Implicating frottage → penis
Link to implication

Reason:

Frottage is performed with two penises.

EDIT: The tag implication frottage -> penis (forum #250617) has been rejected by @NotMeNotYou.

Asphyxia said:
Implicating frottage → penis
Link to implication

Reason:

Frottage is performed with two penises.

-1

post #235818 post #726127

Maybe bulge_frottage should imply frottage? And maybe clothes? Or Clothed_sex?

Was about to suggest this, along with imply frottage -> erection.

crocogator said:
post #235818 post #2048005

That first one is balls_touching, not frottage. You can't see erect penises touching as required for frottage, they could just as well be flaccid which wouldn't count. For the second one, the penises aren't touching, there's two layers of clothing between them.

The bulk update request #3338 is pending approval.

create implication frottage (16148) -> erection (890979)

Reason: Frottage is when:

two characters press and rub their erect penises together.

If you can't see the penises, you can't know they're being rubbed together while erect. If the penises are behind a layer or two of clothing or flesh, as in a bulge or abdominal_bulge, then its the clothing or abdominal flesh being rubbed together rather than the penises, where frottage wouldn't apply.

watsit said:
If you can't see the penises, you can't know they're being rubbed together while erect. If the penises are behind a layer or two of clothing or flesh, as in a bulge or abdominal_bulge, then its the clothing or abdominal flesh being rubbed together rather than the penises, where frottage wouldn't apply.

frottage flaccid has 2 pages of results. At the very least, you'd need to come up with an alternative tag for this kind of thing:

post #2092245

wat8548 said:
frottage flaccid has 2 pages of results. At the very least, you'd need to come up with an alternative tag for this kind of thing:

post #2092245

penis_on_penis doesn't require the penises to be erect (there's also penises_touching, which should probably be aliased to penis_on_penis). Having both penises erect is the primary difference between frottage and penis_on_penis, so if the former can't imply erection, there's no real difference with the latter and they may as well be aliased together.

I'm pretty sure that you can deduce frottage purely from the characters' actions, no? Just like obscured_sex and obscured_penetration.

E.g., post #2742822
I would consider this to be obscured_sex + frottage, but not penis or erection.
Unless there is a tag for crotch_grinding or similar.

thegreatwolfgang said:
Unless there is a tag for crotch_grinding or similar.

That's what I would do. At most penis_on_penis, but if you can't see their penises are erect, you can't know it's frottage instead of just penis_on_penis. As I said, the primary difference between penis_on_penis and frottage is that the latter is rubbing two erect penises together, while the former is touching or rubbing two penises together that may or may not be erect. Whether or not they're both erect would be the difference between frottage or just penis_on_penis. If you don't need apparent erections for frottage, there's no difference with penis_on_penis.

watsit said:

post #2048005
the penises aren't touching, there's two layers of clothing between them.

also totally not frotting because there's 2-layers of cloth between the penises and therefore are not touching:
post #2583556

dripen_arn said:
also totally not frotting because there's 2-layers of cloth between the penises and therefore are not touching:
post #2583556

Correct, just as this isn't penis_sniffing:
post #3532467
and this isn't penis_grab:
post #3541803

watsit said:

dripen_arn said:
also totally not frotting because there's 2-layers of cloth between the penises and therefore are not touching:
post #2583556

Correct, just as this isn't penis_sniffing:
post #3532467
and this isn't penis_grab:
post #3541803

i honestly can't tell if you're also being sarcastic with this argument, because this is absurd logic

dripen_arn said:
i honestly can't tell if you're also being sarcastic with this argument, because this is absurd logic

I don't see what's sarcastic or absurd. A bulge is treated separately from a penis, where a bulge is a penis, tentacles, balls, or anything else causing a protrusion in pants/underwear/abdomen, etc.
post #2026580
bulge_lick and bulge_grab, not penis_lick and penis_grab. One doesn't implicate the other, and the latter set implicates penis because it needs to be visible to tag it. Same with frottage. If its two protrusions rubbing together without a visible penis, tag bulge_frottage, but frottage should only be tagged if erect penises are visible for tagging.

watsit said:
I don't see what's sarcastic or absurd. A bulge is treated separately from a penis, where a bulge is a penis, tentacles, balls, or anything else causing a protrusion in pants/underwear/abdomen, etc.
post #2026580
bulge_lick and bulge_grab, not penis_lick and penis_grab. One doesn't implicate the other, and the latter set implicates penis because it needs to be visible to tag it. Same with frottage. If its two protrusions rubbing together without a visible penis, tag bulge_frottage, but frottage should only be tagged if erect penises are visible for tagging.

