Locked there by
https://e621.net/users/17633

https://e621.net/posts/3699228
https://e621.net/posts/2542953
please remove

let artist have control over their tags ffs

We have a TWYS policy here with regards to tagging for images, and in those images, the characters appears (aka, looks) like they are cubs, (personally, I would tag the first cub, and the second young) But there are lore tags available to tag their actual ages

cutefox123 said:
We have a TWYS policy here with regards to tagging for images, and in those images, the characters appears (aka, looks) like they are cubs, (personally, I would tag the first cub, and the second young) But there are lore tags available to tag their actual ages

It's an inane policy that doesn't take enough into account, which can simply be remedied by the artist having some control over their own content

dacad said:
It's an inane policy that doesn't take enough into account, which can simply be remedied by the artist having some control over their own content

what do you mean it doesn't take enough into account?
you TAG what you SEE
Lore tags are for what you KNOW, aka "this character may look 10, but they are actually 40"
Its actually quite helpful looking for images.

dacad said:
It's an inane policy that doesn't take enough into account, which can simply be remedied by the artist having some control over their own content

could you please explain why it is "insane" and what it doesn't take into account? e6 has had this policy for years, so i don't know why you're deciding to say this instead of looking it up or initially asking why they got locked.

cutefox123 said:
what do you mean it doesn't take enough into account?
you TAG what you SEE
Lore tags are for what you KNOW, aka "this character may look 10, but they are actually 40"
Its actually quite helpful looking for images.

there are other descriptive tags that can be used "smaller character" "smaller by lore" or some shit; something that can be used in special circumstances with ambiguously sized characters / or just pokemon

dacad said:
there are other descriptive tags that can be used "smaller character" "smaller by lore" or some shit; something that can be used in special circumstances with ambiguously sized characters / or just pokemon

"smaller character" is generally young/cub tags here, and *_(lore) tags are what you're looking for with "smaller by lore"
there are tags like smaller sub, but thats generally actual size, while still looking like they are of age.

cutefox123 said:
We have a TWYS policy here with regards to tagging for images, and in those images, the characters appears (aka, looks) like they are cubs, (personally, I would tag the first cub, and the second young) But there are lore tags available to tag their actual ages

My understanding is that both young and cub are tags for characters that appear to be under the age of 18. So if you would tag it young, you would also tag it cub (if furry/feral).

Just kind of glancing through their art and personally I think there should be a lot more young/cub tags than there currently are, especially they have art demonstrating they can draw more adult-like proportions (nsfw) ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Just my opinion though.

dacad said:
there are other descriptive tags that can be used "smaller character" "smaller by lore" or some shit;

There is the adult_(lore) tag that can be used to indicate a character that is tagged young by the way they look is actually older.

shitposter said:
My understanding is that both young and cub are tags for characters that appear to be under the age of 18. So if you would tag it young, you would also tag it cub (if furry/feral).

Just kind of glancing through their art and personally I think there should be a lot more young/cub tags than there currently are, especially they have art demonstrating they can draw more adult-like proportions (nsfw) ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Just my opinion though.

technically speaking, all cubs are young, but not all youngs are cubs

cutefox123 said:
"smaller character" is generally young/cub tags here, and *_(lore) tags are what you're looking for with "smaller by lore"
there are tags like smaller sub, but thats generally actual size, while still looking like they are of age.

Just because a character is small doesn't mean their are a cub, you couch cushion
just take Midna for example

dacad said:
there are other descriptive tags that can be used "smaller character" "smaller by lore" or some shit; something that can be used in special circumstances with ambiguously sized characters / or just pokemon

If it is ambiguous if they are younger or not, it is better to err on the side of caution and mark them as young so that people can avoid it. Some people don't care if a character is actually of age, just the appearance of them can be off-putting. There is the lore tag as well, which is a solution to disambiguate it, while still having the characteristics which are ambiguous be searchable.

I do wish we would not lock tags like cub/young when the post is on a site like FA that clearly doesn't allow that type of content. I can understand the policy in place but when coming to characters like Pokemon who don't have an established lore, what they look like to the viewer becomes more of an personal opinion rather than facts.

It should be as simple as to not force the tags on the artist's work because of the tags most likely being blacklisted and especially blacklisted when viewed with guest accounts. Especially when the work is viewable on FA.

The entire reason this is happening in the first place is because of people tagging previous works with their personal opinion on the character's age as such which put people in the viewpoint that these too are cub/young

It doesn't matter if a character is a 700-year-old vampire if a Canadian or British investigator would think they look 12.

Artwork may be protected in the United States, but in several other countries, it isn't, and users have to blacklist cub and young. If the tagging is inadequate, that equals insufficient blacklisting and thus very bad for those users.

That said, I should be clear I'm not trying to gang up on you or make a moral grandstand; the images linked to are very well-done.

lendrimujina said:
It doesn't matter if a character is a 700-year-old vampire if a Canadian or British investigator would think they look 12.

Drawings may be protected in the United States, but in several other countries, users have to blacklist cub and young. If the tagging is inadequate, that equals insufficient blacklisting and thus very bad for those users.

That said, I should be clear I'm not trying to gang up on you or make a moral grandstand; the images linked to are very well-done.

