tl;dr: Tag What You See rule has been updated to allow for more leniency when tagging character names. See the updated rule here]For those who are unaware, there has been a lot of discussion and complaints recently regarding the very strict nature of our "Tag What You See" rule, which states (with very few exceptions) that the tags that are added to a post MUST be directly verifiable within the post itself, and that external (off-site) sources of information about the post can NOT be used.While this rule helps keep tagging clean and relevant on e621, it also leaves some room for disagreements over what exactly IS contained within a post. Example: post #318662. Under our current TWYS rule, this post would not receive the character tag "rainbow_dash" because there's nothing differentiating this character from any other human character with rainbow hair. However, the artist clearly intended for it to be a humanized Rainbow Dash, as evidenced by the source of the image and the artist's own claims at that source. This very often leads to heated disagreements between users, and has lead to artists requesting the removal of artwork from the site as well (usually also including posts where there were no tagging disagreements at all). Although we realize that it will be impossible to completely avoid such disagreements and takedowns, we really need to do something to try to minimize them at this point.As a result, effective immediately, we are amending the TWYS rule to try to account for these cases. The change is small but important, and is worded in such a way as to keep as much integrity for "Tag What You See" as we can while also allowing "common sense" when tagging characters.For reference, the old TWYS rule read as follows:

Tags should be directly verifiable from the picture itself wherever possible: that way there will be fewer disagreements. The only outside information that can be used to tag a post is the year the art was made and the artist or obvious character's name.

The updated TWYS rule reads as follows:

Tags should be directly verifiable from the picture itself wherever possible: that way there will be fewer disagreements. The only outside information that can be used to tag a post is the year the art was made and the artist or obvious character's name.

Exception for character names only:
You may use an OFFICIAL external source of information (the artist, commissioner, or character owner's gallery/website) when tagging a character name ONLY under the following conditions:

• 1) The external source of information is the artist, commissioner, or character owner's own words on their own gallery or website.

• 2) The post must have at least SOME evidence of the claimed character and can not have any evidence that CONFLICTS with what the external source is saying (e.g. a post can't be tagged "Character A" just because the external source says so, when the post does not actually contain any evidence of "Character A", or in fact looks more like "Character B" instead.) Again, there must be at least SOME evidence that the character is who it's claimed to be, but it does not have to be definitive proof.

This special exception to TWYS is ONLY for naming characters. YOU CAN NOT USE EXTERNAL INFORMATION to tag gender, species, or virtually anything else.

There will be times when it's still not clear what tags should be applied to an image. A moderator or administrator should be contacted to help resolve such cases.

For those who missed some of the discussions regarding this proposed rule change, please reference the discussion thread here: http://e621.net/forum/show/66521

No, I don't expect everyone to be happy with this decision, but the issue has reached a boiling point on the site, and thus requires administrative attention. For those who have been so adamant about following the site's TWYS rule to the letter, I ask that you please try to exhibit the same determination and resilience with adhering to and enforcing the updated TWYS rule. :)

And no, this obviously is not going to solve all of our tagging problems. It's a change meant to address one very specific tagging issue, but we'll still need to handle things on a case-by-case basis. We're just hoping that the number of those cases is going to decrease (or at least be settled much easier) with this updated rule, while also having character tagging make more sense instead of being "blissfully ignorant" at times.

As always, your feedback is welcome below, as well as questions or concerns.

Also, please be diligent in reporting violation of this rule (or how it was) while we make the transition. Not everyone will get it right off the bat and we want to give everyone some time to adjust to the new rule

One question. Is it possible to prove character in zoomed in picture by showing zoomed out picture (Like maybe post #218209 can prove twilight_sparkle tag on post #305623), or it must be always words of artist on his/her official page?

Secondly let's say that B is artist interpretation of C, and it's not easy to tell that it's truth. There are 3 pictures with B, but only on one of them there is written "It's C". Should all 3 picture get C tag, or just one where it's written?

This makes me sad . . .

Less sad since it's just name. That is why it doesn't bug me like crazy. If I read the new rule correctly, a name would be added, but a bust shot would still not be tagged dickgirl and such, right?

I hope otherwise, but I think tagging issues will still arise about gender and everything else. The same people who wanted name will want the other things. Not trying to be negative, I just think it will happen

CamKitty said:
This makes me sad . . .

Less sad since it's just name. That is why it doesn't bug me like crazy. If I read the new rule correctly, a name would be added, but a bust shot would still not be tagged dickgirl and such, right?

I hope otherwise, but I think tagging issues will still arise about gender and everything else. The same people who wanted name will want the other things. Not trying to be negative, I just think it will happen

I'm sure they will, but such cases usually involve the changing of one tag into another (e.g. changing "female" to "herm"), which causes significantly worse tagging/searching problems than just having a character name tagged on a post versus just not having any character tagged at all. Yes, that can 'still' cause issues, but fairly minor ones from what I've seen, and is preferred over the tag wars, bans, and takedowns that we've been doing instead.

Gilda_The_Gryphon said:
One question. Is it possible to prove character in zoomed in picture by showing zoomed out picture (Like maybe post #218209 can prove twilight_sparkle tag on post #305623), or it must be always words of artist on his/her official page?