It is definitely possible to take TWYS too literally. I note that image is tagged fellatio, which does not imply penis because the penis is not necessarily visible, yet we still consider the likes of post #2037849 to be unambiguous enough about what's going on. We've had ten-year-long back-and-forth arguments about whether you're allowed to tag a character as "male" if there is no evidence either way as to the existence of their penis. You don't have to come up with absurd conspiracy theories about how a character might have an open can of sunscreen stuffed down their boxers to tag the most plausible scenario.

The penis and penile tags are kept separate for a reason. It has never been necessary to directly observe a penis in order to tag acts involving it. All your proposals seem to be leading logically towards aliasing them together.

The bulk update request #3347 is active.

create implication frottage (16148) -> penile (609435)

Reason: Consider this the official competing BUR to the above proposals.

Frottage is, obviously, a "form of activity relating to or affecting the penis" (penile wiki), and its close relative docking already implies penile.

Another BUR I found while checking for duplicates that might be worth a look is topic #31733.

EDIT: The bulk update request #3347 (forum #346113) has been approved by @slyroon.

wat8548 said:
You don't have to come up with absurd conspiracy theories about how a character might have an open can of sunscreen stuffed down their boxers to tag the most plausible scenario.

You're right, because sometimes it can be obvious it's not a penis causing a bulge.

wat8548 said:
The penis and penile tags are kept separate for a reason. It has never been necessary to directly observe a penis in order to tag acts involving it. All your proposals seem to be leading logically towards aliasing them together.

Just the opposite. I'm trying to draw a distinction between penises visibly doing something, and penises probably doing something. If frottage doesn't require erect penises being visible, when separates it from any other penile activity with two seen or unseen, erect or flaccid, penises in close contact? Everything would just become a generic penile-based tag if you didn't have to see the penises to tag more specific activities that required a bit more detail than a penis probably being involved.

wat8548 said:
Reason: Consider this the official competing BUR to the above proposals.

To note, this is definitely incompatible with the bulge_frottage -> frottage implication then, since a bulge can be unambiguously balls, dildos, tentacles, or stuffed pants/underwear.

watsit said:
You're right, because sometimes it can be obvious it's not a penis causing a bulge.

To note, this is definitely incompatible with the bulge_frottage -> frottage implication then, since a bulge can be unambiguously balls, dildos, tentacles, or stuffed pants/underwear.

Ah, I think I see the problem. You are labouring under the misapprehension that the bulge and abdominal_bulge tags are in any way related.

To quote from the bulge wiki:

Tagged for noticeable presence of penis and/or balls under clothing.

[...]

This tag has nothing to do with tags such as abdominal_bulge, intestinal_bulge, pectoral_bulge and a variety of other tags which describe a similar bulge, albeit visible through a character's body rather than clothes.

The abdominal_bulge wiki also points out:

Not to be confused with the bulge seen through clothing

You can also check out the current list of aliases to bulge, which include crotch_bulge, pants_bulge, penis_bulge and underwear_bulge, any one of which might have been an implication instead if this was an umbrella tag.

So those two tentacle_penetration pictures are obviously totally irrelevant to the debate, as is the picture of two female characters with dildos up their vaginas. In the latter case, the edit which added the bulge_frottage tag even came with the following reason attached:

Not sure about bulge_frottage, I think I have the wrong king of bulge

post #3125416 presents a more interesting dilemma. Namely, should this be tagged with any sort of frottage, bulge or otherwise? Here's an equivalent post with no clothing involved:

post #3539672

Perhaps we should create a new ball_frottage tag for situations like these? Note that this does not preclude using common sense to conclude when ordinary frottage must be going on. For example, compare the above to post #3535752 - in that case, even though you can technically only see the balls touching, there is no reasonable conclusion other than that frottage must be taking place.

watsit said:
Just the opposite. I'm trying to draw a distinction between penises visibly doing something, and penises probably doing something. If frottage doesn't require erect penises being visible, when separates it from any other penile activity with two seen or unseen, erect or flaccid, penises in close contact? Everything would just become a generic penile-based tag if you didn't have to see the penises to tag more specific activities that required a bit more detail than a penis probably being involved.

