benjiboyo said:
we function purely in our own bubble not caring what outsiders will say about us.

In other words the site is run with some integrity and some understanding that systems are hard enough to make work at all already without permitting pandering to compromise site functionality.

This site doesn't work *fantastically* well. But to the extent that it does beat something else you might compare it to, it's probably an effect of being more consistent.

savageorange said:
In other words the site is run with some integrity and some understanding that systems are hard enough to make work at all already without permitting pandering to compromise site functionality.

This site doesn't work *fantastically* well. But to the extent that it does beat something else you might compare it to, it's probably an effect of being more consistent.

The site works about as well as it can, IMO. It relies not on being perfect, but the average change (tagging on posts, tag wiki pages, what tags even exist and so on) making it better for us users.

savageorange said:
In other words the site is run with some integrity and some understanding that systems are hard enough to make work at all already without permitting pandering to compromise site functionality.

This site doesn't work *fantastically* well. But to the extent that it does beat something else you might compare it to, it's probably an effect of being more consistent.

LOL, to be The Rock ?

alphamule said:
We had to have this site somewhat aloft, because of the drama that comes from being a magnet for the usual suspects. I think most of use know by now what happens if you kowtow to either narcissists or intolerant(of things they don't like) people.

I actually had to deal with this back when the site Furry Life Online was around. It was a huge wake up call for me about how bad these sorts of people can get, and how easy it is for overly restrictive rules to end up killing a site. The site gave in to the loud people who wanted to banish anything they didn't like, and as a result a lot of artists decided not to touch the site since they didn't want to accidentally approach the lines the site staff had drawn or risk being labeled a bad actor. Several months after this incident, the staff tried reversing the decision, but by then it was too late, and it shut down soon after since it couldn't get enough traffic to fund the site's existence.

That being said, we've seen how a lack of rules can also lead to a site's downfall. E621's staff, so far, have managed to walk a fine line very well in terms of how they run the site, and it brings confidence to someone like me that they'll be around for a long time.

This change strikes me as an attempt to "save face" for hosting cub content while avoiding removing the content that rustle puritan jimmies.
I think it's dumb but it probably isn't going to inconvenience anyone until cub stops redirecting to young.

kyureki said:
I actually had to deal with this back when the site Furry Life Online was around. It was a huge wake up call for me about how bad these sorts of people can get, and how easy it is for overly restrictive rules to end up killing a site. The site gave in to the loud people who wanted to banish anything they didn't like, and as a result a lot of artists decided not to touch the site since they didn't want to accidentally approach the lines the site staff had drawn or risk being labeled a bad actor. Several months after this incident, the staff tried reversing the decision, but by then it was too late, and it shut down soon after since it couldn't get enough traffic to fund the site's existence.

That being said, we've seen how a lack of rules can also lead to a site's downfall. E621's staff, so far, have managed to walk a fine line very well in terms of how they run the site, and it brings confidence to someone like me that they'll be around for a long time.

The opposite extreme is sites like Kiwi Farms actively pitching to the bad actors. I guess that case could be summed up as "Nutters all around, come one, come all, we need to get ourselves b& 4m lyf kicked off the Internet!" Yeah, there's also sites that lost focus and then slowly faded or got overwhelmed by... things. Then there's sites like Deviant Art and Yahoo Groups that didn't so much lose focus, as just suffer under horrible executives. Towards the end of YG's usable life, they started intentionally creating horrible interfaces to meet misguided metrics. Wix taking over DA is a bit different situation, though.

Great examples of walking that line: Furry-centered content, blacklists instead of outright banning controversial content, punishments for making the blacklist feature useless (i.e. must-tag and don't unblock to complain rules), no RP, DNP and attempts to encourage people to not outright nuke their art, and a ton of other rules or policies that just maintain some balance or sanity.

I still think it's funny that two extremes can often lead to the same outcome: People imitating a 2yo baby. :D

coryhouse said:
This change strikes me as an attempt to "save face" for hosting cub content while avoiding removing the content that rustle puritan jimmies.
I think it's dumb but it probably isn't going to inconvenience anyone until cub stops redirecting to young.

we have no shame about hosting posts with cubs getting railed. as you can see a lot of the yes voters on the BUR are also the first to jump in and laugh when peeps come to complain about us hosting cub art.

it was a dumb tag; young_anthro and young_feral better.

coryhouse said:
This change strikes me as an attempt to "save face" for hosting cub content while avoiding removing the content that rustle puritan jimmies.
I think it's dumb but it probably isn't going to inconvenience anyone until cub stops redirecting to young.

The entire reason it was changed was because cub is an ambiguous term with too many different meanings to be useful. No one here is trying to "save face" because if anything young_x is a more subject definitive tag anyways...

benjiboyo said:
THIS. this is exactly why e6 acts in a "selfish" way. we function purely in our own bubble not caring what outsiders will say about us. mods always say dnp or blacklist it if you have a problem, you're not forced to be here or to contribute or join in on anything. but if you ARE, you have to follow OUR rules. nothing more nothing less.

that's what really matters, no matter the tag controversy is in the end of the day.

There's nothing inherently wrong with follow the rules and you may participate, but being deaf to criticism is immature.

arkham_horror said:
There's nothing inherently wrong with follow the rules and you may participate, but being deaf to criticism is immature.

What instance of deafness to (substantive) critique would you cite?

The instances of critique I see getting ignored typically have most of the following features:

a) the author is transparently badly motivated, eg. 'just make the site do what I want', 'cater to my favorite artist's preferences on how their art should be tagged'
b) the author doesn't understand what e621 is trying to do and/or doesn't care to learn
c) the solution presented just obviously isn't a solution, or the problem isn't a problem, once you understand what e621 is in fact trying to do.

savageorange said:
What instance of deafness to (substantive) critique would you cite?

d) None of the above.

I wasn't referring to a specific event or instance, but you seem to be on the right wavelength. Valid criticism and concerns should not be discarded alongside the myriad of (charitably) misguided posts.

arkham_horror said:
There's nothing inherently wrong with follow the rules and you may participate, but being deaf to criticism is immature.

in the context of young, it isn't exactly gonna get any set in stone objective right. people can argue in circles forever on the subjectivity of how young something looks, which is why you just need to put that line across the sand at some point. others have said it already, the higher ups take criticism, at least the less ambiguous ones.

savageorange said:
What instance of deafness to (substantive) critique would you cite?

The instances of critique I see getting ignored typically have most of the following features:

a) the author is transparently badly motivated, eg. 'just make the site do what I want', 'cater to my favorite artist's preferences on how their art should be tagged'
b) the author doesn't understand what e621 is trying to do and/or doesn't care to learn
c) the solution presented just obviously isn't a solution, or the problem isn't a problem, once you understand what e621 is in fact trying to do.

d.) They are just not good at debating.
e.) They have an unpopular opinion, or one the mods disagree with.

benjiboyo said:
in the context of young, it isn't exactly gonna get any set in stone objective right. people can argue in circles forever on the subjectivity of how young something looks, which is why you just need to put that line across the sand at some point. others have said it already, the higher ups take criticism, at least the less ambiguous ones.

