General Tag Discussion

@mjangelvortex  
I guess?
 
I just fail to see any issues with it personally, and while I don’t doubt it can cause some issues for some people, I still think there are worse tag issues out there.

@Deserter  
@mjangelvortex  
@Zeb  
It is not redundant, and it is literally caused by you specifically, Zeb, and you know why, and the rest of active tag moderation team. Y’all refuse to allow “pony” to be used for species such as zebras, kirins and deer, and there is no alternative. No, negating other bodytype tags isn’t it, there’s half a dozen of them. Either allow so or keep off “quadrupedal”, which is specifically bodytype tag to describe all these other species.

@mjangelvortex  
I must inform you what before I decided to make it possible to search for characters with show like anatomy (i.e. not anthro) but who aren’t allowed to be tagged pony, tag “quadrupedal” either had zero images under it or less than five, I can’t quite recall :^p

And yes, basically what Barhandar and Lightning Bolt said, there’s no way to search for non pony characters when they are in non anthro form, unlike ponies who use “pony” tag for it. I discussed this problem with a few people on Derpi public IRC, including some of site staff, waaaay back and me and few others who would like to see such a tag agreed at the time on “quadrupedal” since: a) it covers almost all show “races” save for few oddballs or very rarely seen folks like: draconequus (Only Discord outisde of comics and fan made characters), movie races (Storm King mooks, Capper, pirate birds and Klugetown inhabitants [is there even any difference between anthro and non anthro for these]), and diamond dogs, with the only exception being dragons; b) as I said it was unused tag at the time, and from what I can see, wasn’t used for any other purpose by others.

@Background Pony #C2C9  
Zebra,-anthro.
 
And, done!
 
Best of all, that’s much easier to type and remember than zebra, quadrupedal. No, seriously, I misspelled that when typing this out ):

The issues with “Quadruped” and similar is that it’s something with an extremely niche need which would need to be placed on over a million images to serve its intended purpose.
 
I ran the numbers in the past. I’ll need some time to go through them again, but last I checked, the amount of images that would serve the intended purpose of “these are all quadrupedal creatures that also aren’t ponies” was less than 1% of the images we would need to tag with “Quadruped”.
 
We have Pony, Zebra, Deer, etc. Each species has its own tag. You’re asking for a way to search for ponies, zebras, deer, etc all under 1 tag. Which will require tagging over 1 million images.  
And that’s just for having those other non-pony creatures appear in a search using only 1 tag.  
But as I said, the amount of images that would benefit from this are actually relatively minuscule.
 
It’s far too much tagging for far too little benefit. It will be a bloat tag that has too little gain for far too much cost.
 
Hell, we’re still hundreds of thousands of images short of even completing “pony” being properly tagged, and your asking for a tag that would have to be placed on even more images.
 
The benefit is just too small to justify the effort that will have to go into it.

@Barhandar  
It’s understandable why “pony” wouldn’t be as a tag for those situations. It’s not an accurate tag for those creatures because they’re not ponies: they’re Zebra, Kirin, and Deer and they all have their own tags for their respective species. I don’t recall the show or comics calling them ponies. Likewise, I don’t think it would make sense to tag a normal picture of Twilight as “Deer”.
 
@LightningBolt  
@Barhandar  
@Background Pony #C2C9  
Still fair points. I didn’t really consider that.
 
But I think if the tag had its own proper detailed description, there would be a lot less confusion on what the tag is for and mistakes like this would happen less often.

I think the main issue here is that we arbitrarily decided to not tag the pony species tag on anthro ponies, but that we do for literally every other species.

@LightningBolt  
We don’t? That’s odd.

@mjangelvortex  
Correct. I’m not saying to change it now, just that it is odd and a bit of an issue.

@Background Pony #D326  
This line of thinking basically invalidates use of “pony” tag, after all, you could just put “unicorn, -anthro” into search field too.  
@Zeb  
There’s a lot of other very niche tags on the site, but I don’t see people advocating every one of them what has less than 1% percent of images under it to be nuked.  
Also you still for some reason think what the existence of this tag is me calling for everyone on site staff (or at least you, since you’re very adamant against it, for some reason) to put off anything else site related to start tagging it en masse. All I ask is to not nuke a tag what is clearly welcome for some of userbase.

Also, searching, for example “kirin, -anthro” will not show any images what have show like or “realistic” kirins, if images contains an anthro character, even if it’s in background and not even a kirin.