Every S-rated male post on this site makes an assumption about the probable presence of a penis. The answer, as ever, is common sense and context clues from the rest of the image.

wat8548 said:
Ah, I think I see the problem. You are labouring under the misapprehension that the bulge and abdominal_bulge tags are in any way related.

More that people want to use bulge_frottage for any type of bulge-on-bulge rubbing, not just penile bulges. abdominal_bulge_frottage is basically non-existent (no wiki, three whole posts from over a year ago), and apparently people don't think to try that tag instead of bulge_frottage for abdominal bulges.

wat8548 said:
post #3125416 presents a more interesting dilemma. Namely, should this be tagged with any sort of frottage, bulge or otherwise?

Maybe not according to the wiki, but that goes to show how people want to use it, which is the ultimate factor. People want to be able to tag various types of bulges rubbing together with bulge_frottage, regardless of what's causing the bulge or where the bulge is, and frottage is a known term for sexually rubbing penises together, so bulge_frottage as a term for sexually rubbing bulges (of any sort) together would make logical sense.

wat8548 said:
Perhaps we should create a new ball_frottage tag for situations like these?

There is balls_touching, though something like ball_frottage would make sense when there's implied activity beyond merely touching. Regardless, I still imagine people will tag bulge_frottage when that kind of thing is done through clothing, as post #3125416 shows. There's also cases like post #3359673 where it's clearly penis-on-balls rubbing through clothing (in both directions), which is straining the definition of frottage as penis-on-penis.

wat8548 said:
Every S-rated male post on this site makes an assumption about the probable presence of a penis. The answer, as ever, is common sense and context clues from the rest of the image.

The difference is people won't normally search male just to find penises. But people do search frottage to find penises rubbing together. A better analogy would be tagging penis because an image is also tagged male, where common sense and context would indicate a male character probably has a penis even if you can't directly see it. I'd be very cautious against implied penile activity being tagged as that activity, as posts like post #2340956 show the obvious focus is on the balls, any penile rubbing is left to the imagination viewer, and it's not trying to make you think of penises rubbing together. If I search frottage for some sexy penis-on-penis action, that's not the kind of thing I expect to find with it.

watsit said:
More that people want to use bulge_frottage for any type of bulge-on-bulge rubbing, not just penile bulges. abdominal_bulge_frottage is basically non-existent (no wiki, three whole posts from over a year ago), and apparently people don't think to try that tag instead of bulge_frottage for abdominal bulges.

You're saying every mistag - even edits that their own authors admit are probably mistags - should be made canon now? bulge_frottage -male -gynomorph has literally 3 posts total, one of which is the example you selectively presented, and another one of which is male but missing gender tags.

watsit said:
Maybe not according to the wiki, but that goes to show how people want to use it, which is the ultimate factor.

We have invalidated tags for less, I'm just saying. "How people want to use it" has never carried all that much weight in these discussions, especially when "people" keep contradicting each other.

watsit said:
People want to be able to tag various types of bulges rubbing together with bulge_frottage, regardless of what's causing the bulge or where the bulge is, and frottage is a known term for sexually rubbing penises together, so bulge_frottage as a term for sexually rubbing bulges (of any sort) together would make logical sense.

Or there's just no better tag...

watsit said:
There is balls_touching, though something like ball_frottage would make sense when there's implied activity beyond merely touching. Regardless, I still imagine people will tag bulge_frottage when that kind of thing is done through clothing, as post #3125416 shows. There's also cases like post #3359673 where it's clearly penis-on-balls rubbing through clothing (in both directions), which is straining the definition of frottage as penis-on-penis.

That one we do actually have a tag for: nutjob (which may or may not get aliased to balljob one of these days).

watsit said:
The difference is people won't normally search male just to find penises. But people do search frottage to find penises rubbing together. A better analogy would be tagging penis because an image is also tagged male, where common sense and context would indicate a male character probably has a penis even if you can't directly see it. I'd be very cautious against implied penile activity being tagged as that activity, as posts like post #2340956 show the obvious focus is on the balls, any penile rubbing is left to the imagination viewer, and it's not trying to make you think of penises rubbing together. If I search frottage for some sexy penis-on-penis action, that's not the kind of thing I expect to find with it.

I mean, firstly, I don't know what the hell you think post #2340956 is trying to make you think of if not that. But your newfound enthusiasm for respecting the supremacy of taggers over wiki definitions is confusing when you bear in mind your response to my first post in this thread, in which I pointed out that a lot of people don't seem to consider an erection necessary. (There are undoubtedly more examples - flaccid is a very underused and misused tag.)

