The bulk update request #1947 is active.

create alias clenched_balls (0) -> retracted_balls (1241)
create alias balls_clenching (0) -> retracted_balls (1241)

Reason: It is with immense philosophical duress that I've found myself particularly vexed by the unabashedly entropic categorization on this great forum of the phenomena any self-respecting testicular aficionado is undoubtedly familiar with and infatuated by: the cremasteric reflex.

I have shuffled and mused for hours, and can stand it no more. In this place of unmatched organizational prowess in the digital arts, I find that myself and others like me, the ones willing to fight and die upon the hill so effervescently close to the heavens of ball superiority, are all caught lost, confused even, trawling a collection of three tags, derelict, cold hearts in hands, to scratch only the surface of the collective works hosted here featuring but a single muscular response. It is madness. Cruelty, even.

Sisters, brothers, and all those detached from binary associations, how are we to cope in such turmoil? To grow and learn the true depths that our nut-adjacent enthusiasms may reach? Please, spare a thought! A thought for those wanton souls who peered only briefly to the contents of one tag, knowing not that two more reside in the shadows, plump with separate, entirely unique collections of pieces with the exact subject they so desperately sought in the first! Woe! It is with a wave of your fingers that you may save these forgotten few from a repeated fate; from fruitless scanning of a less active tag, starving them of the swollen (though retracted) fruits they so desperately seek!

Are we not better than this? Can we not change for the good of our people? Our family?! I ask all that may relate to our struggle, whether it be vicariously regarding a similar hope you too have felt, or perhaps even this direct issue: come together! For the love of the spheroids we seek to cling to, raise your lighter! Show the watchful eyes and ears of our forum that we CAN do better! That we desire GROWTH for the better! Unite! Unite!

EDIT: The bulk update request #1947 (forum #326155) has been approved by @bitWolfy.

…where did all these votes even come from

what?

The bulk update request #1947 (forum #326155) has been approved by @bitWolfy.

I would think clenching balls meant holding_balls and ball_grab. Maybe you should try writing a reason in the reason field instead of an essay.

auto_moderator said:
The bulk update request #1947 (forum #326155) has been approved by @bitWolfy.

Great, spent so long failing to even comprehend the essay that bitwolfy jumped the gun. Hope those were all cleaned out beforehand.

strikerman said: what?

We have been visited by a Twitter mob.

furrin_gok said:
I would think clenching balls meant holding_balls and ball_grab. Maybe you should try writing a reason in the reason field instead of an essay.

Yes, that is a concern of mine too.

I approved this because literally all posts tagged clenched_balls were using the term correctly – meaning retracted_balls.
If that changes, the aliases might need to be adjusted. I'll keep an eye out for it.

bitwolfy said:
literally all posts tagged clenched_balls were using the term correctly – meaning retracted_balls.

"All posts were under that definition" is all I needed to hear, if that's the case it works for now.
However I can't let "Correctly" slide:

1. Hold in a tight grasp
2. Squeeze together tightly

The second definition in my dictionary can somewhat fit that usage, but I'd have to say them being held by self or another sounds more correct to these definitions.

bitwolfy said:
We have been visited by a Twitter mob.

honestly I was "what?"-ing at both the hoard of voters and whatever the heck Scruffy wrote

furrin_gok said:
"All posts were under that definition" is all I needed to hear, if that's the case it works for now.
However I can't let "Correctly" slide:

Sorry, I just worded my response weirdly. It's past midnight, and my comprehension of English language vanished into the aether.
I meant correctly in reference to it being aliased to retracted_balls in this BUR.

There aren't that many *clench* tags, it seems. Clenched_teeth is the most common.

Edit: actually, after taking a closer look, it seems like at least some of the *clench* tags should be aliased away.
For example, clenched_fists and clenched_hands to fists (to match existing aliases), and clenching_sheets to grabbing_sheets.

