Topic: [REJECTED] Humans are NOT Mammals (in e621) BUR

Posted under Tag Alias and Implication Suggestions

The bulk update request #2439 has been rejected.

remove implication human (373720) -> mammal (3401795)

Reason: The issue of why human does not imply ape despite the fact that humans are apes has been raised in topic #33556. Users have explained why that is the case.

I believe that the same arguments apply to mammal. If you agree, please vote up. If you disagree, please vote down. I am not going to debate the subject.

EDIT: The bulk update request #2439 (forum #333856) has been rejected by @bitWolfy.

Updated by auto moderator

I know you said you won’t argue here, but I’ll opine here in case anyone else wishes to discuss it. That, and I generally don’t like leaving a downvote without an explanation of why. It’s not very useful, and I’m not a fan of when other people do that (unless someone else has already said what I would have said).My main issue is our use of non-mammal_* tags (non-mammal_breasts being the big one). At least for consistency, I think it makes sense to regard them as mammals. Though, regarding the issue with elves you mentioned on the other thread, I think having most humanoids (especially things like elves) also imply mammal would make the most sense. Even reptile_humanoid characters are mostly human and so have predominantly human traits, and so I don’t think non-mammal_breasts should apply to them either. Presumably, if you’re searching -mammal, for example, you would not be looking for what is essentially a human but with a lizard tail. It still looks very mammalian overall. Likewise, I don’t expect to find those types of characters under a search for non-mammal_breasts. So… I say we just call them all mammals.

I’ve thought about this some more, and I’ve come to the conclusion that the original BUR to remove the mammal implication would be best, so I’ve changed my vote.

My initial objection was that the non-mammal_* tags should ideally be a reliable indicator of these features present on non-mammalian species, meaning that, for example, a search for breasts -mammal should give the same results, though the tags have the advantage of being able to identify cases where there’s a mammal and a non-mammal in the same image. Likewise, I don’t think humans nor any humanoids should qualify for the non-mammal_* tags as they are mostly human, and the tag is meant to identify these features when present on species that don’t normally have them. I think even non-mammal humanoids like lizard_humanoid should be disqualified as they are mostly human, which are mammalian.

This idea, however, would also logically require all humanoids to imply mammal as well, which might be excessive. I could support that, personally, as mammal is already a very diffuse mixture of things, with the only common principle being that they all have at least some vaguely mammalian characteristics, and humanoids would still fit within that idea. That way, you could simply search -mammal if you only want to find species that are distinctly not mammalian in any way. However, I don’t see this idea getting much support, and so I’ve come up with another idea.

The first thing is that tags like non-mammal_breasts and other non-mammal tags should not be applied to humanoids. Currently, the wiki mentions no such restriction, but I’m pretty certain that people looking for non-mammal breasts are NOT looking for things like this.

Currently, non-mammal_breasts solo humanoid returns 20 pages of results, but most of them appear to be anthros mistagged as humanoid… it’s amazing how frequently humanoid gets mistagged.

That way, we can still reliably get non-mammalian species with these features without expanding the scope of the mammal tag, as humanoids are essentially mammalian, but not technically mammalian.

Next, I think we should recognize human in the proper context of E621. It is actually treated not like a species tag by the site, but as a body type. Yes, we all know that humans are a species in real life, and that this species is technically categorized as both primate and mammal. This is not really important for our purposes, though. It’s clear in our tagging structure that we don’t consider them that way. They’re treated as a body type as indicated by tags like human_on_anthro. We simply couldn’t do this with any other species - hence why I say that humans, for our purposes, are not a species. We don’t have tags like lizard_on_anthro or whatever. That would be untenable.

To that end, I agree that humans should not be considered mammals here. Not only that, but I think we should even move the tag to the general category to align with the other body type tags, anthro and feral (and while we’re at it, humanoid, taur, and draconcopode should probably also be moved to general - they’re forms, not species). Even better, my preferred solution would be to create a new tag category for forms that all these tags can be moved to, but I feel like that won’t happen.