This sounds more like a user problem then since if you go through a lot of the quilava tags as they are right now, you could say those are mistaken for cub too, but no one is forcing tags on those characters. Lots of pokemon are always debated to be cub just because they are 1st or 2nd evo. If people are really getting cracked down on this, they should blacklist the pokemon, not force a tag that isn't true.

invalid_nickname said:
This sounds more like a user problem then since if you go through a lot of the quilava tags as they are right now, you could say those are mistaken for cub too, but no one is forcing tags on those characters. Lots of pokemon are always debated to be cub just because they are 1st or 2nd evo. If people are really getting cracked down on this, they should blacklist the pokemon, not force a tag that isn't true.

I'm honestly not a fan of the TWYS system, either. But them's the breaks, I'm afraid, and this is a debate that's come up a lot of times before. And it's gotten ugly a lot of times before. This is not the first time the site's been through this song and dance, and the mods have made their judgement clear.

Heck. The lore tag category was created in the first place as a compromise because the TWYS policy struck a lot of people as transphobic. And the staff saw why, though they maintained that an image searching site like this is useless if you can't search for what you want to see.

I'm not advocating for the policy; I'm saying it's useless to fight it because they have their reasons and are sticking to them.

Related: It doesn't help that the official Pokemon canon contradicts itself by having most 1st-stage pokemon labelled as "baby pokemon" yet in the anime they also confirmed that 1st-stage pokemon can grow old without evolving.

But on-topic, the site rule is if something looks cub, it gets tagged as cub, even if the lore of a character says otherwise. If users can't agree on what to tag, an admin will step in and make a ruling. If you disagree with the ruling, you contact NotMeNotYou. But since NotMeNotYou is the one that gave the ruling, you have to contact DasaDevil via email. Contact information is here under "Contact Information"

As for now, the best you can do is tag it as adult_(lore) and put in the descriptions that the character is not cub

dacad said:
Just because a character is small doesn't mean their are a cub, you couch cushion

Unfortunately, some people do see it that way and would complain A LOT about seeing "cub" even though the artist did not intend it to be like that.
Please understand though that the tagging on posts do not necessarily reflect what the artist has intended for the artwork, it is just for viewers to blacklist what they could perceive as being at first glance.

For example, if a character has a rape fantasy and proceeds to engage in simulated rape, it still gets tagged as rape because it looks like it. I am not sure if there is a lore tag equivalent for rape-play.

Likewise, if someone decides to create a young-looking character but confirms that they are of age, it still gets tagged as young because they look like it. In this case, the adult_(lore) tag is also added to clarify to viewers that this character is known canonically as being an "adult".
The opposite is true as well, should someone create an adult-looking character but confirms that they are underaged, it gets tagged young_(lore) to clarify to viewers that the character is canonically young.

dacad said:
It's an inane policy that doesn't take enough into account, which can simply be remedied by the artist having some control over their own content

The thing is, sometimes artists lie, both to themselves and to others. Does the phrase "1,000-year-old loli" mean anything to you?

The relevant factor here is not your character's "canon" age (something that doesn't exist, as Quilavas are not real), but how old they appear to be in the eyes of a neutral bystander, especially since a lot of people specifically do not want to see characters who look underage.

(also you post on Inkbunny, I'm not sure why you've picked this site to go on a moral crusade against cub)

majp said:
I do wish we would not lock tags like cub/young when the post is on a site like FA that clearly doesn't allow that type of content. I can understand the policy in place but when coming to characters like Pokemon who don't have an established lore, what they look like to the viewer becomes more of an personal opinion rather than facts.

It should be as simple as to not force the tags on the artist's work because of the tags most likely being blacklisted and especially blacklisted when viewed with guest accounts. Especially when the work is viewable on FA.

I doubt think FA would care at all what other websites have in their tags.

As a matter of fact, FA does not really care that much about "established lore" if you look at their upload policy on Content Involving Minors:

• Content featuring minors is not allowed when the minor is in the presence of sexual activity, sexual objects, or nudity, though exceptions may be made for non-sexual depictions of birth and breastfeeding. Presence is defined as being in the same scene, such as sharing a comic panel, contiguous image, reference sheet, or specific section of a story where characters are engaging each other.
• Minors may not have detailed bulges or outlines of normal or hyper genitalia, clothed or otherwise. Minors may not be fetishized. Minors younger than 13 may not be depicted as pregnant. Minors are defined as real or fictional humanoids with a childlike body or younger than 18 years old, and any adolescent animals.

FA considers a "childlike body" as being definitive of a minor. Does that mean that they would base off their own personal opinion rather than facts when it comes to handling reports?

The entire reason this is happening in the first place is because of people tagging previous works with their personal opinion on the character's age as such which put people in the viewpoint that these too are cub/young

Which is why users are also welcomed to remove tags that they think does not fit the artwork in question.

Tags only get locked when people argue and start a tag war on what should or should not be tagged. In which case, a moderator steps in to make a final judgement for what the appropriate tag is.

thegreatwolfgang said:
I doubt think FA would care at all what other websites have in their tags.

As a matter of fact, FA does not really care that much about "established lore" if you look at their upload policy on Content Involving Minors:

• Content featuring minors is not allowed when the minor is in the presence of sexual activity, sexual objects, or nudity, though exceptions may be made for non-sexual depictions of birth and breastfeeding. Presence is defined as being in the same scene, such as sharing a comic panel, contiguous image, reference sheet, or specific section of a story where characters are engaging each other.
• Minors may not have detailed bulges or outlines of normal or hyper genitalia, clothed or otherwise. Minors may not be fetishized. Minors younger than 13 may not be depicted as pregnant. Minors are defined as real or fictional humanoids with a childlike body or younger than 18 years old, and any adolescent animals.

