The tag alias #65368 fecharis -> featureless_(disambiguation) has been approved.

Reason: So recently we got rid of cub on the basis that young anthro and young feral could serve the same purpose, while also introducing a swarm of similarly specific young tags.
There's another thread that's looking to get rid of kemono. I agree but think we could do much better than just deleting the tag with no replacement.
So I want to kill off another weird umbrella tag: fecharis.
There're communications all the way from 2020 that suggest the tag is without merit (and specifically pointing out that it exists only to re-ambiguate featureless), and in late 2022 I posted in a forum thread where my participation was, basically, trying to do the same thing I'm doing now:

We don't have any formal "tag creation guidelines", but I do not see "fecharis" satisfying any quality of a good tag.
1. The name is not intuitive to taggers and searchers, even though it could be. "Chiroptera" was renamed to "bat" for this reason, and it's not like tomoe (symbol) or nigirizushi where the tag is a non-English word for a concept that is not itself overly familiar to English-speakers.
2. The wiki is not well-constructed. It presents several fundamentally-unrelated images, but makes no effort to explain how they should count as fecharis. See tomoe (symbol) and the way it clearly delinates which kind of tomoe is which, and how it differs from cancer (symbol). See featureless face, and how it differentiates itself from faceless character.
3. There is no effort made to define which posts don't count, and no effort to direct people to similar tags like featureless face. On its own, a tag having a low number of removals doesn't mean much, but compared to the 6k posts that it currently exists on, there are only 20 times that it has been removed from posts, and 6 of those are from the user responsible for establishing the tag. I would like to think this implies Helio had no serious desire to strongly define what the tag is supposed to mean. Even efforts by other users to "improve" the wiki haven't achieved much, essentially just adding more confusing examples.
4. The wiki should not be trying to link a TWYS feature to a specific character. Different depictions of the Black Mage will have more detailed or less detailed faces, and a character should never imply any kind of feature like this because they can be depicted as different species, gender, colors, etc.
5. Even before this current form, the tag "featureless" was already subject to a disambiguation because Helio was trying to use it the exact same way, with no intuitive name, no high-quality wiki, minimal removals, and no counterexamples. Helio's earliest removals also include several cases of them correctly replacing "featureless" with more specific tags like featureless breasts.
6. This tag has gone through a citogenic process where it was adopted by other users because a single person spammed it across 3490 posts (over half the tag's current population!), not because of any inherent merit or utility.

These are all qualities that we once saw from mimiff: no intuitive name, no well-constructed wiki, no counter-examples, weird character associations, a single weirdo brute-forced it into niche adoption, and a second attempt was made to establish mimiff_(species) after the tag was removed from use.

Fecharis needs to go. We can do so much better.

• post #2654001 only includes closed eyes and, by definition, can't be "fecharis", even though the character is cited as an example.
• post #2443521 shows the features clearly: they're eye sockets and a mouth where the edge of the character's head/skull can be clearly seen. There's even cum shooting into one eye socket and being visible through the other. Not "featureless", even though the character is cited as an example.
• post #2847596 shows features very clearly. For all we know, that's simply what the character looks like in full lighting, and there's not even an obvious helmet or anything like that.
• post #751554 depicts a full-face mask and a half-face mask. The post's image content makes it very obvious they're both masks. Big woop.
• post #3965748 does not depict any faces or masks. They just look like that, and in fact featureless face serves this exact purpose.

I also have some further examples here to show how weirdly broad this tag is.

lafcadio said:

"Face" not shadowed but featureless

post #3517356 post #2690220

"Face" shadowed and featureless

post #2961745

"Face" shadowed with glowing features

post #3503592 post #348931 post #2968361 post #547871 post #999388

Mask

post #280410 post #3518524 post #721537 post #771687 post #1172127

No mask or concealing headwear, they just look like that

post #3442836 post #3440014 post #505565 post #1647047 post #2244946 post #2187243 post #2053715 post #2081590

Based on my reading of the wiki and interpretation of the affected posts, I think we could redirect taggers towards some of these tags, in addition to those already listed in the disambiguation wiki.