If there is any conclusion to be drawn from this discussion, it is that, for the most part, people seem to be happy to tag frottage for any sort of male-on-male crotch-to-crotch contact, without worrying too much about the exact mechanics. Even motion rarely seems to be necessary, if the results of frottage comparing_penis (4 pages) are anything to go by, and motion can be a difficult thing to prove in static images for certain art styles anyway.

Back when I first proposed bulge_frottage -> frottage, you objected on the grounds that motion was necessary for frottage but that bulge frottage could merely depict two bulges touching, a definition which you have now expanded further to include abdominal bulges. It is odd that you seem to have an extreme exclusionist view of one tag yet an extreme expansionist view of the other. If we are to lay down any definitions, they must start from a consistent logical basis, so make your choice one way or the other.

wat8548 said:
You're saying every mistag - even edits that their own authors admit are probably mistags - should be made canon now?

Not every mistag, no. But ones that occur regularly should be considered when making implications, as those mistags will be a source of even more mistags through the implication. And even then, when bulge_frottage is the most sensible tag for any kind of bulge involved in frottage-like action, if you take that away and make it for penile bulges only, you'll need replacements for non-penile variants that people can learn to use instead. That seems to me to be a tall order.

wat8548 said:
I mean, firstly, I don't know what the hell you think post #2340956 is trying to make you think of if not that.

Balls being pressed together and balls, along with butts and gay and balls. Also, balls. And balls isn't penis.

wat8548 said:
If there is any conclusion to be drawn from this discussion, it is that, for the most part, people seem to be happy to tag frottage for any sort of male-on-male crotch-to-crotch contact, without worrying too much about the exact mechanics.

Should it be aliased to penis_on_penis then? What would be the difference?

wat8548 said:
Back when I first proposed bulge_frottage -> frottage, you objected on the grounds that motion was necessary for frottage but that bulge frottage could merely depict two bulges touching, a definition which you have now expanded further to include abdominal bulges.

I don't remember saying anything about motion being an issue (I certainly understand motion is difficult to convey in still images, there's plenty of wiggleroom between what's considered touching and rubbing in that sense, so that wasn't the crux of any argument). What I said was that both penises being erect and in direct contact was necessary for frottage, and that they should be visibly erect and in contact to be tagged. There's just shy of 2 full pages of frottage flaccid, made over a course of who knows how long (and not all of which are actually invalid, e.g. post #1565490), which won't be hard at all to go through. frottage bulge has more, but I don't think is out of the realm of possibility to clean up. But it will be impossible if the bulge_frottage -> frottage implication goes through, and will also make it impossible to properly search for visibly erect penis-to-penis action.

watsit said:
Not every mistag, no. But ones that occur regularly should be considered when making implications, as those mistags will be a source of even more mistags through the implication. And even then, when bulge_frottage is the most sensible tag for any kind of bulge involved in frottage-like action, if you take that away and make it for penile bulges only, you'll need replacements for non-penile variants that people can learn to use instead. That seems to me to be a tall order.

I don't know how much more I can emphasise this: It. Happened. Literally. Once.

watsit said:
Balls being pressed together and balls, along with butts and gay and balls. Also, balls. And balls isn't penis.

Balls doesn't make you even slightly think of penis? I get that we cater to a lot of strange anatomies on this site, but we always allow for certain baseline assumptions.

watsit said:
Should it be aliased to penis_on_penis then? What would be the difference?

Well, there is still topic #31733 which would make that an implication. The more I think about it, the more I feel that would probably be the best option. Attempting to lawyer up a bullet-proof definition of frottage including percentage of skin contact, angle of erection, visibility of camera angle and estimation of velocity is futile. Accepting that it will always be an inherently fuzzy area and settling for a tag that gives most people using it most of what they want most of the time is part of what makes e621's tagging system work. Historically speaking, the more overly specific you make a tag, the more likely it is to get aliased.

watsit said:
I don't remember saying anything about motion being an issue

Well, it's a good job my pettiness knows no bounds:

watsit said in the other thread:
Hmmm. There may be the problem that "bulge frottage" could just be a result of two bulges being pressed against each other. Unless there's actual stimulation (e.g. grinding), I wouldn't consider that sex.

post #3401670 🤔

wat8548 said:
I don't know how much more I can emphasise this: It. Happened. Literally. Once.

All the other examples of bulge_frottage being used for non-penile bulges, and the fact that there aren't alternative tags for those kinds of bulges, don't count?

wat8548 said:
Balls doesn't make you even slightly think of penis?