I'll take a look tomorrow, when I'm more lucid.

scaliespe said:
…where did all these votes even come from

fuckin aliens man

Oh wow, an entire TED Talk in the reason field. I guess it's better than having no reason at all.

scaliespe said:
…where did all these votes even come from

Random users, whom have never been to the forums, suddenly coming to vote be like

I have never written anything on e621 before. But now I must raise my electronically ephemeral pen in solidarity with my penis whom also most certianly feels a passionate tug towards the resolution of this debate.

ScruffyTheDeer has raised not only my plump posterior's interest in further penile procreation, many times before with his delightfully delectable dong doodelings, but also erected a firm fascination for all sphere-related matter in male genitalia. It is now only of furthering increase of my admiration for his circular craftmanship that I sigh a deep and intense breath of relief to know that Scruffy truly cares about the intricate droolinducing details of sweaty sagging cum-filled bulging I am gay I want to lick Balls.

With that said you have my full endorsement of said testicular tag transformation and I wish you all the bouncy best in all future endeavors. <3

Cheers Scruffy!

scaliespe said:
…where did all these votes even come from

https://twitter.com/scruffythedeer/status/1484410226484953089

Would that count as vote manipulation? Publicly pointing a bunch of random people to the vote thread who otherwise wouldn't have paid any mind. I mean, they didn't actually say to vote or to specifically up-vote, so I can see why someone may not think so, but it still had the effect of massively inflating the vote in their favor without a bit of discussion.

watsit said:
Would that count as vote manipulation? Publicly pointing a bunch of random people to the vote thread who otherwise wouldn't have paid any mind. I mean, they didn't actually say to vote or to specifically up-vote, so I can see why someone may not think so, but it still had the effect of massively inflating the vote in their favor without a bit of discussion.

It shouldn't, unless it's used to maliciously target posts or comments. In this case, users have the right to vote on what they think is best for tags, so there is no "punishment" for voting badly without prior discussion.

Of course, the admins can easily counter this with vetos, as evident by some suggestion threads having an upvote majority but still getting declined on grounds that it would not work or be preferable in light of other suggestions.

However, this is just my opinion and own observation though.

watsit said:
Would that count as vote manipulation? Publicly pointing a bunch of random people to the vote thread who otherwise wouldn't have paid any mind. I mean, they didn't actually say to vote or to specifically up-vote, so I can see why someone may not think so, but it still had the effect of massively inflating the vote in their favor without a bit of discussion.

Votes have no bearing on the result of a topic. They exist to suggest an outcome, but it is not mandatory to "follow" the votes: a suggestion can be nuked to the ground with downvotes and yet still be approved, and vice versa this could have been denied despite the overwhelming amount of upvotes. Really, the vote system is in place to prevent the more archaic +1/-1 "system" we had back then, when we simply commented with "+1" or "-1" to show opinions on the suggestion.
I'm starting to think we need this written somewhere noticeable.

siral_exan said:
Votes have no bearing on the result of a topic.

Well, they don't dictate the result of a topic/request, but I think it's a mistake to say they have no bearing at all. If someone sees a bunch of upvotes with no discussion, they're more likely to think it's uncontroversial and safe to apply if they don't have any reservations themselves. But as with here, there were so many upvotes with no immediate counterargument, it was quickly accepted before anyone could raise an objection. Sure, bitWolfy checked to make sure the aliases wouldn't cause incorrect tags, but no one was able to voice a counterargument to the aliases themselves until afterward.

But either way, even if the rules are made up and the points don't matter, there is a rule against vote manipulation for one reason or another. Whether it's one person with a bunch of alt accounts upvoting their request, or one person encouraging bystanders to vote more on their behalf, it's artificially inflating the vote tally.

I've been wishing for more user participation in the forum for a while, since it's always the same 20 regulars here. Linking Twitter followers here just to vote, however, is not an ideal way to achieve that. Even though it does not affect outcomes, it would indeed be nice if this kind of thing could be "officially" discouraged in the future.

The romantic prose was unexpected, but not unwelcome, so cheers m8 I guess.

