I'm going to be blunt here. The species wikis (as in the bigger ones like mammal, avian, etc. in particular) are, for the most part, complete shit. Which is really a shame because it looks like there was a lot of time and effort put into them. However, as it is now, it's a maze of dead links, questionable Latin taxonomy, and most of all, it's extremely unhelpful our purposes.
Specificity:
There's nothing wrong with overly specific "niche" furry species in and of itself. It's great for dogs because we know them well and we use a ton of them. Husky has over 5000 tags, that's useful. However, I'm guessing that very few people would give a shit about the tags like rufous-bellied kookaburras sitting in avian, especially when there are exactly 0 posts tagged with it.
Taxonomy:
We don't follow taxonomy that closely anyway (if we did, we would have dolphin under mammal instead of marine nevermind, I'm silly). So does it really make much sense to model the whole wiki after it then? Why include Latin names (ones that aren't tags) at all? It just makes a mess that is difficult to keep track of.
Fortunately, we have tag_group:species which already takes on an approach that more closely matches implications, and is far closer to what I hope to achieve.
My thoughts on the layout:
tag_group:species
Pretty much how the wiki is set up now.
Includes:
- Major e6 taxonomy groups (mammal, avian, pokémon, etc.
- A slew of widely used species tags "mammals -> canine -> dog, fox, wolf". No pokémon tags though because there's a hell of a lot of them.
- Non-real species.
- Mythological. Whether or not they are implicated to another group is actually irrelevant.
- It might make more sense to make a "tag_group:mythological_species"-sort of wiki instead of putting absolutely everything here.
- Well-defined non-mythological non-real species (draconequus, zergling, that one bug that looks like a croissant that you can freeze and use as a platform). In other words, a species from a cartoon/game should be included, a species invented by a 12 year old on deviantart that has 3 IRL friends who follow their DA account probably shouldn't be included.
- Alien, monster, goo, etc. are a few more examples.
- A brief related section with major group tags like anatomically_correct, animal_genitalia, fur, etc.
Huge group (eg, avian)
Big group (eg, bird)
Small group (eg, eagle)
(Groups at about the same level: horse, whale, lizard)
Includes:
- Niche species
- Related character tags
- Anything specific to this particular tag (eg, on hyena this would also have pseudo-penis).
- Something subtle showing where logical implications (that haven't been implicated yet).
Example
Species:eagle
Eagles are pretty cool. They fly really fast and eat mice and shit.
e6 taxonomy:
† needs implication
See also:
Lowest levels (eg, bald_eagle)
Should at least include:
- Anything extremely specific to the species (pseudo-penis, related character).
- Links back to higher groups.
Optional:
- If your motivated enough, a (preferably feral) picture of the species as a thumb #xxxx on the top for quick reference.
tldr: I want to remove the obscure species tags with 0 posts, rearrange everything based on implications rather than using Latin taxonomy, and add in a few related tags (like beak) where they can be quickly referenced.
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