We all know the site's preference toward TWYS guidelines, reasoning that tags are only in place for the sake of finding an image, NEVER for the sake of literally stating what's supposed to be in the image.

If a post depicts a scene that's supposed to be in a holodeck full of fake trees and grass, we tag it with trees and grass, not holograms and nothing else. If a character is a man but appears to be a woman in an isolated image, that one image gets tagged accordingly. If an artist draws a dragon but it looks just like a crocodile, it's probably gonna be called a crocodile. This makes sense; people looking for trees, women and crocodiles will get these images without having to guess at their true identities of holograms, men and dragons to get to them. Yes, I made all these examples up, but they work.

The point is, tags are all based on what is visually presented in the image by itself, with no influence from other images or informational sources.

Or are they?

Despite the seemingly ironclad nature of the TWYS rule, there are a lot of loopholes, weak areas and exceptions to this rule, and I'd like to discuss our opinions on such instances. The obvious one is character names; nobody's treating it as any big secret that this is an exception to the rule, but many believe it to be the only exception.

How about crossgender? A character's gender is tagged based on the image, regardless of the character's standard gender in outside material. Yet, the crossgender tag exists. Crossgender "refers to an image of a character of one gender depicted as one of the opposite sex (e.g. a male version of a female character or vice versa)." This tag requires knowledge of a character's standard gender in order to be implemented; nothing in the image by itself can facilitate the tag. I've also seen talk of the incest tag, and how it bounces back and forth between being treated under TWYS and TWYK, being that the nature of incest is in its context, not the image itself.

I'm not looking to start a flame war, so please, let's just civilly list what tags we've noticed to operate under unusual guidelines that don't wholly comply with TWYS. It could pay off if such tags could be identified; it might make things easier to manage around here.

So let's hear it: what are some weird tags you've noticed?

Names. Nothing more... no sexual dimorphism, no lore, etc.; only reason name is TWYK is because not everyone knows or can associate a name.

Siral_Exan said:
Names. Nothing more... no sexual dimorphism, no lore, etc. only reason name is TWYK is because not everyone knows or can associate a name.

I'm glad you brought up sexual dimorphism. The differences between genders are determined on this site for tagging purposes in a set of guidelines that use generic humanoid traits to determine between male, female or an intersex variety between.

Basically put, sexual dimorphism is the act of differentiating a subject between genders based on traits specifically held by its species. It's general policy around here to ignore sexual dimorphism for very good reasons. For example, if a male cow anthro has an udder, don't tag it female; it's an anthro.

However, the reason I'm glad it was brought up is because it holds within it another exception. From the howto:tag_genders page: "Masculine/feminine body type may need to be adapted for feral use (a masculine characteristic type for a peacock would include a complex colorful feather design)." It would seem that in some cases, determining a subject's gender by species-unique traits is encouraged by site rules in the case of ferals. So if the cow isn't an anthro and is just a cow, suddenly that udder holds a lot more significance. Conversely, if a peacock anthro is clearly female yet has plumage like a male, sexual dimorphism does not apply, as the character is an anthro.

I'll be honest, you should have gotten a ban for all those cuntboy tags you vandalized.

solais0pleasure said:

Solaris' quote

I'm glad you brought up sexual dimorphism. The differences between genders are determined on this site for tagging purposes in a set of guidelines that use generic humanoid traits to determine between male, female or an intersex variety between.

Basically put, sexual dimorphism is the act of differentiating a subject between genders based on traits specifically held by its species. It's general policy around here to ignore sexual dimorphism for very good reasons. For example, if a male cow anthro has an udder, don't tag it female; it's an anthro.

However, the reason I'm glad it was brought up is because it holds within it another exception. From the howto:tag_genders page: "Masculine/feminine body type may need to be adapted for feral use (a masculine characteristic type for a peacock would include a complex colorful feather design)." It would seem that in some cases, determining a subject's gender by species-unique traits is encouraged by site rules in the case of ferals. So if the cow isn't an anthro and is just a cow, suddenly that udder holds a lot more significance. Conversely, if a peacock anthro is clearly female yet has plumage like a male, sexual dimorphism does not apply, as the character is an anthro.

