The bulk update request #6329 is pending approval.
remove alias lolicon (0) -> loli (30178)
remove implication loli (30178) -> female (2491705)
remove implication loli (30178) -> young (233158)
remove alias shotacon (0) -> shota (35926)
remove alias straight_shota (0) -> shota (35926)
remove implication shota (35926) -> young (233158)
remove implication oppai_loli (532) -> loli (30178)
remove implication pregnant_loli (0) -> loli (30178)
remove implication pregnant_loli (0) -> pregnant (38885)
remove alias pregnant_young (0) -> underage_pregnancy (924)
remove alias pregnant_cub (0) -> underage_pregnancy (924)
remove implication underage_pregnancy (924) -> young (233158)
remove implication underage_pregnancy (924) -> pregnant (38885)
remove implication loli_penetrated (0) -> loli (30178)
create implication young_female_sexualized (0) -> young_female (35709)
create implication young_female_sexualized (0) -> young_sexualized (0)
create implication young_male_sexualized (0) -> young_male (41334)
create implication young_male_sexualized (0) -> young_sexualized (0)
Reason: First, I want to begin by stating that a lot of other people seem to want these changes done in some form, and I have less of a problem with loli and shota than they seem to. Regardless, I think I have a pretty good vision for how to implement the desired changes, so here it is. A lot of my tag projects are not for things I actually like--some of them are even firmly on my blacklist--but sometimes I feel like I know exactly how to handle that situation or tag so I do it anyway. If this is going to be done at all, I'd rather see it "done right," so I'm taking initiative.
The main purpose of this BUR is renaming and reorganizing loli and shota with clearer tag names, establishing the full young_sexualized tag group per gender while I'm at it, and formalizing the new young_* tags with [gender] and young implications.
The first BUR in this BUR thread removes all aliases and implications from tags targeted for adjustment and creates implications for the new young_[female/male]_sexualized tags. Followup BURs will create the other necessary aliases and implications.
Here are all my intended changes, first divided into related groups for ease of understanding and then the actual BURs. Some of these changes have been proposed in other, similar BURs, but this is my vision. I think it's better to show this all in one place than to refer to others' BURs in various older threads that are less relevant now, especially after cub's aliasing. Some of these proposals can be taken to secondary threads for focused discussion if people really want that.
Changes by Group (Not BURs)
Rename loli and shota to young_female_sexualized and young_male_sexualized
unalias lolicon -> loli unimply loli -> female unimply loli -> young alias loli -> young_female_sexualized alias lolicon -> young_female_sexualized unalias shotacon -> shota unalias straight_shota -> shota unimply shota -> young alias shota -> young_male_sexualized alias shotacon -> young_male_sexualized alias straight_shota -> young_male_sexualized
Establish the young_sexualized tag group
imply young_female_sexualized -> young_female imply young_female_sexualized -> young_sexualized imply young_male_sexualized -> young_male imply young_male_sexualized -> young_sexualized imply young_ambiguous_sexualized -> young_ambiguous imply young_ambiguous_sexualized -> young_sexualized imply young_intersex -> young_sexualized imply young_sexualized -> young
Formalize young_[gender] tags with young and [gender] implications
imply young_male -> young imply young_female -> young imply young_ambiguous -> young imply young_male -> male imply young_female -> female imply young_gynomorph -> young_intersex imply young_andromorph -> young_intersex imply young_herm -> young_intersex imply young_maleherm -> young_intersex imply young_intersex -> intersex imply young_gynomorph -> gynomorph imply young_andromorph -> andromorph imply young_herm -> herm imply young_maleherm -> maleherm imply young_ambiguous -> ambiguous_gender
Clean up loli implications
unimply oppai_loli -> loli imply oppai_loli -> young_female_sexualized unimply pregnant_loli -> loli unimply pregnant_loli -> pregnant unalias pregnant_young -> underage_pregnancy unalias pregnant_cub -> underage_pregnancy unimply underage_pregnancy -> young unimply underage_pregnancy -> pregnant alias pregnant_loli -> pregnant_young alias underage_pregnancy -> pregnant_young alias pregnant_cub -> pregnant_young imply pregnant_young -> pregnant imply pregnant_young -> young unimply loli_penetrated -> loli alias loli_penetrated -> young_penetrated
Followup BURs
Part 2
alias loli -> young_female_sexualized alias lolicon -> young_female_sexualized alias shota -> young_male_sexualized alias shotacon -> young_male_sexualized alias straight_shota -> young_male_sexualized imply young_ambiguous_sexualized -> young_ambiguous imply young_ambiguous_sexualized -> young_sexualized imply young_gynomorph -> young_intersex imply young_andromorph -> young_intersex imply young_herm -> young_intersex imply young_maleherm -> young_intersex imply young_sexualized -> young imply young_male -> young imply young_female -> young imply young_ambiguous -> young imply young_male -> male imply young_female -> female imply young_intersex -> intersex imply young_gynomorph -> gynomorph imply young_andromorph -> andromorph imply young_herm -> herm imply young_maleherm -> maleherm imply young_ambiguous -> ambiguous_gender
Part 2.5
imply young_intersex -> young_sexualized
Part 3
imply oppai_loli -> young_female_sexualized alias pregnant_loli -> pregnant_young alias underage_pregnancy -> pregnant_young alias pregnant_cub -> pregnant_young imply pregnant_young -> pregnant imply pregnant_young -> young alias loli_penetrated -> young_penetrated
Rationales
Collapsed to prevent vertigo and "wall of text" illness.
Why rename loli and shota?