@Background Pony #C2C9  

 
Yeah there’s really much bigger issues out there and everyone needs to chill on the “PURGE PURGE!” thing. Like, go purge something actually useless or detrimental, or go add other small useful tags. Like, there’s a user on this site who makes new random tags daily and NEVER makes threads about them and no one but me ever complians about it.

@Zeb  
That’s sort of what I was thinking.
 
@LightningBolt  
It kinda does. Especially if someone wants to look up Pony anthros. I really think it should be included for anthros in the future.
 
@LightningBolt  
I mean, I stopped getting rid of tags. And also, if people don’t know about that specific tagger, they probably haven’t noticed it.

@mjangelvortex  
Wow so you think you can just order whole staff to drop everything you’re doing and tag thousands upon thousands images just because you feel like this, huh? /s  
:^P

@Background Pony #C2C9  
I know you’re joking but I’m not implying any of that.

Wait..why would you tag something that’s not a pony under pony? That’s like tagging an ape as ‘human’.

@Background Pony #C2C9  

 
I’ve never said that. Please do not put words in my mouth.
 
My issue is, as I’ve said repeatedly, It’s far to much for too little of a benefit.
 

 
Yes, there are many Niche tags. But none that will need to be tagged on over 1,233,338 images.  
I’ve just ran the numbers again.  
At the least, the tag will need to be put on 1,233,338 images.  
The combined totals of different 4 legged creatures [excluding pony] is roughly 39,987 images. [Full admittance: I know this is not EVERY 4 legged creature. But I took as many of the largest 4 legged creature tags I was able to remember. Kirin, zebra, griffon, hippogriff, deer, yak.]
 
The intended benefit of the tag:  
Have these other creatures included in a search term along with ponies.  
The percentage of images under the tag which will benefit from this: 3.2%.
 
Once again. The issue is that it’s going to be a tag on well over half the site. For a 3.2% benefit. It’s just too much for too little. It’s a tag that will only serve its function 3.2 percent of the time.

@Background Pony #8E02  
..and by that I mean chimpanzees, gorillas etc (I know humans ARE apes but it doesn’t work the other way around.)

A limited usage =/= should be removed. It existing at all hurts no one so if you don’t wanna tag it, just leave it be and don’t remove it.
 
Seriously please don’t remove ~useless~ but still accurate tags, like, ever. You wanna kill things, kill things like sexy or ugly.

@LightningBolt  

 
Well, since you brought them up…
 
Seriously though, those tags are mostly benign, but every now and again one user notices them and decides they belong on EVERY image that gets them off even a little, or bothers them just a bit. One user nearly ruined the “stupid sexy x” series of tags with that attitude not long ago.

Okay, to differentiate Twilight (the pony) and twilight (time of day..which is literally the tag name) why can’t you do that for bipeds? Biped (anthro), biped (hind legs) for quadruped that are simply on the their hind legs, but not in an action such as rearing up.

@Background Pony #8E02  
@Background Pony #8E02  
That’s also what I’m thinking. Yaks, Deer, Zebra, Kirin, and the like are quadrupedal but they’re not ponies. So tagging them as such is not only factually incorrect but it’s bound to cause confusion and tag wars. They’re their own species and they all have their own unique tags for their species. There’s no need to tag them as pony.
 
@LightningBolt  
Got it.

@Background Pony #D326  
I mean do the stupid sexy * tags really HAVE a purpose? I mean I’m willing to listen and give them a fair break if they had like a specific (albeit arbitrary and community decided) meaning and a few people ruined them.
 
Nor am I about to murder them, mind, I’m just saying that on the scale of tags that are more worth killing, quadrupedal isn’t one of them.

@LightningBolt  
The more subjective tags like “Sexy, cute, ugly, etc” have their own problems, yes.  
The difference, and the issue I’ve been raising the entire time, is the SCALE.  
Those tags are relatively minor. You say not to bring up how “big” a tag is in terms of usefulness. But there’s a difference between 500, 5,000 or even 50,000. And literally over half of the booru. The scale is what makes it a different circumstance. And can’t be ignored by comparing it to other niche tags that are minuscule in comparison.
 
And note: I’ve never called the tag itself “Useless”. It DOES have a use. But the benefit of said use is tiny in comparison to the size the tag will have to be in order to grant said benefit.