The line across the sand is too jagged and zig zag when it should be a straight line. Often two seperate posts with characters that appear the same age one will be locked young and one will be locked -young ("not young").

hjfduitloxtrds said:
d.) They are just not good at debating.
e.) They have an unpopular opinion, or one the mods disagree with.

"the instances of critique I see getting ignored typically have most of the following features:"

I would never make the attribution d) to individual posts or threads -- 'just not being good at debating' isn't something that I consider possible to sensibly judge with that level of information.
I also don't make a habit of stalking people, which might potentially give a level of information which could constitute a better basis for judging that question.

e) is only somewhat clear in the case of a large amount of hostile attention from multiple individuals that specifically includes hostile attention from the mods.

If a discussion just kind of goes nowhere much, and mods do not respond or take action in the thread, that's empirically indistinguishable from 'No mods actually ever bothered to look at this.' (and I point out that aside from 2 specific people, they are unpaid volunteers).

So to be clear, I do not see instances of d) and e); additionally I assert that claims of perceiving d) and e) will generally fail to justify why what you are seeing is actually specifically that factor and not something else.

(this is entirely compatible with d) and e) happening a lot. I personally think d) happens a lot.)

Often two seperate posts with characters that appear the same age one will be locked young and one will be locked -young ("not young").

I agree that this kind of thing is a potentially solvable problem (If there is mod collaboration between these actions)
If it is caused instead by different admins independently handling those posts, it's still a problem but I doubt it would be solvable.

So, to summarize, they want people to use the loli and shota tags? Got it.

But seriously, do they expect the bulk of the users to go to the forums to check for possible future changes? When a change like this happens it is confusing as heck. At first I tought someone was doing tag vandalism removing the cub tag from the posts until I noticed the tag was redirected to young... which only exacerbated the why to a WHY.

sipothac said:
keeping the tag as it was was untenable, and it was decided to be done a way with in an overwhelming 39 to 3 against vote. the tag's gone and it's not coming back.

Here's an example. This site has thousands of users, 42 is like a grain of sand. No one noticed until it was done.

[EDIT] Also, did you guys go post by post adding shota and loli tags after that? Because a lot of the cub tags didn't had those, just the cub tag.
[EDITEDIT] And what about the "underage" feral posts? There cub was totally justified, and young feral is pretty ambiguous.

captainrober87 said:
[EDIT] Also, did you guys go post by post adding shota and loli tags after that? Because a lot of the cub tags didn't had those, just the cub tag.
[EDITEDIT] And what about the "underage" feral posts? There cub was totally justified, and young feral is pretty ambiguous.

the old cub tag was split into young_anthro and young_feral, we went post by post adding those two tags to as many posts that we could (as well as any other applicable young_<form> tag). those tags did not exist prior to this decision, and now, within the matter of months, those tags are on more posts than cub ever was.

they're more useful, more used, and have a more concrete definition.

yarizui said:

A notification of a change like this that effects thousands of artworks would have prevented this conversation from happening at all.

I personally advocated for an announcement myself in the original cubpocalypse thread. but i was mostly arguing that the forums aren't hidden/private.

Having read this thread I quite like this change, since the tags are more specific so someone can search young_anthro and not get a bunch of images depicting underage ferals or taurs. That being said, I noticed the change several days ago and was unaware until finding this thread today that young_anthro and young_feral exist. I was previously under the assumption that it was just young from now on, an assumption that could lead to some individuals needlessly opposing the decision as I previously did.

yarizui said:
-snip-

holy shit, dude. I ain't readin' all that. I'll just skim a few points, see if there's anything worth addressing.

yarizui said:
Cub was *always* a distinct age group. It was *always* meant to be a distinct age group.

if you thought this you're mistaken. it was a tag for any young character (baby, toddler, child, or adolescent) of anthro or feral form, and that's it. that's how it was defined in the wiki, and that's how it was used.

now that definition is split between young_anthro and young_feral. which as I stated above are more well-populated than cub ever was.

yarizui said:
If you type in "cub" you will *still* get a very specific group of artworks that are much more aligned in theme with one another than "anthro."

cub is gone already, cub has been gone for months, you're searching young. I don't know what you're trying to argue here.

yarizui said:
Okay, so where was the community in this vote? Did we elect you? Did we have any type of say in this? You said the quiet part out loud here when you said 40-something people decided something for a site that has thousands of unique visitors every day. If what you 40-something people say is what goes, have you considered at all that there's a problem in that system?

because thosr 40-something user contain the people who make 90+% of the tagging edits. we're the stakeholder-iest of any of the users. we're the people who have volunteered to be the groundskeepers of this website.

also, counter point, where are the thousands of users complaining about this decision if it was bad or even hundreds, or even more than the amount pf users who voted this decision in? there's been, what, like 5 people who've even noticed enough to say anything?

yarizui said:
effected

affected. effected means it was put into effect. "thousands of artworks are affected when the BUR was effected."

yarizui said:
Blacklists are one of the biggest reasons that broad tags like "cub" should exist in the first place - some people want to completely curate their experience to block anything resembling those tags. By removing "cub" as a valid tag, They are now forced to have to blacklist half a dozen tags they have to know the definition of.

no, it's two tags young_anthro young_feral. it was one tag, now it's two tags.

yarizui said:
So why is anything being done in the first place?

I was talking about artists going DNP here. I don't know what you're trying to say or how you think it supports your argument.

yarizui said:
Underaged pregnancy

you mean that tag that didn't exist prior to this decision?

sipothac said:
the old cub tag was split into young_anthro and young_feral, we went post by post adding those two tags to as many posts that we could (as well as any other applicable young_<form> tag). those tags did not exist prior to this decision, and now, within the matter of months, those tags are on more posts than cub ever was.

they're more useful, more used, and have a more concrete definition.

No they're not useful, they're more abstract and confusing for new users and for the blacklist. And I was asking if you added the loli and shota tags, which are clear in meaning, not those.

First of: young can go from a newborn to a teenager in my book, so it doesn't narrow the search at all. I'm asking if you added loli and shota, which clearly indicates "below mature age". If not please do group of fourty people, because young is ABSTRACT while cub, loli and shota clearly mean UNDERAGE.
Second: what even is young_feral. A feral, aka. an animal, before early adulthood is a cub. I understand removing it for anthros and humanoids but come on. What age range does young_feral cover.

And again, fourty votes is not the community, it is just fourty folks who happened to be on the forums at the time. Ninety five percent of the other users were navigating the image board unaware of any of that, while the four percent that checked the forums didn't care to check open that discussion. The important is that the vast majority of the users that don't check the forums were unaware.
Announce these things to the big audience, please.

