[ta:46438]

Reason: currently implicated instead of aliased, completely redundant tag.

EDIT: The tag alias raccoon_dog -> tanuki (forum #291607) has been rejected by @Millcore.

Looking at the aliases, 'raccoon dog' seems to be for the genus Nyctereutes, while 'tanuki' is for the species. There's only one living species in the genus, but several extinct ones. I suppose it's possible that someone might draw one of the extinct species someday, though I don't know how we could even tell the difference, considering that those are extinct.

But since the whole species taxonomy tree was set up like this, we probably shouldn't merge random branches.

The problem with the wiki is that someone simply copied the old article from tanuki after the species rework. Even though it doesn't apply to the genus tag. Edit: Fixed the wiki.

That was me. It is because the wiki for tanuki was taken directly from the wiki for raccoon dog on Wikipedia. It made sense to have the wiki description for all raccoon dogs be in the raccoon dog wiki instead of in the tanuki wiki. I didn't pay attn to the genus that was aliased to the wiki.

I was not finished modifying the wikis. It took me such a long time to consider the usage of the tags that I was no longer in a space to finish the changes I was planning on making. After that I forgot about the tags.

My considerations was that I felt that tanuki was being treated as interchangeable (or once was) with the lesser known raccoon dog species tag. Until the specific subspecies of raccoon dog could be adequately described, it would be difficult to tell a tanuki from other species of raccoon dog.

Edit: Calling all species of raccoon dog tanukis is technically inaccurate. Tanuki only refers to the Japanese subspecies of Nyctereutes procyonoides, which is the species Nyctereutes procyonoides viverrinus. There are other subspecies that are not usually called tanukis.

than the genus name should be used instead of something like "raccoon_dog"

The raccoon dog for our purposes is a single species, N. procyonoides, and isn't referring to the Nyctereutes genus. The tanuki (N. p. viverrinus) is a subspecies of the raccoon dog, hence the implication. There are several subspecies of raccoon dog, not just the tanuki.

The tag alias raccoon_dog -> tanuki (forum #291607) has been rejected by @Millcore.