Not always, just as feet don't always make me think of unseen legs, or a head doesn't always make me think of an unseen neck. Depends on the image, of which many factors can influence it. So when a tag is supposed to be for particular parts doing particular things, I don't think it should apply for an image that doesn't show that part, has an obvious focus on a different part, and isn't made with an obvious intention of it.

wat8548 said:
Well, it's a good job my pettiness knows no bounds:

Okay, so I brought it up a year ago, and I guess I'll retract that statement. As I said though, that wasn't the crux of my argument here (that previous statement was about the bulge_frottage->sex implication, not the bulge_frottage->frottage implication). My primary argument here has been for frottage to mean "both penises being erect and in direct contact", which would exclude bulge_frottage. And by making frottage a catch-all for penis-on-penis action, bulge-on-bulge action, etc, that makes it that much harder to search for direct penis-on-penis action.

Given the numbers of penis_on_penis having 295 posts, with frottage currently having 11k, penis_on_penis isn't used enough to be a substitute for direct penis-on-penis contact if frottage becomes a catch-all. If frottage would be aliased or implicated to penis_on_penis, or vice-versa, fine, but then the bulge_frottage->frottage implication is still bad.

watsit said:
My primary argument here has been for frottage to mean "both penises being erect and in direct contact", which would exclude bulge_frottage. And by making frottage a catch-all for penis-on-penis action, bulge-on-bulge action, etc, that makes it that much harder to search for direct penis-on-penis action.

Given the numbers of penis_on_penis having 295 posts, with frottage currently having 11k, penis_on_penis isn't used enough to be a substitute for direct penis-on-penis contact if frottage becomes a catch-all. If frottage would be aliased or implicated to penis_on_penis, or vice-versa, fine, but then the bulge_frottage->frottage implication is still bad.

Right, but you still haven't explained why none of these arguments apply to bulge_frottage, despite identifying (so far) 1 post for which it could be said to be incorrect for want of a better tag. The only hint you have given is this other post, which relies upon the same mistake about the definition of bulge, along with a strange conspiracy theory about socks that I alluded to in one of my earlier replies.

I posit that the only important thing about a TWYS definition of frottage would be that the casual observer would immediately recognise that frottage is taking place. This is just as easy to discern if the camera angle shows only balls (but there is obviously only one place the penises could have gone) or if the penises are covered by clothing (but you can still clearly trace the outline). This isn't a case like ambiguous_penetration where camera angles can elide multiple possibilities. You could even take up the cause of the implied_frottage tag (2 posts) if that would make you happy.

And then you keep bringing up the need to clear out the search results for frottage, but throw the far less numerous results for bulge_frottage on the "too difficult" scrapheap on the basis of largely unrealised fears about whether that really is a gun in that guy's pocket. Correctly tagged bulges are not, in general, ambiguous about what they are hiding, and even less so if they are currently involved in a sexual act. Again, I ask, which is it going to be: expansionism (frottage can be tagged for flaccid-to-flaccid contact, bulge_frottage is any two bulges in close proximity) or exclusionism (frottage is for erections only, bulge_frottage is frottage through a barrier)?

wat8548 said:
Right, but you still haven't explained why none of these arguments apply to bulge_frottage, despite identifying (so far) 1 post for which it could be said to be incorrect for want of a better tag.

I don't know what you mean. Taking frottage to mean "both penises being erect and in direct contact" is definitionally exclusive of bulge_frottage since a bulge is a covered crotch. bulge_frottage can never be frottage that way, just as bulge_lick can never be penis_lick (unless there's some kind of half-in-half-out thing going on, with both halves in on the action). I don't see what arguments applying to bulge_frottage has to do with anything.

If you want to expand the definition of frottage to be penile-on-penile sex with or without direct contact, then the way bulge_frottage is being used is still broader than that. I brought up three posts to show how loosely people want to use bulge_frottage (two of which are correct bulge usage, and of which there would be no alternatives that people seem keen on using; there are more as well) that still wouldn't fit that definition of frottage. But I would also still not include things like post #2340956 as penile-on-penile sex/frottage with that looser definition, since it's not visible or as obviously occurring (yes it is rather easy to press balls together without necessarily including the penises too).

wat8548 said:
The only hint you have given is this other post, which relies upon the same mistake about the definition of bulge, along with a strange conspiracy theory about socks that I alluded to in one of my earlier replies.