[EDIT] Ok I meant they're not useful to discern underage from just young. The do work to separate anthros from ferals.

captainrober87 said:
No they're not useful, they're more abstract and confusing for new users and for the blacklist. And I was asking if you added the loli and shota tags, which are clear in meaning, not those.

First of: young can go from a newborn to a teenager in my book, so it doesn't narrow the search at all. I'm asking if you added loli and shota, which clearly indicates "below mature age". If not please do group of fourty people, because young is ABSTRACT while cub, loli and shota clearly mean UNDERAGE.
Second: what even is young_feral. A feral, aka. an animal, before early adulthood is a cub. I understand removing it for anthros and humanoids but come on. What age range does young_feral cover.

And again, fourty votes is not the community, it is just fourty folks who happened to be on the forums at the time. Ninety five percent of the other users were navigating the image board unaware of any of that, while the four percent that checked the forums didn't care to check open that discussion. The important is that the vast majority of the users that don't check the forums were unaware.
Announce these things to the big audience, please.

[EDIT] Ok I meant they're not useful to discern underage from just young. The do work to separate anthros from ferals.

young == underage, that's how it's always been. a chatacter who's still developing.

if you're fine seeing adolescent characters and think that's undertagged, that's a separate problem, a problem that cub wasn't solving, because cub was applied to adolescents.

cub was just exactly what ~young_anthro ~young_feral is now.

yarizui said:
I don't know if my opinion matters at all, given that this is my only real post on the forums ever. But "cub" should absolutely remain a tag. There are valid points here and some really reaching ones as well, and since I'm taking the time to actually make a post about this I might as well address them as I see them.

Cub is a range of age groups - but the "young" tag doesn't specifically cover what it means from one person to another. It was *always* meant to be a range of young age groups. It wasn't bizarre or incoherent - when someone listed cub as a tag they knew what they were looking for. Splitting it into multiple tags is more incoherent than the simplistic one word tag.

What you want as a moderator, or what was defined in frankly a very minimal and poor wiki, doesn't necessarily line up with the community's understanding of certain terms. The person you were responding to here is correct. The term "cub" has taken on a wide variety and broad characteristics. A tag doesn't need to be entirely specific to be relevant. I don't understand your argument when you give examples of tags like "anthro" or "feral." Those are at least equally or even more misused and misunderstood than "cub" ever was. If you type "anthro" into your search bar on e621 right now, you'll be guided to a hodgepodge of completely different artworks. If you type in "cub" you will *still* get a very specific group of artworks that are much more aligned in theme with one another than "anthro." Your argument holds no water when the wiki you're referencing is too vague and indistinct to specifically define very broad tags. That's like pointing at a dictionary written by a toddler and using it as a real-world source.

Okay, so where was the community in this vote? Did we elect you? Did we have any type of say in this? You said the quiet part out loud here when you said 40-something people decided something for a site that has thousands of unique visitors every day. If what you 40-something people say is what goes, have you considered at all that there's a problem in that system? If "keeping the tag was untenable" then why are vastly more vague tags still tolerated? If you "wanted it gone for years" then there should have been some communication about *why* it was displaced, instead of just instituting a wide change on the whim of a single vote without any community input. In case you forgot, the reason that this site exists isn't because of you 40-something people - it's the wonderful artists and contributors who place tags and who praise artwork that make this place what it is. There's a reason that tags like "anthro" or "breasts" or "cub" exist - to help a user see a wide variety of artworks that fit under those broad tags so they can eventually narrow their searches down to their tastes. I also see the "loli" tag still stands, even though that is arguably a far more vague tag than "cub" ever was. You're just wrong here, I don't know what else to say.

"Cub" is a far more specific term than half of the tags on this site. Regardless of its popularity, if you applied this same logic to every tag on e621 you're going to end up purging a quarter of them in the name of being too vague. Splitting tags like this into multiple separate tags does not contribute to concise searches - it makes things more difficult to find, especially for new users who now have to learn to check a wiki for every other tag they encounter just to start finding what they want.

Refer to my above thoughts on "vague" tags. This isn't Patreon or FA - artists have the specific right to not have their works posted here via an extremely effective DNP system and if they would prefer those other avenues their work never has to appear here at all. Furs aren't mad about "cub" being deleted because they equated it with "shota" or "loli" - BOTH of those tags are still in the e621 system. If users wanted to use those tags, they would. "Cub" encompassed a large variety of works that didn't have to suggest either "loli" or "shota" or similar tags - that was why it was useful in the first place. I also have a hard time believing than any artist genuinely has a problem with their work being tagged "cub," but is perfectly okay with their work being tagged "loli" or "shota" or similar tags. If that's your argument, then by your logic not only should all of those tags be removed but also any artwork resembling the characteristics of those tags - just in case, to avoid the "drama" and "tag wars." Your statement is a slippery slope logical fallacy.

I agree, I think in general e621's moderators are the best of the best. But specifically in situations like this, where thousands of artworks are effected, there should be community input. On the same hand I also think my words here will change nothing, as it seems these 40 or so people have decided of their own volition what is best for thousands and thousands of users.

Years of discussions among a small group of people does not dictate what is good or right.

Blacklists are one of the biggest reasons that broad tags like "cub" should exist in the first place - some people want to completely curate their experience to block anything resembling those tags. By removing "cub" as a valid tag, They are now forced to have to blacklist half a dozen tags they have to know the definition of.

As a very long time user, long before I ever made an account, I think I've visited the forums maybe 5 times before writing this. If you somehow think the population of the site that visits the forums reflects the average user of the site you are out of touch. And fine, something else overshadowed a planned announcement. But you still didn't actually make an announcement - and it's been months now.

A notification of a change like this, offering an explanation of the deleted tag and offering alternative tags for use in blacklists and searches could have prevented this conversation from happening at all.

I agree entirely, by trying to supposedly prevent a problem from occurring now there are several tags that will place artists under scrutiny, even if they didn't intend for their work to be placed into a specific category.

Okay, if this is the line of logic then how many valid tags are a "loaded term?" "Rape" and its related tags are all still valid. "Loli" is still a valid tag. "Underaged pregnancy" is a valid tag. Isolating "cub" as a "loaded term" and ignoring the dozens or even hundreds of tags on this site that are questionable is a slippery slope, especially for a site like e621 which is supposed to be about artistic freedom.

Oh but I thought that wiki definition of the term was so very important earlier?

This is almost unrelated but the young_adult tag has been applied to less than 100 posts. I'm all for this tag being in broader use and will try to apply it to edits in the future - but it's outside of the "cub" conversation as "young_adult" and "cub" have a less than 1% crossover, judging by the limited artworks tagged with "young_adult."

So why is anything being done in the first place?

This isn't a true/false question. It's an open ended discussion.

