Topic: [REJECTED] Tag mammal/reptile

Posted under Tag Alias and Implication Suggestions

The bulk update request #2241 has been rejected.

create implication mammal/reptile (4) -> mammal (3329202)
create implication mammal/reptile (4) -> reptile (245059)
create implication mammal/reptile (4) -> interspecies (303358)

Reason: I find this tag very useful, but it is rarely used. these implications can be valid if we were to use it.

EDIT: The bulk update request #2241 (forum #330619) has been rejected by @anguirus12345.

Updated by auto moderator

Wouldn't the ideal format be mammal_on_reptile anyway, in line with the other X_on_Y tags? (that aren't the sexual-orientation ones)
mammal and reptile are also enough of a broad mess that I don't care for them at all. There's people whose tagging projects are slapping one or the other on fictional species that don't have a clear definition because they're not real animals and therefore not literally within the classes of Mammalia or Reptilia.

It might be a hot take but mammal and reptile should be wholly derived from real-world species implications, not used as a descriptor because something has fur/tiddies or scales.

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magnuseffect said:
Wouldn't the ideal format be mammal_on_reptile anyway, in line with the other X_on_Y tags? (that aren't the sexual-orientation ones)
mammal and reptile are also enough of a broad mess that I don't care for them at all. There's people whose tagging projects are slapping one or the other on fictional species that don't have a clear definition because they're not real animals and therefore not literally within the classes of Mammalia or Reptilia.

It might be a hot take but mammal and reptile should be wholly derived from real-world species implications, not used as a descriptor because something has fur/tiddies or scales.

The problem with that is that fictional species already imply mammal and other real species. Like, skaven implies rodent, tauren implies bovine, salmonid (splatoon) implies fish, etc…

Reptiles have a nice solution in the existence of the scalie tag - fictional reptilian species like Argonian imply scalie rather than reptile. However, I don’t think this would work well for mammals. Reptiles at least have a fairly common set of characteristics, whereas mammals can vary greatly. A momotreme in no way resembles a cetacean which in no way resembles a chiropteran. They’re so vastly different that having an umbrella tag akin to scalie but for real and fictional mammals is virtually useless. However, the current system allowing one to find, for example, skaven in search results for rodent is vastly more useful, since that’s clearly what they appear to be and are thus a relevant search result.

magnuseffect said:
It might be a hot take but mammal and reptile should be wholly derived from real-world species implications, not used as a descriptor because something has fur/tiddies or scales.

I don't think we do that in practice, we sometimes tag mammal, avian, etc. to some Pokémon if they resemble the real-world species.
Under the general guidelines, it states "Fictional named species such as Pokémon should not be tagged as specific real life animals, though broad categories such as canine and rodent can be applied."

scaliespe said:
The problem with that is that fictional species already imply mammal and other real species. Like, skaven implies rodent, tauren implies bovine, salmonid (splatoon) implies fish, etc…

thegreatwolfgang said:
I don't think we do that in practice, we sometimes tag mammal, avian, etc. to some Pokémon if they resemble the real-world species.
Under the general guidelines, it states "Fictional named species such as Pokémon should not be tagged as specific real life animals, though broad categories such as canine and rodent can be applied."

I would find this to be okay. If a species is close enough to tag a broad category of a real life animal (e.g. braixen -> canine), then having a braixen -> canine -> canid -> mammal implication chain should be fine since it's still based on a real animal. However, directly implying a fictional species to reptile or mammal without any other real world basis could be more contentious.

scaliespe said:
The problem with that is that fictional species already imply mammal and other real species. Like, skaven implies rodent, tauren implies bovine, salmonid (splatoon) implies fish, etc…

All of these have at least a distinct and intentional basis in real world equivalent animals.
This is not the case for something such as avali mammal solo

scaliespe said:
Reptiles have a nice solution in the existence of the scalie tag - fictional reptilian species like Argonian imply scalie rather than reptile.

This is irrelevant as a counterpoint when it does not prevent widespread tagging of reptile on Argonians.
argonian reptile solo
For bonus points here's a post currently tagged argonian mammal

thegreatwolfgang said:
I don't think we do that in practice, we sometimes tag mammal, avian, etc. to some Pokémon if they resemble the real-world species.

The issue is not what we tag under direct site policy, it's what is tagged in practice by the broader userbase. I'm just not about to start reporting for it without having it very clearly hammered out, and I'm also not about to start following around the accounts habitually tagging no-real-world-analogue OC species as mammals to tag-war them back.