Secondly let's say that B is artist interpretation of C, and it's not easy to tell that it's truth. There are 3 pictures with B, but only on one of them there is written "It's C". Should all 3 picture get C tag, or just one where it's written?

I would say that yes, both of those posts need to be tagged with Twilight_Sparkle. If the post is the child/parent of a larger, uncropped post, then I'd say that you could use the information obtained from the uncropped post to assist with tagging the cropped post (since "figuring out" that it's Twilight Sparkle in the image is as simple as just viewing the child/post.)

As far as your second question, that sounds like something that may need to be handled on a case-by-case basis, but it might help me to understand if you can provide any existing examples on the site or maybe word it a different way.

CamKitty said:
This makes me sad . . .

Less sad since it's just name. That is why it doesn't bug me like crazy. If I read the new rule correctly, a name would be added, but a bust shot would still not be tagged dickgirl and such, right?

I hope otherwise, but I think tagging issues will still arise about gender and everything else. The same people who wanted name will want the other things. Not trying to be negative, I just think it will happen

Ya, this will only affect name tagging, nothing else, also, I am in favour of this change and I don't want this for gender and the likes, names is useful without any real negatives, while gender would really open the flood gates.

And this is because name adds something without taking or changing, while gender would change.

I was wondering when you guys would do something about this.

It'll just make a different kind of argument pop up,but it's better than doing nothing. . .

Dominion said:
I was wondering when you guys would do something about this.

It'll just make a different kind of argument pop up,but it's better than doing nothing. . .

Correct, it will resolve some arguments but leave new room for others to start. However, the idea is that these situations should end up being less destructive to the site now than they were before (bans, takedowns, etc), while trying to have as little impact on "TWYS" as we can.

And by 'discussion' you meant 'I asked what people thought of this idea on the forum and the response was almost universally "That's retarded", so we decided to make the change anyway'.

But by all means, go ahead and go against everything that TWYS stands for. All in the name of quelling the occasional childish artist temper tantrum/hissy fit, right? Wouldn't want to step on any artist's toes, that'd be really super bad and stuff.

This is essentially a spit in the face of everyone who has been an ardent supporter of the TWYS rule. "Thanks for all the hard work keeping tags neat and within the purview of the site's rules, and making this the best repository of furry art on the internet, but we've decided to cave in to crybabies and undermine all your hard work and the integrity of our tagging system. Better luck next time."

Digital_Kindness said:
And by 'discussion' you meant 'I asked what people thought of this idea on the forum and the response was almost universally "That's retarded", so we decided to make the change anyway'.

But by all means, go ahead and go against everything that TWYS stands for. All in the name of quelling the occasional childish artist temper tantrum/hissy fit, right? Wouldn't want to step on any artist's toes, that'd be really super bad and stuff.

You mean that all those users complaining in comments are part of the Great Artist Conspiracy?
I understand that some people don't like this change, and I'm not sure if I like it or not. But dismissing voice of many users like that is just rude and dumb.

Char said:
As far as your second question, that sounds like something that may need to be handled on a case-by-case basis, but it might help me to understand if you can provide any existing examples on the site or maybe word it a different way.

I simply meant that if doxy made another pic similar to post #318662 then whether there must be official confirmation "Yes, this is still rainbow dash.", or we can guess that since it looks like in pic which is tag rainbow dash we can also tag it rainbow dash.

Or to say it in other words, does relation looks like* is transitive. Is it like, that if doxy's humanized RD looks like RD, and new pic looks like doxy's humanized RD therefore new pic looks like RD.

Digital_Kindness said:
And by 'discussion' you meant 'I asked what people thought of this idea on the forum and the response was almost universally "That's retarded", so we decided to make the change anyway'.

But by all means, go ahead and go against everything that TWYS stands for. All in the name of quelling the occasional childish artist temper tantrum/hissy fit, right? Wouldn't want to step on any artist's toes, that'd be really super bad and stuff.

There were a lot of sensationalist responses to the proposed solution from people who seemed more concerned with staying-the-course no matter what rather than addressing a very real issue that the site has been having. And the response was hardly universally "that's retarded", there were several who thought the rule change was either good or at least understandable, given the alternative of doing nothing.

Additionally, I made the previous discussion thread specifically for some of our most active users (recall that I did not link the thread in the News at any point, because I wanted to hear mostly from those who I knew would be concerned or against the proposed rule change.). Even then, the feeling that it would be a bad change was hardly universal; a lot of what I saw were people assuming that this one exception will lead to future exceptions down the road and a gradual eroding of "TWYS" altogether. I find that concern to be completely unfounded, personally.

And I'm not sure how you're determining that we're going against "everything TWYS stands for" by allowing this one small exception while still incorporating "TWYS" even within the exception. So if you could help me to understand why you feel that way, that would be greatly appreciated.

Your attitude towards artists is exactly the kind of attitude that causes takedowns. The more artwork that gets removed, and the more artists we have to put on the Avoid Posting list, the less enjoyable EVERYBODY'S e621.net experience will be as a result. Keep in mind that while artists may not give a damn about what e621's policies are, they're NOT going to be ok with e621.net users constantly trying to drag the artist into it when there's a tag war over whether a character tag should be on a picture or not. I've been contacted by artists more than once for this very reason.

