The bulk update request #7353 is active.

mass update slit_(disambiguation) -> genital_slit

Reason: slit_(disambiguation) -genital_slit = 0

My understanding is that this BUR will simply empty slit_(disambiguation) with no actual changes. This is not an alias. This is a one-time operation. If the above search is not empty at the time of approval, just empty it at your discretion.

I moved almost everything to genital_slit or cloaca, both tagged according to the instructions in both wikis. This means a lot of ferals and characters seemingly without an anus got tagged cloaca. Cloaca was often tagged via implication from vertical_cloaca or horizontal_cloaca, and I added cloacal_penis when I could remember. Removed slit_(disambiguation) without any addition when I found the post didn't adequately depict a slit. Didn't spend much thought on slit_pupils... Basically, I updated every post in that search with what I thought the tagger was trying to tag. Flipped some genders as I saw fit (genital_slit vs pussy), and flipped *slit* <-> *cloaca* subtags as appropriate when I thought to check for them. Fleshed out the slit_(disambiguation) wiki. This was a good opportunity to start cloacal_rectum, which is a tag I'd wanted for 6 years (post #646853), for the cloaca's "anus," which is not actually an anus, the few times it gets depicted.

This was not easy, but not exactly hard either with enough instructions. I double-checked everything I had tagged cloaca and swapped the few instances that seemed excessive to genital_slit.

EDIT: The bulk update request #7353 (forum #398490) has been approved by @slyroon.

𝖠𝗅𝗋𝖾𝖺𝖽𝗒 𝖾𝗑𝗂𝗌𝗍𝗌 𝖺𝗌 𝗉𝖺𝗋𝗍 𝗈𝖿 𝖡𝖴𝖱 #7148 𝗈𝗇 𝗍𝗈𝗉𝗂𝖼 #31320, 𝖻𝗎𝗍 𝗍𝗁𝖾𝗒 𝗂𝗇𝖼𝗅𝗎𝖽𝖾𝖽 𝖺𝗇 𝗎𝗇𝖺𝗅𝗂𝖺𝗌 𝖿𝗈𝗋 𝗌𝗅𝗂𝗍 -> 𝗌𝗅𝗂𝗍_(𝖽𝗂𝗌𝖺𝗆𝖻𝗂𝗀𝗎𝖺𝗍𝗂𝗈𝗇) 𝗐𝗁𝗂𝖼𝗁 𝖾𝗌𝗌𝖾𝗇𝗍𝗂𝖺𝗅𝗅𝗒 𝗇𝗎𝗅𝗅𝗂𝖿𝗂𝖾𝗌 𝗍𝗁𝖾 𝗉𝗎𝗋𝗉𝗈𝗌𝖾 𝗈𝖿 𝗁𝖺𝗏𝗂𝗇𝗀 𝖺 𝖽𝗂𝗌𝖺𝗆𝖻𝗂𝗀𝗎𝖺𝗍𝗂𝗈𝗇 𝗍𝖺𝗀 𝗂𝗇 𝗍𝗁𝖾 𝖿𝗂𝗋𝗌𝗍 𝗉𝗅𝖺𝖼𝖾.

I can address some things mentioned in that thread. But first, the numbers:

I removed slit ~8500 times, just below the post change history limit. These are all posts that did not have a tag edit since the slit -> slit_(disambiguation) alias.
I removed slit_(disambiguation) ~150 times. I saw, I think, two other users with a meaningful amount of removals, but this was basically a solo project.
I added genital_slit ~4800 times during this project.
I added cloaca ~750 times during this project.
I removed cloaca ~300 times during this project, including 59 reversals of my own tagging last night.

^{*Numbers intentionally slightly under-reported due to my own mistakes, reversals, and variance in tagging behavior.}

That's about 3000 times where the I removed slit_(disambiguation) without a replacement or where a miscellaneous other slit-type tag was appropriate.

1. slit is a lazy slang term mostly used by scalie fans who can't be bothered to learn correct anatomical terms or our corresponding tags and occasionally as a means of skirting around using gender-aligned tags. This includes both artist uploaders and other taggers.

2. slit was often used to communicate the expectation that a character has a slit of any kind even when the post does not show the slit or inconclusively shows a slit (e.g., some conspicuous genital creases that could just be skin deformed around an engorged penis). I started more aggressively "denying" the borderline posts the genital_slit tag because they really did do a poor job of demonstrating a slit, often just being a penis stapled onto a body that should have had a slit but didn't. In some ways, this tagging behavior is like tagging non-mammal_balls, where the tag comments on a character's "normalcy" for their species but just... doesn't matter.

3. slit has been tagged for every kind of orifice. 750 mistags for cloaca, as said above. Maybe 500 mistags/overtags for pussy (hard to demonstrate with a search). Let's say up to 100 mistags for slit-style anuses. Maybe 50 mistags for confusing herm anatomy. Handful of tags for slits on arthropod_abdomens (and one exciting mistag for such an ovipositor). I don't think anyone on this site can authoritatively provide tagging guidance for orifices on arthropod abdomens, similarly to many depictions of "tail pussies." Maybe 20 mistags for slit_outline (outline of a genital_slit like a pussy_outline).

