It's no secret how utterly useless the humanoid tag family has become. To recap, due to the common definition of the word outside of e621, most images that use it mistake it for a synonym of anthro. Even if the wiki says otherwise, most people don't read the wiki page for every single tag that they use.

Unfortunately, any attempt to change such a large and long-standing tag family is going to be a gargantuan undertaking, as these are some deeply-buried and complex roots we're gonna have to dig up. There's no way that we can avoid a whole lot of manual sorting because of the sheer scale of misuse. I'm going to need you guys's help.

At any rate, here's a basic plan for what I have in mind.

• Step 1: Decide on a replacement that both encompasses all use cases for what humanoid was INTENDED for, and, more importantly, does NOT suggest that it includes anthros.
• The current most promising candidates are human-like (the term the site rules uses) or near-human (which other users, including a Janitor, have advocated for previously).
• As said term has not been selected yet, it will be referred to here as the Chosen Replacement Term (CRT).
• Step 2: Start dismantling the implication trees of the relevant tags.
• Step 3: Rebuild the implication trees using the CRT.
• Step 4: Move and rewrite the wiki entries.
• Step 5: Mass-update all tags that implied humanoid, followed by humanoid itself, to invalid_tag. This should greatly compress the workload for...
• Step 6: This is the painful, regrettably unavoidable part, but we have to rip the band-aid off at some point... manually sort through the invalid_tag tag, and add the CRT to the posts that it actually fits, while simply removing the invalid_tag from posts that it doesn't fit. I am aware that there are nearly half a million posts that we would have to dig through, but if you can think of any easier way, I'd love to hear it.
• The reason I'm suggesting this instead of sorting through the humanoid tag as-is is because of the implication trees that currently exist. Step 5 will reduce them all to a single tag instead of many.
• Step 7: Move the humanoid tags to the invalid category to officially retire them.
• Step 8: I have no power over this step, but if this campaign works, then the uploader itself will have to be updated to replace the "humanoid" button with one for the CRT.
• Step 9: Clean up any new humanoid-tagged posts uploaded in the interim.

This post will be updated with a work-in-progress BUR script as we work out the specifics.

This is FAR from a perfect plan — seriously, if you guys can think of anything, ANYTHING to make the manual sorting easier, please say so — but that's why this is a planning thread and not an actual BUR thread.

First thing's first, we should probably gather all tags in the family so we can plainly see what to unimply and replace.

lendrimujina said:

• The current most promising candidates are human-like (the term the site rules uses) or near-human (which other users, including a Janitor, have advocated for previously).

"near-human" doesn't work since it applies to anything with a vaguely human-like body that is not based on an animal. It can apply to something like gengar:
post #4646438
or mawile:
post #4371513
which, while vaguely human-like with two arms and two legs attached to a main body. "Human-like" may also be stretching it, but these are among the things it's intended to cover.

lendrimujina said:

• Step 3: Rebuild the implication trees using the CRT.

I also wonder if we should do away with a number of the humanoid tags, like alien_humanoid, monstrous_humanoid, canine_humanoid, feline_humanoid, etc, and not replace them with whatever replacement term gets used. We don't do these for anthros or ferals, and we have tags like rabbit_ears and wolf_tail which are supposed to indicate a human(oid) with that anatomical feature; and what is a fox_humanoid but a human(oid) with a fox_tail and/or fox_ears, as an example. Of course these tags are also often misused on anthros of the given species, like humanoid itself.

watsit said:
I also wonder if we should do away with a number of the humanoid tags, like alien_humanoid, monstrous_humanoid, canine_humanoid, feline_humanoid, etc, and not replace them with whatever replacement term gets used. We don't do these for anthros or ferals, and we have tags like rabbit_ears and wolf_tail which are supposed to indicate a human(oid) with that anatomical feature; and what is a fox_humanoid but a human(oid) with a fox_tail and/or fox_ears, as an example. Of course these tags are also often misused on anthros of the given species, like humanoid itself.

I agree that not all of them should return. It's which ones to exclude that gets tricky, and something that I'm not in a position to judge unilaterally.

watsit said:
"near-human" doesn't work since it applies to anything with a vaguely human-like body that is not based on an animal. It can apply to something like gengar:
post #4646438
or mawile:
post #4371513
which, while vaguely human-like with two arms and two legs attached to a main body. "Human-like" may also be stretching it, but these are among the things it's intended to cover.