FA considers a "childlike body" as being definitive of a minor. Does that mean that they would base off their own personal opinion rather than facts when it comes to handling reports?

Which is why users are also welcomed to remove tags that they think does not fit the artwork in question.

Tags only get locked when people argue and start a tag war on what should or should not be tagged. In which case, a moderator steps in to make a final judgement for what the appropriate tag is.

Wasn't the entire Milachu situation because of this?

Consider a two image sequence: first image is very gruesome snuff, second image reveals that it's a movie production still. Would you, as an artist, rally to remove the snuff tag from your first image?

We can never escape this conflict can we?

TWYS: An 'inane' policy on a site not actually dedicated to canon but appearances. It's almost like it's an art archive and not a social media site.

thegreatwolfgang said:
Tags only get locked when people argue and start a tag war on what should or should not be tagged. In which case, a moderator steps in to make a final judgement for what the appropriate tag is.

Protip: If it got locked, it's probably because a lot of people disagree with the person removing the tag? :facepalm:

benjiboyo said:
We can never escape this conflict can we?

No, because you can't please everyone, and some will go to places that people don't agree with them, just to complain.

votp said:
Wasn't the entire Milachu situation because of this?

This? https://e621.net/forum_topics/33827

Just wait until sites start using very accurate AI scoring systems to tag...

dacad said:
Locked there by
https://e621.net/users/17633

https://e621.net/posts/3699228
https://e621.net/posts/2542953
please remove

let artist have control over their tags ffs

Actually, I agree with you, cubs are for furry characters who are visibly babies or toddlers at most.
They are young, sure, that tag is definitely right to be there, but they don't look like babies or toddlers, they look like teenagers (around ages 12-13 to be precise). Even the wiki referring to body proportions agrees with me on that.

edit: And while the wiki for cub has its own definition of the term, it acknowledges it is usually reserved for characters between ages 4 to 10. That wiki page should be fixed in my opinion.

But besides that, artists don't havean extra authority on their art over anyone else to avoid problems. Imagine I upload my own art that features no women and then tag it female anthro, wouldn't that piss of people?
This can quickly be abused by trolls, so this rule exemption you want isn't a good excue.

cutefox123 said:
technically speaking, all cubs are young, but not all youngs are cubs

If you use the tags how they are defined, for any character who appears under the age of 18, then both tags absolutely should be applied for furry/feral. Or young + shota/loli for human/humanoid/cub. Young shouldn't be used on a character that appears to be 18+. This is probably why tags such as baby, toddler, child, and teenager exist. To denote those differences.

Example:

• a character who looks 13 should have young + teenager + cub/shota/loli
• a character who looks 2 should have young + toddler + cub/shota/loli

Again, just my understanding of how those tags are supposed to be used.

This only proves the point that TWYS doesn't work. I'm telling you these issues would vanish if you got rid of that retarded policy.

sexygaydragon said:
This only proves the point that TWYS doesn't work. I'm telling you these issues would vanish if you got rid of that retarded policy.

It works fine for age, discussions like this just pop up because there's a very obvious stigma behind portraying these kinds of characters.
If we just took the artist's word for it each time they wanted to establish a character's age, people would actually have a harder time avoiding cub/loli/shota content.
There are all sorts of disclaimers about how "all characters portrayed are 18 or older", and there's the "1,000-year-old-dragon-who-looks-like-a-little-girl" trope too.

wolfmanfur said:
Actually, I agree with you, cubs are for furry characters who are visibly babies or toddlers at most.
They are young, sure, that tag is definitely right to be there, but they don't look like babies or toddlers, they look like teenagers (around ages 12-13 to be precise). Even the wiki referring to body proportions agrees with me on that.

edit: And while the wiki for cub has its own definition of the term, it acknowledges it is usually reserved for characters between ages 4 to 10. That wiki page should be fixed in my opinion.

But besides that, artists don't havean extra authority on their art over anyone else to avoid problems. Imagine I upload my own art that features no women and then tag it female anthro, wouldn't that piss of people?
This can quickly be abused by trolls, so this rule exemption you want isn't a good excue.

SO more let's just alias cub to young. It's extra, like lolie when "young female."

There are enough tags for the various age group that young covers them all and people can search for the groups they want

sexygaydragon said:
This only proves the point that TWYS doesn't work. I'm telling you these issues would vanish if you got rid of that retarded policy.

And search would be useless like it is on any of the art sites

I've just added adult_(lore) to those pieces 👍

camkitty said:
SO more let's just alias cub to young. It's extra, like lolie when "young female."

There are enough tags for the various age group that young covers them all and people can search for the groups they want

And search would be useless like it is on any of the art sites

Useless only if you are a dumbass. I legitimately have an easier time searching for things on every other website.

lafcadio said:
It works fine for age, discussions like this just pop up because there's a very obvious stigma behind portraying these kinds of characters.
If we just took the artist's word for it each time they wanted to establish a character's age, people would actually have a harder time avoiding cub/loli/shota content.
There are all sorts of disclaimers about how "all characters portrayed are 18 or older", and there's the "1,000-year-old-dragon-who-looks-like-a-little-girl" trope too.

If you took the artist's word you'd have way less issues. Things would actually be tagged correctly. You guys don't actually care about tag accuracy at all. The tags are for the blacklist not the image apparently as I've been told. Can't remember who it was though.