Now, if humans are no longer considered mammals, this gives us the ability to search specifically for humans with certain species. Specifically, we would be able to search human_on_anthro -mammal to get results featuring humans interacting with non-mammal species, or human_on_anthro mammal to specifically get humans with non-human mammals. Currently, neither of these searches work. And, really, keeping human implying mammal does not actually help anything. It does not make searching anything any easier, and only makes some things harder. They aren’t species in the first place, only forms. Other form tags don’t imply anything, even though you could make a case for humanoid also being inherently mammalian.

So… yeah. +1 to this de-implication.

Updated

scaliespe said:
It still looks very mammalian overall.

I expect people to take this thread even less seriously than the last one but I'll reiterate that looks mammal is a bad tagging justification. looks like a specific taggable species group which is mammal would be better, but even then the implication should come from getting given that species group's tag and not a direct implication from whichever fictional creature tag we're talking about. But humanoid is too broad a concept and we don't imply human to fictional things unless they're indistinguishable.

Updated

magnuseffect said:
I expect people to take this thread even less seriously than the last one but I'll reiterate that looks mammal is a bad tagging justification. looks like a specific taggable species group which is mammal would be better, but even then the implication should come from getting given that species group's tag and not a direct implication from whichever fictional creature tag we're talking about. But humanoid is too broad a concept and we don't imply human to fictional things unless they're indistinguishable.

As it currently stands, lots of purely fictional things already imply mammal because they look mammalian, so this wouldn’t be out of place. But as I suggested in the other thread, perhaps creating some non-taxonomic umbrella tags for different flavors of “mammalian” might be a better solution.

scaliespe said:
As it currently stands, lots of purely fictional things already imply mammal because they look mammalian, so this wouldn’t be out of place.

Those purely fictional things that look mammalian had their implications created by a single (former) admin without any visible discussion.. Until we know whether that was a decision made by the broader administration this isn't a good argument.

magnuseffect said:
Those purely fictional things that look mammalian had their implications created by a single (former) admin without any visible discussion.. Until we know whether that was a decision made by the broader administration this isn't a good argument.

I’m not saying I’m in favor of keeping them, but if other (current) admins decide to keep them, then this will be a perfectly valid argument.

If I'm allowed to throw in my opinion:
I think we should keep humans tagged as mammals - because that's what we are. Not having it tagged as "ape" makes sense, as people looking for apes usually don't have content with humans in mind.

squirrelz said:
If I'm allowed to throw in my opinion:
I think we should keep humans tagged as mammals - because that's what we are. Not having it tagged as "ape" makes sense, as people looking for apes usually don't have content with humans in mind.

Honestly, depends how far down the tree you want to go. "Ape" seems to be the generally-used term for the entirety of Hominoidea, although I imagine few spare a thought for gibbons on here. It would be a bit of an annoyance, admittedly, searching for human/non-human content as I find everything excluding Homo to be displeasing to the eye, but I suppose I could edit my blacklist to be something to the effect of "primate -human" at that point to try to filter it.

This goes against tag what you see and all the progress that has been made on the tagging system.
Scientific classification of humans are as follows:

Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Primates
Suborder: Haplorhini
Infraorder: Simiiformes
Family: Hominidae
Subfamily: Homininae
Tribe: Hominini
Genus: Homo
Species: H. sapiens

Humans are in the mammalia class, so humans should remain implicating mammal.
Technically, human should imply primate, but not ape. Ape is layman term for Hominoidea. Apes branch off into their own thing in the Simiiformes Infraorder.

Personally I would prefer a more taxonamically correct tagging of including humans in the primate implication.

Additionally (Bolded for focus on specific phrase)

gattonero2001 said:
If you agree, please vote up. If you disagree, please vote down. I am not going to debate the subject.

This makes me feel like you are uninterested or have no interest in backing the implication change at all. Why should I want to support a change that the submitter doesn't even feel like they care about at all?
(Not a personal attack, just a very direct question as to "why support if you don't feel like you support")

chaser said:
Apes branch off into their own thing in the Simiiformes Infraorder.

First paragraph of your link says

[..] containing all animals traditionally called monkeys and apes. More precisely, they consist of the parvorders [..] and apes (Hominoidea; including the genus Homo).