What "conspiracy theory" are you talking about? I only brought up possible scenarios that people may be likely to tag bulge_frottage for. Do you disagree that people would tag scenarios like that as bulge_frottage? If so, you have more faith in humanity than me.

wat8548 said:
I posit that the only important thing about a TWYS definition of frottage would be that the casual observer would immediately recognise that frottage is taking place. This is just as easy to discern if the camera angle shows only balls (but there is obviously only one place the penises could have gone) or if the penises are covered by clothing (but you can still clearly trace the outline).

I say the most important thing about a TWYS definition of frottage is that an observer can see direct penis-to-penis contact. Just as bulge_grab is separate from penis_grab, the latter requiring a penis being visibly grabbed, bulge_frottage should stay separate from frottage, the latter requiring penises to be visibly touching. You can have penis_on_penis be the tag for direct penis-to-penis contact if you really want, but as people primarily use the frottage tag for direct penis-to-penis action, it should alias or imply penis_on_penis while bulge_frottage should not imply it, otherwise penis_on_penis would remain woefully undertagged.

wat8548 said:
And then you keep bringing up the need to clear out the search results for frottage, but throw the far less numerous results for bulge_frottage on the "too difficult" scrapheap on the basis of largely unrealised fears about whether that really is a gun in that guy's pocket.

No, I only brought up the need to clean up frottage once, while saying the way people use bulge_frottage is reasonable given the circumstances (it's an easy logical connection to make, some-sort-of-bulge+frottage-like action = bulge_frottage). Restricting bulge_frottage to be only when it's clearly penile-on-penile does a disservice to those other types of bulges as there aren't actively used alternatives for the different types (and creates unnecessary ambiguity for less-detailed bulges ).

wat8548 said:
Again, I ask, which is it going to be: expansionism (frottage can be tagged for flaccid-to-flaccid contact, bulge_frottage is any two bulges in close proximity) or exclusionism (frottage is for erections only, bulge_frottage is frottage through a barrier)?

Neither. I'd prefer frottage to be erections only, but I can see an argument to including flaccid penises as long as it's clear something sexual is going on with them touching (they could be just starting so haven't become fully erect yet, and clears up cases where one is erect or flaccid and the other half-erect or flaccid), but in either case they should be in direct contact. bulge_frottage would make sense to include any crotch bulges (whether it's balls-on-balls, penis-on-balls, penis-on-penis, etc, through at least one layer of clothing), and may or may not include abdominal_bulge_frottage depending if people have trouble using that separate tag or not.

watsit said:
I don't know what you mean. Taking frottage to mean "both penises being erect and in direct contact" is definitionally exclusive of bulge_frottage since a bulge is a covered crotch. bulge_frottage can never be frottage that way, just as bulge_lick can never be penis_lick (unless there's some kind of half-in-half-out thing going on, with both halves in on the action). I don't see what arguments applying to bulge_frottage has to do with anything.

You know what this reminds me of? The age-old debate over whether posts like these should be tagged fellatio. Technically, there isn't a penis penetrating a mouth right at this very second, but it is abundantly clear fellatio is going or has recently gone on regardless, the posts could not reasonably be said to be depicting anything else, and no-one searching for fellatio would be disappointed to find those in their results.

I have made my position on this matter clear several times before: the purpose of e621's tagging system is to help people find content they are looking for, and avoid content they have blacklisted. If you are tagging in such a way that someone would ask why their blacklist didn't work, or would be disappointed they didn't find such an image in their regular tag search, you are doing it wrong. Satisfying the ontological whims of the few dozen obsessives who post in threads like this, or providing training data to an automated image classification system (which has happened at least once), appear nowhere in the site's priorities.

I have gone further than saying you don't need to directly see frottage to tag it, too. "Tag What You Can Reasonably Deduce" has long been an acceptable interpretation of official policy, and if it wasn't then we wouldn't have a 15-year legacy of flamewars over the gender tags.

watsit said:
If you want to expand the definition of frottage to be penile-on-penile sex with or without direct contact, then the way bulge_frottage is being used is still broader than that. I brought up three posts to show how loosely people want to use bulge_frottage (two of which are correct bulge usage, and of which there would be no alternatives that people seem keen on using; there are more as well) that still wouldn't fit that definition of frottage. But I would also still not include things like post #2340956 as penile-on-penile sex/frottage with that looser definition, since it's not visible or as obviously occurring (yes it is rather easy to press balls together without necessarily including the penises too).