Why do I even bother? This won't go anywhere anyways so I'm quitting while I'm still sane.

wolfmanfur said:
Actually, I agree with you, cubs are for furry characters who are visibly babies or toddlers at most.
They are young, sure, that tag is definitely right to be there, but they don't look like babies or toddlers, they look like teenagers (around ages 12-13 to be precise). Even the wiki referring to body proportions agrees with me on that.

edit: And while the wiki for cub has its own definition of the term, it acknowledges it is usually reserved for characters between ages 4 to 10. That wiki page should be fixed in my opinion.

Literally ignores the latter half of the sentence you are supposedly quoting from the cub wiki.

• While most cubs are quite young (4-10, in human years), the phrase cub can refer to all physically immature and legally underage characters, ranging from infants, to underage teenagers.

sexygaydragon said:
This only proves the point that TWYS doesn't work. I'm telling you these issues would vanish if you got rid of that retarded policy.

I can imagine the hell that is going to break loose if TWYK becomes accepted.

Ah yes, the males of my "original species" all have big boobas and pussy-like genitalia that function just like penises. Don't tag them as female though because I said so!

sexygaydragon said:
If you took the artist's word you'd have way less issues. Things would actually be tagged correctly. You guys don't actually care about tag accuracy at all. The tags are for the blacklist not the image apparently as I've been told. Can't remember who it was though.

Why do I even bother? This won't go anywhere anyways so I'm quitting while I'm still sane.

See, these sentences are grammatically correct, but they don't actually communicate anything substantial. What issues are solved by taking the artist's word? What is not being tagged correctly that would be tagged correctly by allowing artist input to take priority?

Gender tags have certainly caused some issues when it comes to author avatars, characters depicted inconsistently, and certain flat-chested women, but the introduction of gender lore makes it so that the needs of both parties can be satisfied. Users who like masculinity and cocks can find those by searching male, users who like trans characters can find those by searching trans_(lore), and users who like any female trans or otherwise can find those by searching ~female ~trans_female ~female_(lore).
People who want to avoid young content, or are legally required to do so in their country and will face actual jailtime for downloading this kind of content can blacklist young. People who want to seek out characters that are visibly adult or known to be adults can search ~adult ~adult_(lore).
Adult (lore) has been applied to the OP images, so the needs of both camps should be satisfied. People who can't/won't view cub content don't need to see the post. People who're okay with adults portrayed as youthful can find the post by searching.

Any proposed alternative to TWYS age tags that does not tackle these issues is a non-starter.

The tags are for the blacklist not the image apparently as I've been told. Can't remember who it was though.

This claim is transparently silly. It also cloaks itself under the guise of relevancy, but there is no proof that this statement is from any kind of reliable source.
I do not believe for a second that there is a single user who blacklists the tag 2001 because it was a traumatic year for them.
I do not believe for a second that there is a single user who blacklists the tag 4:3 because that particular aspect ratio gives them seizures.
No, these things get tagged because they're related to the image.

siral_exan said:
could you please explain why it is "insane"

Inane is an actual word, it's not a typo

1. Lacking sense or substance.
2. Without contents; empty; void of sense or intelligence; purposeless; pointless; characterless; useless.
3. Lacking sense or meaning (often implying, "to the point of boredom or annoyance").

Of course personally I don't agree with OP that e621 refusing to be their PR agents is inane. It seems far more appropriate to say that in my observation, running a tagging system off of anything less objective than TWYS is an inane and futile endeavour.

thegreatwolfgang said:
Literally ignores the latter half of the sentence you are supposedly quoting from the cub wiki.

• While most cubs are quite young (4-10, in human years), the phrase cub can refer to all physically immature and legally underage characters, ranging from infants, to underage teenagers.

I can imagine the hell that is going to break loose if TWYK becomes accepted.

Ah yes, the males of my "original species" all have big boobas and pussy-like genitalia that function just like penises. Don't tag them as female though because I said so!

Notwithstanding that my exact complaint is that the wiki's definition of cub is inconsistent with reality. A cub is, in fact, a very young animal and would tantamount to a baby or child in anthro furry characters.
I made a quick search just to verify and some dictionarries' definitions is quite plain and simple "the newborn of an animal". Nobody uses the term cub to mean an underage animal ever and I understand why Dacad would be infuriated by this. These 2 posts should have young + teenager and nothing else.

This is the same problem with loli and shota, a loli is a girl infant, but there are teenagers tagged loli or shota.
https://e621.net/posts/3455533?q=teenager+loli

savageorange said:
Inane is an actual word, it's not a typo

Of course personally I don't agree with OP that e621 refusing to be their PR agents is inane. It seems far more appropriate to say that in my observation, running a tagging system off of anything less objective than TWYS is an inane and futile endeavour.

sorry, my iphone must have autocorrected it; i know inane is a word but didn't notice the added "s" until just now. in my defense, i'm way too tired of these threads popping up 'cause they always get sung in the exact same tune, and just wanted to wait for Dacad to reply to me...

wolfmanfur said:
Nobody uses the term cub to mean an underage animal ever and I understand why Dacad would be infuriated by this.

The furry community does AFAICS. This certainly doesn't seem to be limited to or originated by e621.