I want to encourage you to not think that e621.net is going to fall apart now over this small exception, and we'll see how things are looking a month or two down the road. If it seems that things are only getting worse as a result, then we'll try to come up with another solution at that time. But simply doing nothing is not an option.

Gilda_The_Gryphon said:
You mean that all those users complaining in comments are part of the Great Artist Conspiracy?
I understand that some people don't like this change, and I'm not sure if I like it or not. But dismissing voice of many users like that is just rude and dumb.

I simply meant that if doxy made another pic similar to post #318662 then whether there must be official confirmation "Yes, this is still rainbow dash.", or we can guess that since it looks like in pic which is tag rainbow dash we can also tag it rainbow dash.

Or to say it in other words, does relation looks like* is transitive. Is it like, that if doxy's humanized RD looks like RD, and new pic looks like doxy's humanized RD therefore new pic looks like RD.

If it's still Doxy's humanized RD (and not a different artist that just happened to draw a very similar looking character), then I'd say it'd be ok to tag it as RD as well. I think the odds are pretty good though that Doxy will make it obvious who the character is supposed to be on his site.

The best solution would be to move the site to a hosting nation that isn't affected by takedowns in the first place, but you've made clear that won't happen, so...I guess what I say is irrelevant, then. Browsing and not contributing seems to be the way to go, judging by the history of everything I've said and done so far and its response.

Digital_Kindness said:
And by 'discussion' you meant 'I asked what people thought of this idea on the forum and the response was almost universally "That's retarded", so we decided to make the change anyway'.

But by all means, go ahead and go against everything that TWYS stands for. All in the name of quelling the occasional childish artist temper tantrum/hissy fit, right? Wouldn't want to step on any artist's toes, that'd be really super bad and stuff.

This is essentially a spit in the face of everyone who has been an ardent supporter of the TWYS rule. "Thanks for all the hard work keeping tags neat and within the purview of the site's rules, and making this the best repository of furry art on the internet, but we've decided to cave in to crybabies and undermine all your hard work and the integrity of our tagging system. Better luck next time."

And everything gets tagged! But just the identity tags, no fetishes, or positions or numbers! and just true identity tags! no genders or species, just pure bred names. and none of those fancy nick names or furry names. Just pure, Anglo-saxon catholic names. You know what? nobody gets tagged.

Ahhhh america.

but no seriously.. When did we become so bipartisan. Some people want a very strict interpretation of the founding rule set, and others want a very loose..

Well I'm starting my own tagging party. The Awesomecrats. Our party platform stands on loose but heavily monitor tag what you see morals of secondary gender traits and names for everyone. We are also for no new taxes and lean moderation, with transparency for all!

Foobaria said:
The best solution would be to move the site to a hosting nation that isn't affected by takedowns in the first place, but you've made clear that won't happen, so...I guess what I say is irrelevant, then. Browsing and not contributing seems to be the way to go, judging by the history of everything I've said and done so far and its response.

Correct, that will never happen at LEAST as long as Varka and I are involved on this site. Neither of us want to be associated with a site that does not respect copyright owners' wishes to have their material removed if they so choose.

The CORRECT way to go about acquiring and retaining artwork is to give artists and character owners INCENTIVE to allow e621.net to host their artwork; if an artist views their artwork existing on e621.net as beneficial for themselves in some way, then everybody wins. We'll always continue working towards incentivising both artists and users alike into contributing to the site.

Wont this be abused? I can see it already, now ANY image with a girl with pink hair will be tagged fluttershy....even when it looks nothing like it -.-

Conker said:
Wont this be abused? I can see it already, now ANY image with a girl with pink hair will be tagged fluttershy....even when it looks nothing like it -.-

We'll use logical thinking.. hair style / eye color is big when tagging humanized ponies

Conker said:
Wont this be abused? I can see it already, now ANY image with a girl with pink hair will be tagged fluttershy....even when it looks nothing like it -.-

Can you enlighten me on how many images that has been so far? I'm currently aware only of a few out of the nearly 300,000 posts on the site.

Char said:
The CORRECT way to go about acquiring and retaining artwork is to give artists and character owners INCENTIVE to allow e621.net to host their artwork; if an artist views their artwork existing on e621.net as beneficial for themselves in some way, then everybody wins.

I don't consider it "winning" when it's bending-over backward and relaxing rules that make the most sense for the greatest majority of people to effectively condone stuck-up attitude. In my OPINION, if an artist is so uptight about their art/gamemod/music/whatthefuckever that they have to control it like it's their first-born child (note I'm talking about situations that do not involve money changing hands, therefore ego is the only consideration), the world is much-better-off without their art and they should stop posting it entirely and go see a psychiatrist about their mental problems instead.

The Minecraft modding community is the most vitriolic and controlling cesspool of ever-living shitstorm for just this very reason, that this kind of behaviour is not only endorsed but encouraged. I hate to see any other medium drop to that disgusting level.

If a person is not physically, professionally, or financially harmed by an action, and their own deserved freedoms and rights are not impacted by that action, they need to get the fuck over it or get the fuck out.

In my opinion.

