why are size tags like big_balls, huge_balls, and hyper_balls (big muscles, huge_muscles, hyper muscles... etc) all implicated, that defeats the whole purpose of those tags, they have specific definitions that don't overlap

Blacklisting purposes, IIRC. We don't support wildcard tags, *_belly, in blacklists, and it's assumed that a person who wants to not see big_belly would also want to avoid even larger bellies. If we did support wildcard tags, we could just have the user do *_belly and exclude whichever belly tags they're OK with.

An inconvenient workaround, looking for big_balls only, would be to search big_balls -huge_balls.

I do note that in topic #32110, regarding implying after_rape, attempted_rape, and imminent_rape -> rape, the argument went the other way: tag correctness over ease of blacklisting. Which is weird, because I think people care a lot more about blacklisting rape than hyper_balls...

matrixmash said:
An inconvenient workaround, looking for big_balls only, would be to search big_balls -huge_balls.

I do note that in topic #32110, regarding implying after_rape, attempted_rape, and imminent_rape -> rape, the argument went the other way: tag correctness over ease of blacklisting. Which is weird, because I think people care a lot more about blacklisting rape than hyper_balls...

Yea, this implication chain is archaic, back when e6 was more about convenience than accuracy (not completely, just more). Granted, I don't know if wildcards can even be supported in blacklists, that's a Kira question that they may have answered already, I just remember that this has been asked before and I believe the answer was "for blacklisting's sake".

terrathewizard said:
why are size tags like big_balls, huge_balls, and hyper_balls (big muscles, huge_muscles, hyper muscles... etc) all implicated, that defeats the whole purpose of those tags, they have specific definitions that don't overlap

They're not clearly delineated. There is overlap in what constitutes big_muscles and huge_muscles, for instance, as different people may have different cut-off points. So two different posts with characters that have the same muscle size can be tagged differently if it was tagged by two different people, with neither being really wrong. Also, the sizes do conceptually fit inside each other... huge muscles are very big muscles, and hyper muscles are very huge muscles. So given the blurry line separating them, and since they are conceptually tiered, it works better to have an implication chain like that.

siral_exan said:
If we did support wildcard tags, we could just have the user do *_belly and exclude whichever belly tags they're OK with.

That wouldn't work, since it'd include tags like cum_on_belly, which don't actually indicate the size of the belly. And there are other tags, like monotone_belly and glistening_belly which are used with no regard to the belly size, but erroneously implicate belly, causing the belly tag to be misapplied on some posts.

terrathewizard said:
why are size tags like big_balls, huge_balls, and hyper_balls (big muscles, huge_muscles, hyper muscles... etc) all implicated, that defeats the whole purpose of those tags, they have specific definitions that don't overlap

There's a lot of grey area between "big" and "huge"/"huge" and "hyper", due to how subjective they can be, and the range of scale that they both can reasonably cover? You can set some guidelines in wiki articles , but most people probably don't read those while uploading casually.