Tags aren't a black and white thing, which I know you understand. In the context of this conversation, "cub" applies to a broad variety of artworks - if it isn't broken, don't fix it. There are tools for artists to add their work to the DNP list, and if they choose to upload their own work they can lock certain tags from being applied to their work. Just because "cub" exists as a tag doesn't mean that it can or should be applied to everything that appears to fit under that tag. The DNP list is extremely effective, moreso than almost any other forum on the internet, and giving creators control over what can be uploaded by other people is a vital step you've all done extremely well as moderators in recent years. So why this particular tag? Why was there zero interaction with the community of the site? You can't just take a broad action like this with no communication and expect people not to question it. I'm not even a particularly big fan of the cub tag but I have always believed that e621 is a place for completely open artistic freedom. This could be interpreted by some artists as an imposition or restriction of their artistic expression, and by those who appreciate that broad genre as a direct attack on their preferences in artwork. At bare minimum, an announcement should have been made but even then we'd still be having this discussion.

This is exactly why broad tags like "cub" should be in place - so that those who want to view content under that umbrella can, and those who want to avoid it can easily blacklist it with a single phrase.

Obviously I had too much free time on my hands today, but I absolutely think the "cub" tag should be reinstated. And if not, that there should be an explicit announcement made that explains the reasoning behind its removal and options for people who want to blacklist content like this, as well as those that want to view it.

I agree, but too long man. Did really need to write a book? Too long. Read anyway.

sipothac said:

if you thought this you're mistaken. it was a tag for any young character (baby, toddler, child, or adolescent) of anthro or feral form, and that's it. that's how it was defined in the wiki, and that's how it was used.

now that definition is split between young_anthro and young_feral. which as I stated above are more well-populated than cub ever was.

This is exactly why the cub tag should have been kept.

sipothac said:

because thosr 40-something user contain the people who make 90+% of the tagging edits. we're the stakeholder-iest of any of the users. we're the people who have volunteered to be the groundskeepers of this website.

also, counter point, where are the thousands of users complaining about this decision if it was bad or even hundreds, or even more than the amount pf users who voted this decision in? there's been, what, like 5 people who've even noticed enough to say anything?

"Because we're more important than other users because we have been chosen to rule the site."
You can't just volunteer. You have to be chosen by the boss.

I'm here. I'm complaining.

The very suggestion that we should put direct democracy first and foremost when cub caused problems specifically because of inconsistency between users is incredibly silly. topic #41659 did not spring up overnight, it was created after a long string of issues related to the tag.

I don't think we can rely on tag adjustment threads regularly getting double-digit votes. There is a large portion of the userbase that is content with never touching the forums. Final Fantasy XIV is a game with several million subscribers and lots of species/characters that are highly relevant to a furry art archive, yet related forum threads get consistently low interactions. It is nothing short of a miracle that the great cub replacement got 40 votes, and yet forum posts like this lead me to believe that, if only these people cared to check the forum every once in a while, we could've easily had many times more than 40 votes.

Even past the issue of most requests getting a dearth of votes, sometimes the crowd just uses tags in a way that is, simply put, lacking information. There were several hundreds of instances of Renamon's thigh symbols being incorrectly tagged cancer (symbol), but any sufficiently-informed person will identify most of those as tomoe (symbol) instead. Most people don't know (or care about) the difference, does that mean that I should have let all the cancer mistags remain instead of establishing the correct tag? Most people don't recognize the characters that I recognize, so should I never make character/copyright tags?

hjfduitloxtrds said:
"Because we're more important than other users because we have been chosen to rule the site."
You can't just volunteer. You have to be chosen by the boss.

we're literally all volunteers, dude, nearly everyone here has chosen to take on the tasks they take on for no compensation. just because a few of us have volunteered and have been accepted to higher positions does not make them not volunteers.

sipothac said:
we're literally all volunteers, dude, nearly everyone here has chosen to take on the tasks they take on for no compensation. just because a few of us have volunteered and have been accepted to higher positions does not make them not volunteers.

You may have volunteered. I'm not arguing that. They are volunteers but they've had to be chosen for their positions. I can't just volunteer to be an admin or a mod or a janitor. They have all been chosen for their positions because they all think alike and to hell with opposing views or opinions.

To be clear, I think all the janitors and privileged users are doing an excellent job. I just take issue with how biased some of the moderators and admins can be.

hjfduitloxtrds said:
They have all been chosen for their positions because they all think alike and to hell with opposing views or opinions.

post #276594

if this was true we wouldn't have moderators suggest BURs that other moderators and admins downvote.

hjfduitloxtrds said:
I can't just volunteer to be an admin or a mod or a janitor.

Yes, you can. You apply for the position. Your application is to volunteer for the position. Some are invited based on their site contributions, but there are definitely applications where you volunteer for that. They aren't open atm afaik, though.

hjfduitloxtrds said:
You may have volunteered. I'm not arguing that. They are volunteers but they've had to be chosen for their positions.

Sipothac isn't site staff. Most of the users who voted on topic #41659 were not site staff. 8 voters were janitors/moderators, and 31 were regular users like you and me.

definitelynotafurry4 said:
Yes, you can. You apply for the position. Your application is to volunteer for the position. Some are invited based on their site contributions, but there are definitely applications where you volunteer for that. They aren't open atm afaik, though.

That wasn't my point. I'm ineligible because I don't agree with most of their decisions. I'd never be accepted because of differing views. They want only those who agree with them. They would absolutely never accept me for who I am. You need to be similar to them to be one of them.

hjfduitloxtrds said:
You need to be similar to them to be one of them.

I am literally not a furry.

For the people who are mad about this change, I'm curious, if young_feral and young_anthro implied cub, would that solve your problem?
If your answer is "No, because it would include teenagers" and/or "No, because it would include rating:safe" Then you don't know what the cub tag was for in the first place.

lafcadio said:
I am literally not a furry.

Most sanest e6 janitor

lafcadio said:
I am literally not a furry.

post #2305116

hjfduitloxtrds said:
That wasn't my point. I'm ineligible because I don't agree with most of their decisions. I'd never be accepted because of differing views. They want only those who agree with them. They would absolutely never accept me for who I am. You need to be similar to them to be one of them.

I'm no longer on the staff team, but when I was, I was on the "task force" (so to speak) that was responsible for interviewing people for staff positions.
I've never rejected an application because I disagreed with the user's opinion on tagging. In fact, I distinctly remember there being disagreements among staff about how cub should be applied that went back years and years.
It's okay to have an opinion, man.

I'd reject you for other reasons, though.
- Your activity on the site is fairly low. The tagging stands out a bit, but overall it just seems like you are here to browse and chat. Nothing wrong with that – but we would be looking for people who are more engaged than that.
- You don't really have an identity. Your name is just a keyboard mash, you have a blank profile page... I've no idea who you are as a person.
- The neutral record could go either way, since it's for a fairly minor thing. Still, it's a factor.
- In your arguments in this thread, you come off as quite bitter and spiteful. It's okay to be passionate about stuff that you believe, but the way you go about it is really not helpful.

