The difference between holding_* and *_grab tags is nonsensical.

Right now there's a distinction made that "grabbing" means "another character is touching that body part", and "holding" means "the character is touching their own body part".

Unsurprisingly, the results are that these tags are constantly misapplied (For example, there are 3.7k posts under butt_grab solo and the same number under breast_grab solo -disembodied_hand), the distinction is entirely arbitrary, an uploader or tagger wouldn't know it without consulting the wiki page. Most logically take "grab" to follow the dictionary definition of "to grasp or seize suddenly and roughly", while holding is "to carry or support". Ask most people, and they'll say they are two different actions.

Is this really a "butt grab" when the character is holding up the other character by the butt? Or a "balls grab" when she's clearly supporting the weight of the balls with her hand and not "grabbing" them?

post #3700882 post #3689420

They should both be holding_*.

Is this better described as the character "lifting or supporting" their butt when they only have a single hand squeezing the top of a butt cheek? Would you say the character in the first image is just "holding a breast" or is she "grabbing her breast"?

post #3500302 post #3659712

They should both be *_grab.

We have multiple hand_on_own_* and hand_on_another's_* tags that could be used to make a clear, objective distinction of whose hand is doing the touching. We don't need to rely on an arbitrary distinction between *_grab and holding_*. We should use those, change posts using grab/holding to whichever action is more appropriate, and fix this issue.

Thoughts?

Without necessarily denying that there's a mistagging problem with these tags, I'm not sure trying to draw a visual distinction between "grabbing" and "holding" is the solution. Maybe we should just use "holding" or "grabbing" exclusively, and combine it with "own" when appropriate?

The longstanding standard is that hand_on_x tags are meant to be used when a character has their own hand on a body part, and x_grab tags are meant to be used when a character's hand is own another character's body part. Yes, the tag names do not make this clear at all, and I'm 100% in favor of changing the tag names. Also, I genuinely wasn't aware that there was a holding_x set of tags, and those should be merged to the hand_on_x tags (and then they should be moved to a tag name that's actually descriptive).

strikerman said:
The longstanding standard is that hand_on_x tags are meant to be used when a character has their own hand on a body part, and x_grab tags are meant to be used when a character's hand is own another character's body part. Yes, the tag names do not make this clear at all, and I'm 100% in favor of changing the tag names. Also, I genuinely wasn't aware that there was a holding_x set of tags, and those should be merged to the hand_on_x tags (and then they should be moved to a tag name that's actually descriptive).

My only question is what if someone is using something other than a hand (wing, tentacle, tail, etc.) to hold up a boob or butt?

vulpes_artifex said:
Without necessarily denying that there's a mistagging problem with these tags, I'm not sure trying to draw a visual distinction between "grabbing" and "holding" is the solution. Maybe we should just use "holding" or "grabbing" exclusively, and combine it with "own" when appropriate?

That sounds like what I'm suggesting, and making a visual distinction. For example, the first image would be hand_on_another's_butt holding_butt and the third would be hand_on_own_butt butt_grab.

strikerman said:
The longstanding standard is that hand_on_x tags are meant to be used when a character has their own hand on a body part, and x_grab tags are meant to be used when a character's hand is own another character's body part. Yes, the tag names do not make this clear at all, and I'm 100% in favor of changing the tag names. Also, I genuinely wasn't aware that there was a holding_x set of tags, and those should be merged to the hand_on_x tags (and then they should be moved to a tag name that's actually descriptive).

I disagree with merging holding_* tags with hand_on_*:

• not all holding involves hands, a character might hold with a tail or their foot
• holding is a specific action, post #2567683 is a prime example of "holding butt" (and "lifting butt" is aliased to holding butt, reinforcing that it means "supporting/carrying", same with "lifting_breast"), hand_on_* is neutral, alone, it can apply to a character merely resting a hand on the body part, not squeezing or supporting that body part.

maplebytes said:
I disagree with merging holding_* tags with hand_on_*:

• not all holding involves hands, a character might hold with a tail or their foot
• holding is a specific action, post #2567683 is a prime example of "holding butt" (and "lifting butt" is aliased to holding butt, reinforcing that it means "supporting/carrying", same with "lifting_breast"), hand_on_* is neutral, alone, it can apply to a character merely resting a hand on the body part, not squeezing or supporting that body part.

We could set up a chain of tags where hand_on_own_x and hand_on_another's_x are at the top, and more specific tags (e.g. holding_own_x) then imply them. I'm not sure how much benefit there is to specifying exactly how much of a character's hand is on a body part. I'm not strictly opposed to the idea of keeping them separate, I just think the simplest option would be for the best. We do already have leg_on_x, tail_on_x etc. tags too, although they're not nearly as widespread.

strikerman said:
We could set up a chain of tags where hand_on_own_x and hand_on_another's_x are at the top, and more specific tags (e.g. holding_own_x) then imply them. I'm not sure how much benefit there is to specifying exactly how much of a character's hand is on a body part. I'm not strictly opposed to the idea of keeping them separate, I just think the simplest option would be for the best. We do already have leg_on_x, tail_on_x etc. tags too, although they're not nearly as widespread.

The only things I'm suggesting is changing the definitions of *_grab and holding_* tags to match up with the dictionary definitions and common understanding of "holding" and "grabbing", instead of the arbitrary, unintuitive distinction that's causing all of the "mistags". Then slowly fixing the posts under them to fit, and adding hand_on_(another's/own)_* to them where necessary. In the rare cases there aren't hands, we can use tail_on_* etc.

In a lot of cases, hand_on_(own/another's)_* already imply hand_on_*, so we don't need to worry about creating implications.

I think *_grab should refer to having a firm grasp on something, regardless of what prehensile member is doing the grasping. For many tail and tentacle related cases coiling should be used, unless the tentacle has pincers or something in anatomy to actually grab with.

*_on_own_* and *_on_another's_* should be used for tentacle_on_own_neck and hand_on_another's_head to take no stand on the kind of contact involved.

This would enable searching images with characters touching other characters at given locations, as well as characters having given locations grabbed firmly.

P.S. One thing that I am still missing is a way of tagging where tags have a relation to each other, so that one could look for images where (either by themselves or within an image of a larger group) an athletic felid with black hair and barefoot is grabbing by the arm a humanoid with blonde hair and fingerless gloves. Now you only get all images with black haired and blonde characters where someone is barefoot and someone has fingerless gloves and someone is grabbing someone by the arm. Of course, this change would take ages to propagate throughout the images, and I don't know how the tagging could be kept easy.

+1, the vast majority of users cannot distinguish between grabbing and holding as they are currently defined. The distinction is not clear enough from the tag names, to be useful for tagging or searching. The issue is further complicated by squeeze, grope, fondle and hand_on tags.

I think an achievable goal is having posts tagged reliably with hand_on_own_breast, hand_on_other's_butt and so on. These are good, self-explanatory tags. The grab, grope etc tags are much more subjective and will never be tagged completely reliably but are still useful. Dictionary definitions and a couple of aliases should bring those mostly in line with typical usage. But because we've long used idiosyncratic definitions of grab and hold, those tags will need to be reviewed and changed as necessary. That's more than 100,000 posts to go through.