But anyway haplorphine would be a better place to plug human into than plain primate. It's something we distinguish from strepsirrhines already, and people who want lemurs but not haplorphine species or humans would only need a single tag to exclude them.
But I imagine humans are kept separate to keep them out of what we consider animals for the purposes of classifying what's furry

magnuseffect said:
But I imagine humans are kept separate to keep them out of what we consider animals for the purposes of classifying what's furry

Ding ding ding

Yeah, and this is getting into dog/wolf/canine area, I guess. From an artistic POV, humans only barely resemble apes and chimps and bonobos and so on. Also, compared to each other, they vary a lot. Some irony: Dogs have more variation in one species in appearance for tagging purposes, than the rest of the canines. (Or at least it seems that way from tagging)

alphamule said:
Some irony: Dogs have more variation in one species in appearance for tagging purposes, than the rest of the canines. (Or at least it seems that way from tagging)

Yeah, that’s because of selective breeding. Despite being only a single species, they’ve been bred to have vastly different appearances.

But yeah, the fact that primates are considered “furry” but humans are not is the main reason to keep the distinction, I think.

Updated

The bulk update request #2454 is pending approval.

create implication human (373720) -> ape (6449)

Reason: Humans are apes, which are mammals (and everything inbetween). If a user really wants to find apes (or mammals!) that aren't human, they can search for ape -human or ~chimpanzee ~gorilla ~orangutan ~gibbon. This will go better if Gatto's BUR is approved, since it'll imply down the chain anyways.

I gree mostly with @Chaser and @MagnusEffect...

To consider humans as not mammals will be horribly anti-scientific...

But then again, in a site were you see boobs generously drawn in fishes, anphibians, reptiles, birds and even insects.... xD ... I really don't know what to think, really.

xD

furrin_gok said:
If a user really wants to find apes (or mammals!) that aren't human, they can search for ape -human or ~chimpanzee ~gorilla ~orangutan ~gibbon.

Unless there's both an non-human ape and a human in the picture, then that first search will exclude such results. And the second search is untenable as there's no way a person can reliably know all the kinds of non-human ape tags there are. That you would need to add a non-human_ape tag just goes to show why "ape" should be for non-human apes. ~human ~ape works perfectly fine to find both without having to put "human" under the "ape" tag, which otherwise creates the aforementioned problems. IMO, human should be kept separate from ape for the same reason dinosaur is kept separate from bird, to clearly distinguish them since most people expect different things from them.

Updated

watsit said:
Unless there's both an non-human ape and a human in the picture, then that first search will exclude such results. And the second search is untenable as there's no way a person can reliably know all the kinds of non-human ape tags there are. That you would need to add a non-human_ape tag just goes to show why "ape" should be for non-human apes. ~human ~ape works perfectly fine to find both without having to put "human" under the "ape" tag, which otherwise creates the aforementioned problems. IMO, human should be kept separate from ape for the same reason dinosaur is kept separate from bird, to clearly distinguish them since most people expect different things from them.

I put it up as an accuracy thing, in this case I kind of don't mind if the BUR ends up failing.

furrin_gok said:
The bulk update request #2454 is pending approval.

create implication human (373720) -> ape (6449)

Reason: Humans are apes, which are mammals (and everything inbetween). If a user really wants to find apes (or mammals!) that aren't human, they can search for ape -human or ~chimpanzee ~gorilla ~orangutan ~gibbon. This will go better if Gatto's BUR is approved, since it'll imply down the chain anyways.

Ape has 4,294 posts, and human has 244,552 posts, if human implied ape, only roughly 1.5% of all posts tagged ape would feature non-human apes. Human implying Mammal is justified and harmless, meanwhile, human implying ape may be scientifically accurate, but it would instantly cripple the usability of the existing tag. I don't think almost anyone searching for ape is seeking out the dozens of daily posts featuring humans, they're specifically looking for non-human apes.

I’ve thought about this some more, and I’ve come to the conclusion that the original BUR to remove the mammal implication would be best, so I’ve changed my vote.