Oh boy, another objectively mistagged post presented as evidence. Fun fact about post #1957760: the edit which introduced bulge_frottage also added frottage, thus making it doubly incorrect by your own definitions. The user who added them also has a warning for tagging abuse.

That post did conveniently remind me of the dry_humping tag, which is a possible destination for the (again, very few) bulge_frottage posts that do not depict frottage.

watsit said:
What "conspiracy theory" are you talking about? I only brought up possible scenarios that people may be likely to tag bulge_frottage for. Do you disagree that people would tag scenarios like that as bulge_frottage? If so, you have more faith in humanity than me.

It remains a conspiracy theory until you have successfully produced even one example of a post tagged bulge_frottage which appears to depict two penises rubbing together through clothing but does not in fact depict that.

You don't have to talk about faith in humanity to the guy who campaigned for the perpetually misused pantsless tag. I just prefer to base my cynicism on observed reality rather than imagining the most bad-faith tagger conceivable and proceeding as if they exist.

If a tag has no more than a very trivial number of mistags, there's no reason to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

watsit said:
Neither. I'd prefer frottage to be erections only, but I can see an argument to including flaccid penises as long as it's clear something sexual is going on with them touching (they could be just starting so haven't become fully erect yet, and clears up cases where one is erect or flaccid and the other half-erect or flaccid), but in either case they should be in direct contact. bulge_frottage would make sense to include any crotch bulges (whether it's balls-on-balls, penis-on-balls, penis-on-penis, etc, through at least one layer of clothing), and may or may not include abdominal_bulge_frottage depending if people have trouble using that separate tag or not.

Perhaps the real issue at hand here is the question of what "frottage" actually means. You say it can only mean "two erect penises grinding against each other", but throw the word "bulge" in front of there and suddenly you're all like "mang, I dunno, could be like a rolled up sock or something". If that is the case, should frottage be a valid tag at all? Why don't we disambiguate it and establish penis_frottage, since there are clearly so many other types? This isn't even a hypothetical concern - check out the results for frottage female/female -male, or how many times people have had to be taught that the tribadism tag exists. (Ratte produced an extreme example up there.) The word "frottage" has been contorted well beyond its original meaning so many times on this site (ask me about my hatred for the breasts_frottage tag), but the one derivative tag which is clearly a variant of the act itself is bulge_frottage. And now you want to take even that away from us.

wat8548 said:
You know what this reminds me of? The age-old debate over whether posts like these should be tagged fellatio. Technically, there isn't a penis penetrating a mouth right at this very second, but it is abundantly clear fellatio is going or has recently gone on regardless, the posts could not reasonably be said to be depicting anything else, and no-one searching for fellatio would be disappointed to find those in their results.

There is definitely a gray area where it comes to when something stops being the thing and becomes something else. oral vs after_oral, sex vs after_sex, etc. At what point does it stop being the act and become after-the-act?

wat8548 said:
I have made my position on this matter clear several times before: the purpose of e621's tagging system is to help people find content they are looking for, and avoid content they have blacklisted. If you are tagging in such a way that someone would ask why their blacklist didn't work, or would be disappointed they didn't find such an image in their regular tag search, you are doing it wrong.

And you run into trouble when two different people have different feelings on the matter. As I've said, if I search for frottage, I would not want to see things like post #2340956 scattered throughout the results. Apparently you would, though. There are likely other people that agree with me, as there are likely other people who agree with you. So, what's the way forward (noting that forum votes on a BUR isn't going to be a representative sample of the site's users as a whole)?

wat8548 said:
It remains a conspiracy theory until you have successfully produced even one example of a post tagged bulge_frottage which appears to depict two penises rubbing together through clothing but does not in fact depict that.

There's a stark difference between a conspiracy theory and a hypothetical concern. FWIW, I'm actually a bit surprised that things like underwear stuffing seems to be non-existent in art here, at least I can't find any tag for it. But regardless, I do think a potential hypothetical, which would have an impact on the viability of an alias or implication should it occur, at least be considered, rather than be brushed aside as a crazy idea that a person in their right mind wouldn't think of.

wat8548 said:
Perhaps the real issue at hand here is the question of what "frottage" actually means. You say it can only mean "two erect penises grinding against each other", but throw the word "bulge" in front of there and suddenly you're all like "mang, I dunno, could be like a rolled up sock or something". If that is the case, should frottage be a valid tag at all? Why don't we disambiguate it and establish penis_frottage, since there are clearly so many other types?

