The bulk update request #4911 is pending approval.

remove alias related (0) -> invalid_tag (-9)
create implication parent_(lore) (46141) -> related_(lore) (0)
create implication son_(lore) (24518) -> related_(lore) (0)
create implication daughter_(lore) (15484) -> related_(lore) (0)
create implication sibling_(lore) (47923) -> related_(lore) (0)
create implication grandparent_(lore) (1435) -> related_(lore) (0)
create implication grandchild_(lore) (1007) -> related_(lore) (0)
create implication uncle_(lore) (1736) -> related_(lore) (0)
create implication nephew_(lore) (1597) -> related_(lore) (0)
create implication niece_(lore) (1034) -> related_(lore) (0)
create implication cousins_(lore) (2206) -> related_(lore) (0)
create implication aunt_(lore) (967) -> related_(lore) (0)

Reason: (Yes I know there's no aunt implication here, that's a matter for another thread.) (EDIT: topic #38739)

Now that the issue of whether they should be lore has been settled, I'd like to propose a major change to the structure of family tags which would have made my life compiling topic #38296 quite a bit easier.

There is currently no tag for when any two characters in a post are related, in any way. The closest thing we have is this wiki page, which lists each of the family tags manually. Considering the incest_(lore) tag is in the exact reverse situation - only a generic tag, no subtags to distinguish between different types of incest - this seems a bizarre omission.

This was first brought up (recently) here, and then again here. The first of those links suggests using the family tag for such a purpose, but another user points out that that tag is already in use for a more specific purpose (and should probably be lore-ified, come to think of it). The suggestion I made was to have all of them imply related, or more likely related_(lore). There's just one problem:

fatherofgray said:
Aliasing related → invalid_tag
Link to alias

Reason:

Not specific enough. I already cleaned up the four posts tagged with it myself. This is a preventative alias.

Ideally I'd like for this to be aliased to related_(lore) instead, because it looks a bit strange otherwise. "Not specific enough" could be applied to literally any umbrella tag, and hasn't been grounds to invalidate them yet. And what does "preventative" mean? Perhaps "speculative" might have been a better word? Let's do a deep dive.

In total, related has been removed from 20 posts.

The first two were both copy-paste errors which obviously needed reverting regardless of any of the tags were accidentally valid.

The third one is post #351723, which has been deleted. When first uploaded, it was tagged relatives, which was changed to related one version later. It never had any more specific tags attached to it. The Pixiv source is also gone. Fortunately, by some miracle, the FurAffinity source still survives (and I can't imagine that's long for this world given recent events and what I know about this artist's content), and has this in the description:

His OC Yeeta spanking Ivan his bro :)

So it should have been tagged brothers, but wasn't. Bad practice, sure, but not technically invalid.

The fourth is post #284696, which has since been tagged brothers.

The fifth post, post #369589, has been deleted as "Not relavent [sic] to site interests", but we can still infer things about the use of the tag "related" from the fact that it was added, on upload, together with a very large amount of numbers in parentheses, not a single tag containing an underscore (the only exceptions being tags like megaman), a bunch of tags like "in", "the" and "raving", and of course invalid_tag for everything the site did manage to catch. (It was also, for some reason, tagged circumcised despite being rated Safe.) Most of the incorrect tags, including "related", were removed by the same user who added them. In short, I diagnose copy-paste abuse again.

The tagging history of post #378498 is best appreciated together with its comment section. When first uploaded, by its own artist marlon.cores, its tags were: male pose invalid_color invalid_tag etc.. Four minutes later, the same user (according to the comments) flagged it with the reason "Marlon.cores". When that failed to produce the desired result, he removed the last three tags and added the actual artist tag, together with sexy. and (relevantly to this discussion) related. He then posted a plaintive comment in response to a user puzzled by the flag, dated only 24 minutes after upload:

marlon.cores said:
I need help ... Reads do not know English and I'm lost in this shit.....help-me...

An admin came to the rescue and cleaned up everything. It is not clear what he thought he was doing with the "related" tag here, but given the random flailing on every other part of the post, it probably doesn't hold any deeper meaning.

"related" was added to post #427100 together with both "mother" and "son".

On the other end of the spectrum, it was added to post #130791 at the same time as posted:, views: and comments:.

post #484781 was a shitty recolour, which had "related" in its initial batch of tags, which were all nuked by the uploader 10 minutes later and "related" was never re-added.

The next three posts are all the responsibility of a user who apparently either got compromised or went mad, pasting an entire legal contract of some kind into the tags of three posts, before quietly reverting them a few hours later.

The next two entries are both of the same post, post #594938. Upon upload, this was tagged, in its entirety, with: my, little, and pony. Presumably the uploader was told this was not sufficient, for they swiftly added another two tags: Related and tags. Another user attempted to tag the post properly, but the uploader reverted their work.

post #475374 is from the same comic as post #427100 and appears here for the same reason. post #192645 and post #192643 also feature these characters.

post #603693 was tagged both "related" and brothers on upload. post #539494 was tagged mother_and_son. The last change before the alias was post #611712, which features the same characters as post #603693.