This seems to make more sense to others than it does to me. I will say, however, that I am in favor of demystifying non-English tag names that have various cultural connotations and mean different things to different people who use these tags differently from each other. For example, some people will always view kanna_kamui as "the dragon loli" and tag her as such, regardless of her depicted gender, apparent age, sexualization, and especially regardless of what our wikis say. I did spend maybe 15 hours checking and removing loli and shota mistags from intersex posts to prepare for this BUR, so these tags have accumulated some misuse over the years.
Why young_[female/male]_sexualized?
I've seen floated the idea of calling loli and shota sexualized_young or "sexualized" something or other for several months now. With the community's recent adoption of young_[gender] tags and other tags starting with young_*, I think we should try to collect all possible young-related tags into standardized tags beginning with young_* like we do for various other tags.
We began standardizing tag names like this before e621 implemented tag autocomplete, and standardized tag naming became all the more imperative for discoverability after tag autocomplete. In other words, I want people to type young_[male/female] and to see young_[male/female]_sexualized directly below that on the autocomplete list. This is how people discover and use a lot of tags now, and it's a good thing (when taggers aren't spamming redundant junk and mistags that start with the same keyword). Although these tag names are long, they do a good job identifying exactly what they are for, and the syntax of keyword_sub-keyword_special-keyword has a certain intuitive elegance.
Why not only young_sexualized?
That could work. Searching young_sexualized + young_[gender] does get us most of the way there. But why not just give people exactly what they want instead of lego tags they must piece together? Why stop short? I've found that having a tag that is 100% a thing significantly improves search results instead of relying on taggers to add combinations of tags. More relevant posts should get tagged with that single tag than the separate tags will appear together. Just give people exactly what they want, no bs.
These renames also ensure that loli and shota still function as search terms with the desired results after the rename. We know without seeing that people still search and tag with terms like "futa", "trap", etc. And I am very sympathetic to replacing a 4 and 5 letter tag with a 23 and 21 letter tag lmao. Typing that out sucks a lot. Shorthand advised.
Just to lay out the whole thought experiment... Aliasing loli and shota to young_sexualized will wreck any search with just shota. That won't give good results. The search must become, confusingly, shota young_male. And searching just loli will likewise yield some quite irrelevant results. Going the other way, aliasing to young_female and young_male would provide a better user experience, but of course that will include safe results too so the search becomes loli rating:e which isn't as bad. Or we can just use an alias that works 1:1 and forget about all this extra stuff.
Why use young_sexualized at all?
Loli and shota have almost been tagged 80K times. Young porn is somewhat popular. Are people using the tags simply because they exist or because they want to find similar content and have these posts shown in the same search? I don't know. Seems like a waste to lose all that tagging effort, most of which will be correct. I feel like in 2015-2018 we argued for "good enough tagging" but nothing more. Tagging philosophy has since changed, and we've gotten more specific. A lot of that "good enough" tagging has actually turned out pretty bad and we're still cleaning it up. The calls to "do something" about loli and shota may be more evidence of that.
What is "sexualized"?
This should mean anything sexual that would trigger a Questionable or Explicit rating as defined in our ratings wiki. Honestly, this word still has some room for misinterpretation and argument, but that situation seems like an improvement over the uncertainty of loli and shota. We can always make incremental improvements with the new ideas that materialize before us when they do. This is here now. Also, I kind of hope people don't start adding *_sexualized to random tags. I really don't think we need feral_sexualized, but this loli/shota solution is meant as a clean exit for a special problem.
imply young_intersex -> young_sexualized
Yeah, yeah. The other elephant in the room. The very short version is this imprints our gender tagging policy directly into some implications. I was considering how ugly it would be to have a long *_sexualized tag for each young_[gender] when I realized, based on my tagging 30K+ young posts, that's extremely redundant, and in fact, should be 100% redundant if people truly follow our gender tagging rules. This is an elegant solution that spares us from some redundant, ugly-looking tags.
On e621, characters have feminine, masculine, or entirely "ambiguous" bodies. If we know nothing of the character's genitals, then these characters can only be tagged one of female, male, or ambiguous_gender. If we can identify a character's genitals and they don't match their body, they are one of the four intersex genders. And if we know about a character's genitals, then we can say the character is "sexualized" and the post should be rated Questionable or Explicit. Yes, I am saying intersex rating:safe should be empty. I could have emptied that myself before typing this to much more easily be found "right on the Internet," but I shouldn't have to. Most of those posts are clearly mistagged or misrated. We have [gender]_(lore) tags as a compromise for these posts.
I know people will want to link various posts and ask what about that? Here's how.
Male-bodied characters do not need anything known about their genitals to get the male tag. See: featureless_crotch and all (?) industry children's art. While we may expect art to fill the space where a male's genitals should be, a flattened crotch simply does not mean the character is andromorph. Even for furry art that wants to force the issue with male bodies wearing skimpy bikinis or skintight leotards, effectively saying "there's no room for a penis here," genitals are not required for the male tag but are still required for the andromorph tag. Call it Schrodinger's penis: the penis simultaneously exists and does not exist until observed. That's kind of how cartoon logic works in regular art.
For female-bodied characters to have a bulge (penis), the bulge must be so obviously a penis that the post is no longer Safe, or else the bulge is too discreet to sway gender tagging away from a female with a normal pubic mound + normal vulva. I looked at a bunch of posts and could not find anything that contradicted these ideas. Lastly, let's be honest, if a post is trying to make a statement about a character's genitals (notice this flat/bulging crotch!), even without showing the genitals, then the art is literally sexualizing that character.
In spite of all that, I think it's best to put this implication alone in an isolated BUR. This idea shouldn't prevent the other BURs from going forward, although rejection does require some changes.
I could say even more, but I'm tired of typing. If you have something to say, at least do me the courtesy of checking this post to see if I've already covered it.