Additionally, e621 defines certain terms in very specific ways in order to make them most usable under TWYS - ie. functional for indexing images. Treating the e621 label 'cub' as strictly implying some dictionary definition of cub is unambiguously a communication error. Yes, people may come here and conclude that this tag 'cub' refers to some dictionary definition. But we can't really help that, as long as we prioritize indexing images effectively.
The most we can do is switch to some other word, which will also be defined in a very specific way.

People's general tendency to coerce and bastardize words ensures this situation will continue for the foreseeable future.

savageorange said:
The furry community does AFAICS. This certainly doesn't seem to be limited to or originated by e621.

Additionally, e621 defines certain terms in very specific ways in order to make them most usable under TWYS - ie. functional for indexing images. Treating the e621 label 'cub' as strictly implying some dictionary definition of cub is unambiguously a communication error. Yes, people may come here and conclude that this tag 'cub' refers to some dictionary definition. But we can't really help that, as long as we prioritize indexing images effectively.
The most we can do is switch to some other word, which will also be defined in a very specific way.

People's general tendency to coerce and bastardize words ensures this situation will continue for the foreseeable future.

To be frank, I don't see the point of these tags when young is already there. Instead of blacklisting loli, users could blacklist

young human female

This seems rather unnecessary if you ask me.

wolfmanfur said:
To be frank, I don't see the point of these tags when young is already there. Instead of blacklisting loli, users could blacklist

young human female

This seems rather unnecessary if you ask me.

"loli" ensures that it blocks young characters who are female, not young characters who happen to be in the same image as a female.
Also, lolis don't have to be human.

lafcadio said:
"loli" ensures that it blocks young characters who are female, not young characters who happen to be in the same image as a female.

Or in the same image as one character who is human and one who is female.

Addressing one concept via multiple tags really works a lot better in the positive (searching FOR x) case rather than blacklisting. Still doesn't work very well since it assumes that all the tags which your rule considers relevant are actually applied to the relevant images. Which is a lot less likely than the correct application of a single tag.

lafcadio said:
or are legally required to do so in their country and will face actual jailtime for downloading this kind of content

I'll just add: before anyone says "well don't download it then", even viewing a file in a browser is still receiving it over the network. It is also a download, even if the "Download" button or right mouse button are never touched.

(I know this might seem obvious to a lot of us, but you'd be surprised how many people don't know that.)

Maybe I'm just reiterating already made points here, but I can see a lot of reason in the suggestion to use different language to describe these sorts of characters. The issue here is that TWYS is determining a character to be young in appearance, and the young tag is being applied. The character in question may not necessarily be young, but they have an appearance that makes it seem so. People get angry because their work, which depicts no minors, is tagged as young. According to TWYS, this character is young to some extent. TWYS is only an issue here because it is being used in a context that is ultimately subjective. Although things like adult_(lore) exist, it doesn't address the original issue that being tagged young is apparently making that claim, even if it is not necessarily true. This language is imprecise and really should be something closer to young_appearance to maintain that what is being tagged is absolutely what is being seen and has no relevance to canon or other external factors.

Perhaps this is not necessary, but from what I've seen, many of these issues are brought up by those who don't entirely understand the nuances of the e621 tagging system. Rather than requiring these people to take a course in furry website semantics, it would be easier to simply provide them with an equivalent term that does a better job addressing what is truly at hand here, which is appearances. If people are still angry despite this change, it would be trivial to end the discussion immediately with a link to a wiki page for a more well-defined term. I understand it is unlikely changes will be made to this, as it has been a years long debate with few changes, but while everyone is sharing their thoughts, I figured I'd join in.

I should fucking not write in these kind of forum topics for my own mental health, but I guess I already did so might as well send.

dacad said:
let artist have control over their tags ffs

dacad said:
It's an inane policy that doesn't take enough into account, which can simply be remedied by the artist having some control over their own content

Whole point of the website is to be content orientated, not artist orientated. There's already gazillion websites where artists can do whatever they want with their own material.

So how the website is and should be is if someone was upkeeping their own collection and was categorizing it, but now for everyone and crowdsourced.
Main differences here are that if you don't want individual putting your artwork in folder called "cub" there's realistically nothing to be done. On website there's takedown and that's the control artists have over their own content. If you don't like how people use your toys, you can take your toys away, because they are your toys, but you can't just go and tell others how they are allowed to play games using your toys either.

Also NotMeNotYou is sites head admin, so if they lock the tags, then there's not really anything that any user or admin can do in these instances.

majp said:
I do wish we would not lock tags like cub/young when the post is on a site like FA that clearly doesn't allow that type of content. I can understand the policy in place but when coming to characters like Pokemon who don't have an established lore, what they look like to the viewer becomes more of an personal opinion rather than facts.

It should be as simple as to not force the tags on the artist's work because of the tags most likely being blacklisted and especially blacklisted when viewed with guest accounts. Especially when the work is viewable on FA.

The entire reason this is happening in the first place is because of people tagging previous works with their personal opinion on the character's age as such which put people in the viewpoint that these too are cub/young

My problem here is that why should we start changing policies how to deal with stuff here just because of another website artist happens to use?
FA also does not show this content by default either unless user creates account, puts in birthday that confirms they are at least 18 and then enables mature content in their user settings.

At least e621 goes by visuals (like basically all other services that disallow loli, shota and cub), where FA sometimes goes by lore, but then sometimes by visuals.
They basically instaban from Miles from Sonic, but I have even opened up a ticket about clearly extremely young looking pokemons acting and looking like literal toddlers (not just the first evolution, but clearly drawn to look even younger) and the responce for the ticket was that in lore they could be older they will not do anything. So with pokemon stuff, I guess I wouldn't worry with FA.