My initial objection was that the non-mammal_* tags should ideally be a reliable indicator of these features present on non-mammalian species, meaning that, for example, a search for breasts -mammal should give the same results, though the tags have the advantage of being able to identify cases where there’s a mammal and a non-mammal in the same image. Likewise, I don’t think humans nor any humanoids should qualify for the non-mammal_* tags as they are mostly human, and the tag is meant to identify these features when present on species that don’t normally have them. I think even non-mammal humanoids like lizard_humanoid should be disqualified as they are mostly human, which are mammalian.

This idea, however, would also logically require all humanoids to imply mammal as well, which might be excessive. I could support that, personally, as mammal is already a very diffuse mixture of things, with the only common principle being that they all have at least some vaguely mammalian characteristics, and humanoids would still fit within that idea. That way, you could simply search -mammal if you only want to find species that are distinctly not mammalian in any way. However, I don’t see this idea getting much support, and so I’ve come up with another idea.

The first thing is that tags like non-mammal_breasts and other non-mammal tags should not be applied to humanoids. Currently, the wiki mentions no such restriction, but I’m pretty certain that people looking for non-mammal breasts are NOT looking for things like this.

Currently, non-mammal_breasts solo humanoid returns 20 pages of results, but most of them appear to be anthros mistagged as humanoid… it’s amazing how frequently humanoid gets mistagged.

That way, we can still reliably get non-mammalian species with these features without expanding the scope of the mammal tag, as humanoids are essentially mammalian, but not technically mammalian.

Next, I think we should recognize human in the proper context of E621. It is actually treated not like a species tag by the site, but as a body type. Yes, we all know that humans are a species in real life, and that this species is technically categorized as both primate and mammal. This is not really important for our purposes, though. It’s clear in our tagging structure that we don’t consider them that way. They’re treated as a body type as indicated by tags like human_on_anthro. We simply couldn’t do this with any other species - hence why I say that humans, for our purposes, are not a species. We don’t have tags like lizard_on_anthro or whatever. That would be untenable.

To that end, I agree that humans should not be considered mammals here. Not only that, but I think we should even move the tag to the general category to align with the other body type tags, anthro and feral (and while we’re at it, humanoid, taur, and draconcopode should probably also be moved to general - they’re forms, not species). Even better, my preferred solution would be to create a new tag category for forms that all these tags can be moved to, but I feel like that won’t happen.

Now, if humans are no longer considered mammals, this gives us the ability to search specifically for humans with certain species. Specifically, we would be able to search human_on_anthro -mammal to get results featuring humans interacting with non-mammal species, or human_on_anthro mammal to specifically get humans with non-human mammals. Currently, neither of these searches work. And, really, keeping human implying mammal does not actually help anything. It does not make searching anything any easier, and only makes some things harder. They aren’t species in the first place, only forms. Other form tags don’t imply anything, even though you could make a case for humanoid also being inherently mammalian.

So… yeah. +1 to this de-implication.

In regards to the OP request, I'd only give it +1 if the ape implication goes through, otherwise I'd give it a -1. It's a harmless implication due to everything implying it. "This is a species known to have hair and/or bald, semi-dry skin" is incredibly vague.

I mean you can just search for mammals -human if you don't want humans in your mammal search

The site already makes a distinction between humans versus other animals by banning human_only standalone images, so I don't see what the harm in unimplicating is.

Scientifically we're mammals, but furry-wise we aren't even animals.

lendrimujina said:
The site already makes a distinction between humans versus other animals by banning human_only standalone images, so I don't see what the harm in unimplicating is.

Humans are still allowed here, even human_only posts in some circumstances, but as this is a furry booru, human images don't automatically fit here without something more. We don't allow images that are only a background with no characters, but background tags still get appropriate implications because an image can still have one along with the relevant furry characters.

closetpossum said:
...Humans are Mammals

Science says so. History says so.

Yes, but humans aren't furries.

It's like asking if there's a doctor in the house because someone needs medical care only for someone with a Ph.D in interpretive dance to speak up that they're a doctor and should count; it's technically true, but it's not relevant to what is being looked for.

lendrimujina said:
Yes, but humans aren't furries.

It's like asking if there's a doctor in the house because someone needs medical care only for someone with a Ph.D in interpretive dance to speak up that they're a doctor and should count; it's technically true, but it's not relevant to what is being looked for.

