"Resolved" : forum #269777

...

I realize that tag-what-you-see has been discussed half to death in the context of non-human sexual dimorphism but I wanted to touch on something that I'm not so sure has been totally clarified. That is, where does one draw the line as to what is considered "external information" in adherence with TWYS?

I'm going to use "charr" as an example.

"Charr" are playable characters in ArenaNet's MMORPG "Guild Wars 2". Unlike most playable fantasy creatures however, charr do not adhere to human-like sexual dimorphism. Instead, the identifiers of a charr's sex include fairly distinct differences in muzzle shape, brow shape, and fur density (notably on the tail).

As such, most users will probably tag one of these monstrous creatures as male. If we've decided to go by majority vote in regards to TWYS, then that's just how it's gotta be. Case closed- I get it.

But exactly how commonly-known does something have to be for it to cross beyond the threshold of "external information"?

Going back to Guild Wars 2. It has, at this point, surpassed 11-million players. 11-million people have seen the "charr" and, based on published statistics, over 1.5 million people have played as charr.

So, not accounting for folks who are familiar with the aforementioned species without having played it in-game, it doesn't seem unfair in the context of GW2 being an MMORPG to suggest that 1.5 million people know what a male or female charr looks like.

Now, I can't really make any assumptions as to how many of those 1.5 million use e621 but I'd bet that it's not a percentage so small as to be irrelevant.

So, getting back to my question- how commonly-known does information have to be as to not fall under "external information"? Using my example, likely several hundreds of users are able to identify a female charr without "external information". That is, they don't need to check the artist's profile- all the information needed is within the image.

Of course, several hundred pales in comparison to the site's total users but still there's a number of ways I could see this kind of information being addressed and I see some potential for compromises.

• Keep the rule rigid (as it is). Users that want to see masculine characters without distinguishing sexual features (I.E. no breasts or beards) will have to modify their blacklists/searches to allow for posts tagged as male.
• Meet in the middle. If the uploader sees a male and you see a female (or vice-versa) tag as ambiguous gender.
• Allow for contradictory but inclusive tagging. Group A sees a male and Group B sees a female. Tagging the post as both will allow it to show up in a search for either tag (assuming that the user hasn't blacklisted the male or female tag).

So, thoughts?

Charr also have been discussed to death, we do not consider any sort of fantasy lore's sexual dimorphism relevant to our tagging system.
This means neither charr get their fancy sexual dimorphism applied, nor do any pokemon, or anything else in that vein.

I do know what charrs are exclusively because of this website alone and I see them a lot, so I know a charr when I see one but I have no idea about their sexual dimorphism nor do I care.

Charrs are fantasy species, as in they cannot be assumed to be general information that everyone knows from elementary school, as such it's counted as external information at that point. And like you pointed out, there's high change that the games playerbase and sites userbase does have some overlapping, but most likely really small portion.

The main problem here is that charrs are far from only fictional species out there and all of our guidelines have to cover all of our posts. Making exclusions simply because how popular something is and because obviously then everyone who ever encounter the character are aware of its biological quirks. This is also what so many always forget when they are proposing stuff like this - the changes aren't for one specific thing, they would need to reflect all posts here and all similar cases, meaning once the tagging ruling change is done, we need to modify all of our exsisting posts to reflect those changes as well - not only for charrs but for all fictional species.

Also my counterargument for these have always been that if you who knows the species, you can adjust your thinking into someones who have no idea about the species, but those who have no idea what the species is cannot adjust their thinking into canon and lore they don't know.

Arkin said:
But exactly how commonly-known does something have to be for it to cross beyond the threshold of "external information"?

It has to be a real species. For more information see forum #239784.

Arkin said:
So, thoughts?

All that happened with charr is body-type was brought back into consideration when determining a character's gender. (As per the Gender Tagging HowTo )
As previously a vagina was apparently all that was needed to have a post tagged cuntboy.
Beyond that, arguing that charr should be tagged based on specific traits is a weak argument when multiple artists and character owners are known to mix-and-match. There was an artist with a male charr/worgen hybrid character that just looked like a male charr but with a female charr tail, and more recently there's a character that uses female charr traits for everything except body-type and genitalia.

Most disagreements I've seen on gender TWYS are based either on belief that presence of breasts = body-type, or an inherent disagreement on what constitutes masculine or feminine traits with regard to human-like form.

That said, I'm personally a fan of anthropomorphic designs that don't rely on human form, and I'd hate for artists to feel that they have to design their characters and species in a way that complies with e621 policies. I'd rather encourage artists to just draw whatever they want and not care what e621 tags their work gets.

SHITPOST MODE ACTIVATE

leomole said:
It has to be a real species.

Mairo said:
general information that everyone knows from elementary school

So, if we establish that knowledge of a non-fictional species' traits are a valid source of tagging information, can I start tagging pouched non-female marsupials as intersex?
Male marsupials with pouches are a fictional invention, and as such acknowledging a pouched marsupial as male should be classed as using external information.

I think we had/discussed a tag at one point for males-with-pouches, and does-with-antlers and peahen with male colors etc.

This is the closest I can find to a discussion like that.
(Although a second pass did find me this)

It doesn't bring up marsupials.
I also feel like a marsupial pouch being a definitive indicator (with the apparent exception of the water opossum and the thylacine) of "this creature has mammaries" is on a bit of a different level to something like antlers or colouration.
Last I checked when we get a character with breasts and a penis we don't tag male reverse_sexual_dimorphism
You could argue that many pieces of media have been depicting male kangaroos with pouches for decades, at which point I have to ask:

Arkin said:
But exactly how commonly-known does something have to be for it to cross beyond the threshold of "external information"?

If this is it then I guess the OP got their answer.

MagnusEffect said:
All that happened with charr is body-type was brought back into consideration when determining a character's gender. (As per the Gender Tagging HowTo )

Thanks, that page delivers the kind of concrete wording I was looking for.

Reading your responses, I realize that it's fair for this kind of thing to fall under my own responsibility. That is, I should be making adjustments to my own blacklist/searches to account for external information rather than demanding that changes be made site-wide.

Sure, I'll have to filter through a handful of posts that I don't want to see but it's more equitable than returning muscular flat-chested monsters to any user who searches for females as it's /probably/ not what they're looking for.