normally scalie animal can be drawn fur-covered instead. We cover these bases using the hybrid tag, which unequivocally states:

Use the component animals and hybrid tag if you want to tag these, provided the component animals can be discerned from each other in the post.

Dragonite is as much a scalie as any reptile. Just because you can find a picture of a dragonite covered in fur instead of scales doesn't make it any less of a scalie. Otherwise me finding a picture of a fur-covered snake means it's not allowed to imply scalie through reptile. And we can have snakes that don't look like reptiles, so this line of logic means snake can't imply anything.

lafcadio said:
If you want to talk taxonomy, then sure, Sonichu is always a rodent at all times, but that's just not how tagging works.

Our entire species tagging system is based on real-life taxonomy. Sure, it’s not a perfect representation (bird doesn’t imply dinosaur even though that’s what they are, taxonomically speaking - presumably just because we want dinosaurs to be considered scalie, but not birds), but it’s still overall taxonomy-based. That’s why common raven implies raven which implies corvus (genus) which implies corvid which implies oscine which implies passerine which implies bird which implies avian. Behold, taxonomy.

Characters can identifiably be Pokemon without having the features of the species they're normally associated with. If you aren't willing to acknowledge this particular point, then there is genuinely no further point in discussing this with you, you're just wrong.

If a character can be a Pokémon without the usual traits of a particular Pokémon species, it’s either a humanoid, a hybrid, or some kind of fakémon. Do you have any examples to the contrary? Everything you’ve given so far is one of the above. All I’m saying is that Pokémon are still species, and are to be treated the same way that all other species are. Even the slightest feature taken from a Pokémon makes it a hybrid of that Pokémon. If it has absolutely no features taken from the original Pokémon species, how can you identify it as that species? All the examples you’ve given so far have had at least one identifiable trait taken from the Pokémon in question, making it a hybrid or a humanoid of that species - except your froakie example, which is not a Pokémon at all - it’s literally just a human in a costume resembling the Pokémon, as Watsit pointed out already. A post like that shouldn’t even be tagged froakie if it wasn’t for the feral one seen in the background; it would otherwise be just human_only. But regardless, humanoids and hybrids are always supposed to be tagged with each constituent species regardless of how recognizable or identifiable it is. Just look at asui_tsuyu. She’s tagged as frog humanoid, which implies frog, which implies amphibian. If you don’t know the source material, would you recognize that character as an amphibian? Maybe, maybe not. Some depictions of the character make it more obvious than others. That’s still what the character is, though, unless deliberately depicted as an alternate species. The arguments you’re making sound to me like they’d have the logical conclusion of also removing the frog -> amphibian implication due to characters like Asui Tsuyu, and, well… basically every other taxonomic species implication on the site.

Think about how these situations apply to literally any other species. Instead of these being a froakie or a spiritomb or any other thing, imagine if it was a raven or a cobra or a German Shepherd. All the same points apply. They can be hybrids or humanoids that barely resemble their constituent species, if at all - and, yet, they all imply other things that may not seem relevant, but they are technically, taxonomically accurate. That’s simply the nature of the hybrid and humanoid tags, and it’s a “problem” (or feature, depending on your perspective) that extends far beyond the domain of Pokémon. It’s not an argument against Pokémon species implications.

Even if the TwoKinds example of yours was the "gotcha" you think it is, all that it proves is that somebody didn't tag duo correctly. The solution to bad tagging is not to add more bad tagging.

Fine, bad example. I didn’t actually see the squirrel hiding in there. But I think you may have missed this:

watsit said: post #2991140, or post #3116082. These are solo rodent hybrids, but absolutely nothing says 'rodent' to me. Except maybe the long non-poofy tail? Hardly a rodent-exclusive trait, anyway. Much less so than feathered wings being an avian trait.

The point is not really to find specific examples. You’re already aware that hybrids sometimes hardly resemble one of their constituent species, if at all. If your point is to argue each post individually, I could give you thousands of examples. There are over 90,000 posts tagged with hybrid. If you don’t already know that, I can just keep pulling up examples until you do.

