Topic: What's the deal with all the Mal0/SCP-1471/SCP-1471-A tags?

Posted under Tag Alias and Implication Suggestions

First of all, I would like to admit I got into the SCP Foundation Fandom through Mal0.

Second of all, people need to make less art of Mal0 and more of literally any other SCP.

Now on to the actual reason for this topic. I don't really (understand why/think that) the number of Mal0 tags we have right now makes sense or is necessary. For the uninitiated, Mal0, aka SCP-1471, is a character created by the Creepypasta/Horror Writing Forum, The SCP Foundation. They are a dark humanoid with a canine skull face and long black hair that people start hallucinating after they download Mal0's app onto their phone. Somewhere down the line she became the fandoms resident furry bait character out of the thousands of other monsters and prompts.

I read that there was a topic #18487 that talked about how people have a lot of fan characters based on the entity, referred to as the "Mal0 race" (which is not really a thing but let's ignore that for now), therefore we now have a malo species tag(which is also spelled wrong). However, it currently is not implicated or aliased to the other two Mal0 tags, those being SCP-1471 and SCP-1471-A.

Another thing is that SCP-1471-A is the skull-headed canine anthro and SCP-1471 is the App itself. The problem is SCP-1471 is usually not something that is represented in the posts since there are since the vast majority of them are Mal0 by themselves and even if their is a smartphone or whatever it is not obvious if the app itself is there or being used. Which begs the question: "Should we even have an SCP-1471 tag?" Especially since we don't do the same with the various other SCP characters like SCP-939. Does it not make more sense if SCP-1471 was aliased to SCP-1471-A? or vice versa?

There are currently number of instances of SCP-1471, SCP-1471-A, and the Malo tag being used independently of each other. Which is probably a problem because it means that users will miss the some posts if they don't use all of them in a query with a tilde(~) or asterisk(*) and/or they are not aware that all these other tags exist.

I think something should be done about this so I am just gathering a little bit of feedback before I try and request and Alias/Implication/BUR.

TL;DR: I think the character known as Mal0 might have redundant tags and that they need to be streamlined, but I am not sure because it is a little complicated.

foolysh said:
Another thing is that SCP-1471-A is the skull-headed canine anthro and SCP-1471 is the App itself.

It’s the discrepancy between this site and the SCP wiki’s site of how things are organized that might create this problem. The reason why posts with SCP-1471-A are also tagged with SCP-1471 is because that’s the SCP designation that the -A is assigned to, which I can agree in almost all cases is pretty redundant but the parent wiki page does not necessarily implicate the -A since that’s a character. Now in that regard SCP-1471-A should always implicate SCP-1471, but some people don’t like tag bloat so I can see where you’re coming from.
Technically speaking, Mal0 is the app itself, so that’s what posts showing the actual app in the photo should be tagged, but in the SCP article, yes, 1471 is the app itself.
I think for this website’s sake, it is better to stay the way as is, but I can understand where it gets confusing.

furrin_gok said:

  • scp-1471 is the umbrella term.
    • malo is the phone app, should only be used when it's visible on a phone
    • scp-1471-a is the anthro entity.

Handle it that way and any confusion should be removed.

Well, I understand all that I just find it a little redundant. Like for example, SCP-2547 is supposed to be an entire pack of canines of various species, and SCP-2547-1 is the anthro with with the leather coat. SCP-2703 is a phone number and SCP-2703-1 is the tentacle-owl lady. But they both currently don't have two separate tags like in the case of Mal0. Moreover, I don't think any other SCP tagged on this site besides MAl0 has a unique species tag. Even if they are supposed to be a part of a unique and original species within their own lore and/or have a bunch of fan-characters like SCP-682 and SCP-173.

I personally think that the vast majority of SCP tags should just be like SCP-INTEGER. If the tag is in reference to a group of entities that have very distinct and different appearances to be recognized as completely different characters then you should use SCP-INTEGER-[DIGIT/LETTER]. Like SCP-354, SCP-1913* or SCP-3887* and maybe then you can have an umbrella SCP-INTEGER tag like in the case of SCP-354.

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foolysh said:
Well, I understand all that I just find it a little redundant. Like for example, SCP-2547 is supposed to be an entire pack of canines of various species, and SCP-2547-1 is the anthro with with the leather coat. SCP-2703 is a phone number and SCP-2703-1 is the tentacle-owl lady. But they both currently don't have two separate tags like in the case of Mal0.

The Malo app is actually displayed, though. For 2547, only recently have any images popped up of the pack of them, and for 2703 nobody cares about a message out of nowhere.

furrin_gok said:
The Malo app is actually displayed, though. For 2547, only recently have any images popped up of the pack of them, and for 2703 nobody cares about a message out of nowhere.

Ignoring, the fact that we are going into character lore and its influence on tagging which is generally a no-no.