Foobaria said:
I don't consider it "winning" when it's bending-over backward and relaxing rules that make the most sense for the greatest majority of people to effectively condone stuck-up attitude. In my OPINION, if an artist is so uptight about their art/gamemod/music/whatthefuckever that they have to control it like it's their first-born child (note I'm talking about situations that do not involve money changing hands, therefore ego is the only consideration), the world is much-better-off without their art and they should stop posting it entirely and go see a psychiatrist about their mental problems instead.

The Minecraft modding community is the most vitriolic and controlling cesspool of ever-living shitstorm for just this very reason, that this kind of behaviour is not only endorsed but encouraged. I hate to see any other medium drop to that disgusting level.

If a person is not physically, professionally, or financially harmed by an action, and their own deserved freedoms and rights are not impacted by that action, they need to get the fuck over it or get the fuck out.

In my opinion.

The vast majority of outcry regarding TWYS for character names was from e621 users themselves, not artists. Although yes, there are some artists who have complained, I rarely see them involved in the tag wars themselves. We can't be ignoring the outcry from e621.net's own users too, especially when it's as loud as it is about this particular tagging issue.

Foobaria said:
If a person is not physically, professionally, or financially harmed by an action, and their own deserved freedoms and rights are not impacted by that action, they need to get the fuck over it or get the fuck out.

e621.net itself is potentially harmed both professionally and financially when the site's users seem intensely divided over the site's policies, especially once that manifests itself as content lost. The site can not take the position of "fuck bitchy artists, YOLO!" and survive; our own users would make sure of that by migrating to other websites, or starting one of their own, once they become completely dissatisfied with the amount of artwork that has to be removed. Again, that's why the pressure is on us (the e621 administration, but particularly Varka and myself) to try to prevent that from happening without ruining our own names.

Conker said:
Wont this be abused? I can see it already, now ANY image with a girl with pink hair will be tagged fluttershy....even when it looks nothing like it -.-

Only if the artist source says so.

I do see your point though. I don't like it, but the site IS a business, they need to do what they need to do

Every triumph of reason is to be cherished, no matter how small. I applaud you.

CamKitty said:
Only if the artist source says so.

I do see your point though. I don't like it, but the site IS a business, they need to do what they need to do

Yes, I mean, believe me, I REALLY REALLY REALLY want it to be as simple as just "TWYS". I really do, cause that would just make everything easier. Unfortunately, it's been demonstrated over and over for months/years now that it can't ALWAYS be that simple; so we're trying to maintain as much integrity for "TWYS" as we can while also allowing for cases where "TWYS" is problematic but can be resolved with minimal negative impact on someone's ability to search/blacklist properly. Adding an accurate (i.e. "common-sense", with supporting evidence) character tag versus having no character tag at all is such a situation.

Char said:
Yes, I mean, believe me, I REALLY REALLY REALLY want it to be as simple as just "TWYS". I really do, cause that would just make everything easier. Unfortunately, it's been demonstrated over and over for months/years now that it can't ALWAYS be that simple; so we're trying to maintain as much integrity for "TWYS" as we can while also allowing for cases where "TWYS" is problematic but can be resolved with minimal negative impact on someone's ability to search/blacklist properly. Adding an accurate (i.e. "common-sense", with supporting evidence) character tag versus having no character tag at all is such a situation.

I get it, I don't like it, but I get it. :P

Character name from source, everything else the same as it was. I will remember when tagging :P

I fully support this.

Since I have MLP blacklisted, this will also work towards blacklisting things that have been MLP'd, for example.

Infact, the picture in Char's first post is one thing I got worked up about, but decided against posting.

YOU CAN NOT USE EXTERNAL INFORMATION to tag gender, species, or virtually anything else.

Let's imagine the following situation: a flat chested FEMALE is wearing androgynous clothes, as there are no FEMALE "atributes" and SHE is wearing MASCULINE-like clothes, someone can tag it as MALE and it is probably correct by this rule. Well, this is probably what the person saw.

I'd suggest to tag at least the gender and species as the artist/the character owner wishes or is on art description. Why? What I see may not be what you see, but what the artist/character owner create is what it is. And this probably will finish the tag trolling.

I often see flat chested females tagged as cuntboy and and vice-versa. Well, I find it annoying as hell.

NSFW said:
Let's imagine the following situation: a flat chested FEMALE is wearing androgynous clothes, as there are no FEMALE "atributes" and SHE is wearing MASCULINE-like clothes, someone can tag it as MALE and it is probably correct by this rule. Well, this is probably what the person saw.

I'd suggest to tag at least the gender and species as the artist/the character owner wishes or is on art description. Why? What I see may not be what you see, but what the artist/character owner create is what it is. And this probably will finish the tag trolling.

I often see flat chested females tagged as cuntboy and and vice-versa. Well, I find it annoying as hell.

The issue with this is that you can not even begin to derive that information from that picture itself; if there's no evidence to even SUGGEST that it's a herm, then it can't be tagged as such.

The reason why this doesn't apply as much to tagging character names is that usually there IS evidence within the image to suggest who the character is; sometimes it's not definitive proof, but it narrows things down. Using an extra bit of information from an official source to definitively tag the character name isn't such a big deal at that point. Using external information to completely change the apparent gender of a character IS a big deal, and so it's not tolerated.