And yes, age is relatively subjective thing, that's the reason why in real life work we now check IDs from anyone appearing under 30yo, now amplify that by fictional characters not having ID to begin with and then being semi-feral non-human fictional species.
(also there's bunch of other tagging restrictions with fictional species as well as their lore is not taken into account either)

benjiboyo said:
We can never escape this conflict can we?

Unless there's huge shift in people differencing between reality and fiction in drawn pornographic content, nope.
Considering how much violent video games are still tied together with shootings, not sure if that ever happens.

lendrimujina said:
I'll just add: before anyone says "well don't download it then", even viewing a file in a browser is still receiving it over the network. It is also a download, even if the "Download" button or right mouse button are never touched.

(I know this might seem obvious to a lot of us, but you'd be surprised how many people don't know that.)

BTW, this also differs immensily between countries.
I have verified that in Finland, if the content is on cache, even if it's technically in your posession, it's still clearly not content that user has knowingly or deliberately downloaded so it doesn't hold in court. Additionally cub content is also fully legal as there's no actual human minors involved in any manner and it's fictional content.
But for both you should talk with professional how these things are in your own country as there are some that having file in any manner is enough to get you into trouble, but for majority of countries including many US states, these are perfectly legal. It's only payment processers and advertisers who usually deny this kind of content from platform for them to work with the platform, that's why e.g. Patreon doesn't allow hypnotism in sexual intercourse as it's non-consensual which Paypal denies.

garbagehumanbeing said:
Maybe I'm just reiterating already made points here, but I can see a lot of reason in the suggestion to use different language to describe these sorts of characters. The issue here is that TWYS is determining a character to be young in appearance, and the young tag is being applied. The character in question may not necessarily be young, but they have an appearance that makes it seem so. People get angry because their work, which depicts no minors, is tagged as young. According to TWYS, this character is young to some extent. TWYS is only an issue here because it is being used in a context that is ultimately subjective. Although things like adult_(lore) exist, it doesn't address the original issue that being tagged young is apparently making that claim, even if it is not necessarily true. This language is imprecise and really should be something closer to young_appearance to maintain that what is being tagged is absolutely what is being seen and has no relevance to canon or other external factors.

Perhaps this is not necessary, but from what I've seen, many of these issues are brought up by those who don't entirely understand the nuances of the e621 tagging system. Rather than requiring these people to take a course in furry website semantics, it would be easier to simply provide them with an equivalent term that does a better job addressing what is truly at hand here, which is appearances. If people are still angry despite this change, it would be trivial to end the discussion immediately with a link to a wiki page for a more well-defined term. I understand it is unlikely changes will be made to this, as it has been a years long debate with few changes, but while everyone is sharing their thoughts, I figured I'd join in.

This is kinda funny to me considering IRL porn labels these as "teen" (adult actors who look like they're 15) which is technically even worse than "young".
Also stuff like young_appearance sounds like unnecessary repitition, because the whole point of tags are to be indication of visual information of that post, so if it's tagged young, it's already "characters appearance is young" and not "character is young by lore".

I would hope instead of this site decorating something with roses makes the problem dissapear, but rather people stopping combining them together with literal CP which is basically the core issue for most.

garbagehumanbeing said:
Rather than requiring these people to take a course in furry website semantics, it would be easier to simply provide them with an equivalent term that does a better job addressing what is truly at hand here, which is appearances.

All normal (non lore) tags are about appearances, as Mairo says. This is not a complex requirement we are imposing on users, to understand that fact, though I'll admit it may be that we could make the primacy of TWYS more clear and unavoidable.

The issue of having our own meanings of terms is not avoidable if we intend to keep search functional. But the existing ontology is not hard to understand if a person will just begin from the assumption that any given tag references observable elements of the image rather than any part of their own narrative of what they mean to depict in the image.

mairo said:
I should fucking not write in these kind of forum topics for my own mental health,

you and me both, brother

mairo said:
This is kinda funny to me considering IRL porn labels these as "teen" (adult actors who look like they're 15) which is technically even worse than "young".
Also stuff like young_appearance sounds like unnecessary repitition, because the whole point of tags are to be indication of visual information of that post, so if it's tagged young, it's already "characters appearance is young" and not "character is young by lore".

I would hope instead of this site decorating something with roses makes the problem dissapear, but rather people stopping combining them together with literal CP which is basically the core issue for most.

I agree that many of these things seem unnecessary and many who criticize the strongest hold double standards, but in lieu of fundamental changes in policy and viewpoints, I believe that being as syntactically unambiguous as possible in the definition and application of the current rules is the best way to stop these sorts of debates before they run out of control while hopefully informing those who are new or otherwise uninformed as to exactly how the standards are applied in the clearest terms possible. With that said, I think I'll also refrain from further spending my time commenting on such topics for the time being, since I know I'll just talk in circles if I keep going.

In my years on the site I've found the easiest way to deal with tagging dissonance (as with sex/gender tagging complaints) is to stop caring about the tag group your problem exists in. It's just pretty rough if people are going to feel they're being accused of enjoying porn of minors, along with the difficulty avoiding some more extreme young content which may be genuinely unappealing to them.

