First I'd like to suggest a clarification on the intent offered for these rules. Gender is more effectively the mental state of a subject's sex, it is not something which can be defined by any characteristic that can be captured within in image. It is possible to determine the sex, or biological equipment type, from visible characteristics.
Bug/Requested solution 1: In the rules mission statement use the correct grammar of "sex" instead of "gender" OR reword with separate policies towards "sex" and "gender" (likely an inference from characteristics such as effeminate / girly clothing or the inverse: however I believe that those tags are not actually gender tags just related proxies).
https://e621.net/wiki/show/e621:rules#taggingabuse
The purpose for this is to prevent users from abusing the system that for easy searching/indexing of the posts. This enforces the site’s “Tag What You See” rule, in that you cannot tag an image as “male” or “female” unless there is visible evidence of that. Even if another site has the same character with better visibility of its gender, that post uniquely must contain those elements. Mistagging, adding invalid tags, or removing valid tags are not punishable for a one-time offense, but they will be disciplined if they produce a pattern of tagging abuse.
Bug 2 : The rules/policy do not define what is reasonable / correct and leave it to interpretation: of both users and individual admins/moderators.
- Adding a tag to a post that is not either clearly visible, or reasonably assumed
- Removing a valid tag, either as part of a dispute/argument, or to place one that is not correct
From a visual sex identification perspective the possible combinations are:
| ... | vagina | penis | breasts |
|---|---|---|---|
| null | no | no | no |
| male | no | yes | no |
| dickgirl | no | yes | yes |
| herm | yes | yes | yes |
| female | yes | no | yes |
| female (mastectomy) | yes | no | no |
| herm (mastectomy) | yes | yes | no |
| 'c boy' | yes | no | ??? |
| ??? | no | no | yes |
However that's assuming perfect knowledge, what happens when it is unclear? If you cannot, for example, definitively say (from a single image) if a subject has a vagina or not?
Are breasts + penis always either of Herm or Dickgirl? Or could it be either one due to the lack of data?
Is a flat chested subject without breasts female (in sex) or are they a 'c boy'; if there's scarring did they have breasts before?
I believe that the current policy means to say plausible where it says reasonable. I believe that on a single image basis any sex that can be isolated based on visible criteria is valid to tag.
However, I'd also like to go further. Is it 'reasonable' to base the determination off of data from other artwork of that subject within a pool? Is it reasonable, if the subject is a recognized character, to base it off of the sex(es) they typically have?
Updated by Siral Exan