Hello everybody. I'm putting together a bit of a guide and I wanted to gather some feedback about what specific traits you personally use to tag anthro.

For example, a character with "an upright pose, flat back, fingers, and toes" would make me tag anthro. There are lots of traits but generally anything less than that and I find myself hesitant to tag it anthro. That's just me though.

Here are a few potential categories (for organizational purposes):

Obvious traits: "Yes, this is definitely anthro."

Potential traits: "A couple of these would work fine in most cases."

Traits that might go either way: "I might use one of these to tip the scale in borderline cases."

Unlikely traits: "This trait doesn't help me at all." or "This is definitely not anthro."

Keep in mind that there are no "right" or "wrong" answers to this question. I know a lot of people will differ in opinion here and I'm not expecting everyone to agree on amy particular case.

So e6, how do you anthro?

More often than that I tag anthro when I see artwork I like that is in dire need of more tags so that others can see it. Granted, it's a rather hypocritical policy, so I'll try to do better about being more consistent in tagging it. I do want other people to find the work, so it's in my best interest--and theirs--to tag art in such a way that more folks have access to it.

In general, I don't.
I pretty much never tag anthro, feels like a "filler" tag to me.
Tho I do tag feral.

I tag them by a combination of various traits: bipedal, human-like posture, breasts, fingered hands, navel, neck and head shape, human feet, eye and iris type, waist and hip shape, piercings, tool usage, etc.

When in doubt, I approach it from an another angle: is it feral enough to tag as feral? Would it fit under the bestiality tag? If not, it's an anthro.

Toony characters such as many ponies are usually hardest to pigeonhole, because of the lack of detail.

We might have slightly different definitions, but in 99.5% of cases I agree with how others use those tags. I rarely see anything that makes me think "that shouldn't be tagged as feral".

Peekaboo said:
In general, I don't.
I pretty much never tag anthro, feels like a "filler" tag to me.
Tho I do tag feral.

Pretty much this. I really only tag copyrights, characters and gender/genital tags.

I only tag positions when I find it necessary (such as the Piledriver and facesitting tags) and only really delve into filler when there aren't many other necessary tags.

Misappropriated said:
More often than that I tag anthro when I see artwork I like that is in dire need of more tags so that others can see it. Granted, it's a rather hypocritical policy, so I'll try to do better about being more consistent in tagging it. I do want other people to find the work, so it's in my best interest--and theirs--to tag art in such a way that more folks have access to it.

Funny, I end up doing the exact opposite. "This isn't remarkable enough for most people to vote up or down, and it'll probably never get tagged if I don't do it myself".

Peekaboo said:
In general, I don't.
I pretty much never tag anthro, feels like a "filler" tag to me.
Tho I do tag feral.

I tend to avoid anthro myself since I don't really care for most of it. I like to use feral -anthro since both are often forgotten and it gives me a greater chamce to find missed posts than just using feral. That being said I totally understand where you're coming from. I'll admit I rarely tag straight, gay, or bisexual simply because I tend to forget about it.

Genjar said:
I tag them by a combination of various traits: bipedal, human-like posture, breasts, fingered hands, navel, neck and head shape, human feet, eye and iris type, waist and hip shape, piercings, tool usage, etc.

We might have slightly different definitions, but in 99.5% of cases I agree with how others use those tags. I rarely see anything that makes me think "that shouldn't be tagged as feral".

Neck, head shape, and waist may be a little hard to explain, but I'm sure this should help. The others are perfect examples. Though I tend to avoid navel since all mammals have them anyways (although humans have more prominant ones than...say...horses).

Edit: Placental mammals*

Genjar said:
ony characters such as many ponies are usually hardest to pigeonhole, because of the lack of detail.

Yeah...I'm bad about that. I tend to tag ponies feral when they are at last "show-accurate" even though I know better. Mostly because stereotypical "furry-anthro" (bipedal, fingers, colored fur-skin) is comparatively uncommon. For whatever reason most people seem to prefer the rounded off hooves and horsecock regardless of what their body is shaped like.

I find pokemon the hardest myself. I tend to ignore them more than I should. >.>

Genjar said:
When in doubt, I approach it from an another angle: is it feral enough to tag as feral? Would it fit under the bestiality tag? If not, it's an anthro.

That's a brilliant way to look at it. I'm definitely including this.

Though I suppose it doesn't help much if you have 2 borderline cases having sex with eachother, but it'll at least get us most of the way there.

After reading through the responses, I have to laugh a bit about my use of the anthro tag. I almost always use it where relevant. Instead of looking at it like a "filler tag" I tend to look at it as 1 of the most defining tags of the piece. Without looking, I bet its one of the most used tags on the site, and definitely bigger than other body-type tags like feral. I feel like the site could be divided up in a pie chart like way, between feral, anthro, humanoids, etc.

But, I'm one of those people that likes to tag EVERY SINGLE LAST GOD DAMNED THING POSSIBLE... I realized I might have a problem when one of my posts got something like 35-40 tags... All on my own.

So, to answer the OP, I tag it a lot, whenever the character has a humanoid body type as well as "other" features. Upright bipedal features are obvious, but if it's somewhere between animal and anthro, I just make a judgment call on the specific piece. It would be nice to get some specific rules if possible, but I don't know if it is.

Tokaido said:
After reading through the responses, I have to laugh a bit about my use of the anthro tag. I almost always use it where relevant. Instead of looking at it like a "filler tag" I tend to look at it as 1 of the most defining tags of the piece. Without looking, I bet its one of the most used tags on the site, and definitely bigger than other body-type tags like feral. I feel like the site could be divided up in a pie chart like way, between feral, anthro, humanoids, etc.

But, I'm one of those people that likes to tag EVERY SINGLE LAST GOD DAMNED THING POSSIBLE... I realized I might have a problem when one of my posts got something like 35-40 tags... All on my own.

So, to answer the OP, I tag it a lot, whenever the character has a humanoid body type as well as "other" features. Upright bipedal features are obvious, but if it's somewhere between animal and anthro, I just make a judgment call on the specific piece. It would be nice to get some specific rules if possible, but I don't know if it is.

Logically that makes it seem less important given so much stuff here is anthro, it would seem feral and bestiality tags would be more important.

Human penis.
Just my 2 cents.