There doesn't seem to be any way to search for whatever kind of muscle without an overly complex search. For instance, to find pecs, biceps, or abs, you have to type ~pecs ~biceps ~abs. There needs to be an umbrella tag.
By the way, it was decided that abs shouldn't imply muscles, yet pecs does imply muscles.

I've been meaning to bring this up to get resolved for awhile now. Most of my concerns fall into two basic ideas that I think would make this tag set a lot more usable and consistent:

1, Muscles is meant to be used only for a "muscular body type", (which is good to have a tag for). But "muscles" as the name is too broad, so it often gets tagged any time someone has visible muscles and is an ongoing source of confusion and misuse. I think separating out the specific body type to be something like "muscular" would make it a lot more clear.

2, Whether we should also have an umbrella tag for muscles is debatable and I can see reasons on both sides. Because on the one hand, everyone has muscles so what is the point? But on the other hand, while everyone has muscles, those muscles aren't always that visible and there's still a world of difference between having some visible muscles, and being a very pronounced muscular body type. So under that line of logic, adding a half-step to this grey area instead of being "all or none" might be worth considering.

For instance, having an umbrella tag for "visible muscles" would help related messy areas like where the implication for tags like musclegut should go. (In the past it was implicated to --> muscles but then was deleted). Honestly having musclegut implicated under the tag for "muscular body type" seems like a mixing of body types instead of being a good fit. It only half works, and it further confuses what the "muscular body type" tag even means when it includes muscleguts. But I can understand the urge to tag the muscles that you can see. Tags like musclegut might fit better if they were implicated to an umbrella tag for "visible muscles" (the only reason they're not just regular overweight is because they have some visible muscles, even if it's only big biceps sometimes), and it would probably make more sense to be implicated to "visible muscles" instead of "muscular body type" which is a different body type than musclegut is.

Also, an umbrella tag for "visible muscles" would give tags like abs, pecs, biceps a place to be implicated to. So that people searching for "visible muscles" would have a single tag to use without using up their search slots trying to do ~abs ~biceps ~pecs etc in addition to their search. And people who don't want to see any visible muscles would have an easier time blacklisting it, because some people find it gross to be able to see the muscles at all. Tags like muscular would be implicated to --> muscles as a body type dedicated to visible muscles (it's a natural fit).

So basically, this idea would look like this:

muscles -- all visible muscles get tagged with this
--pecs - implicated as a type of visible muscles
--biceps - implicated as a type of visible muscles
--abs - implicated as a type of visible muscles
--musclegut - implicated as a body type that includes at least some visible muscles
--muscular - implicated as a body type that is defined by being so entirely based on visible muscles everywhere.
--hyper_muscles - if they're visible enough to be hyper, then they're visible enough to be "visible muscles"

I think it would be a lot more stable and organised over the long term than what we've been trying to do (which was having "muscles" = "muscular body type" and then trying to keep the rest from getting tagged with it, which led to frequent misunderstanding why seeing visible muscles couldn't get the "muscles" tag. That just hasn't worked very well.) But what do people think? Would people be ok with this?

Previous discussions: forum #136884, forum #124380, (forum #146260 to a lesser degree), many others

FinallyLostIt said:
Even skinny twigs can have defined abdominals. The muscles tag is for very muscular characters, as stated by wiki]

This is really the only reason I can think of why that wouldn't work, and I've heard it before in several forms. That being said...I'm going to be pretty frank when I say that is a pretty bad reason, and I'll tell you why.

If the muscles tag has taught us anything it's that trying to restrict a broad term like this to a minimum size doesn't work unless someone is going to clean it up constantly. We have a wide tier of muscle choices (big_muscles, huge_muscles*, hyper_muscles) and related tags (musclegut, toned, many muscle groups, etc.) already in place if we need to tag something more restricted in size.

However, I'm not saying we need to make muscles an umbrella tag for all of this because I don't think that would solve any issues and make muscles broader than it needs to be, what I'm saying is we need to talk renaming the muscles tag before anything productive is going to happen with it.

If we don't rename it, we would probably need to rework the muscles tag from the ground up and implicate the muscle groups to it. In other words, we keep it the same and treat the sizes like breasts, penis, etc. which is certainly another option.

_{*huge_muscles still doesn't actually have an implication.}

Edit: I think pickle's more articulate on this one.

Although I agree with Furrypickle's comment, I'm going to repost what I said in an earlier thread because I think it still stands. I'm thinking we could use muscles as an umbrella tag like Pickle said, but perhaps change the current muscles tag to muscular so that it more obviously stands for "characters who are very muscular" instead of "anything to do with muscles," but I can foresee that being a bit confusing to taggers who don't follow these forum posts.

The big problem is that it seems like the whole muscle 'tag group' is all out of whack. Currently, Big_muscles implies muscles, but muscles as defined by the wiki is for characters of "very muscular" build and where the image focuses on the muscles. It also points to toned which is more or less what the muscular tag originally made me think of. Herein lies the hitch. Tags like flexing and pecs all imply the muscles tag, but if you think about it anyone can flex, and a toned character can have nice abs and have them be the main focus of the image without being "muscly" as defined by the current wiki. I think that the verbiage is a bit part of the problem right now, as I'm sure that the muscles tag is used when "hey, this guy has muscles, lets tag that." I think changing a few names around, and un-implicating flexing and abs and stuff.

Proposal:
1. Leave toned as it is, for "athletic," but not "chiseled" builds. Like this post #524548
2. Change muscles to muscular, because it's confusing. The tag should give the idea that the image is all about a person who is muscular beyond normal, but not pushing hard against what's possible in the real world. Should be for very well defined muscles up to bodybuilder levels. Like this post #525884
3. Alias big_muscles to hyper_muscles, and have it be described as muscles beyond the realm of possibility. Like this post #500402
4. Un-implicate flexing and abs from muscular as it doesn't make much sense with the proposed definitions as previously stated.