Again, this change to TWYS is not intended to do anything more than solve a problem with characters remaining untagged when it's fairly obvious to most people who the character is, especially given the usual context of e621.net's content.

NSFW said:
Let's imagine the following situation: a flat chested FEMALE is wearing androgynous clothes, as there are no FEMALE "atributes" and SHE is wearing MASCULINE-like clothes, someone can tag it as MALE and it is probably correct by this rule. Well, this is probably what the person saw.

I'd suggest to tag at least the gender and species as the artist/the character owner wishes or is on art description. Why? What I see may not be what you see, but what the artist/character owner create is what it is. And this probably will finish the tag trolling.

I often see flat chested females tagged as cuntboy and and vice-versa. Well, I find it annoying as hell.

Let's not open the floodgates

this is great! :D

As the GOP of the awesomecrat party, me and my party of 20 kazillion constituents approve this new rule

Ahh, finally. I was getting tired of the "HUUUUUUURRR IT'S AN APPLE NOT AN ORANGE!!!" argument.

I can live by that

I may be making this suggestion a bit late, but to curb all problems there is something you can do Char:

Make another 'class' of person. Not quite an admin, but nearly. Make it so that the original poster can put the initial tags in, but only this new class and Admins can make changes to the tags.

This will eliminate virtually all tag wars and all TGYS problems.

I am sorry to say, but I am going to agree a bit with DK. This new line will only create another problem in about a year from now. Just like legalized Marijuana. Give it 10-20 years, there will be another drug that will be on the table for legalization.

Make another 'class' of person. Not quite an admin, but nearly. Make it so that the original poster can put the initial tags in, but only this new class and Admins can make changes to the tags.

And that's your better option? Because there are few cases of tag warring, you want to take away ability for being useful from all members? It's like curing a sneezing by decapitation.

_Waffles_ said:
Just like legalized Marijuana. Give it 10-20 years, there will be another drug that will be on the table for legalization.

Yeah, they're going to legalize more dangerous drugs like alcohol and cigarettes... oh, wait.

If that second drug is worth considering legalization, then sure. But don't let that hypothetical drug be your reason against marijuana. They will be judged separately and as fairly as our society allows.

And the same will happen with the rules here. Just because a rule got relaxed a little now is no reason it has to be relaxed more in the future, and anyone who tries to argue otherwise doesn't know how to argue.

In other words, slippery slopes all over the place here.

I applaud this change. It's going to let people tag what any sane person calls a duck as a duck while not interfering with the spirit of the rule.

The only people truly wanting legalized marijuana are people who are already using marijuana illegally or are people who want to use it, but dont due to fear/respect of the law. Methamphetamine has some great medical aspects to it, but is still illegal due to people not able to have control due to human nature. But this is not about drugs so I will stop.

I am just making a parallel. This amendment to the TWYS rule makes sense, but the problem is that this amendment is not going to stop tagging problems, just swap the problems to another area (gender most likely) from "Well the artists said *BLANK* and we allow character names...."

I just see a slippery slope getting drenched in soap.

This special exception to TWYS is ONLY for naming characters. YOU CAN NOT USE EXTERNAL INFORMATION to tag gender, species, or virtually anything else.

I have one question. What if the character is e.g. male and on the pic I can deceptively see him as a female. I have to tag bad information?
Or maybe more possible option: character is a cuntboy and someone tag him as a female. Chest isn't seen. So it should be tagged wrongly as a female or as a cuntboy? Cause without external information no-one could know it's cuntboy but tagging wrongly is a bit... strange.

Regards, Smokofenek.

Main problem is that people are stubborn (no offense but it's the truth). And sometimes the voice of some users is louder that the actual artist.

Just giving my point of view on the arguments. I've never been on one personally (and I don't want to), so this may be a bit narrow

Honestly I like the rule and it's addendum. Yet I can also see the problem that if it is tagged as a character that is herm but you cant tell whether or not it is, then that could start a debate could it not? Yet as far as I see, the only problem would be that if a name tag have been previously proven to a specific gender by more than, say a good 86% of total posts with same character's name tag, then I should say that should be the tagged gender if all you see is the chest up or only see the character from the back. And yes I pulled that number out my ass, just giving an idea of what can be used for a future addendum if it is required and a gender tag war is spawned over a character name tag. Granted if it were to come to, say things like Renamon or Pikachu, then the gender tag should be TWYS. Seeing as yes in the animes the digimon or pokemon were called by those species names, but it is simply species as it has been tagged as many times now. Granted this whole 'little' rant of mine is simply to try to give warning about the tag war might flood the site since the 'Insert Character Name' might be created originally and most of the time as a specific gender and have it commissioned or simply drawn rarely as a male or female or even as a herm or other intersexed gender such as Cuntboy or Dickgirl, depending on the original gender of course. Of which I say if an 'alternate gender' picture of a known named character to be tagged as an 'alternate gender' version of said character. Just a heads up 'rant' from me, Gender tagging war may pop up in the future with 'Named' characters appearing in pictures. I just hope my rant is unfounded.

_Waffles_ said:
I am just making a parallel. This amendment to the TWYS rule makes sense, but the problem is that this amendment is not going to stop tagging problems, just swap the problems to another area (gender most likely)

That was kinda the intention of the rule, switching it from one big and annoying part to a smaller, less annoying one.