I wouldn't be against that, but there's still the issue of people tagging frottage for penis-on-penis action as that's the common term for it. If people don't get in the habit of using penis_frottage and just continue on using frottage, then we're back at square one. Do you really think we can get people to stop using frottage and use penis_frottage instead?

watsit said:
There is definitely a gray area where it comes to when something stops being the thing and becomes something else. oral vs after_oral, sex vs after_sex, etc. At what point does it stop being the act and become after-the-act?

More pertinently, I was wondering how you would tag an image snapped at a precise moment during a frotting session in which the characters' penises do not happen to be touching each other, despite it being more than apparent to an outside observer what they are up to. Something like this or this.

watsit said:
And you run into trouble when two different people have different feelings on the matter. As I've said, if I search for frottage, I would not want to see things like post #2340956 scattered throughout the results. Apparently you would, though. There are likely other people that agree with me, as there are likely other people who agree with you. So, what's the way forward (noting that forum votes on a BUR isn't going to be a representative sample of the site's users as a whole)?

You might find it easier to understand if you considered it from the other important perspective: someone who has the tag blacklisted and is seeking to avoid it. I don't know if there are any users on here with a crippling phobia of frottage, but while we're speaking in hypotheticals anyway, do you think such a user would be thrilled to see post #2340956 on their screen without warning?

watsit said:
I wouldn't be against that, but there's still the issue of people tagging frottage for penis-on-penis action as that's the common term for it. If people don't get in the habit of using penis_frottage and just continue on using frottage, then we're back at square one. Do you really think we can get people to stop using frottage and use penis_frottage instead?

No, that wasn't a remotely serious suggestion. But you were the one who wanted to imply frottage to erection, despite continuing usage of it to tag non-erect penises and indeed non-penises. And yet bulge_frottage should not imply frottage, on the basis of a still entirely hypothetical concern about underwear stuffing.

wat8548 said:
More pertinently, I was wondering how you would tag an image snapped at a precise moment during a frotting session in which the characters' penises do not happen to be touching each other, despite it being more than apparent to an outside observer what they are up to. Something like this or this.

It's a gray area, yes. I do think there's a difference when there are clearly in view penises "actively" rubbing around each other or in clear contact, vs a focus on balls touching or pressing together with no visible penises (and the penises there would be are separated by clothing), though.

wat8548 said:
You might find it easier to understand if you considered it from the other important perspective: someone who has the tag blacklisted and is seeking to avoid it. I don't know if there are any users on here with a crippling phobia of frottage, but while we're speaking in hypotheticals anyway, do you think such a user would be thrilled to see post #2340956 on their screen without warning?

No, but the flip-side is just as valid. Someone who has frottage blacklisted because they don't want to see penises rubbing together, but ends up missing a bunch of posts that you only see balls rubbing together without a penis in sight. Would they be happy? You seem to think images of balls rubbing together will always instantly make someone thing of penises rubbing together, but I explained that's not always true. Regardless of how you look at it, some people would want it one way, and others would want it the other way. And I contend, my suggestion is more practical and useful, as it maintains a distinction between direct-penis action vs bulge action (which a number of other tags maintain a similar distinction), while your suggestion would lump them all together, with penile bulges being a specific subset and direct penis having no tag to itself.

wat8548 said:
But you were the one who wanted to imply frottage to erection, despite continuing usage of it to tag non-erect penises and indeed non-penises. And yet bulge_frottage should not imply frottage, on the basis of a still entirely hypothetical concern about underwear stuffing.

You're really stuck on the sock thing, aren't you? You're talking as if that's my core worry, when I only mentioned it once alongside other potential ways people would use bulge_frottage that I don't think should also be tagged frottage.

And yeah, I initially proposed to imply frottage to erection, despite people erroneously tagging it for non-erect non-penises. It would need some cleanup, obviously (and, if what I've said more recently is any indication, I can change my mind on; though I do still maintain it should be visible penises in direct contact even if erection is negotiable). You want to imply frottage to penile, despite continuing usage of it to tag non-penises. It's going to need cleanup either way, except your suggestion would leave bulge_frottage in a weird place of not simply being for bulges engaging in frottage-like action, as its name would suggest, but rather only specific bulges, and there being no obvious in-use tags for other bulges or widely used tag for direct penis contact.

The tag implication frottage -> penis (forum #250617) has been rejected by @NotMeNotYou.

The bulk update request #3347 (forum #346113) has been approved by @slyroon.