No sexual dimorphism. This had been brought to pretty much every species that practices it that also features character once, if not more. It does not help the site if only a limited amount of people know how to tag it...

And, for reference's sake for everyone, the TWYS Explained) wiki page so it can be directly referenced, instead of needing to blindly quote it.

Beanjam said:
I'll be honest, you should have gotten a ban for all those cuntboy tags you vandalized.

Yet, here I am, cuntboy tags intact, helping people come to an understanding with some of the more controversial tagging situations. See, that little fiasco you mention is part of why I feel this subject should be brought up. Communication is what I'm after here, so feel free to post your opinions on such situations you've come across if you'd like.

Siral_Exan said:
No sexual dimorphism. This had been brought to pretty much every species that practices it that also features character once, if not more. It does not help the site if only a limited amount of people know how to tag it...

And, for reference's sake for everyone, the TWYS Explained) wiki page so it can be directly referenced, instead of needing to blindly quote it.

But the link you provided says nothing about sexual dimorphism? But you have a good idea; I'll post the link I quoted from so people get the full context: https://e621.net/wiki/show/howto:tag_genders

im p sure that irl animal sexual dimorphism can be used in some cases. like if there is feral lion with mane but no humanoid sexual dimorphism or visible genitals, it will still get tagged as male.

Let's start with this one, then.

post #675477

solais0pleasure said:
I'm noticing a new trend of posts seemingly having conflicting tags to avoid tag wars. In this case, my guess is too many people are split on whether the image looks anthro or feral, so it's both and everyone's happy. You'll also see the ambiguous_gender tag. Probably for the same reason.

The fish is feral. There will never be two gender tags per character.

Beanjam said:
Let's start with this one, then.

post #675477
The fish is feral. There will never be two gender tags per character.

You forgot the part where I was responding to someone asking why the character was tagged feral and anthro. I was just responding to the question. I'll be honest, I only glanced at the image, lol. Nice catch with the fish, btw. (...See what I did there?)

solais0pleasure said:
You forgot the part where I was responding to someone asking why the character was tagged feral and anthro. I was just responding to the question. I'll be honest, I only glanced at the image, lol. Nice catch with the fish, btw. (...See what I did there?)

Just so long as you realize that the body type and gender tags are absolutely ironclad. They are not just ubiquitous, but mandatory. Each and every character must get one and only one. Therefore, 110% TWYS adherence for them is absolutely indisputable, and will always be indisputable.

Mutisija said:
im p sure that irl animal sexual dimorphism can be used in some cases. like if there is feral lion with mane but no humanoid sexual dimorphism or visible genitals, it will still get tagged as male.

Precisely. The flipside being that a female lion anthro with a mane is still female, as the mane should not indicate gender in that case. Example! :D

...How do I link an image like what Beanjam did? I actually found an example.

Beanjam said:
Just so long as you realize that the body type and gender tags are absolutely ironclad. They are not just ubiquitous, but mandatory. Each and every character must get one and only one. Therefore, 110% TWYS adherence for them is absolutely indisputable, and will always be indisputable.

I mean, you make it sound like whatever the first tag is on a post must stay there forever, which is not true, even the admin can attest to that. Absolutes like "ironclad" and "110%" are part of where this confusion of rules comes from, which is what this post is about. I'd also like to quote or link that one-and-only-one rule, but I can't find it. Do you think you could help us out with that?

solais0pleasure said:
...How to I link an image like what Beanjam did? I actually found an example.

You write Thumb #
and after the # you put the image number. Which you can in the url of the image.

It looks like this:
post #998709
But you write it like this:

thumb #998709

If i didn't explain it good enough. You can find more information about it here

solais0pleasure said:
Absolutes like "ironclad" and "110%" are part of where this confusion of rules comes from, which is what this post is about.

There is no confusion. You just want to tag how you want.

Mighyenta said:
You write Thumb #
and after the # you put the image number. Which you can in the url of the image.