I hope this helps.

bitwolfy said:
I'm no longer on the staff team, but when I was, I was on the "task force" (so to speak) that was responsible for interviewing people for staff positions.
I've never rejected an application because I disagreed with the user's opinion on tagging. In fact, I distinctly remember there being disagreements among staff about how cub should be applied that went back years and years.
It's okay to have an opinion, man.

I'd reject you for other reasons, though.
- Your activity on the site is fairly low. The tagging stands out a bit, but overall it just seems like you are here to browse and chat. Nothing wrong with that – but we would be looking for people who are more engaged than that.
- You don't really have an identity. Your name is just a keyboard mash, you have a blank profile page... I've no idea who you are as a person.
- The neutral record could go either way, since it's for a fairly minor thing. Still, it's a factor.
- In your arguments in this thread, you come off as quite bitter and spiteful. It's okay to be passionate about stuff that you believe, but the way you go about it is really not helpful.

I hope this helps.

I don't want to be a mod or an admin. I wouldn't be able to do the job. I couldn't effectively give out records, and argue the reasoning for them. Maybe a janitor someday but that's not the point. I know I'm completely useless to the site, but is that good reason to completely disregard my opinions. The neutral record is for a profoundly stupid reason. I'm not bitter. I'm sorry if I come off that way. I don't know why I'm here. Not a day goes by I don't ask myself that very same question. I have an Identity. the main reason for the name is to match my FA username which I can't change. Several years ago I was lazy and stupid and just typed in random letters to get in. Do I regret that decision now? Not really. Names are not that important to me. The blank profile is mainly to to laziness and indifference. Does anyone here really care who I am? Who I am isn't important. I know who I am. Do you know who you are? My only motivation to move up would be more privileges, but I really don't want the responsibility. I was just whoever is chosen is chosen mainly because they're a "good fit" meaning they share similar opinions and ideas as the other mods.

oopsitripped said:
For the people who are mad about this change, I'm curious, if young_feral and young_anthro implied cub, would that solve your problem?
If your answer is "No, because it would include teenagers" and/or "No, because it would include rating:safe" Then you don't know what the cub tag was for in the first place.

Yes, because cub is a better tag than young. This Whole discussion would probably not have happened.

hjfduitloxtrds said:
Yes, because cub is a better tag than young. This Whole discussion would probably not have happened.

The discussion happened because more people agreed that young is a better tag than cub because cub is ambiguous, which is the entire reason it was destroyed. It's just a useless tag.

definitelynotafurry4 said:
The discussion happened because more people agreed that young is a better tag than cub because cub is ambiguous, which is the entire reason it was destroyed. It's just a useless tag.

Well then why are so many arguing against it? I don't think more people agreed. It's rather likely that the NC ban distracted several people who otherwise might have voted and are now complaining here instead.

hjfduitloxtrds said:
Yes, because cub is a better tag than young. This Whole discussion would probably not have happened.

Ah, I see what's happening.
I genuinely don't mean to be rude here. Please, hear me out.

You are wrong.

And you are having trouble coming to terms with that fact.

I don't mean "objectively wrong", that's rarely possible. No, you are wrong in a sense that most people in the community disagree with you.
Now, I can already see you providing justifications for why that vote was invalid. You have already done so a few times in this thread.

However, the simple reality of the matter is that 40 votes on any given AIBUR is already quite a lot. Most don't get that much activity.
The vast majority of the userbase simply does not care one way or another. In fact, most people don't even know that aliases and implications exist.
The people who did vote are the ones who made tagging their hobby. They already decide how stuff gets tagged on a regular basis, typically in a way that's barely noticeable to you.
That is how the site is run. If you wish to encourage more people to get more serious about tagging – I fully support that endeavor.

And you do not have to be "picked by a boss" to be a part of that community. You are not going to get kicked out for having dissenting opinions either.
But what you are doing right now is trying to diminish their opinions in favor of your own.

If you really want to, you can make a new BUR that removes the cub -> young alias.
But the results are likely going to be largely the same.

hjfduitloxtrds said:
Yes, because cub is a better tag than young. This Whole discussion would probably not have happened.

I disagree with the notion that the umbrella tag cub is in any way better than our current solution. If you want young anthros, search young_anthro. If you want young ferals, search young_feral. If you don't care, search young or ~young_anthro ~young_feral. If you want to avoid young furries but not young humanoids, just blacklist ~young_anthro ~young_feral.

Having separate tags for separate concepts is very useful, there's a massive difference between searches like charizard mega_charizard_x mega_charizard_y and ~charizard ~mega_charizard_x ~mega_charizard_y.

hjfduitloxtrds said:
Well then why are so many arguing against it? I don't think more people agreed. It's rather likely that the NC ban distracted several people who otherwise might have voted and are now complaining here instead.

Do not mistake a high-volume argument for a high-quality argument. Flat earthers spend a lot of time arguing in favor of flat earth, that doesn't mean they're right and the globe earthers are wrong.

bitwolfy said:
Ah, I see what's happening.
I genuinely don't mean to be rude here. Please, hear me out.

You are wrong.

And you are having trouble coming to terms with that fact.

I don't mean "objectively wrong", that's rarely possible. No, you are wrong in a sense that most people in the community disagree with you.
Now, I can already see you providing justifications for why that vote was invalid. You have already done so a few times in this thread.

However, the simple reality of the matter is that 40 votes on any given AIBUR is already quite a lot. Most don't get that much activity.
The vast majority of the userbase simply does not care one way or another. In fact, most people don't even know that aliases and implications exist.
The people who did vote are the ones who made tagging their hobby. They already decide how stuff gets tagged on a regular basis, typically in a way that's barely noticeable to you.
That is how the site is run. If you wish to encourage more people to get more serious about tagging – I fully support that endeavor.

And you do not have to be "picked by a boss" to be a part of that community. You are not going to get kicked out for having dissenting opinions either.
But what you are doing right now is trying to diminish their opinions in favor of your own.

If you really want to, you can make a new BUR that removes the cub -> young alias.
But the results are likely going to be largely the same.

If "diminish their opinions in favor of your own" means simply voicing my opinions and the reasoning behind such opinions, then yes, I am. I don't care about winning an argument. Using huge bold text to declare that I'm wrong makes no difference. You can make it even bigger, I'm sure. But that won't change my opinion. Just because "most people (~40 people)" disagree with me does not mean I am wrong. "Most people" are not objectively right just only because they are "most people" and outnumber me. We are pretty screwed as a society if we use that definition as to who's right or wrong.

hjfduitloxtrds said:
If "diminish their opinions in favor of your own" means simply voicing my opinions and the reasoning behind such opinions, then yes, I am. I don't care about winning an argument. Using huge bold text to declare that I'm wrong makes no difference. You can make it even bigger, I'm sure. But that won't change my opinion. Just because "most people (~40 people)" disagree with me does not mean I am wrong. "Most people" are not objectively right just only because they are "most people" and outnumber me. We are pretty screwed as a society if we use that definition as to who's right or wrong.