Some possible problems:
The line between toned and muscular is very blurry, and I'm not sure if it's possible to come up with a good rule of thumb that we can all agree on, much less enforce. Many images have all of these tagged, like post #524956 and I bet that we'll have to start a project to fix them...

So I guess what I'm suggesting is to maybe make muscles the umbrella tag (we may need to rename muscles or muscular) and set up well defined levels of muscularity. From smallest to largest muscles, toned --> muscular --> hyper_muscles, and just leaving tags like abs implicated to muscles, but not any of the "levels of muscularity."

The implication hierarchy would look like this:

• muscles
• abs/biceps/musclegut etc...
• toned
• muscular
• hyper_muscles

PS: we could also add big_muscles between muscular and hyper_muscles, but honestly I don't know if that would be necessary. Where does big_muscles end and hyper_muscles begin? I think that's an unnecessary level of differentiation that would just be confusing and useless.

furrypickle said:
I've been meaning to bring this up to get resolved for awhile now. Most of my concerns fall into two basic ideas that I think would make this tag set a lot more usable and consistent:

1, Muscles is meant to be used only for a "muscular body type", (which is good to have a tag for). But "muscles" as the name is too broad, so it often gets tagged any time someone has visible muscles and is an ongoing source of confusion and misuse. I think separating out the specific body type to be something like "muscular" would make it a lot more clear.

2, Whether we should also have an umbrella tag for muscles is debatable and I can see reasons on both sides. Because on the one hand, everyone has muscles so what is the point? But on the other hand, while everyone has muscles, those muscles aren't always that visible and there's still a world of difference between having some visible muscles, and being a very pronounced muscular body type. So under that line of logic, adding a half-step to this grey area instead of being "all or none" might be worth considering.

For instance, having an umbrella tag for "visible muscles" would help related messy areas like where the implication for tags like musclegut should go. (In the past it was implicated to --> muscles but then was deleted). Honestly having musclegut implicated under the tag for "muscular body type" seems like a mixing of body types instead of being a good fit. It only half works, and it further confuses what the "muscular body type" tag even means when it includes muscleguts. But I can understand the urge to tag the muscles that you can see. Tags like musclegut might fit better if they were implicated to an umbrella tag for "visible muscles" (the only reason they're not just regular overweight is because they have some visible muscles, even if it's only big biceps sometimes), and it would probably make more sense to be implicated to "visible muscles" instead of "muscular body type" which is a different body type than musclegut is.

Also, an umbrella tag for "visible muscles" would give tags like abs, pecs, biceps a place to be implicated to. So that people searching for "visible muscles" would have a single tag to use without using up their search slots trying to do ~abs ~biceps ~pecs etc in addition to their search. And people who don't want to see any visible muscles would have an easier time blacklisting it, because some people find it gross to be able to see the muscles at all. Tags like muscular would be implicated to --> muscles as a body type dedicated to visible muscles (it's a natural fit).

So basically, this idea would look like this:

muscles -- all visible muscles get tagged with this
--pecs - implicated as a type of visible muscles
--biceps - implicated as a type of visible muscles
--abs - implicated as a type of visible muscles
--musclegut - implicated as a body type that includes at least some visible muscles
--muscular - implicated as a body type that is defined by being so entirely based on visible muscles everywhere.
--hyper_muscles - if they're visible enough to be hyper, then they're visible enough to be "visible muscles"

I think it would be a lot more stable and organised over the long term than what we've been trying to do (which was having "muscles" = "muscular body type" and then trying to keep the rest from getting tagged with it, which led to frequent misunderstanding why seeing visible muscles couldn't get the "muscles" tag. That just hasn't worked very well.) But what do people think? Would people be ok with this?

Slightly off topic, but I'm going to undo the implication of musclegut to --> chubby for now that I just noticed was there. It doesn't fit with our "scale of fatness" that was decided on long after that implication was passed. And the amount of gut can vary by a significant amount so that muscleguts could range on that scale depending on how big that belly is. Also musclegut is not usually what people who are searching for "chubby" are envisioning in any case. If it should be implicated to anything, it maybe should be implicated to belly. Since that's a more accurate description of what it looks like. So that can be discussed. But that existing implication is in direct contradiction with everything else so I'm going to delete it for now.

parasprite said:
Previous discussions: forum #136884, forum #124380, (forum #146260 to a lesser degree), many others

This is really the only reason I can think of why that wouldn't work, and I've heard it before in several forms. That being said...I'm going to be pretty frank when I say that is a pretty bad reason, and I'll tell you why.

If the muscles tag has taught us anything it's that trying to restrict a broad term like this to a minimum size doesn't work unless someone is going to clean it up constantly. We have a wide tier of muscle choices (big_muscles, huge_muscles*, hyper_muscles) and related tags (musclegut, toned, many muscle groups, etc.) already in place if we need to tag something more restricted in size.

However, I'm not saying we need to make muscles an umbrella tag for all of this because I don't think that would solve any issues and make muscles broader than it needs to be, what I'm saying is we need to talk renaming the muscles tag before anything productive is going to happen with it.

If we don't rename it, we would probably need to rework the muscles tag from the ground up and implicate the muscle groups to it. In other words, we keep it the same and treat the sizes like breasts, penis, etc. which is certainly another option.

_{*huge_muscles still doesn't actually have an implication.}

Edit: I think pickle's more articulate on this one.

So... it looks like this was all forgotten :\

Fenrick said:
So... it looks like this was all forgotten :\

LIVE, DAMN YOU! *Uses defibrillator*