The tag alias #69307 western -> wild_west is pending approval.

Reason: wild_west is a clearer name for this concept. The term "western" can be confused with western society in general, which is not worth tagging as per the discussion in https://e621.net/forum_topics/43672 of getting rid of oriental.

(alternatively, could be a bulk-update instead of an alias).

There are quite a few posts that have nothing to do with the wild west.

post #4513048 post #4553095 post #4433932 post #4359454 post #4235268 post #4111452 post #4132719

Most of these are dragons, so I suspect people are typoing western_dragon. Unless we can somehow resolve that issue, aliasing western away might cause more confusion than it's worth.

With that said I do agree that "wild west" is a clearer name for the setting than "western". Maybe making it an invalid tag would be better...

Then it needs to be cleaned up manually. The description of the tag says "A tag indicating thematic elements indicative of 19th century American wild west. For example, duster coats, chaps, desert towns, saloons, revolvers, and especially cowboy hats."

After that set to invalid yeah.

These are not the same thing. One covers thematic elements of a genre, the other is a setting.
'Western' being a common genre in movies, literature, and everywhere else. While wild west is used far less commonly, and implies a narrow time period and setting compared to what western can cover. Not all westerns are set in wild west. See Firefly for example.

genjar said:
'Western' is a common genre in movies, literature, and everywhere else. I don't see what's so unclear about it — wild west is used far less commonly, and implies location instead of genre. You can have westerns set in space, for instance. See Firefly.

It's a not-uncommon mistag for "western dragon" too. Or for indicating more generally western culture vs eastern culture. Like you say, "wild west" and the "western" genre also aren't entirely synonymous, but people can easily confuse them, calling something a western for taking place in the wild west despite not being thematically western. Some people may tag it just because a character's wearing a cowboy outfit, which is associated with but not indicative of westerns.

Disambiguation makes the most sense to me.