Amazing. It seems that despite reading my post, you didn't understand a single word.
You diminish their opinions in favor of your own by insisting that their votes don't matter.
Go off, then. Tell us why your opinion is more important than everyone else's.

... are you gonna say that it's because you are right?

hjfduitloxtrds said:
Well then why are so many arguing against it? I don't think more people agreed. It's rather likely that the NC ban distracted several people who otherwise might have voted and are now complaining here instead.

"so many"? there've been like maybe half a dozen users, out of however many thousands of users the site has, that have come to say anything, and none of them have a coherent reason why cub should be considered a valid tag.

bitwolfy said:
Amazing. It seems that despite reading my post, you didn't understand a single word.
You diminish their opinions in favor of your own by insisting that their votes don't matter.
Go off, then. Tell us why your opinion is more important than everyone else's.

... are you gonna say that it's because you are right?

I never said any of that. My opinion is no more or less important than anyone else's opinions.
Their votes all matter just as much as my vote.

sipothac said:
"so many"? there've been like maybe half a dozen users out of however many thousands of users the site has. that have come to say anything, and none of them have a coherent reason why cub should be considered a valid tag.

So you just shut down any argument by simply claiming they're all incoherent?

hjfduitloxtrds said:
I never said any of that. My opinion is no more or less important than anyone else's opinions.
Their votes all matter just as much as my vote.

What are we doing here then? We already had a vote, and the site you champion had lost.
I already told you that if you really want to, you can make a BUR that undoes the change.

But when that inevitably fails, you won't accept the results of it either.
Your mind is already set, and you have plenty of excuses at the ready for why the vote does not matter.
So again, what are we doing here?

hjfduitloxtrds said:
So you just shut down any argument by simply claiming they're all incoherent?

I call em' as I see em', my dude.

but also, answer the damn question

bitwolfy said:
Tell us why your opinion is more important than everyone else's.

... are you gonna say that it's because you are right?

why, in this case, do you believe that you're right about cub?

honestly, I just want to see if it's possible for you back up your arguments. because I don't think any of us have seen you do it before. prove to us that you're not some kind of weird deep cover troll. you've _never once_ given any reason or evidence why your stance on an argument is valid, you always just say "no, you're wrong, I'm right". whether the debate is about the viability of the cub tag or what colors are.

sipothac said:
I call em' as I see em', my dude.

but also, answer the damn question
why, in this case, do you believe that you're right about cub?

honestly, I just want to see if it's possible for you back up your arguments. because I don't think any of us have seen you do it before. prove to us that you're not some kind of weird deep cover troll. you've _never once_ given any reason or evidence why your stance on an argument is valid, you always just say "no, you're wrong, I'm right". whether the debate is about the viability of the cub tag or what colors are.

Did you really have to dig up the color thing again? I'm done arguing about cyan and teal. It really wasn't that important to me. If this is just bait to try to get me in some sort of trouble, it ain't happening. I'm not biting.

I thought I explained it before. Cub is specific to the furry community. It is well understood that cub means young anthro/ young feral. Young has too much real life meaning, which makes it more distasteful when used on posts. Actually I find more issue with the fact that young is being inconsistently locked onto posts that do not look young.

sipothac said:
why, in this case, do you believe that you're right about cub?

To prevent accusations of hypocrisy, I am going to quickly reiterate what the arguments against cub are.

The cub tag is not consistently applied.
Some people defined it using various age ranges, while others simply applied the tag to any posts featuring underage characters.
Even the official definition was extremely vague: it specified that most cubs are between the ages of 4 and 10, but also allowed for infants and teenagers to be tagged as such.
In fact, that definition vaguely overlapped with young.

Additionally, cub was being used as an umbrella tag for multiple different body types.
That is fairly unique, and considered to be a bad practice. More specific tags are typically used with a single body type each: young_anthro, young_feral, etc.

I didn't participate in topic #41659, but I consider these arguments to be internally consistent, and in line with existing practices.
The main argument against it is that some users would be confused by the change – seeing humanoids where they expected to see only anthros and ferals.

However, that's hardly a unique situation.
For example, people are occasionally confused by the futa tag returning andromorph characters – and that is fine, since any solutions that will fix it are going to be more complicated, and with their own downsides.
Similarly, I believe that in this case, the upsides of not having to deal with the inconsistent definitions of cub outweighs the downside of minor confusion among the users.

hjfduitloxtrds said:
Actually I find more issue with the fact that young is being inconsistently locked onto posts that do not look young.

Just so we are clear, do you believe that artists themselves should be the final arbiters of what tags should be applied to their posts?
I don't want to misunderstand your position here.

bitwolfy said:
However, that's hardly a unique situation.
For example, people are occasionally confused by the futa tag returning andromorph characters – and that is fine, since any solutions that will fix it are going to be more complicated, and with their own downsides.

hmmm... actually, thinking about it, I wonder if changing the futanari alias from -> intersex to -> herm would actually be a bad idea at this point. it is the japanese word for hermaphrodite, so herm is actually the closest valid adjacent tag, and I'm not sure that the potential herm mistags would actually that big of a deal since it isn't particularly uncomon for the tag to be misapplied as it is so it'd just be a bit more work on the same pile.
although, fixing bad tagging is a bit more of a hassle than adding missing tags, so, posts with lose intersex tags would probably be preferable than a bunch of gynomorphs being tagged herm.
I wonder if the trade-off would be worth it. I guess it'd be kinda hard to say since we don't actually know how common it is for people to type futanari or futa into the tag box.

bitwolfy said:
Just so we are clear, do you believe that artists themselves should be the final arbiters of what tags should be applied to their posts?
I don't want to misunderstand your position here.

No, the decision should not necessarily be made by the artists themselves. It's just I often see arguments usually in the comments of posts that are questionably tagged young and locked young, and often users are disagreeing, and i find myself agreeing with the disagreement because sometimes they don't look young. The way young is being applied is too inconsistent, and characters are often more aggressively tagged young here than they are elsewhere, and are being allowed sometimes on multiple other sites which have strict rules against young artwork. But that's often been dismissed as not a good argument because "We are not FA" or some other reason akin to that. The decisions are still made by a small minority (<1%) of users when there are millions of users. I take more issue against locking tags young which are not young, than the terminology itself.

hjfduitloxtrds said:

The way young is being applied is too inconsistent

Playing devil's advocate, here is one example:
post #4350259 locked -young
post #4286708 locked +young

snpthecat said:
Playing devil's advocate, here is one example:
post #4350259 locked -young
post #4286708 locked +young

this seems to have happened because RD locked both posts (as well as many others by the same artist) to +young initially but NMNY overruled that later, but only applied the -young lock it to one of these two posts.

personally, I'd side with Dash's stance on most of these, but NMNY does have the final say.

snpthecat said:
Playing devil's advocate, here is one example:
post #4350259 locked -young
post #4286708 locked +young

Well obviously, being animated makes the character not young because he is now moving. /s

oopsitripped said:
For the people who are mad about this change, I'm curious, if young_feral and young_anthro implied cub, would that solve your problem?
If your answer is "No, because it would include teenagers" and/or "No, because it would include rating:safe" Then you don't know what the cub tag was for in the first place.