It looks like this:
post #998709
But you write it like this:

thumb #998709

If i didn't explain it good enough. You can find more information about it here

Thank you! Let's see...
post #1010009
Aha! There she is. As you can see, this is clearly a female character, and the site discouragement of sexual dimorphism would prevent an erroneous edit changing the female tag due to the character having a mane. But as Mutisija said, it would be a different story in the case of a regular feral lion, where the sexual dimorphism policy would be naturally relaxed.
post #1002244
The best way to follow the rules is to be aware of when and why their exceptions present themselves.

solais0pleasure said:
I'm glad you brought up sexual dimorphism. The differences between genders are determined on this site for tagging purposes in a set of guidelines that use generic humanoid traits to determine between male, female or an intersex variety between.

There's been a whole thread on this: https://e621.net/forum/show/191308

I think it should be more like TWYKYS - Tag What You Know You See. If you can identify a character, species or the like, and it's obviously that, then you should tag it.

For example, let's take this post: post #808509

TWYS would suggest that the character is a dickgirl - visible cleavage and cock, but no visible pussy. However, TWYK would make me want to tag it as herm, as I know that that character has a pussy, yet the image doesn't show it. And as a hybrid (or chimera) of both Latios and Latias, with Latios normally being exclusively male and Latias usually being exclusively female, Latiuses (Latiusi?) would normally be exclusively Herms - in fact, the only Latius tagged on here is the same character (with different orgins) and as the same gender when they're a Latius.

Lativee said:
I think it should be more like TWYKYS - Tag What You Know You See. If you can identify a character, species or the like, and it's obviously that, then you should tag it.

For example, let's take this post: post #808509

TWYS would suggest that the character is a dickgirl - visible cleavage and cock, but no visible pussy. However, TWYK would make me want to tag it as herm, as I know that that character has a pussy, yet the image doesn't show it. And as a hybrid (or chimera) of both Latios and Latias, with Latios normally being exclusively male and Latias usually being exclusively female, Latiuses (Latiusi?) would normally be exclusively Herms - in fact, the only Latius tagged on here is the same character (with different orgins) and as the same gender when they're a Latius.

tagging genders based on canon and fictional lore is always purely TWYK

Lativee said:
I think it should be more like TWYKYS - Tag What You Know You See. If you can identify a character, species or the like, and it's obviously that, then you should tag it.

For example, let's take this post: post #808509

TWYS would suggest that the character is a dickgirl - visible cleavage and cock, but no visible pussy. However, TWYK would make me want to tag it as herm, as I know that that character has a pussy, yet the image doesn't show it. And as a hybrid (or chimera) of both Latios and Latias, with Latios normally being exclusively male and Latias usually being exclusively female, Latiuses (Latiusi?) would normally be exclusively Herms - in fact, the only Latius tagged on here is the same character (with different orgins) and as the same gender when they're a Latius.

While I agree that that's probably a herm, it would still be tagged as dickgirl. And I say probably because this Latius hybrid is 100% fanmade and too obscure to warrant the herm label even if tags did operate by TWYK. The rules of tagging are strictly for finding traits in an image, for organizational purposes, not literally what it is. That being said, the description is not bound by such limitations, and is there specifically to describe things not usually obvious in the image...but if the description has its own set of rules beyond that, I don't know them off the top of my head.

General rule of thumb: if the herm's penis is visible, but not the pussy, call it a dickgirl in the tags. It'd be a mess otherwise.

(clicked the wrong thing, can't delete)

What about text on the image? Whether it's dialogue or not, it's on the image, so does the content of that text count as "What is Known," or "What is Seen?" There was a bit of an argument over on post #1011942 over that: I believe that since it's inside the image, it's taggable, but Siral_Exan pointed out that there's no evidence supporting that, though at the same time there's none against it either.

Furrin_Gok said:
What about text on the image? Whether it's dialogue or not, it's on the image, so does the content of that text count as "What is Known," or "What is Seen?" There was a bit of an argument over on post #1011942 over that: I believe that since it's inside the image, it's taggable, but Siral_Exan pointed out that there's no evidence supporting that, though at the same time there's none against it either.

