"Resolved" : forum #269777

...

I realize that tag-what-you-see has been discussed half to death in the context of non-human sexual dimorphism but I wanted to touch on something that I'm not so sure has been totally clarified. That is, where does one draw the line as to what is considered "external information" in adherence with TWYS?

I'm going to use "charr" as an example.

"Charr" are playable characters in ArenaNet's MMORPG "Guild Wars 2". Unlike most playable fantasy creatures however, charr do not adhere to human-like sexual dimorphism. Instead, the identifiers of a charr's sex include fairly distinct differences in muzzle shape, brow shape, and fur density (notably on the tail).

As such, most users will probably tag one of these monstrous creatures as male. If we've decided to go by majority vote in regards to TWYS, then that's just how it's gotta be. Case closed- I get it.

But exactly how commonly-known does something have to be for it to cross beyond the threshold of "external information"?

Going back to Guild Wars 2. It has, at this point, surpassed 11-million players. 11-million people have seen the "charr" and, based on published statistics, over 1.5 million people have played as charr.

So, not accounting for folks who are familiar with the aforementioned species without having played it in-game, it doesn't seem unfair in the context of GW2 being an MMORPG to suggest that 1.5 million people know what a male or female charr looks like.

Now, I can't really make any assumptions as to how many of those 1.5 million use e621 but I'd bet that it's not a percentage so small as to be irrelevant.

So, getting back to my question- how commonly-known does information have to be as to not fall under "external information"? Using my example, likely several hundreds of users are able to identify a female charr without "external information". That is, they don't need to check the artist's profile- all the information needed is within the image.

Of course, several hundred pales in comparison to the site's total users but still there's a number of ways I could see this kind of information being addressed and I see some potential for compromises.

• Keep the rule rigid (as it is). Users that want to see masculine characters without distinguishing sexual features (I.E. no breasts or beards) will have to modify their blacklists/searches to allow for posts tagged as male.
• Meet in the middle. If the uploader sees a male and you see a female (or vice-versa) tag as ambiguous gender.
• Allow for contradictory but inclusive tagging. Group A sees a male and Group B sees a female. Tagging the post as both will allow it to show up in a search for either tag (assuming that the user hasn't blacklisted the male or female tag).

So, thoughts?