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magnuseffect said:
All of these have at least a distinct and intentional basis in real world equivalent animals.
This is not the case for something such as avali mammal solo

This is irrelevant as a counterpoint when it does not prevent widespread tagging of reptile on Argonians.
argonian reptile solo
For bonus points here's a post currently tagged argonian mammal

The issue is not what we tag under direct site policy, it's what is tagged in practice by the broader userbase. I'm just not about to start reporting for it without having it very clearly hammered out, and I'm also not about to start following around the accounts habitually tagging no-real-world-analogue OC species as mammals to tag-war them back.

Okay, so you’re just talking about mistagging. Then, yeah, I agree that people shouldn’t be doing that. I was just responding to this:

magnuseffect said:
It might be a hot take but mammal and reptile should be wholly derived from real-world species implications

What I see here is just a case of needing more moderation/tag projects to keep those tags where they belong. I think searching for mammal minus all the things that currently imply mammal would be a good way of finding these tags where they don’t belong.

I kinda wish we could have certain tags that can only be implied via implication to avoid user error like this.

scaliespe said:
I kinda wish we could have certain tags that can only be implied via implication to avoid user error like this.

Unfortunately there are already a number of direct fictional->mammal implications endorsed by administration. (From what I'm seeing they're all put there by ImpidiDinkaDoo with zero on-site discussion linked.)
species are shown in-source to have milk-producing mammary glands, which makes things a mess. Personally I'd rather keep mammal to its real-world classifications as has breasts is an extremely sketchy qualifier on a site largely dedicated to anthropomorphism, and in many cases knowing they even have mammaries at all is a bypass of TWYS.

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magnuseffect said:
Unfortunately there are already a number of direct fictional->mammal implications endorsed by administration. (From what I'm seeing they're all put there by ImpidiDinkaDoo with zero on-site discussion linked.)
species are shown in-source to have milk-producing mammary glands, which makes things a mess. Personally I'd rather keep mammal to its real-world classifications as has breasts is an extremely sketchy qualifier on a site largely dedicated to anthropomorphism, and in many cases knowing they even have mammaries at all is a bypass of TWYS.

I’m sure most of those could be moved to a lower level species instead. I think these miscellaneous species need some kind of parent tag regardless, and if mammal truly is the closest thing we can get for some of them, well…

magnuseffect said:
species are shown in-source to have milk-producing mammary glands, which makes things a mess. Personally I'd rather keep mammal to its real-world classifications as has breasts is an extremely sketchy qualifier on a site largely dedicated to anthropomorphism, and in many cases knowing they even have mammaries at all is a bypass of TWYS.

Not to mention non-mammal_breasts are a thing. Breasts aren't proof of being mammalian in fiction.

scaliespe said:
I think these miscellaneous species need some kind of parent tag regardless, and if mammal truly is the closest thing we can get for some of them, well…

Mammal isn't even a cohesive set of visually-defined traits. It is inherently a What-You-Know tag. A chiropteran looks nothing like a cetacean. It's closer to how pokémon_(species) and digimon_(species) function, if anything. As opposed to the visually-determined tags that get applied to fictional creatures that are based on the real-world species they resemble.
Take away its only sane function as the collector for grouping a great portion of our real-world creatures and it's another one of those mess-tags people keep complaining about like alien and monster. If everything really needs a parent tag make it fictional_creature or something and allow every franchise with its own visually-disconnected mishmash species to have their own grouping tag.

I just don't see the practical search utility in single-tag grouping ewoks with dolphins.

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That could work, but… I don’t see that being too useful on its own. It’s just that, for as much as, say, Ewoks don’t resemble dolphins, they do quite closely resemble things like bears or badgers or something like that. Species like this still do closely resemble some mammals even without referencing any one in particular. It might be referencing more than one species, but it’s not exactly a hybrid, either. I’d like for there to be some layer beneath mammal that refers specifically to those sorts of furry terrestrial quadrupeds so that they don’t just have to use the same tag as cetaceans, but we don’t have one. At the very least, mammal distinguishes these sorts of creatures from reptilian or avian or piscine creatures. I think broad categories like that could be useful in conjunction with something like fictional_species so that you can sort through the huge number of fictional species by desired appearance.

Or to put it another way… I think the way we currently place certain fictional species under broad category tags like scalie and avian and so on is very useful, and I think there needs to be something comparable for species resembling certain mammalian species that don’t fit neatly into the lower categories. I don’t really like that the only option we have is mammal, but I’m not sure that removing those tags from mammal is an improvement. See, at least they generally look like some mammals, even if they look very different from others. It’s not blatantly wrong like the earlier example of people tagging avali with mammal manually just because they’re drawn with breasts or whatever.

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