Sidestepping the ongoing debate here for a moment... I'm not exactly "mad" about the change myself (and so I'm not exactly the sort of user you're addressing here), but personally, I would like that. Although, it'll never happen, for much of the same reasons why the cub tag was axed in the first place.

I'm largely satisfied with how it shook out, mind you. For tagging clarity, I can't think of anything better. I only have one minor quibble. I don't quite like when fandom-specific terms get sent to the shadow realm in favor of more generic ones. I know of course that's not exactly a relavant argument against a tag that's clearly causing issues in it's usage, elsewise I might have poked my head out and brought it up in the Cubpocalypse thread. But...

Like it or not, this site has an undeniable effect on the fandom as a whole. I can't count the number of people I've encountered who have adopted andro/gynomorph terminology, despite those tags having been created from whole cloth and first applied to such characters... *checks* less than 5 years ago. We are one of - if not the - largest and most well-known furry-centric sites on the internet right now. Long gone are the days when we were just some tiny hole-in-the-wall booru for people to dump art and behave like it's the wild west. Our reach goes well beyond the bounds of these pages alone. What we call things matters.

There's an argument to be made then that 1) we may have some (small) responsibility of stewardship towards the fandom's culture, regardless of our insistence on merely being a humble art archive and 2) that dashing fandom-specific terms instead of striving to rehabilitate them in some way may be a poor decision.

I believe that 'cub' as the fandom uses it will persist for many years more, but I can't help but feel we may have also cut it adrift at the same time. Again, I don't expect anything be changed, though I do hope in the future some consideration, however small, be given to the wider impact we might have when we swing the bat around.

A lot of words to be spent on a "minor quibble," I suppose - especially from a lurker like myself - but they've been weighing on my mind for a while now. Apologies.

sipothac said:
this seems to have happened because RD locked both posts (as well as many others by the same artist) to +young initially but NMNY overruled that later, but only applied the -young lock it to one of these two posts.

personally, I'd side with Dash's stance on most of these, but NMNY does have the final say.

I'd rather agree with NMNY's decision on this one. It's weird that they are tagged completely opposite though. Small and short=/= young. These cannot be the sole criteria for what is young. Plenty of adults are small. Certain species can also tend to be small.

hjfduitloxtrds said:
Small and short=/= young. These cannot be the sole criteria for what is young. Plenty of adults are small. Certain species can also tend to be small.

I'd argue that when enough of the human figure is abstracted (basic cartoon humanoids that lack much of the detail present in real humans), replaced with something completely different (humanoid figures with animal heads, among other things), or obscured (small characters turned away from the camera so the details of their face, chest, etc. can't be seen), small and short will often be the only reliable indicators.
Figure alone certainly isn't the end-all-be-all, there are enough short characters that exhibit obvious signs of old age (solo beard dwarfism), but when legislators are threatening non-USians with legal penalties because they happened to look at the wrong posts, when websites penalize users posting these youthful-looking characters, and when fictional young/baby content is regularly subject to false reports, I think it'll probably be better for everyone overall if we just go "better safe than sorry" and tag the weird stuff.
But I don't get into young-related tag wars/locks so whatever.

blodsho said:
-snip-

I think the circumstances around the two cases is a bit different.

the whole furry community had been looking for an out in regards to "dickgirl" and "cuntboy" (_especially_ "cuntboy"), you can find users who already used obfuscated versions of those terms when tagging their own characters on FA and elsewhere, using "dgirl" and "cboy" or "cunnyboy". us, like, "ratifying" the change over to gynomorph and andromorph _was_, at least partially, intended to create a cultural shift way from using the old terms, both for tagging and discussions on the site, and our change kind of just acted as the perfect alternative the larger community was looking for.

"cub", however is different, people are still fully comfortable with self-identifying with the term and people are still comfortable using the term in common speech. the change was entirely utilitarian, and I don't think it's likely to have much of an effect on people identifying their characters as cubs or identifying as part of the cub community.

sipothac said:
I think the circumstances around the two cases is a bit different.

the whole furry community had been looking for an out in regards to "dickgirl" and "cuntboy" (_especially_ "cuntboy"), you can find users who already used obfuscated versions of those terms when tagging their own characters on FA and elsewhere, using "dgirl" and "cboy" or "cunnyboy". us, like, "ratifying" the change over to gynomorph and andromorph _was_, at least partially, intended to create a cultural shift way from using the old terms, both for tagging and discussions on the site, and our change kind of just acted as the perfect alternative the larger community was looking for.

"cub", however is different, people are still fully comfortable with self-identifying with the term and people are still comfortable using the term in common speech. the change was entirely utilitarian, and I don't think it's likely to have much of an effect on people identifying their characters as cubs or identifying as part of the cub community.

You're not wrong, but I would argue that the fact even a single soul took seriously our "ratification" of (at the time) seemingly nonsense terms when alternative terms were already out there and catching on (a few of which I remember seeing being advocated for to be our new tags) just goes to show the amount of sway we do have. You're also right about the cub community. It's those exact reasons I don't see cub falling completely out of use for quite a long time, if ever. I can see it slowly fading over time in the wider scope, though. Mostly as the fandom outside of the cub community grows and shifts. A shame, but them's the breaks I suppose.

alphamule said:
Incoming shotapocalypse is like that episode of Reboot with two games loaded on top of each other.

So there's plans to get rid of the shota and loli tags too? I was wondering because the arguments being made against the cub tag would seem to apply to them just as much if not more so.

thelibertineyeen said:
So there's plans to get rid of the shota and loli tags too? I was wondering because the arguments being made against the cub tag would seem to apply to them just as much if not more so.

Eventually...

thelibertineyeen said:
So there's plans to get rid of the shota and loli tags too? I was wondering because the arguments being made against the cub tag would seem to apply to them just as much if not more so.

Yeah, they will most likely be aliased to young_male and young_female

thelibertineyeen said:
So there's plans to get rid of the shota and loli tags too? I was wondering because the arguments being made against the cub tag would seem to apply to them just as much if not more so.

I don't think that's necessary but it may happen, unlike cub, loli is already popularly known as an underage female character, shota an underage male character. both only valid for humans and some humanoids

From what you can see, it is not ambiguous and nor is it an umbrella term like it was with cub. There are some people who use loli and shota in anthro and feral characters but it's mostly to make their blacklist work so I don't see this as a serious problem.