• glowing_eyes
• shadowed_eyes
• sunken_eyes
• eye_socket (this wouldn't be my first choice given its gore associations, but I'm listing it nonetheless because there are a handful of relevant posts.)
• glowing_face
• shadowed_face
• eyeless
• glowing_mouth
• mouthless

EDIT: The tag alias fecharis -> featureless_(disambiguation) (forum #386302) has been approved by @slyroon.

+1 for unclear name and unclear description. Not sure aliasing to featureless_(disambiguation) is appropriate since many uses are not featureless, but invalidating it in some way is appropriate, IMO.

watsit said:
+1 for unclear name and unclear description. Not sure aliasing to featureless_(disambiguation) is appropriate since many uses are not featureless, but invalidating it in some way is appropriate, IMO.

I opted for the featureless (disambiguation) alias because from the beginning this tag was an attempt to get around featureless being disambiguated. The same user is simultaneously responsible for a majority of featureless and fecharis tags, and literally every one of their wiki edits is for one of those three tags.
They probably should've gotten a record for this but they haven't done a single post edit since August 2022, the time has long since passed.

Should fecharis be aliased to the disambiguation tag, we'll just update the wiki as is normal.

The tag alias fecharis -> featureless_(disambiguation) (forum #386302) has been approved by @slyroon.

Lafcadio these posts -> https://e621.net/posts/2053715 , https://e621.net/posts/999388 were deleted by Slyroon months ago. They can't be viewed.

I think you listed very good examples aside from those two and they could be used to update the featureless_(disambiguation) wiki page. Are you planning on handling that?

Also I'd like to assist with the disambiguation cleanup, if you make a project or have some retagging guidelines feel free to message me.

diligentdragon said:
Lafcadio these posts -> https://e621.net/posts/2053715 , https://e621.net/posts/999388 were deleted by Slyroon months ago. They can't be viewed.

I think you listed very good examples aside from those two and they could be used to update the featureless_(disambiguation) wiki page. Are you planning on handling that?

Also I'd like to assist with the disambiguation cleanup, if you make a project or have some retagging guidelines feel free to message me.

Both of those examples are "humanoid" characters with cartoon black skin (as if they're permanently in shadow) and glowing eyes/mouth.

I do intend to update the wiki, though this is a slightly weird case in that Helio's prior uses of featureless and fecharis are wrong, and pointing people towards new tags necessitates pointing out actual features.
Failing any suggestions from other users I think I might want to format the new wiki to look something like this?

obscured features
(shadowed face, etc.)
partially featureless
(eyeless, mouthless, etc.)
fully featureless
(the current list)

lafcadio said:
Both of those examples are "humanoid" characters with cartoon black skin (as if they're permanently in shadow) and glowing eyes/mouth.

I agree that those are good examples of humanoid characters with those anatomical oddities (missing certain features). I just wanted to point out that only site staff can view them since they were deleted.

lafcadio said:
I do intend to update the wiki, though this is a slightly weird case in that Helio's prior uses of featureless and fecharis are wrong, and pointing people towards new tags necessitates pointing out actual features.
Failing any suggestions from other users I think I might want to format the new wiki to look something like this?

I think the format you're suggesting is a good idea, a series of sections with a summarizing sentence as the title, with a set of example posts and appropriate/related tags inside that section. My suggestion would be to include a "Not to be confused with" or similarly titled section to address the previous misuse of the tag, like for characters which are just wearing a mask but not literally lacking features.

Also I have used the fecharis tag before and I often engage with this kind of content, so I feel obliged to offer my help with the cleanup. Just let me know.

First shot at updating the wiki. I've added a couple *less tags to the wiki.
I've omitted a small selection of these tags because I think they might need cleanups or aliases.

faceless → faceless character, featureless face
fingerless → fingerless gloves, featureless hands, mitten hands
handless → amputee, armless, featureless arms, hands-free, winged arms
nippleless → featureless breasts, featureless chest
thumbless → handpaw(?????)

