The tag alias #57902 catgirl -> feline has been approved.

Reason: Changed with suggestions from topic #34337

• "catgirl" is the common term for female cat_humanoid but:
• catgirl can be potentially mistagged on feline anthro characters, and not just cat humanoids, so it shouldn't be aliased to cat_humanoid
• catgirl could be applied to a gynomorph character, so it shouldn't be aliased to female

Feline is a catch-all for cat creatures in general, this is probably the best way to get rid of the tag without causing serious mistags.

EDIT: The tag alias catgirl -> feline (forum #338922) has been approved by @bitWolfy.

+1, but any reason you went for feline and not felid?

strikerman said:
+1, but any reason you went for feline and not felid?

My thinking is that catgirl is more likely to be tagged on a character that is clearly a cat, or an ambiguous cat-like species, so they would need to be tagged as feline; if the character were a tiger or lion or anything else that would fall under felid but not feline, "catgirl" is less likely to be used. If "catgirl -> feline" is added to a post with a lion, the mistag can be fixed easily at a later date (using a search like lion solo feline), far easier than searching through tens of thousands of posts tagged felid for characters that aren't tagged feline but should be.

The tag alias catgirl -> feline (forum #338922) has been approved by @bitWolfy.

This may be considered heresy, but IMHO the feline / felid distinction is more than a little bit pointless.
The strict taxonomical tags aren't terribly helpful in general.

bitwolfy said:
This may be considered heresy, but IMHO the feline / felid distinction is more than a little bit pointless.
The strict taxonomical tags aren't terribly helpful in general.

No, you're right and you should say it. I remember when that one (now former) admin created all these scientific taxonomy tags and I couldn't understand the point back then either. The main impact has been making it more difficult to tell at a glance how many species are tagged in a post.

bitwolfy said:
This may be considered heresy, but IMHO the feline / felid distinction is more than a little bit pointless.
The strict taxonomical tags aren't terribly helpful in general.

post #2790570

I personally use the distinction a lot...

I'm personally still in favor of trying to get the best of both worlds by leaving the system we have as it is, but offering an option in the account to remove some of the upper taxonomy names, and replace the remaining scientific names with more generic ones, preferably it'd be some client side trickery.

The advantage would be that we can get the best of both worlds, the cool people that can use the more complex system can utilize it for their own benefit, and the regular people can more easily deal with a simpler system.

@Bitwolfy maybe that's something you could consider adding to your script? If it is doable in CSS only we could even have it as some sort of staff approved custom CSS template people to use.

notmenotyou said:
replace the remaining scientific names with more generic ones

If this means ursid will become bear (or even common_bear), yes yes yes a thousand times yes.

strikerman said:
If this means ursid will become bear (or even common_bear), yes yes yes a thousand times yes.

Chiropteran becomes bat_(mammal). (Wait, that one's not aliased?)
I'd love seeing common terms like that.

The problem with scientific taxonomy is that we're not tagging scientific illustrations, we're tagging idealised fantasy depictions of animals drawn by other furries based on little more than a vague pop culture understanding of those species' key traits. When all you have to go on is a pair of triangular ears and a cylindrical tail, does the distinction between feline_humanoid and felid_humanoid matter? Do you bloody well think it mattered to the artist?

Imagine if other tags tried to maintain this level of realism. Speaking as someone who recently stayed up all night tracking down and classifying such lovely tags as cum_in_brain, I think anybody trying to study sexology based on furry porn would be in for a shock.

bitwolfy said:
This may be considered heresy, but IMHO the feline / felid distinction is more than a little bit pointless.

It seem useful to me, felid is "all cats", pantherine are "big cats", feline are "small cats". Unlike some taxonomical tags, there's a widely understood difference in what these two taxonomical groups describe (even if the exact scientific names aren't widely understood), a lot of people know of "big cats". But the similar names can be confusing, the difference wasn't even clear to me until having to figure out whether to suggest aliasing this tag to felid or feline.

The strict taxonomical tags aren't terribly helpful in general.

Phalangeriform and didelphid immediately come to mind, how many posts under phalangeriform actually depict Australasian marsupials ("Possum"), and not the far more popular, more visually distinctive (black, grey, white fur, bald pink tail) marsupial of the Americas ALSO known as "(O)possum"? Could it be that most people don't know what phalangeriform/didelphid means and just assume whichever comes up is the correct scientific designation?

I don't have any suggestions or opinions on what, or if anything could be changed, just wanted to give my two cents.

furrin_gok said:
Chiropteran becomes bat_(mammal). (Wait, that one's not aliased?)
I'd love seeing common terms like that.

Also cervid (deer), hyaenid (hyena), rhinocerotoid, (rhinoceros), delphinoid (dolphin, which isn't even correct given that dolphins can belong to other families)

Does machairodontine (sabre-toothed tiger) count? In any case I hate these tags and would do anything to see them changed

Nobody's mentioned lutrine yet?

wat8548 said:
Nobody's mentioned lutrine yet?

it's hard to keep track of all these tags

strikerman said:
it's hard to keep track of all these tags

On that note actually, is there a list of those tags with complicated sciency names instead of their normal names?

wat8548 said:
The problem with scientific taxonomy is that we're not tagging scientific illustrations, we're tagging idealised fantasy depictions of animals drawn by other furries based on little more than a vague pop culture understanding of those species' key traits. When all you have to go on is a pair of triangular ears and a cylindrical tail, does the distinction between feline_humanoid and felid_humanoid matter? Do you bloody well think it mattered to the artist?

The problem is if we go based on what species artists actually draw 90% of all furries should be tagged as dogs with weird fur colors.

strikerman said:
On that note actually, is there a list of those tags with complicated sciency names instead of their normal names?

Check the mammal wiki, specifically the section at the top.

notmenotyou said:
The problem is if we go based on what species artists actually draw 90% of all furries should be tagged as dogs with weird fur colors.

post #610271

Just remembered possibly the worst example on the site: sus_(pig), a case of introducing ambiguity for no reason.

Like, I'm not even wholly opposed to aliasing bear or bat given their other meanings, but at least be consistent about it!