I would say so. If something is suggested by text in the image, that's something I'm seeing in the image, and therefore strictly TWYS. It's not TWYK, because it only utilizes in-image visual information. The comments you link bring up TWYR not being allowed, but that acronym is entirely made up and is completely unsupported by site rules. It's already been discussed before that incest tagging as it stands now relies heavily on in-image text in order to be validated under TWYS. So yes, everything in the site rules indicates that if a character is referred to as female in an image, then you should TWYS and add the female tag.

Furrin_Gok said:
What about text on the image? Whether it's dialogue or not, it's on the image, so does the content of that text count as "What is Known," or "What is Seen?" There was a bit of an argument over on post #1011942 over that: I believe that since it's inside the image, it's taggable, but Siral_Exan pointed out that there's no evidence supporting that, though at the same time there's none against it either.

Upon review of the example you brought up, however, TWYS still implies that the female tag not be placed. The problem there is that the character's gender was referenced in a supplemental English translation of the Japanese text, but the Japanese text itself does not imply gender. The Japanese language can be a lot more gender-neutral with its pronouns than English, and translators often have to use outside information or their own judgement when writing it out in English.

(It sometimes leads to problems, like the FF14 character Nael van Darnus being treated as male in English despite being gender-neutral in the original Japanese, only to be revealed as female years later. The ultimate case of TWYS gender tagging.)

ClaiohmSolais said:
I would say so. If something is suggested by text in the image, that's something I'm seeing in the image, and therefore strictly TWYS. It's not TWYK, because it only utilizes in-image visual information. The comments you link bring up TWYR not being allowed, but that acronym is entirely made up and is completely unsupported by site rules. It's already been discussed before that incest tagging as it stands now relies heavily on in-image text in order to be validated under TWYS. So yes, everything in the site rules indicates that if a character is referred to as female in an image, then you should TWYS and add the female tag.

Text doesn't dictate how something gets tagged. Leeway is given with incest because it's weird and hard to standardize. But a wolf saying "I am a cat" doesn't mean we tag it as a cat. Same goes with gender. A user searching females shouldn't be getting males in their results because it says "male" on a reference sheet or in some dialog that they probably won't even be reading. This is part of the reason we implemented descriptions, to include extra information about the image. If anomalous situations come up, we will handle them on a case-by-case basis. But for now, words on the image are not a deciding factor.

ippiki_ookami said:
Text doesn't dictate how something gets tagged. Leeway is given with incest because it's weird and hard to standardize. But a wolf saying "I am a cat" doesn't mean we tag it as a cat. Same goes with gender. A user searching females shouldn't be getting males in their results because it says "male" on a reference sheet or in some dialog that they probably won't even be reading. This is part of the reason we implemented descriptions, to include extra information about the image. If anomalous situations come up, we will handle them on a case-by-case basis. But for now, words on the image are not a deciding factor.

I've still yet to find a single rule that even discusses TWYR, let alone discourage it. Regardless, the example brought up was ambiguous gender save for a potential bit of dialogue referring to a character's gender, and even that proved to be false.

I understand text not being a factor in a contradictory situation, but I can't think of an example like that, and have otherwise seen it may take lower priority rather than no priority at all. Plenty of tags rely entirely on in-image text, so I think what you're trying to say is that it isn't a factor in gender tagging specifically. But even then, gender tagging rules don't actually mention text one way or the other from what I can see. Is there a separate wiki rule specifically about in-image text that I should look up?

TWYR is not a rule, but something I made up because it rhymed with see. But, there are tags that require dialogue or disprove / are disproved by, certain tags. Dirty talking, dialogue, language texts, and impregnation (if the impregnated outright says they are pregnant now, no other circumstance, unless the wiki is outdated when I read it) are some cases where you need to "TWYR".

Ultimately, I'd call it a way to remember that certain texts are still under the effect of TWYS. Nothing more than a faux (imitation) TWYS. It was a phonetic way to get a point across.

To answer the original question, these can be considered to rely on outside knowledge, at least in part:

• alternate_color
• alternate_costume
• alternate_hairstyle
• alternate_species
• anthrofied
• feralized
• furrification
• ponification
• humanoidized
• humanized