And that soap pouring on the slippery slope is kinda the same thing the radio industry said to tape recorders, politicians said to blood in games, the RIAA that said that a single Ipod full with pirated music is worth 8 billion $ and so on, this is not a vertical slope dropping done where you reach terminal velocity while sliding but more something where you only realize that slope is there because your spilled milk starts to slowly flow away from you.

Smokofenek said:
I have one question. What if the character is e.g. male and on the pic I can deceptively see him as a female. I have to tag bad information?

You want to tag female and Crossgender

Smokofenek said:
Or maybe more possible option: character is a cuntboy and someone tag him as a female. Chest isn't seen. So it should be tagged wrongly as a female or as a cuntboy? Cause without external information no-one could know it's cuntboy but tagging wrongly is a bit... strange.

That is an interesting scenario, depends on the character, if he looks more girly or more manly (trap).

I think we should just close this site, or replace everything with cute pictures of kittens. Not only would this end all drama, but after all if we allow people watch furry art it's just one step to commit bestiality in real life.

Char, now's the moment to lock this thread.

I'm looking at the previous thread concerning this rule, and the first 3 pages is everyone saying they hate it. Yet, here it is. Yay.

Gilda_The_Gryphon said:
I think we should just close this site, or replace everything with cute pictures of kittens. Not only would this end all drama, but after all if we allow people watch furry art it's just one step to commit bestiality in real life.

Gilda, stahp.

Pyke said:
I'm looking at the previous thread concerning this rule, and the first 3 pages is everyone saying they hate it. Yet, here it is. Yay.

Seeing as I'm in favor of this and also posted on all two Yes, only two pages...
You may need glasses, or a bigger font.

Also, only a handful of the people who didn't like this presented actual reason why they disliked it other than "because I say so".

Thank you. I'm glad that we finally can remove some of the unnecessary tagging arbitration when tagging character names. Images should be tagged what they are, not what people think they are.

It's nice to know that the issue wasn't being ignored by the admins. Respect.

Smokofenek said:
I have one question. What if the character is e.g. male and on the pic I can deceptively see him as a female. I have to tag bad information?
Or maybe more possible option: character is a cuntboy and someone tag him as a female. Chest isn't seen. So it should be tagged wrongly as a female or as a cuntboy? Cause without external information no-one could know it's cuntboy but tagging wrongly is a bit... strange.

Regards, Smokofenek.

Tag ONLY name, add nothing else not seen

Thumbs up to the staff

after reading all the comments, I have to say I have no problem with the change. It doesn't change much and the gender thing... if a character has a flat chest, has a pussy but you can see the face wouldn't you tag it female!? But if you see a character with a male face and a pussy and no breasts wouldn't you tag it cuntboy? Some artist even draw these cuntboy's super cute but some actually draw in an adam's apple to get there point across. If all else fails female is the way to go.

CamKitty said:
Only if the artist source says so.

I do see your point though. I don't like it, but the site IS a business, they need to do what they need to do

A business? ....not really, it may be now run by someone who runs a toy business but we are not customers here. This isnt really a business, however if you find a business for viewing porn images please do tell me lol

Char said:
Can you enlighten me on how many images that has been so far? I'm currently aware only of a few out of the nearly 300,000 posts on the site.

Ive seen it on a few, even arguments between 2 groups of people who think this is fluttershy vs this is the artist's OC....its kinda bad and happens more then you think, its not too hard to find.

--------

Oh 1 last comment....

This can be abused in a rather funny way as well...

Artist paints a picture of a potato, and says its fluttershy, by this sites new rule, a potato would be tagged as fluttershy lol

Now I know that example is an extreme one, but it can happen in littler matters, from chars with similar hair eyes ect, and the artist not mentioning it or just lying to screw with people.

Conker said:
Ive seen it on a few, even arguments between 2 groups of people who think this is fluttershy vs this is the artist's OC....its kinda bad and happens more then you think, its not too hard to find.

Surely, considering the tagging policies here, no sensible artist would create an OC that looks exactly the same as a similar character?

Conker said:
Now I know that example is an extreme one, but it can happen in littler matters, from chars with similar hair eyes ect, and the artist not mentioning it or just lying to screw with people.

That already happened before this new addendum. At least with the new rule you can stop the majority of arguments from even happening, keeping them to a minimum.

Conker said:
Artist paints a picture of a potato, and says its fluttershy, by this sites new rule, a potato would be tagged as fluttershy lol

That has never happened, nor will it. Even on the unlikely chance that it did, I'm sure an admin would be around make a decision. Most likely people would just agree to tag it as a potato anyways.

Conker said:
Oh 1 last comment....

This can be abused in a rather funny way as well...

Artist paints a picture of a potato, and says its fluttershy, by this sites new rule, a potato would be tagged as fluttershy lol

• 2) The post must have at least SOME evidence of the claimed character and can not have any evidence that CONFLICTS with what the external source is saying (e.g. a post can't be tagged "Character A" just because the external source says so, when the post does not actually contain any evidence of "Character A", or in fact looks more like "Character B" instead.) Again, there must be at least SOME evidence that the character is who it's claimed to be, but it does not have to be definitive proof.

