Hi people of e6, tldr multiple users are mistagging snake_tail onto any snake that happens to have a tail. This also occurs (to a lesser extent) to the living_tail tag.

So, this is my first forum post on e6, so I hope that I posted this in the right place. Normally, I'm not the one to engage with the tagging community here, but as an enjoy-er of a very niche tag I've noticed a major mishandling of the snake_tail tag. Over the past couple of months, posters have been tagging any snake or snake humanoid with a snake-like tail with the 'snake_tail' tag. However, snake_tail refers to a living, sentient tail that happens to be a snake. From what I read, I should report people who consistently mistag, but it's not one or two people repeatedly doing this mistake according to the tagging history. Instead, it is dozens of up-loaders who seem to be tagging their images with snake_tail, presumably because they do not understand the meaning of the tag. There are far too many images for a single person to clean up. It's almost rendered the tag meaningless. You will also find the same issue to a much lesser extent for the living_tail tag.

I don't know what to do other than to call for help on this one. Do I need to contact moderators, make a new post somewhere, just sit back?
You can find examples of this tag being used incorrectly on post 5602829, 5602767, 5637524, or by just searching for the tag yourselves.

That is the correct move to report repeat offenders of mistagging of the same tag.

As for help, tag maintenance is a community-wide effort. Everybody has the ability to edit tags and change them if they are wrong.
You can try posting a significantly summarised version of this on the Tag Projects thread and see if anybody would be willing to pick it up.
However, in most cases, you'd have to put in the effort to fix the mistags yourself as well and report any repeat offenders for Tag Abuse if you come across them far too many times.

Man, I wish there was an easier way. Guess I might have to do it myself on a bored afternoon. I just have this creeping feeling that this problem is going to persist for a while, especially if people don't read the tag descriptions. :/

Anyways, thanks for the reply!

snake_tail is a really bad tag name for what the wiki says it's for. Other x_tail tags are (supposed to be) for humanoids with the tail of a particular animal, for instance wolf_tail or fox_tail being for animal humanoids with a tail matching that species (though they are often similarly mistagged, for any wolf or fox with a tail). Same for other body parts, like rabbit_ears.

Perhaps something like snake_for_a_tail would help clear up the confusion with what snake_tail wants to be.

watsit said:
Perhaps something like snake_for_a_tail would help clear up the confusion with what snake_tail wants to be.

Would flipping it around and calling it tail_snake make it better?
This should negate any issues with <animal>_tail, but it still leaves the original snake_tail tag up for question.

thegreatwolfgang said:
Would flipping it around and calling it tail_snake make it better?

I would support this.