I don't see this one getting better until some major offsite drama (much more than a single artist panicking on Twitter) goes down because of it, or young becomes so overtagged that the dissonance is felt by an overwhelming majority of users.
If your ability to participate in a community hinges on whether e6 in particular says your characters are underage, it's probably not a healthy community to be around anyway.

This? https://e621.net/forum_topics/33827
[/quote]

(Majority of it was actually https://e621.net/forum_topics/32387 here)

yetanothertemp said:

This? https://e621.net/forum_topics/33827

(Majority of it was actually https://e621.net/forum_topics/32387 here)
[/quote]

This is also relevant https://e621.net/forum_topics/37194

Hmm... maybe aliasing the tags to young_appearance, cub_appearance, loli_appearance etc. could avoid some of these uncomfortable feelings from artists actually? Same tags, same function, but it's more obvious that lore-wise the character may or may not really be young. (The lore tags would still exist for clarification though)

sexygaydragon said:
I legitimately have an easier time searching for things on every other website.

I see you haven't been using DA, Pixiv, or noticed the 5x as much metadata as any other booru that didn't just copy tags *drumroll* from here. Or you're just lying to make a point.

cloudpie said:
I've just added adult_(lore) to those pieces 👍

Careful, that sounds sane! Certainly not ane. ;)

savageorange said:
It seems far more appropriate to say that in my observation, running a tagging system off of anything less objective than TWYS is an inane and futile endeavour.

A sort-of-competing site(Non-furry, organized on galleries/equivalent of of pools and sets instead of images), E-Hentai.org has dealt with Mister 300-yo-(not)loli taggers from the very beginning. Given the 50+TB of data there, TWYS is not an entirely dissimilar concept to their presence rule.

cloudpie said:
Hmm... maybe aliasing the tags to young_appearance, cub_appearance, loli_appearance etc. could avoid some of these uncomfortable feelings from artists actually? Same tags, same function, but it's more obvious that lore-wise the character may or may not really be young. (The lore tags would still exist for clarification though)

Given TWYS concept, 'cub' implies 'looks_like_cub'.

If I search for potato, I expect to see potato under TWYS, I don't care that the potato identifies (/"is") as cabbage, there's lore tags for that.

Tags are for search relevancy and for blacklisting. Whether a tag applies is based on questions like, "Does someone offended by this tag want their blacklist to cover this image?" and "Will someone typing this tag into the search box find this image relevant?" Factoring in anything else makes search and blacklisting less accurate which makes the site worse for everyone.

alphamule said:
Given TWYS concept, 'cub' implies 'looks_like_cub'.

Well yes, but I just mean renaming the tag to sound less offensive to artists who don't want their characters called cubs and who currently see the tag as an accusation. Cub would be aliased to cub_appearance. We've already done this with gynomorph and andromorph because the previously used tags were considered offensive by many. Just an idea though

cloudpie said:
Well yes, but I just mean renaming the tag to sound less offensive to artists who don't want their characters called cubs and who currently see the tag as an accusation. Cub would be aliased to cub_appearance. We've already done this with gynomorph and andromorph because the previously used tags were considered offensive by many. Just an idea though

Neoteny and neotenic are fun words.

cloudpie said:
We've already done this with gynomorph and andromorph because the previously used tags were considered offensive by many.

Then we ended up with people who thought the current terms were offensive. Can't please everyone

strikerman said:
Then we ended up with people who thought the current terms were offensive. Can't please everyone

This, there is not a world where someone does not find the new word upsetting. Now they would be upset even insinuating they draw their character to look young

strikerman said:
Then we ended up with people who thought the current terms were offensive. Can't please everyone

Frankly the whole process is damned. Slurs are slurs because people make a point of using $WORD_THAT_REFERS_TO_X_THING offensively. If you change the word that is used, all that is achieved is some delay before the new word becomes a slur because people update to the fact that that is the word used for X thing now.

(it's not as if 'dickgirl', say, was any less of a literal description of the subject in question than 'gynomorph' is. Rather the opposite. Certain people seem to think that obscurantism is going to impede slur users, as if slur users were somehow bereft of basic pattern recognition.)

A fairly prominent example: [1] , [2]

savageorange said:
Frankly the whole process is damned. Slurs are slurs because people make a point of using $WORD_THAT_REFERS_TO_X_THING offensively. If you change the word that is used, all that is achieved is some delay before the new word becomes a slur because people update to the fact that that is the word used for X thing now.

(it's not as if 'dickgirl', say, was any less of a literal description of the subject in question than 'gynomorph' is. Rather the opposite. Certain people seem to think that obscurantism is going to impede slur users, as if slur users were somehow bereft of basic pattern recognition.)

A fairly prominent example: [1] , [2]

I misread that as "Sword That Refers To X Thing" and thought you were about to dive into a metaphor for using words as weapons.

Anyway. The difference with gynomorph/andromorph here is that their previous terms were already being used as slurs outside of e6.
Their replacements probably aren't going to be used in the same way; they don't exactly roll off the tongue, so I can't see someone using them in a fit of anger without making themselves look as pretentious as if they said "I'm going to extend my calcaneus against your gluteus maximus" instead of "I'm going to kick your ass".
From what I've seen, people who object to new terms there are offended for ideological reasons moreso than fears that the new terms will become slurs.

I'm not entirely sure whether or not the same principle applies to the cub tag argument.

lendrimujina said:
I misread that as "Sword That Refers To X Thing" and thought you were about to dive into a metaphor for using words as weapons.