I think it could happen in the distant future because the young human is more specific and better fulfills the task of searching for underage humans.

tinger1 said:
I don't think that's necessary but it may happen, unlike cub, loli is already popularly known as an underage female character, shota an underage male character. both only valid for humans and some humanoids

From what you can see, it is not ambiguous and nor is it an umbrella term like it was with cub. There are some people who use loli and shota in anthro and feral characters but it's mostly to make their blacklist work so I don't see this as a serious problem.

I think it could happen in the distant future because the young human is more specific and better fulfills the task of searching for underage humans.

loli and shota are for any sexualized young character regardless of form, female and male, respectively.

benjiboyo said:
in the context of young, it isn't exactly gonna get any set in stone objective right. people can argue in circles forever on the subjectivity of how young something looks, which is why you just need to put that line across the sand at some point. others have said it already, the higher ups take criticism, at least the less ambiguous ones.

I tried (poorly) to make a broader point independent of the what-do-we-call-underage-furries-so-I-can-wank-to-them-more-efficiently debate. Evidently I fucked it up.

lafcadio said:
The very suggestion that we should put direct democracy first and foremost when cub caused problems specifically because of inconsistency between users is incredibly silly. topic #41659 did not spring up overnight, it was created after a long string of issues related to the tag.

But, Sirsovcomrade, aren't we a monarchy-communist anarepublic? Viva la Heterodocy!

Seriously though, sometimes the buck has to stop at experience. I only downvoted it because it was such a pain. Accuracy won but at what short term cost? Biting the bullet this year prevented it being even worse when there's 5 million posts!

The statement that we all agree is hilariously wrong. Not even the janitors put on a unified front and some of those people have been here since 2010 or earlier.
People don't contribute to the site all willy-nilly, either. For proof of that, see how many people got banned for consistently tagging things incorrectly that they got warned about, multiple times. Same with banned because uploading paysite rips, not tagging artist to avoid DNP strike (this is actually one of the more serious ones), and well, you get the idea. I think a lot of people are shocked at the relative freedom that is like a pit trap for careless people to fall into. XD

lafcadio said:
Do not mistake a high-volume argument for a high-quality argument. Flat earthers spend a lot of time arguing in favor of flat earth, that doesn't mean they're right and the globe earthers are wrong.

"It's flat, bro..." "FES: Members around the globe!" I literally saw t-shirts for sale with gags like that. That last one is particularly trollsome, haha.

There's a kind of well-known phenomenon that less than 1% of people using a site like say, Github or Sourceforge actually submit any changes or even comments. I suspect that most people with an account on here are just here to use the site in effectively a readonly mode. i.e. Find porn. This is no different than most people just wanting to get their computers working for them instead of the other way around.

I see that people didn't beat around the bush for long, before calling out blatant nonsense.

blodsho said:
A lot of words to be spent on a "minor quibble," I suppose - especially from a lurker like myself - but they've been weighing on my mind for a while now. Apologies.

Naw, it was a good read and perspective. It makes sense to worry about the consequences of our actions. Of course we could go the opposite extreme and take ourselves too seriously. That way leads to calcification among other things.

sipothac said:
I think the circumstances around the two cases is a bit different. ...

blodsho said:
You're not wrong, but I would argue that the fact even a single soul took seriously our "ratification" of (at the time) seemingly nonsense terms when alternative terms were already out there and catching on (a few of which I remember seeing being advocated for to be our new tags) just goes to show the amount of sway we do have. You're also right about the cub community. It's those exact reasons I don't see cub falling completely out of use for quite a long time, if ever. I can see it slowly fading over time in the wider scope, though. Mostly as the fandom outside of the cub community grows and shifts. A shame, but them's the breaks I suppose.

Thing is, andromorph and gynomorph are pretty old words, and the base words are ancient. Looking for earliest mentions in zoology shows them to go back at least to 2001, on the Internet. Wikipedia had an article posted in 2014. Oh, and Alpheus Packard (1870's) used the combined term that is effectively the same as hermaphrodite, so far as this site is concerned.

definitelynotafurry4 said:
Yeah, they will most likely be aliased to young_male and young_female

Or... well, look at results of shota -male and loli -female. Up until just now, loli was already implying female, but I tried to make sure the non-female ones were tagged correctly. The loli intersex solo results for example. It might just have them both aliased to a common tag for both when sexualized. We'll see what happens. Exciting times ahead! >:)

:edit: Crud, loli -female still not working.
Since young male isn't aliased to male, apparently, have to also check: shota -male -young_male

post #4481986 A post that conflicts with lolicon automatically being female. The character is pretty clearly gynomorphic?

alphamule said:
Since young male isn't aliased to male, apparently, have to also check: shota -male -young_male

Well young_gender and young_form tags are being unaliased afaik. Both young_female and young_male are now accurate and correct tags. And loli implies young and female and shota implies young, but oddly not male even though their wiki descriptions are identical. Regardless, there isn't really any reason to not alias them away to young_female and young_male respectively since it means the same thing.

definitelynotafurry4 said:
Well young_gender and young_form tags are being unaliased afaik. Both young_female and young_male are now accurate and correct tags. And loli implies young and female and shota implies young, but oddly not male even though their wiki descriptions are identical. Regardless, there isn't really any reason to not alias them away to young_female and young_male respectively since it means the same thing.

Sorry, missworded. I meant implication! Ugh, not sure how I made that mistake.

Yeah, tried to edit out the non-male shotas but could not do the same with female lolis. Them's breaks. :shrugs:

alphamule said:
Or... well, look at results of shota -male and loli -female. Up until just now, loli was already implying female, but I tried to make sure the non-female ones were tagged correctly. The loli intersex solo results for example. It might just have them both aliased to a common tag for both when sexualized. We'll see what happens. Exciting times ahead! >:)

loli still implies female and has done for quite some time

I've said a couple of times that I think shota and loli would be more useful (and less annoying) if they were also applicable to young andromorph and maleherm characters, and young gynomoroh and herm characters respectively.

I made a BUR on the subject that got some mixed reception.

yarizui said:
This is exactly why broad tags like "cub" should be in place - so that those who want to view content under that umbrella can, and those who want to avoid it can easily blacklist it with a single phrase.

Cub is not so useful for those who want to view one specific kind of cub content, but not the other. For example, some people are fine with what is now young_anthro, but don't want to see young_feral. With just the cub tag, you can't filter on body type easily, as you could easily have a non-young feral character in a piece with a young anthro. This is why specific tags can be good, as long as it's not overly burdensome to taggers.

As for blacklisting, you can still blacklist using a single tag like young if you don't want to see underage content. In fact the default blacklist already has young -rating:safe, which people can just leave in place and/or copy. Nothing changes in this regard except the specific name of the tag.

tinger1 said:
...loli is already popularly known as an underage female character, shota is an underage male character.

Lolis isn't a character who is young in sexual situations. Culturally, in Japan, it's a body type for fictional female characters that are petite, the same with shotas.