TWYS rule is stupid in itself, you force these things of getting people to tag just based on what they see instead of going by what they actually are. This is where all the disagreements come in and people get all pissy about it, because A) You could be insulting the artist and/or creator of the character who made it, and B) Having people demanding removal of images because you are getting people to forcefully tag it by what they may look like, which would indeed be incorrect tagging of the original character.

Gender tagging is an issue, forcefully tagging them incorrectly is a bit of an insult to the creators character by calling them what they're not. I would of expected a better way of images getting tagged, just to tag them of what they actually ARE, because there are thousands of incorrectly tagged images all over this site based upon this TWYS rule which I find wrong sometimes, and searching for specific images on this site ends up bringing in ones that shouldn't even be in that tag list.

not that I'm an artist, but if I was one, I'd want my art properly tagged as what I intended it to be rather than someone else's subjective idea of what it looked like to them.

ShadWolf said:
You could be insulting the artist and/or creator of the character who made it

Versus alienating users who suddenly can't search or blacklist an image they've seen? Tagging for image qualities beyond character names is important for the usage of the site and has no personal implication.
If the artist takes it as an insult, perhaps he or she might take insult to the fact that the negative light on the traffic light, the red light, happened to also be his or her favorite color.

What about the ambiguous gender tag? If you go to the source and verify a character is male or female, should it still be tagged as ambiguous gender?

v00d00pizzaman said:
What about the ambiguous gender tag? If you go to the source and verify a character is male or female, should it still be tagged as ambiguous gender?

This amendment has nothing to do with gender tags. Just character names.

ShadWolf said:
-snip-

This is database with a search function, subjectively tagging would result in much bigger flaws for the search to work than an objectively tagging of an outsider ever would.
This is the scientific way, to take facts of what you see or measure, and try to find the rules that bind those facts together, you do not take the end product or assume what should be seen and try to find facts to support this.
There is no hard evidence of a hermaphrodite on the picture (penis and vagina on a single character) so it does not get to be assumed to be one just because the fictional character was one on the last picture.

This is however also what this rule change may help to solve, search for the character if you wish to see the character, search for the gender if you wish to be presented pictures containing people easily identifiable of this gender in the pictures themselves.

nilo said:
not that I'm an artist, but if I was one, I'd want my art properly tagged as what I intended it to be rather than someone else's subjective idea of what it looked like to them.

This sword cuts deeply in both directions, isn't the artist his perception of his creation ultimately flawed because he conceived it? Didn't he put thought into his creation, something that goes with his pictures, a small story to tell why he had the idea to draw this, why he had the idea to draw it the way he drew it?
How are we supposed to see his thoughts? Sure, he may give us insight about them but if we look at his creation, we see what he did and we only see the result, the finished work.
This flawed perception of your own thoughts and creations is the reason why there are editors for books who make sure you didn't typo to much, but also to check for flaws in logic, for holes in the plot, for a smooth flow of the story.
This is the same reason why getting a second opinion is worth so much, a different perspective may give you a better view on the same problem, the reason why it happened to all of us that we stood once inside the forest but couldn't see the forest because all those stupid trees were standing in our view.

What the artist wants to create and what he finally is creating isn't always the same, if surely happened to you that you wanted to cook spaghetti, but added a smudge of salt too much and created some sort of thin saltworms.

_Waffles_ said:

Make another 'class' of person. Not quite an admin, but nearly. Make it so that the original poster can put the initial tags in, but only this new class and Admins can make changes to the tags.

This will eliminate virtually all tag wars and all TGYS problems.

That's dumb. That's like how deviant art and FA handle tagging.. and uugh that's the worst idea.

Conker said:
A business? ....not really, it may be now run by someone who runs a toy business but we are not customers here. This isnt really a business, however if you find a business for viewing porn images please do tell me lol

e621 is owned by Dragonfruit Ventures LLC, not Bad Dragon. We do run a business here, and that business is what keeps the lights on, you just get the byproduct of said business, a free website for you to browse completely unhindered~

Renard_Queenston said:
Surely, considering the tagging policies here, no sensible artist would create an OC that looks exactly the same as a similar character?

Its happend before, Ive seen a lot of TWOKINDS fights where a artist made a OC that looked excatly like a char from twokinds, it sprung up a lot of fights on tagging.

tony311 said:
2) The post must have at least SOME evidence of the claimed character and can not have any evidence that CONFLICTS with what the external source is saying (e.g. a post can't be tagged "Character A" just because the external source says so, when the post does not actually contain any evidence of "Character A", or in fact looks more like "Character B" instead.) Again, there must be at least SOME evidence that the character is who it's claimed to be, but it does not have to be definitive proof.

Ok, so If I get a image of a potato, put a pink wig on it, say its fluttershy, by these new rules it should be tagged "Fluttershy_(mlp)" Pink hair, and artist saying so, see my point now?

Conner said:
Ok, so If I get a image of a potato, put a pink wig on it, say its fluttershy, by these new rules it should be tagged "Fluttershy_(mlp)" Pink hair, and artist saying so, see my point now?

No, because:

1) No one will take you seriously.
2) A potato. Really?
3) It would be obvious that you would be trolling
4) Not just hair
5) Fuck you. That's why.

Char said:
Using external information to completely change the apparent gender of a character IS a big deal, and so it's not tolerated.