Which is irrelevant to them being tagged as mammals as no one uses "mammal" as shorthand for furry. Humans aren't being tagged anthro/feral/whatever, and neither are humanoids being tagged anthro/feral (though an incredibly high number of people keep mistagging anthros as humanoid and/or feral), so that analogy doesn't work.

lendrimujina said:
Yes, but humans aren't furries.

It's like asking if there's a doctor in the house because someone needs medical care only for someone with a Ph.D in interpretive dance to speak up that they're a doctor and should count; it's technically true, but it's not relevant to what is being looked for.

missing the point.
OP wants to remove the implication.
My reply is just facts that completely rebuttal the OP's wishes

closetpossum said:
...Humans are Mammals

Science says so. History says so.

completely rebuttal

If we were going by-the-book on that we'd also be tagging them primate and ape.
Humans are already not tagged the same way as anything else.

scaliespe said:
I’ve thought about this some more, and I’ve come to the conclusion that the original BUR to remove the mammal implication would be best, so I’ve changed my vote.

My initial objection was that the non-mammal_* tags should ideally be a reliable indicator of these features present on non-mammalian species, meaning that, for example, a search for breasts -mammal should give the same results, though the tags have the advantage of being able to identify cases where there’s a mammal and a non-mammal in the same image. Likewise, I don’t think humans nor any humanoids should qualify for the non-mammal_* tags as they are mostly human, and the tag is meant to identify these features when present on species that don’t normally have them. I think even non-mammal humanoids like lizard_humanoid should be disqualified as they are mostly human, which are mammalian.

This idea, however, would also logically require all humanoids to imply mammal as well, which might be excessive. I could support that, personally, as mammal is already a very diffuse mixture of things, with the only common principle being that they all have at least some vaguely mammalian characteristics, and humanoids would still fit within that idea. That way, you could simply search -mammal if you only want to find species that are distinctly not mammalian in any way. However, I don’t see this idea getting much support, and so I’ve come up with another idea.

The first thing is that tags like non-mammal_breasts and other non-mammal tags should not be applied to humanoids. Currently, the wiki mentions no such restriction, but I’m pretty certain that people looking for non-mammal breasts are NOT looking for things like this.

Currently, non-mammal_breasts solo humanoid returns 20 pages of results, but most of them appear to be anthros mistagged as humanoid… it’s amazing how frequently humanoid gets mistagged.

That way, we can still reliably get non-mammalian species with these features without expanding the scope of the mammal tag, as humanoids are essentially mammalian, but not technically mammalian.

Next, I think we should recognize human in the proper context of E621. It is actually treated not like a species tag by the site, but as a body type. Yes, we all know that humans are a species in real life, and that this species is technically categorized as both primate and mammal. This is not really important for our purposes, though. It’s clear in our tagging structure that we don’t consider them that way. They’re treated as a body type as indicated by tags like human_on_anthro. We simply couldn’t do this with any other species - hence why I say that humans, for our purposes, are not a species. We don’t have tags like lizard_on_anthro or whatever. That would be untenable.

To that end, I agree that humans should not be considered mammals here. Not only that, but I think we should even move the tag to the general category to align with the other body type tags, anthro and feral (and while we’re at it, humanoid, taur, and draconcopode should probably also be moved to general - they’re forms, not species). Even better, my preferred solution would be to create a new tag category for forms that all these tags can be moved to, but I feel like that won’t happen.

Now, if humans are no longer considered mammals, this gives us the ability to search specifically for humans with certain species. Specifically, we would be able to search human_on_anthro -mammal to get results featuring humans interacting with non-mammal species, or human_on_anthro mammal to specifically get humans with non-human mammals. Currently, neither of these searches work. And, really, keeping human implying mammal does not actually help anything. It does not make searching anything any easier, and only makes some things harder. They aren’t species in the first place, only forms. Other form tags don’t imply anything, even though you could make a case for humanoid also being inherently mammalian.

So… yeah. +1 to this de-implication.

Gonna quote myself here as my point still stands, rejected or not. lol

Yeah, it’s probably tl;dr. Oh well.

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