Universally treating anything with wings as an avian (angels, pegasi, etc.) is madness. In the ideal world where each and every post has absolutely every relevant tag applied, people who want to find angel humanoids (the stereotypical moeblob kind, not the "be not afraid" kind), birds, and pegasi all at the same time search for something like feathered_wings, not avian.

This is becoming fairly off-topic, and I’m not here to argue that point, exactly. However, I will say that not all feathered_wings are actually avian. You sometimes see this on feathered dragons. Sometimes they have typical dragon-like membranous wings that are simply covered in feathers, but are not avian wings; therefore, they are tagged feathered wings but not avian.

To say that stereotypical angels have an avian trait is perfectly accurate. I’d even go so far as to say they should imply avian if not for the fact that they aren’t always depicted with avian wings - other traits like halos can identify them. The same applies to Pegasi - that implication may actually be valid as they are simply unicorns if they aren’t depicted with the avian wings. That being said, I’m just musing on a tangential subject at this point, and it has little bearing on the current discussion. Perhaps someone can create a Pegasus -> avian implication and the issue can be hashed out on that thread instead.

The real issue here is going back to your earlier example of a Pegasus with Ho-oh’s wings. That one unquestionably is an avian hybrid as it has the wings of an identifiable avian species. Again, not a Pokémon-specific issue. If I draw a Pegasus with black wings and claim that they’re raven’s wings, the post would be tagged with raven (implies avian) and hybrid, even if that’s the only avian trait whatsoever.

post #1346049 is a dragonite, but it's not scalie. Same goes for post #2250120, it's a furred_dragon and not a scalie.
Literally the most important principle behind implications is that they're not valid unless they apply in 100% of cases. What you really want is for people to apply tags like scalie on images where they make sense, not to automatically add them on posts where they don't make sense.

I think you’ve misunderstood the scalie tag. It does not equal scales (if it did, the scales tag would be completely redundant). In fact, both of your examples are scalie, so I’ve gone ahead and added the missing scalie tag. This tag is actually used for anything with reptilian or reptile-like features. This is why the tag doesn’t imply scales, and in fact why no species tags ever imply scales. Any reptile or otherwise scalie creature can be drawn without scales entirely, but they’re still considered scalie.

Case in point: furred snake implies snake which implies scalie. All furred snakes are tagged with scalie due to the implication chain despite the fact that they usually lack scales entirely.

Want a “real” example? Well, feathered dinosaur implies dinosaur which implies scalie. These have become more popular since the discovery that many dinosaur species (especially theropods) were actually covered in feathers and may not have even had scales. Still, they are reptiles, so they fit under the scalie umbrella.

How about a non-extinct example? Even in real life, species such as snakes can be born without scales. It’s a birth defect, but even so, art of a scaleless snake would ruin the “scalie = creature with scales” idea.

Even still, some species of reptiles simply don’t have scales at all, ignoring dinosaurs. The softshell turtle is a species that naturally completely lacks scales. Once again… it implies scalie because it’s a reptile. As you can see, the “scalie = creature with scales” idea could never work, so it’s not a surprise that the admin decisions on matters such as furred snakes and feathered dinosaurs have gone against that idea.

Also, note that the current wiki page for scalie is badly outdated. The description of a creature with “scaly skin” was written 9 years ago, way before the current furred snake and feathered dinosaur implications were approved. Even the current distinction between scaly dragons and furred/feathered dragons predates these changes. I’ve spoken with an admin about this situation a while ago, suggesting that the distinction should be removed as scalie simply refers to general reptilian or reptile-like anatomy regardless of the presence of scales, which applies to furred and feathered dragons just the same, and the response was that they would probably support that change. The wiki will also be updated to reflect that.

If you’re still not convinced, remember that the same issue, once again, arises with hybrids. I could draw a snake/cat hybrid that’s covered in fur, no scales anywhere, and yet… it still implies scalie via the snake -> scalie implication chain. That’s no different than a furry dragonite being tagged scalie. Literally the only solution to the problems you’re raising would be to simply remove all species implications. Absolutely nothing could ever imply anything else simply because hybrid situations confuse everything. The better solution is to, well, not do that, as our current implications make everything much easier to search and sort. With nearly 300,00 Pokémon posts, they need the same privilege.