Let me understand something: if someone draw, for example, a 22+ flat chested non-feminine FEMALE character dressing a MASCULINE tuxedo and someone tags it as male, can I fix such thing or people are going to nag me for this? [I know girls who likes to do this, but get real angry when you ask if they're male.]

Note: all those 503 errors are real annoying... I'm trying to edit this for like 15 minutes!

CamKitty said:
Let's not open the floodgates

I'm not trying to cause drama, I'm just asking.

NSFW said:
Let me understand something: if someone draw, for example, a 22+ flat chested non-feminine FEMALE character dressing a MASCULINE tuxedo and someone tags it as male, can I fix such thing or people are going to nag me for this? [I know girls who likes to do this, but get real angry when you ask if they're male.]

Note: all those 503 errors are real annoying... I'm trying to edit this for like 15 minutes!

I'm not trying to cause drama, I'm just asking.

What the character is supposed to be is meaningless.
What is obvious in the picture is what is tagged, with this one exception of character names.
So if it was obviously female, i.e. face, figure etc. but flat chested and dressed like a man, the it would be tagged as female, and probably crossdressing and some other things.
But, if it's flat chested, and has no obvious feminine features it would be tagged as male.

Conker said:
Its happend before, Ive seen a lot of TWOKINDS fights where a artist made a OC that looked excatly like a char from twokinds, it sprung up a lot of fights on tagging.

Ok, so If I get a image of a potato, put a pink wig on it, say its fluttershy, by these new rules it should be tagged "Fluttershy_(mlp)" Pink hair, and artist saying so, see my point now?

If you put a pink tail and a butterfly cutie mark on it, I'd tag that as fluttershy, and potato.

Really people, it's not complicated. Nothing changes, except that a character tag is taken from source. NOTHING ELSE changes in the rules, so stop getting clarification if you understood the rule before.

Geez . . .

Renard_Queenston said:
No, because:

1) No one will take you seriously.
2) A potato. Really?
3) It would be obvious that you would be trolling
4) Not just hair
5) Fuck you. That's why.

Remain civil, dude

Conker said:
Ok, so If I get a image of a potato, put a pink wig on it, say its fluttershy, by these new rules it should be tagged "Fluttershy_(mlp)" Pink hair, and artist saying so, see my point now?

Char said:
2) The post must have at least SOME evidence of the claimed character and can not have any evidence that CONFLICTS with what the external source is saying (e.g. a post can't be tagged "Character A" just because the external source says so, when the post does not actually contain any evidence of "Character A", or in fact looks more like "Character B" instead.) Again, there must be at least SOME evidence that the character is who it's claimed to be, but it does not have to be definitive proof.

Please make sure you have a complete understanding of the rule before asking about any potential issues it may cause. :)

NSFW said:
Let me understand something: if someone draw, for example, a 22+ flat chested non-feminine FEMALE character dressing a MASCULINE tuxedo and someone tags it as male, can I fix such thing or people are going to nag me for this? [I know girls who likes to do this, but get real angry when you ask if they're male.]

It simply depends on what the character appears to be. If they look indistinguishable from a male, then you tag it as male. It's not that e621.net tags are saying "this is _______", they're saying "this looks like ________" (which is the only natural result when following TWYS; ...I mean, you're tagging what you SEE, so the tags are saying "looks like ____").

ShadWolf said:
TWYS rule is stupid in itself, you force these things of getting people to tag just based on what they see instead of going by what they actually are.

Bullshit. These are not photographs: These are drawings. None of these characters exist. All of this is a total fantasy.

What is in the image is what there is. There's no "real thing" behind the image to refer to.

If what's in the image doesn't look like what the artist says it is supposed to be, then the artist did a shitty job of drawing the art. End of story.

NSFW said:
Let me understand something: if someone draw, for example, a 22+ flat chested non-feminine FEMALE character dressing a MASCULINE tuxedo and someone tags it as male, can I fix such thing or people are going to nag me for this? [I know girls who likes to do this, but get real angry when you ask if they're male.]

It simply depends on what the character appears to be. If they look indistinguishable from a male, then you tag it as male. It's not that e621.net tags are saying "this is _______", they're saying "this looks like ________" (which is the only natural result when following TWYS; ...I mean, you're tagging what you SEE, so the tags are saying "looks like ____").

I wonder what were to happen if we tagged both genders in cases like these

ok so I take it that its safe to tag my art with my characters name
but their gender are still WYS right?

Folseh said:
ok so I take it that its safe to tag my art with my characters name
but their gender are still WYS right?

Yes/no
If the character isn't obvious in the picture the source has to confirm it.
If the source given doesn't somehow give information as to what character is depicted then you still TWYS.

And as to gender, still TWYS.

Hammie said:
Yes/no
If the character isn't obvious in the picture the source has to confirm it.
If the source given doesn't somehow give information as to what character is depicted then you still TWYS.

And as to gender, still TWYS.

Yes but my sources (being my own submissions on FA) often have the character name out in the open as those are my characters

Folseh said:
Yes but my sources (being my own submissions on FA) often have the character name out in the open as those are my characters

Yep, that's all you should need.

Shame we cant just upvote/downvote individual tags on a picture like comments are handled