4. genital_slit is a bad tag name. It does not communicate that the tag is just meant for penis-containing slits, nor does it distinguish itself from cloacas, nor will it come to mind for uninformed taggers. The tag is unintuitive. The most natural change would be to penile_slit, which should much better communicate what the tag is for, but what's the under/over on how often this would get mistagged for a penis's urethra?

5. By my understanding, genital_slit is only correct for cetacean genital cavities (diagram ), both male and female. This creates a tagging quandary when tagging female cetaceans (compromise is to tag cetacean_pussy) and begs the question of why we are still using this term incorrectly. Surely we can do better.

6. If slit were to be revalidated, it should be as something like slit_(orifice)... and that should at least have implications from vertical_cloaca and horizontal_cloaca which are slit-shaped.

Furry art has evolved over time. Let's say art posted 8+ years ago was a lot less detailed and genital slits were not that common. A lot of old posts were tagged slit based on expectation that was not demonstrated, and I ended up cleaning a chunk of one user's mess who was banned for precisely that. Art posted 5-8 years ago has improved detail and genital slits became somewhat expected. Art posted 5 years ago to present continued to increase detail with lavish dragon art becoming more common and artists occasionally getting adventurous with depictions of genitals and seeking greater anatomical accuracy. Over time, those outlier artists who did something particularly well or accurately gained company and lost some of their outlier status. During this project, I started looking forward to the older, simpler art because I wouldn't have to think as hard. Art from the past 3 years was a slog to get through.

I do want to move on from this. This tag operation has no downside. Right?

abadbird said:
4. genital_slit is a bad tag name. It does not communicate that the tag is just meant for penis-containing slits, nor does it distinguish itself from cloacas, nor will it come to mind for uninformed taggers. The tag is unintuitive. The most natural change would be to penile_slit, which should much better communicate what the tag is for, but what's the under/over on how often this would get mistagged for a penis's urethra?

5. By my understanding, genital_slit is only correct for cetacean genital cavities (diagram ), both male and female. This creates a tagging quandary when tagging female cetaceans (compromise is to tag cetacean_pussy) and begs the question of why we are still using this term incorrectly. Surely we can do better.

Wait, since when is genital_slit a male/penis-only tag? I have been tagging genital_slit based on point no. 5 since forever on both males & females and have never taken into account whether the slit could contain a penis or not.
I guess it could be because of @Genjar's wiki revision 4 years ago as they were trying to decrease the amount of mistags or this memo from 8 years ago, which have led to this interpretation?

IMO, genital_slit should be used on both males and females, since dragons in particular feature them a lot and it is nigh impossible to distinguish between genders without their genitals being exposed.
As for the question of tagging slits on females, we should only tag them if we can see the vaginal opening or secretions inside a slit-like fold.
It could overlap with plump_labia, but it should look naturally flat like a horizontal_cloaca and not plump like that of a humanoid_pussy.
If no genital is exposed, then you can tag ambiguous_gender genital_slit.

thegreatwolfgang said:
I guess it could be because of @Genjar's wiki revision 4 years ago

Before I properly begin, first sentence in the wiki...

https://e621.net/wiki_page_versions/diff?otherpage=50993&thispage=29781&commit=Diff - 6 years ago

Slit for internal penis, separate from anus.

...I am nicely saying that everyone should revisit wikis for tags they commonly use if they haven't read the wiki in 6 years.

Wait, since when is genital_slit a male/penis-only tag?

https://e621.net/wiki_page_versions/7868 - 11 years ago, first version

On dolphins, orcas, whales and other marine mammals, this is a cavity where the penis remains when not being used, mostly to preserve hydrodynamism.

The wiki did not explain what to do with female "slits," so the unhandled logic went to -> do nothing, female slits are not discussed in this wiki and are something else. That was the frustrating thing about genital_slit--until Genjar's edit, the wiki didn't directly say which gender/genitals it's for. Even paraspite's clarification post doesn't help much: don't tag genital slits as either pussy or cloaca and they can be ambiguous gender (ambiguous_slit is far superior and should take all ambiguous_gender cases anyway).

Like I keep saying across my forum posts, a lot of our wikis have wrong information, missing key information, frame things poorly, are too specific or vague, etc. In this case, the original text is not factually incorrect but does critically fail to mention that cetacean genital slits can also have vaginas, and omitting such key information entirely skews perception and became tagging policy. I now reference the final paragraph of my rant in forum #384272, particularly the "become embedded in e621's DNA" part.

IMO, genital_slit should be used on both males and females, since dragons in particular feature them a lot and it is nigh impossible to distinguish between genders without their genitals being exposed.

ambiguous_slit is the way to go. Give all the ambiguously gendered characters their own tag to keep them separate.

