Topic: Tag alias: cervine -> old_world_deer

Posted under Tag Alias and Implication Suggestions

Wandering Spaniel

Janitor

watsit said:
These aren't old world deer, but are deer-like enough to be tagged generically cervine:
post #3090688 post #4477274 post #4495893

"Cervine" works well enough as a name for fictional deer-like creatures, without having to be tied to real-world deer.

Cervine means the old world deer family, they are synonyms, see wikipedia. Are you thinking of the cervid family, which cervine is a subfamily of?
"Deer" is not a species. It's the collective name for all animals in the cervid family, a synonym of cervid. again please look at wikipedia

Deer works exactly as well for fictional creatures as cervid does because they are synonyms, and cervine doesn't work as well because that word specifically means the old world deer subfamily. Those images are mistagged

Wandering Spaniel

Janitor

If you prefer we change back to latin names for all taxonomic families that's fine, but it's a different issue, it was ruled before that we should use common names now. Maybe take it up over on the latin names -> common names thread where this decision was originally made: https://e621.net/forum_topics/36246

linking this here too just for reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxonomic_rank

Also I'm sorry if this sounds aggressive at all, I don't mean it that way, I can't really tell how it sounds through text ^^'

Updated

Watsit

Privileged

wandering_spaniel said:
Cervine means the old world deer family, they are synonyms, see wikipedia. Are you thinking of the cervid family, which cervine is a subfamily of?
"Deer" is not a species. It's the collective name for all animals in the cervid family, a synonym of cervid. again please look at wikipedia

With the move to common names, there was also the understanding to not be so specific with taxonomy, because people aren't going to have a good grasp of it and it being somewhat extraneous to the site. Cervid/cervine worked to indicate a deer-like creature without explicitly calling it a deer, similar to how canid/canine work to indicate a dog or wolf-like creature without calling it a dog or wolf. Even if that's what they may technically mean, using the common name brings more of an expectation of the real animals. Like with "fox" (or "true fox") just being the common name for the genus Vulpes, even though it doesn't name a species, fox shouldn't be tagged on fictional fox-like creatures, because the expectation is to find real foxes under the fox tag and not fictional things based on a fox. You tag canine instead. Even with how the fox tag was recently changed from referring to the genus vulpes, to referring to what we colloquially call "a fox" regardless of its taxonomy (e.g. the grey_fox, not actually a fox), it still only applies to real species and canine is the proper tag to use for fictional ones.

Honestly, even distinctions like canid and canine seem a bit superfluous to me; how many people really know the difference, let alone can distinguish them in drawn art? As strikerman said when he first started this:

Why are we trying to be more complicated than Wikipedia? This is a site to let people look at fluffy images, they shouldn't need a zoology degree to navigate. [...] scientific names can change as our understanding of the world develops, but in common parlance a bear will always be a bear

The idea wasn't to have the bear tag be equivalent to the old ursid tag (or deer equivalent to cervid). It was to better fit the general perception of what people call bears/deer and not be so bogged down with what they are scientifically.

donteven

Member

watsit said:
Cervid/cervine worked to indicate a deer-like creature without explicitly calling it a deer, similar to how canid/canine work to indicate a dog or wolf-like creature without calling it a dog or wolf.

Honestly, even distinctions like canid and canine seem a bit superfluous to me; how many people really know the difference, let alone can distinguish them in drawn art?

Ditto on both of these. It feels really strange to just slap "deer" on fictional-but-very-cervid species.
And now we also have canis in the mix for an extra bit of confusion.

Wandering Spaniel

Janitor

donteven said:
Ditto on both of these. It feels really strange to just slap "deer" on fictional-but-very-cervid species.
And now we also have canis in the mix for an extra bit of confusion.

Canis is a genus, not a subfamily (such as the canines) or family (such as the canids). This page is very helpful for learning about taxonomic ranks

Although I don't think I agree personally, I do understand your and Watsit's point of view about it feeling less weird to call fictional deerlike species cervids rather than deer even though cervid and deer are synonyms. However I don't think this thread is the best place to have that discussion, since that change would affect every family-level taxonomy tag on the site that currently uses its common name. My BUR is only for fixing a missed alias and implication using our current standard that all other species tags follow at the moment. Cervine used to imply cervid because cervinae, the old world deer, is a subfamily of the cervid family, the deer. All cervines are cervids (and you could reword that sentence as "all old world deer are deer" because they are synonyms). If you look at the part 2 in that forum post, the cervine_taur and cervine_humanoid versions have already been implied to deer_taur and deer_humanoid... Strikerman seemed to have just forgotten to include the cervine tag in there. It's clear their intent was for cervine to retain its implication to the deer family tag, so images of fictional species (mis)tagged as cervine would get the deer tag anyway. And Strikerman also likely missed that the cervine subfamily has a common name we can use, "old world deer".

Updated

Wandering Spaniel

Janitor

watsit said:
The idea wasn't to have the bear tag be equivalent to the old ursid tag (or deer equivalent to cervid). It was to better fit the general perception of what people call bears/deer and not be so bogged down with what they are scientifically.

Also would like to point out that "bear" and "ursid" ARE also synonyms. They are equivalent because they mean exactly the same thing, just like deer. Bear is the common name for the ursidae family. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bear

CowboyJones

Member

watsit said:
With the move to common names, there was also the understanding to not be so specific with taxonomy, because people aren't going to have a good grasp of it

Most people don't have a good grasp on taxonomy, but this alias is only going to affect people who DO know taxonomy well enough to try tagging cervine, and directing them towards the correct naming. I think this alias is p good for that, nobody who isn't aware won't be affected.

Watsit

Privileged

wandering_spaniel said:
Also would like to point out that "bear" and "ursid" ARE also synonyms. They are equivalent because they mean exactly the same thing, just like deer. Bear is the common name for the ursidae family. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bear

That's the point I was trying to make. Scientifically speaking, bear and ursid mean the same thing, but in common parlance what people call a bear isn't based on what an ursid is. Like how people use "fox" for other animals besides those in the genus vulpes, despite "fox" being a synonym for the genus vulpes. Changing the tag from ursid to bear (or cervid to deer) was to align it more with peoples' concept of a bear/deer, to use it's colloquial meaning over it's scientific meaning, just as fox was changed to include animals that are known colloquially as foxes and not just the genus vulpes.

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