P.S.: Wow, this BUR was approved 2 hours after being submitted... and here I am, sitting on a pile of months-old requests...

post #2769806

And now I am similarly lucid, as well! Time to defend what went down here from my own perspective a little:

1) I think a sane approach to the BUR itself here is to consider that this instance is one that many would agree is pretty easy to resolve. There were 3 tags all being used to describe the same thing (the cremasteric reflex) and having just one makes a great deal more sense. The sum total of all the posts under the original 3 tags, numbering ~14 at the time of submission, were clearly tagged as such because of the presence of the cremasteric reflex in each of them. Couple that with the fact that I discussed this with both Kira and bitWolfy before ever clicking submit, I think it's fair to say that it was the straightforward-ness of this request, and not the vote explosion, that got it resolved so quickly. I guess if it were compared to, say, cooking a meal, doing this request was kind of like throwing some frozen peas in the microwave between dealing with the turkey and the stuffing and all the other big stuff. Quick, simple, and now out of the way. No more, no less.

2) My sharing of this post was done for two reasons: to show off a piece of creative writing I was proud of and to quell the numerous people in my notifications voicing similar hopes for a truncation of these tags (I seem to attract many testicle enthusiasts). If I'm being honest, I wasn't even made aware there was a voting system in place, only that a forum post would be made upon submission. So, please don't suspect that my tweet was meant as a way to tip the scales in my favor. Despite my over-dramatization, if this request were denied I'd have shrugged and moved on. This isn't really some big battle I feel I need a stake in. It was, at best, a dull, fleeting want for a quality of life improvement after finding it difficult to locate stylistic references for dem ball scrunchies. Plus, a wrist injury has kept me from drawing consistently lately, so I've been grasping at any motivation that arises to outlet some creativity.

3) All of this is to say that I approached this under the impression that it was a particularly simple request to digest, and so I decided to have some fun with it. Forgive me for not anticipating conniptions from people who seek to treat this as though their very being comes into question if they walk away from any mole hill on this section of the website without first crafting an exhaustingly sizeable mountain out of it.

Trust me, I promise that I understand the desire to standardize the organizational methods used here. I'm with you on that goal 100%. The granularity of search functions on e621 continue to boggle my mind, the robustness of tags gets better every day, and, frankly, I often suspect we're sitting on one of, if not THE most well sorted and documented collection of digital media on the planet, and I think that's neat as hell. I meant for this to carry the same weight that a quick joke in a research paper might: no rules broken, all criteria met, but something the reader can smile at to break up the monotony a bit. That's all. Thanks 4 reading c:

scruffythedeer said:
I think it's fair to say that it was the straightforward-ness of this request, and not the vote explosion, that got it resolved so quickly.

My secret sources point to a slightly different conclusion.

Plus, a wrist injury has kept me from drawing consistently lately, so I've been grasping at any motivation that arises to outlet some creativity.

I wish you a speedy recovery. Feel free to exercise your writing skills, but please include a TL;DR that goes straight to the point. Filling the "Reason" field with word salad beats the point of having a "Reason" field in the first place, even if the word salad is funny.

Forgive me for not anticipating conniptions from people who seek to treat this as though their very being comes into question if they walk away from any mole hill on this section of the website without first crafting an exhaustingly sizeable mountain out of it.

This part could do with a little bit less passive aggressiveness.

Thanks 4 reading c:

You're welcome (｡•̀ᴗ-)✧

bitwolfy said:
We have been visited by a Twitter mob.

Well, dang.

…

I wish I had that many Twitter followers lol

Regarding vote manipulation--If it's for something as simple like as a consolidation tag, I don't think it matters.

gattonero2001 said:
My secret sources point to a slightly different conclusion.

Yeah lol. This one got pushed through fast because Scruff caught bitWolfy during his duty cycle. If he'd been an hour later this would probably rot in pending for a month or two.

