REMOVE TAG IMPLICATIONS FROM THE SEARCH SYSTEM. IT SHOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN ADDED TO THE SEARCH BAR. Try searching "male -male_only" and you will get exactly ZERO results. This is because the tag implication system is taking "male_only" and automatically substituting it for "male" in the results. This makes the "male_only" tag COMPLETELY useless. You can't filter it out or in without hitting EVERY post that simply has the "male" tag. Searching "male -male_only" SHOULD return every post which contains the "male" tag but does not contain the "male_only" tag.

Now I'm NOT saying that male_only -> male is a misuse of Tag Implication, because going by the description/explanation, the system is SUPPOSED to add the "male" tag to any post that only has the "male_only" tag, which would make sense. It however should NOT be implemented into the search functionality, because then you're saying that if someone SEARCHES for male_only, they should be given every post that contains the "male" tag, even if it doesn't contain male_only. This defeats the purpose, and it's been like this for MONTHS.

If you're using tags like "male_only" it's because your specific sexual preferences are limited to (or exclude) those types of results, so this flaw is a big problem and makes this site incredibly unattractive and anti-user friendly.

male_only is aliased, not implicated.

male

Edit: For what you want you can search:

male solo
male group -female -intersex -ambiguous_gender

lance_armstrong said:
male_only is aliased, not implicated.

male

see, I specifically looked up aliases and implications before I posted to avoid this error. I assumed it couldn't be an alias, because male_only is absolutely NOT the same thing as "male" as "male" could apply to any post with "male/female" and "male_only" implies there are only males in the image. I have no idea why it'd be an alias, as that's specifically counter to what the example given says "You would not generally alias rectangle to square, for example, because while all squares are rectangles, not all rectangles are squares. To model this sort of relationship, you would need to use implications."

Additionally, the arrow notation (ex: "eagle → bird") is used on the implication page and not the alias page.

Male_only is not a valid tag. It has not been a valid tag for over five years.

This behavior is also not a product of an implication. It's from an alias, this one: https://e621.net/tag_aliases/6478
You are lashing out at a system you do not even understand.

Searching for male -female -intersex returns posts with only male characters with reasonable reliability.
Add -ambiguous_gender -zero_pictured to that search if it's not enough.

bitwolfy said:
Male_only is not a valid tag. It has not been a valid tag for over five years.

This behavior is also not a product of an implication. It's from an alias, this one: https://e621.net/tag_aliases/6478
You are lashing out at a system you do not even understand.

Searching for male -female -intersex returns posts with only male characters.

Wonderful, but I'm not looking for only male characters, I want to find posts by [an artist] which don't contain only male characters. Tell me how to do that and I'll be on my way. It seems that if an image features only male characters that aren't specifically engaging in male/male action, there's no way to identify that.

if the rest of you are pansexual and completely fine with seeing every possible kind of sexual interaction, I guess that's just a "me" problem. Maybe this site isn't for me after all. I keep coming back here every few months because the variety of posts here is much better than on a site like rule34, but I keep hitting the wall of how much the tag system here completely blows compared to the other sites. You guys dropped the distinction between male_on_intersex and intersex_on_male and I've hated it here ever since, as male_on_intersex was my favourite tag and intersex_on_male was my least favourite. Whatever. I'm gone.

bklib said:
Wonderful, but I'm not looking for only male characters, I want to find posts by [an artist] which don't contain only male characters. Tell me how to do that and I'll be on my way.

Well, I don't know which artist you have in mind, but let's use braeburned for the sake of an example.

braeburned ~female ~intersex should return posts with at least one female or intersex character.

Ah, this provides some perspective on that other forum post about male_only tag... Oh right, https://e621.net/forum_topics/30020 was linking to here, already. I hadn't followed the hyperlink, yet. I went ahead and put link going other way around for convenience if someone reads this later.

Hmm, could try these combinations:
male/male (finds images including male-on-male)
male -male/male (This should remove any overt examples of above)
male -pussy -breasts -teats (Similar to other person's example)

Actually, these should probably go into the wiki for tags?