Most of the Coco (AC) posts should probably be eye sockets instead, maybe empty eye sockets should be aliased to that too? (edit again: fuuuck there's another one hollow eyes)

lafcadio said:
Most of the Coco (AC) posts should probably be eye sockets instead, maybe empty eye sockets should be aliased to that too? (edit again: fuuuck there's another one hollow eyes)

I'm like, not a huge fan of these options. eye_sockets and empty_eye_sockets are very gore-sounding and hollow_eyes sounds kind of like empty_eyes, which is something else.

I feel like something closer to mask_face would be better for cases like coco_(animal_crossing) and shyguy.

My suggestions / opinions are...

alias faceless -> featureless_face; Faceless seems ambiguous, especially since faceless_character is so similarly named and featureless_face is a more literal. But there are definitely featureless_face characters mistagged as faceless_character that will need manual retagging.

It makes sense to alias fingerless and handless into featureless_hands and featureless_arms. The Alias could be flipped for consistency, depending on what happens with the rest. I don't see a special case those two tags cover that isn't already covered by the featureless tags, gore is covered by the severed_* tags. I suppose you could have scarred over finger stumps but I think severed_* still works there. Amputee also covers those situations.

I have seen posts with areola 'bumps' tagged as featureless_breasts even when there is no clothing present (https://e621.net/posts/4496061, https://e621.net/posts/1986281, https://e621.net/posts/1805548). Some characters literally are just fully nude but still have those attributes. I don't what to use in those situations, maybe nippleless is the tag to cover those posts? In my opinion those bumps would make a post questionable rating unlike featureless_breasts which can be used on some safe rated posts.

No idea what to do with thumbless, you could have a humanoid hand without a thumb though, so aliasing to handpaw would not cover non-furry humanoids or even most animal_humanoids.

I want to point out that tags like armless, legless, mouthless, eyeless, earless and noseless, are still quite useful. They cover situations where a character is anatomically lacking that specific characteristic.

Going off what sipothac said, I think there should be a tag for situations where it is obvious a character's face is literally a mask, I think those situations are rare though. It might be a good idea to rename empty_eyes to a more specific name, like solid_eyesand then using hollow_eyes to cover posts for characters like coco_(animal_crossing) where the eyes are just holes with no indication they ever had an 'eye' in them. Empty_eyes strikes me as a little ambiguous when we consider characters similar to Coco. Also empty_eyes could refer to a dead eyed stare, whereas a name like solid_eyes would more clearly convey that the eyes lack pupils and sclera (literally a solid color).

I really don't see the point of having eye_socket AND empty_eye_sockets the eye_socket tag could technically be applied to any post where the character has detailed eyes. It doesn't even have a wiki page. I think empty_eye_sockets should be reserved for gore posts or posts with scarred characters. I would say either alias them together or invalidate eye_socket and retag those posts to empty_eye_sockets where necessary.

I understand retiring the tag. But I still find it a perfectly cromulent word that I'm going to continue to use as a neologism. Just not as a tag.

Does anyone think this tag is invalid -> shadow_face ?

I think its legitimate and I want to begin applying it to posts as part of the cleanup, anyone disagree?

Also I think it makes sense to have a tag for instances where a mask is clearly fused to a character's head, maybe mask_face? Does anyone have an alternative / concerns about establishing a tag like that?

What exactly was the source of the tags name? I've never been able to find anything about it online and it's such an oddly specific word that I figured there had to be something behind it.

mothbean said:
What exactly was the source of the tags name? I've never been able to find anything about it online and it's such an oddly specific word that I figured there had to be something behind it.

I think it's literally just a corruption of the word "featureless".

EDIT: as far as I can tell it originates here with the first use here being 30th of January of 2020, less than a day after the featureless -> featureless_(disambiguation) alias was put into effect, by the same user that prompted said alias in the first place. so it seems to be a word whose entire existence is because someone was avoiding an alias.