Thank you for the clarification. :) It moves this from utterly baffling to making logical sense. Even upon reading, the terma helper* in the Reason field just didn't seem relevant to anything being suggested. Now that you've broken the ground with this sort of humor, perhaps future attempts will be better received and understood.

scruffythedeer said:
3) All of this is to say that I approached this under the impression that it was a particularly simple request to digest, and so I decided to have some fun with it. Forgive me for not anticipating conniptions from people who seek to treat this as though their very being comes into question if they walk away from any mole hill on this section of the website without first crafting an exhaustingly sizeable mountain out of it.

We weren't having conniptions. The BUR's description was so puzzling and the sudden surge of previously unknown voters so out of the ordinary that it unintentionally overwhelmed the humor. Thankfully, you'd had the foresight to clear it with bitWolfy and Kira beforehand so our concerns were groundless. Who knows? Maybe your BUR will encourage some of those voters to stick around and help grow the website.

bitwolfy said:
We have been visited by a Twitter mob.

"Oh, #$@%. There goes the planet."
_________

* terma helper, n. The extra verbiage one uses to stretch a 600-word essay to the required 1000. ~ Sniglets

gattonero2001 said:
My secret sources point to a slightly different conclusion.

matrixmash said:
Yeah lol. This one got pushed through fast because Scruff caught bitWolfy during his duty cycle. If he'd been an hour later this would probably rot in pending for a month or two.

post #2968475

clawstripe said:
We weren't having conniptions.

oh, yeah, the couple people that did have cleared out at this point.

either way, ye. this area of the site was previously unknown to me (there are LOTS OF SECTIONS ON E621 AAAA) and I'll be telling a lot more people about it. i'm definitely tired of seeing people get up in arms over parts of e621 that they, themselves, could fix. any chance at keeping that to a minimum is a yes from me, dawg.

As a fellow nut for nuts, Scruffy's right that we need a tag to describe this reflex, but is "retracted" the best description? The tag might confuse people thinking that it describes testes that can retract into the body, clenching was definitely not the best term either (clenching balls in your hands?). Maybe I misunderstand the cremasteric reflex, is it only a description for scrotum tightening from cold or touch, or are we including scrotal/testicular motions during arousal or ejaculation?

The reason I ask is that there's two other tags that seem to potentially describe this reflex more clearly to the average contributor and have seen more use:

• throbbing_balls is already used to describe pulsating (tightening/untightening) balls, prior to, or in the process of ejaculating
• If this only applies a tightened scrotum from cold/touch, could this be more accurately tagged under tight_balls*?

_{*the current description of which doesn't seem to apply to most (or any) of the images tagged with it, so it could be rewritten to cover the results of the cremasteric reflex}

Or just cremasteric reflex?? The most accurate term is the best, and it can be made easier to find through aliases.

scaliespe said:
Or just cremasteric reflex?? The most accurate term is the best, and it can be made easier to find through aliases.

i object on the grounds that scruffy is the only person who knows what "cremasteric" means

strikerman said:
i object on the grounds that scruffy is the only person who knows what "cremasteric" means

I’ve never heard it before in my life, but I assumed it was a real thing based on its usage in here. If it is a real term, I’d say we should use it. I haven’t looked it up because I really do not want to read about or see diagrams of whatever this reflex is.

scaliespe said:
I’ve never heard it before in my life, but I assumed it was a real thing based on its usage in here. If it is a real term, I’d say we should use it. I haven’t looked it up because I really do not want to read about or see diagrams of whatever this reflex is.

Even if it's a thing, an unintuitive name makes it harder for people to navigate. Aliases aside, if someone was looking for the tag on an existing post, they wouldn't know what to look for.

scaliespe said:
I’ve never heard it before in my life, but I assumed it was a real thing based on its usage in here. If it is a real term, I’d say we should use it. I haven’t looked it up because I really do not want to read about or see diagrams of whatever this reflex is.