As for the question of tagging slits on females

A "slit" with a vagina is just a pussy (unless the character is a herm). They are not visually distinct from a lot of innie_pussy. Many IRL mammals have subtle pussies just like the "slits" we're talking about on scalies. These aren't actually special, just harder to tag.

The entire point of invalidating slit should be to force users to use more specific tags that give more exact search results. Using genital_slit as a multi-gendered slit tag is just slit_2.0.

abadbird said:
...

I don't even know ambiguous_slit was even a tag (or even a valid one) since it was never mentioned anywhere in the genital_slit wiki.
I would suggest it be aliased to ambiguous_gender or slit_(disambiguation) for that matter
I'd even argue that innie_pussy looks visually similar to ambiguous_slit.

Regardless of how the wiki is defining things, it still doesn't stop people from tagging things differently or through intuition. This "problem" seems to have persisted for 11 years as you have pointed out, even with a proper wiki.
Outside of e6, people still refer to genital slits as being male/female because real cetaceans are described as such.. Even events like slit_day don't exclude females from the mix.

With that being said, what exactly is the purpose of genital_slit? A tag to show the penis emerging from a housing similar to sheath? A tag which shows just the slit itself being separate from the anus (which apparently is more accurately being referred to as ambiguous_slit)? Or just a slit by itself which houses the genitals of both sexes as the name implies (which we shouldn't actually be tagging)?

thegreatwolfgang said:
With that being said, what exaxtly is the purpose of genital_slit? A tag to show the penis emerging from a housing similar to sheath? A tag which shows just the slit itself being separate from the anus (which apparently is more accurately being referred to as ambiguous_slit)? Or just a slit by itself which houses the genitals of both sexes as the name implies (which we shouldn't actually be tagging)?

As I understood it, genital_slit is supposed to be where a penis is housed, whether or not the penis is actually visible. It's not supposed to be used for cloacas or vaginas. Though as is often the case, people will tag characters as male due to lore knowledge and subsequently tag genital_slit without a penis visible, when more objective tagging would say to tag female and pussy instead of male and genital_slit (or ambiguous_gender and ambiguous_slit as a "compromise"). Feral characters in particular suffer this problem, as they're often not sexually dimorphic enough to tell they're male when you see just a slit without a penis (being largely indistinguishable from a vagina).

watsit said:
As I understood it, genital_slit is supposed to be where a penis is housed, whether or not the penis is actually visible. It's not supposed to be used for cloacas or vaginas. Though as is often the case, people will tag characters as male due to lore knowledge and subsequently tag genital_slit without a penis visible, when more objective tagging would say to tag female and pussy instead of male and genital_slit (or ambiguous_gender and ambiguous_slit as a "compromise"). Feral characters in particular suffer this problem, as they're often not sexually dimorphic enough to tell they're male when you see just a slit without a penis (being largely indistinguishable from a vagina).

Having these tags be locked to genders (or specifically genitalia type) feels needless and redundant to me, not to mention a lot of people will not know the difference.

• male = genital_slit
• female = pussy
• intersex = genital_slit and/or pussy
• ambiguous_gender = ambiguous_slit

When it could easily be:

• male = genital_slit male
• female = genital_slit female
• intersex = genital_slit intersex
• ambiguous_gender = genital_slit ambiguous_gender

I only tag pussy if I could actually see inside the slit. Same as I would with male if I could see a penis_tip or penis.

With the current tagging criteria, how will people differentiate between female pussy and ambiguous_gender ambiguous_slit on non-sexually-dimorphic characters?
People are still going to tag genital_slit even when the gender is ambiguous (see genital_slit ambiguous_gender -ambiguous_slit -male -penis -female -pussy).

thegreatwolfgang said:
Having these tags be exclusive to genders (or specifically genitalia type) feels redundant to me, not to mention a lot of people will not know the difference.

• male = genital_slit
• female = pussy
• intersex = genital_slit and/or pussy
• ambiguous_gender = ambiguous_slit

When it could easily be:

• male = genital_slit male
• female = genital_slit female
• intersex = genital_slit intersex
• ambiguous_gender = genital_slit ambiguous_gender

This of course won't work reliably with more than one character. The primary issue is people tagging the sex of non-mammal (often feral) beast-less characters, and thus what the slit-like thing is, based on lore knowledge. ambiguous_slit can also be seen as an issue, as the presence of a slit-like thing would normally be taken as a pussy and thus get ambiguous characters tagged as female or andromorph, where it would then be tagged pussy and not ambiguous_slit; it basically seems to be a self-defeating tag. Slits are just confusing and messy. But it is useful to tag genital_slits separately from pussy and cloaca when a character can otherwise be tagged male, with or without a visible penis.

The bulk update request #7353 (forum #398490) has been approved by @slyroon.