Thanks, tony. I wasn't even aware I could edit wiki articles. I have enough on my hands just wrapping my brain around various tagging issues, right now, but I'll remember that for the future.

Seems to be a lot of people confusing the ringtail issue by tagging ringtailed lemurs as "ringtail", too. I'm not sure if these should be retagged "ringtailed_lemur" (which I've done to a few) or the ringtail tag just deleted to leave "lemur".

There are lots of different kinds of lemurs, though, so...

EDIT: Argh, the 'ringtail' tag page actually says it's for ringtailed lemurs. Should that be edited, or should we use "cacomistle" for ringtails?

Stupid ambiguous English nomenclature!

I think it's usually referred to as "ring-tailed cat", although that could be misleading to a lot of people since it's a member of the raccoon family.

"Cacomistle" is probably a term that will be identifiable to only a very small percentage of users on this site. That word refers to two different species, but they're so similar I doubt many (if any) artists actually distinguish between them.

I'd say go with the most common usage and just make it "ring-tailed_cat".

I'd be in favor of invalidating the tag "ringtail" and retagging all the ringtailed lemurs as "ringtailed_lemur".

That way we have a distinct species tags for each one.

...

Edit: It occurs to me that if we go the route I suggested, that we should probably have an alias.

Alias: ringtailed_cat -> ring-tailed_cat

The second term is the most-commonly accepted spelling.

This is, incidentally, the case for the lemurs, too. The correct spelling is to hyphenate "ring-tailed".

Hmm. I guess my main problem with 'ring-tailed cat' is then we're going to get people tagging it 'feline'.

I was looking at the Wikipedia article and the weird thing about it is that the article title is 'ring-tailed cat' but then the first thing the article refers to it as is 'ringtail'.

I do like the idea of invalidating 'ringtail' and making distinct tags for both species, though, since I suspect 'ringtail' is always going to be a muddle. 'Cacomistle', as far as I understand, is in common parlance used to refer to both Bassariscus astutus and Bassariscus sumichrasti (hooray unambiguous Latin names), and I feel like distinguishing between those two in tags might be a bridge too far, since they really are quite similar.

I see Wikipedia uses "cacomistle" to refer just to B. sumichrasti. I'm always a little skeptical about using Wikipedia as an authoritative source, but maybe it's good enough in this case since this is, you know, a furry art site, and not a research paper.

In short, I dunno. I'm rambling.

RedRaven said:
"Cacomistle" is probably a term that will be identifiable to only a very small percentage of users on this site. That word refers to two different species, but they're so similar I doubt many (if any) artists actually distinguish between them.

Here's what I have been thinking:
Even if we correctly fix all the tags, if possible. We still or maybe will bumped into the same problems and the same tags that will probably be created again by users because why? Not much people know about such specific tags like these, that's the thing. Not many people on this site knows all animals and including their kingdom, order, suborder, etc.

I think we should put up tags that is at least obvious and that is in the common knowledge.

And also I don't know much about the alias and the implication tag thing, so you can encounter this.

"Just my two cents."

Eh, I made my suggestion, dat mink, and I know it's not the best solution, but I can't think of a better one.

As Keats hints at, do we even need to distinguish between ring-tailed cats and ring-tailed lemurs? I haven't checked, either to see how prevalent images of those are or whether or not the artists even clearly distinguish them. After all, a lemur is already a primate, and hence almost anthropomorphic out of the starting block. Make a ring-tailed cat anthro and there's almost certain to be some crossover in how they appear.

Keats is probably also right in asserting that some people will tag them as felines. Have you encountered any images of ringtails (either kind) that actually look feline? If not, we probably don't need to worry about that except on occasion. As long as we have a wiki article that clearly distinguishes between them and explicitly states that ring-tailed cats are NOT actually cats, that would further help to ameliorate the problem.

I guess the bottom line is whether, if we stick with the TWYS rule, we can really distinguish between them or that the species are so muddled in the artwork that attempting to do so is a lost cause.

RedRaven said:
Eh, I made my suggestion, dat mink, and I know it's not the best solution, but I can't think of a better one.

As Keats hints at, do we even need to distinguish between ring-tailed cats and ring-tailed lemurs? I haven't checked, either to see how prevalent images of those are or whether or not the artists even clearly distinguish them. After all, a lemur is already a primate, and hence almost anthropomorphic out of the starting block. Make a ring-tailed cat anthro and there's almost certain to be some crossover in how they appear.

They really don't look similar at all, save for the ringed tail, and they're not closely related by any stretch of the imagination, so I'd say those are good enough reasons to distinguish them. I first noticed it when I was looking for pictures of ringtails (i.e., cacomistles) and kept getting my search results clogged up with lemurs.

RedRaven said:
Keats is probably also right in asserting that some people will tag them as felines. Have you encountered any images of ringtails (either kind) that actually look feline? If not, we probably don't need to worry about that except on occasion. As long as we have a wiki article that clearly distinguishes between them and explicitly states that ring-tailed cats are NOT actually cats, that would further help to ameliorate the problem.

That was my assertion. :) But yeah, you're probably right in that it won't be that big a problem.

RedRaven said:
I guess the bottom line is whether, if we stick with the TWYS rule, we can really distinguish between them or that the species are so muddled in the artwork that attempting to do so is a lost cause.

We can, I have no question. Unless the _artist_ is confused, they're visually distinct from one another - different coloration, different body shape, etc.

Wallaby needs to be a species tag.