In summary, that's a narrow win (10 to 9) of invalid uses to valid uses, but we should bear in mind that the vast majority of the invalid ones were immediately reverted, often by the same user who added them. At the time of the invalidation request, there were no posts using it in any sense other than "family relations". And obviously any tag which is not widely used is going to have a higher ratio of bad usage, because competent taggers (and non-vandals) know not to use it in the first place.

The one possible concern I can see is that "related" is apparently a common piece of vocabulary which pops up when sloppily copy-pasting tags from an external web page, as well as apparently something bad taggers might passively-aggressively add to their meagre lists. But in every case where that's happened, it's immediately obvious for other reasons that the correct course of action is to throw the whole edit away. So I don't think there's a significant risk of long-term harm in repurposing this tag and putting it to the use a small handful of people were already attempting to use it for at the moment it got invalidated.

wat8548 said:
"Not specific enough" could be applied to literally any umbrella tag, and hasn't been grounds to invalidate them yet.

In this case, I think the argument would be that it doesn't stick to a particular idea or concept to be an umbrella of. "Related" could just as well be for familial relations, as it could be for a given post being related to another post. Or for an image to be related to a setting or story. Or for an object to be related to another object. Or for a piece of clothing to be related to a brand or character. The word "related" just means two or more things are associated in some way. "Familial relation" or just "family" would be a clearer term for people who are part of a family.

In a more general sense, these tags are rather muddy. When you get into ideas of adoption and step siblings, people are related in a more legal or social sense and not biologically. Some tags are more strict on this (e.g. incest_(lore) requires biologically related) and it's easy to get mixed up. E.g. post #3570211 and post #4076294, where the dialog and artist description uses the terms mother and son, and the posts with them are tagged as such, but if you didn't see some other comments made by the artist elsewhere, you wouldn't know the son is adopted and they're not biologically related. And indeed, post #4076294 had a couple people trying to tag it as inbreeding and incest since all indications were of them being biologically related. There are people that care about the difference, and this all just gets really messy.

watsit said:
In this case, I think the argument would be that it doesn't stick to a particular idea or concept to be an umbrella of. "Related" could just as well be for familial relations, as it could be for a given post being related to another post. Or for an image to be related to a setting or story. Or for an object to be related to another object. Or for a piece of clothing to be related to a brand or character. The word "related" just means two or more things are associated in some way. "Familial relation" or just "family" would be a clearer term for people who are part of a family.

The family tag is already in use in the sense of "family unit", i.e. group pictures of a character and their immediate family. This isn't the first time it has been suggested for this purpose.

watsit said:
In a more general sense, these tags are rather muddy. When you get into ideas of adoption and step siblings, people are related in a more legal or social sense and not biologically. Some tags are more strict on this (e.g. incest_(lore) requires biologically related) and it's easy to get mixed up. E.g. post #3570211 and post #4076294, where the dialog and artist description uses the terms mother and son, and the posts with them are tagged as such, but if you didn't see some other comments made by the artist elsewhere, you wouldn't know the son is adopted and they're not biologically related. And indeed, post #4076294 had a couple people trying to tag it as inbreeding and incest since all indications were of them being biologically related. There are people that care about the difference, and this all just gets really messy.

Those posts should be tagged stepmother_and_stepson instead (and that tag should be recategorised to lore, but let's get the biological tags squared away first).

wat8548 said:
Those posts should be tagged stepmother_and_stepson instead (and that tag should be recategorised to lore, but let's get the biological tags squared away first).

Stepmother/son isn't applicable either, as that would mean the son's biological father remarried with the step mother, which isn't the case (neither parent is biologically related to him). They would be foster mother and foster son.

watsit said:
Stepmother/son isn't applicable either, as that would mean the son's biological father remarried with the step mother, which isn't the case (neither parent is biologically related to him). They would be foster mother and foster son.

I see there is an adopted tag with an existing implication tree. That should definitely get lored as well.

Update: Added aunt_(lore) now that that BUR has gone through. Also pluralised cousins_(lore), which I didn't realise was an exception to the usual rule about plural tag names.

I have been wondering if there might be more support for using relatives_(lore) as the umbrella tag. relatives is not currently invalid, is currently applied only to deleted posts, and has only been used six times in history (one of which was also tagged related). Unfortunately I can't audit all of them because fully half of these posts have been taken down and the sources deleted, but the most recent use, post #2555082, does present the intriguing case of a character who is described as nothing more specific than a "relative" in lore, a concept for which we currently have no tag.

wat8548 said:
I have been wondering if there might be more support for using relatives_(lore) as the umbrella tag.

Doesn't sound that bad to me.

bump. relatives_(lore) should be ok, family should be lore-ified and imply it too.