2547

to my knowledge only appears as the entire pack in pool #26355 which kind of comes back to that whole thing with the species, but it seems to be the exception and not the rule. This makes sense because 2547-1 is the only one with a distinct appearance. There are a lot of SCPs on this site that are a part of a larger species but they are usually given only one tag, even if lore wise they have multiple designations for individual/notable instances like SCP-956 or SCP-939. There are also several non-malo fan characters/interpretations, most recently SCP-682-B but they are not given species tags.

The other problem, Mal0's App (SCP-1471), is that Mal0's App usually is not displayed, actually. Mal0's App has an appearance in Mobile Application Stores but has no appearance once it is actually installed. It's just the entity doing its own thing at that point. Which is why 1471-1 is depicted doing all sorts of things, calling, texting, sending videos, appearing in VR, and in real life. Even if

nobody cares a about a message out of nowhere

or 2703 in general, she and Mal0 are basically have slightly different versions of the same function/concept (entity shows up when you willingly interact with an associated thing and people care more about the entity than the associated thing).

I believe that all the SCPs should be held to the same Standards, including Mal0 when it comes to tagging. I feel like we either need a bunch of new tags to disambiguate unique SCP characters, add umbrella tags to categorize them collectively, and give them their own species tag like Mal0. Or we need to get rid of some of these Mal0 tags.

lance_armstrong said:
People can draw whatever they want to.

Well I know that. It was just a poor attempt at humor on my part. Along with the bit about how Mal0 is the main reason for my interest in the fandom which is kind of pathetic.

furrin_gok said:
Remember, that's an "Oh", not a zero, as written on the official page itself. malo, not mal0.

Oh, my bad.

I guess my suggestion is:

What do you think?

The bulk update request #4863 is pending approval.

create implication malo_(app) (0) -> scp-1471 (0)
create implication scp-1471-a (4484) -> scp-1471 (0)

Reason: I just realized I never made the actual BUR for this. I believe these will solve the problem.

Please run this first

Preparing

update malO -> scp-1471-a
category scp-1471 -> copyright
category malo_(disambiguation) -> invalid

Then perform the main BUR and do this that is currently blocked

Blocked boi

alias malo -> malo_(disambiguation)

Blocked by

Lastly, the billion characters. Low on priority.

Characters

category malO_0.9 -> character
category malO_1.0 -> character
category malO_1.1 -> character
category malO_1.1b -> character
category malO_2.0 -> character

Hopefully this will stop malO tags having a monthly discussion

Updated

Watsit

Privileged

omegaumbra said:
create implication malo_(character) (0) -> malo_(species) (0)

There are other characters named malo, so the generic malo_(character) tag should be disambiguated. Characters shouldn't imply a species anyway. I thought MalO was a character, what's malo_(species)?

watsit said:
There are other characters named malo, so the generic malo_(character) tag should be disambiguated. Characters shouldn't imply a species anyway. I thought MalO was a character, what's malo_(species)?

It's because there's the original malO anthro characters and then a bunch of additional anthro characters based on the original story, that I decided to group up all in a species tag. Im ok with removing all of this of the BUR.

I don't know which name could be better for the original anthro character that's is not malO_(character), though...

omegaumbra said:
The bulk update request #4863 is pending approval.

create implication malo_(app) (0) -> scp-1471 (0)
create implication scp-1471-a (4484) -> scp-1471 (0)

implicate <character> -> <species> == no. alternate_species exists, and while scp-1471-a is a character that is of tied to her species in kind of a weird way, we really only make an exception to this for deity because it sometimes acts more like a copytag. furthermore, I'm not sure how I feel about implying the malo species tag to scp-1471 since that in turn implies scp_foundation and most of the characters under that tag (who aren't 1471-a) are just random furries with dog skulls for faces and have no further connection to SCP stuff.

also, what's wrong with using scp-1471-a as the tagname for the character? I think more users are going to recognize that as the character (or at least scp-<numbers>-a) over "malo".

I reworked the BUR to do away with the species implications. Keeps scp1471-a the character, updates malO into it and then aliases to the disambiguation. Lastly turns the bunch of existing species tags into characters.

I guess it's OK now, right? scp-1471 being copyright makes sense?

Edit: do I need to manually make the scp foundation implication removal from scp-1471-a since it will imply a tag that has it?

Updated

Watsit

Privileged

Is it possible to distinguish between malO 0.9/1.0/1.1/1.1b/2.0 that they need separate tags? malo_(app) doesn't seem used, is there a depiction of the app that's not the character?

watsit said:
Is it possible to distinguish between malO 0.9/1.0/1.1/1.1b/2.0 that they need separate tags?

These look like a bunch of OCs based on the original story (technically all scps are OCs). They do seem different from one another though

post #2115446

watsit said:
malo_(app) doesn't seem used, is there a depiction of the app that's not the character?

Very rarely, by skimming the tags. Stuff like this

post #3670096 post #2493214

Edit: Looking at the story, it seems that the app does not identify itself, it just send pictures. Technically every single time someone uploads an image of the character with the Gallery app open it's technically malo_(app) too, like this

post #3889077

Not very TWYS friendly though (do we have a "gallery app" tag?)

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