Yeah, it's just a reference to shell variable expansion -- $var expands to the value of the variable named var.

Their replacements probably aren't going to be used in the same way; they don't exactly roll off the tongue, so I can't see someone using them in a fit of anger without making themselves look as pretentious as if they said "I'm going to extend my calcaneus against your gluteus maximus" instead of "I'm going to kick your ass".

Sure, but there are other options than just adopting the word verbatim. You can bastardize it until it does roll off the tongue. People will manage to infer what you mean as long as it's not totally different.

From what I've seen, people who object to new terms there are offended for ideological reasons moreso than fears that the new terms will become slurs.

And yeah, that's definitely a factor, certain kinds of people making a sport of being offended online (which feeds the other online sport, of offending such people as extensively as you can)

lendrimujina said:
I misread that as "Sword That Refers To X Thing" and thought you were about to dive into a metaphor for using words as weapons.

Their replacements probably aren't going to be used in the same way; they don't exactly roll off the tongue, so I can't see someone using them in a fit of anger without making themselves look as pretentious as if they said "I'm going to extend my calcaneus against your gluteus maximus" instead of "I'm going to kick your ass".

Measurehead time!

yetanothertemp said:
(Majority of it was actually https://e621.net/forum_topics/32387 here)

I still have no idea why this was locked.

sexygriffon said:
I still have no idea why this was locked.

I would imagine because they implemented the lore tags

Big oof, cuz those doesn't even look like cub. And bigger oof if a FA user uses those tags as "proof" to ban the artist.
I think it's safer to submit a takedown to avoid problems if the tag is locked like that.

I've read through all of this and... mother of all universes, how asinine.

I can already see the Charizard OC that is declared underage in the character's lore but will still be seen a lot because "It's a Charizard, looks adult to me, a site moderator", because let's be real, how many people search for "lore tags"?

Edit: Speaking of lore tags, I'll be right back, I'll go tag every single Riolu image on this website as "young_(lore)", because Riolu is a Baby Pokémon, but not tagged cub most of the time.

altairdeazuros said:
I've read through all of this and... mother of all universes, how asinine.

I can already see the Charizard OC that is declared underage in the character's lore but will still be seen a lot because "It's a Charizard, looks adult to me, a site moderator", because let's be real, how many people search for "lore tags"?

I would imagine it be utilised by people who would feel morally disgusted if they had seen an outwardly adult-looking, yet canonically underaged character engaging in NSFW activity.

Edit: Speaking of lore tags, I'll be right back, I'll go tag every single Riolu image on this website as "young_(lore)", because Riolu is a Baby Pokémon, but not tagged cub most of the time.

Technically that would be correct, according to the current wiki definition. However, you cannot blanket tag all Riolu images as being young_(lore) due to certain conditions needing to be met first.

• If the artist drew an adult-looking Riolu but failed to mention the age, add the young_(lore) tag (as per Pokémon lore).
• If the artist drew an adult-looking Riolu and explicitly stated that they are underaged, add the young_(lore) tag (as per Pokémon and artist lore).
• If the artist drew an adult-looking Riolu and explicitly stated that they are adult, leave as is without the cub or young_(lore) tag (as per artist lore).

• If the artist drew a young-looking Riolu but failed to mention the age, add the cub tag (as per TWYS).
• If the artist drew a young-looking Riolu and explicitly stated that they are underaged, add the cub tag (as per TWYS).
• If the artist drew a young-looking Riolu and explicitly stated that they are adult, add the cub and adult_(lore) tag (as per TWYS and artist lore).

altairdeazuros said:
I've read through all of this and... mother of all universes, how asinine.

I can already see the Charizard OC that is declared underage in the character's lore but will still be seen a lot because "It's a Charizard, looks adult to me, a site moderator", because let's be real, how many people search for "lore tags"?

Edit: Speaking of lore tags, I'll be right back, I'll go tag every single Riolu image on this website as "young_(lore)", because Riolu is a Baby Pokémon, but not tagged cub most of the time.

LOL, the point of lore tags wasn't for search, it was for artists and character owners to be acknowledged subjectively. And yes, I suspect a few do in fact use them for searches or blacklists.

altairdeazuros said:
Edit: Speaking of lore tags, I'll be right back, I'll go tag every single Riolu image on this website as "young_(lore)", because Riolu is a Baby Pokémon, but not tagged cub most of the time.

thegreatwolfgang said:

• If the artist drew an adult-looking Riolu but failed to mention the age, add the young_(lore) tag (as per Pokémon lore).

In lore, a pokemon's evolutionary stage has nothing to do with their age. It's plenty possible for riolu, treecko, and other first-stage evos to be adults, so if the artist never said their age, we shouldn't assume they're young by lore. "Baby pokemon" is just a classification for first-stage pokemon that can't breed, it doesn't mean they're all babies in lore.

thegreatwolfgang said:
Technically that would be correct, according to the current wiki definition.

No it wouldn't. "Canon" lore is never taken into account in lore tags, only what the artist claims. We nuked the entire baby_pokemon tag because so many people shared your misconception.

The whole point of the lore tags is that they can and usually do flatly contradict what's staring you in the face. In the specific case of age lore tags this often takes the form of an artist writing "all characters are over 18" as an ass-covering afterthought beneath some completely on-model porny fanart of canonically underaged characters.

This topic is becoming a repeat of countless other ones that came before it, let's all move on pretty please