It's a niche medical term that isn't intuitive to uploaders, which is similar but opposite to my concern about "retracted balls" (too vague). Unless there's no better "neutral" word for it, we should stick with tag names that balance accuracy and being obvious to laypeople. If we're going to make further changes, we could alias "cremasteric reflex" to retracted balls (or to tight balls or whatever), or add a note mentioning the term to wiki entries for whatever tag or tags that end up describing the physical results of the cremasteric reflex.

hungrymaple said:
It's a niche medical term that isn't intuitive to uploaders, which is similar but opposite to my concern about "retracted balls" (too vague). Unless there's no better "neutral" word for it, we should stick with tag names that balance accuracy and being obvious to laypeople. If we're going to make further changes, we could alias "cremasteric reflex" to retracted balls (or to tight balls or whatever), or add a note mentioning the term to wiki entries for whatever tag or tags that end up describing the physical results of the cremasteric reflex.

Very many tag names on the site aren’t intuitive to people who aren’t familiar with the specific terminology. I’ve learned a lot of new terms since joining. But the fact is that the most accurate possible term is probably best, and it can be found through aliases. If someone is looking through the tags on the post, they’ll probably notice the term they don’t know and click on the wiki page to learn what it is. I think this is all much better than to use a more “general” term, which will probably result in cases where people know the tag exists but haven’t read the wiki to know exactly how it’s used, assuming they already know how to use it, and then go tag it on posts where it isn’t correct.

scaliespe said:
Very many tag names on the site aren’t intuitive to people who aren’t familiar with the specific terminology. I’ve learned a lot of new terms since joining. But the fact is that the most accurate possible term is probably best, and it can be found through aliases. If someone is looking through the tags on the post, they’ll probably notice the term they don’t know and click on the wiki page to learn what it is. I think this is all much better than to use a more “general” term, which will probably result in cases where people know the tag exists but haven’t read the wiki to know exactly how it’s used, assuming they already know how to use it, and then go tag it on posts where it isn’t correct.

While it's true there are tags you need to read the description of to "get", I think "cremasteric reflex" is not a good tag on multiple levels: it's wordy, it doesn't give you any clue it has to do with the male genitalia, it doesn't describe what it is, it's hard to spell (or hard to remember the exact spelling of), and it's a niche term even in medical circles. If someone wants to see "balls tightening up", they're going to search for any number of tags that mention balls, if we were to apply the standard you're suggesting, we would have "pubococcygeus contractions" instead of throbbing penis.

My main point was that retracted balls like "clenching balls", is also not the best at describing the phenomenon and may confuse people because we have other "retracted" tags like retracted foreskin and retractable claws, that clearly describe something being pulled back, or pulled into the body, not just tightening up as the cremasteric reflex seems to describe, and we also have two other tags, that see much more usage, that could potentially describe it.

hungrymaple said:
While it's true there are tags you need to read the description of to "get", I think "cremasteric reflex" is not a good tag on multiple levels: it's wordy, it doesn't give you any clue it has to do with the male genitalia, it doesn't describe what it is, it's hard to spell (or hard to remember the exact spelling of), and it's a niche term even in medical circles. If someone wants to see "balls tightening up", they're going to search for any number of tags that mention balls, if we were to apply the standard you're suggesting, we would have "pubococcygeus contractions" instead of throbbing penis.

My main point was that retracted balls like "clenching balls", is also not the best at describing the phenomenon and may confuse people because we have other "retracted" tags like retracted foreskin and retractable claws, that clearly describe something being pulled back, or pulled into the body, not just tightening up as the cremasteric reflex seems to describe, and we also have two other tags, that see much more usage, that could potentially describe it.

Unlike "pubococcygeus contractions", though, there doesn’t seem to be a single term that adequately describes this phenomenon without possibly being confused for something else - or at least I haven’t heard it yet. Throbbing, clenching, retracing, tightening, etc all sound like they could mean different things. Using the scientific term in this case is meant to avoid any potential ambiguity in the tag name. It’s not really that hard a tag - much easier than "pubococcygeus contractions" would be.