Pokemon like that are already used as examples on the current humanoid wiki page. (Though I'm a bit weird in that I wouldn't put them in that category personally, I'd consider both of those feral in the same way I'd consider a monkey to be feral, but hey, that's why I'm not in charge of defining the fine lines drawn between these categories. =p)

lendrimujina said:
Pokemon like that are already used as examples on the current humanoid wiki page.

Apparently my brain short-circuited and I didn't finish the sentence. I meant to say, "... while vaguely human-like with two arms and two legs attached to a main body, aren't near-human in appearance." So the term near-human doesn't work for what it's supposed to apply to. The term human-like is a little better, but still feels like a stretch in some cases.

Man, this tag family is so intertwined that I'm running into circular paths even trying to list them all. I knew this would take a while, but... this is gonna take a while.

watsit said:
Apparently my brain short-circuited and I didn't finish the sentence. I meant to say, "... while vaguely human-like with two arms and two legs attached to a main body, aren't near-human in appearance." So the term near-human doesn't work for what it's supposed to apply to. The term human-like is a little better, but still feels like a stretch in some cases.

Any term that has 'human' in it will face the same exact problems in equal proportion to the existing humanoid. any new term will first off have to avoid that. Therein through lays another issue, any existing alternative that does not include human in the term will likely not be able to cover everything presently under humanoid, kemonomimi for example could cover those with recognizable animal features but wouldn't really be applicable to robots or elementals for example.

ryu_deacon said:
Any term that has 'human' in it will face the same exact problems in equal proportion to the existing humanoid. any new term will first off have to avoid that. Therein through lays another issue, any existing alternative that does not include human in the term will likely not be able to cover everything presently under humanoid, kemonomimi for example could cover those with recognizable animal features but wouldn't really be applicable to robots or elementals for example.

what if we just removed the "human" part, then, so just... "oid"

dba_afish said:
what if we just removed the "human" part, then, so just... "oid"

But there might be a character or two named that, so we'll do... "oid_(body_type)"

ryu_deacon said:
Any term that has 'human' in it will face the same exact problems in equal proportion to the existing humanoid. any new term will first off have to avoid that. Therein through lays another issue, any existing alternative that does not include human in the term will likely not be able to cover everything presently under humanoid, kemonomimi for example could cover those with recognizable animal features but wouldn't really be applicable to robots or elementals for example.

Problem is, the point of the tag in the first place is for those who prefer characters that are more human than anything else. (Or can't stand them.) It has to refer to humans somehow, because that's their defining feature.

Do we need an entirely separate tag for "human with like one or two animal traits"? Because that's what it's beginning to sound like. Humanoid is beginning to even sound useless for its intended definition because it's just too broad. Not all of us think the same thing when we hear it. Some people see "humanoid" and think "things that have an upright stature like Gardevoir". I see "humanoid" and think "non-furries that only qualify for the site on a technicality like Link". How can someone search / blacklist the Gardevoirs separately from the Links?

The problem is beginning to seem a lot deeper than just a misused tag family, that's what I'm saying.

Human_based ?

Ah, I had forgotten about gengar when I suggested near-human. Humanlike is my new favorite then. I think that one would be fine for gengar, and would hopefully be less confusing than humanoid

*edit: gengar not gardevoir. Although it'd be fine for gardevoir too lol

lendrimujina said:
Problem is, the point of the tag in the first place is for those who prefer characters that are more human than anything else. (Or can't stand them.) It has to refer to humans somehow, because that's their defining feature.

Do we need an entirely separate tag for "human with like one or two animal traits"? Because that's what it's beginning to sound like. Humanoid is beginning to even sound useless for its intended definition because it's just too broad. Not all of us think the same thing when we hear it. Some people see "humanoid" and think "things that have an upright stature like Gardevoir". I see "humanoid" and think "non-furries that only qualify for the site on a technicality like Link". How can someone search / blacklist the Gardevoirs separately from the Links?

The problem is beginning to seem a lot deeper than just a misused tag family, that's what I'm saying.

are you suggesting a change in definition alongside the change in name?

dba_afish said:
are you suggesting a change in definition alongside the change in name?

Right now I'm wondering what the correct path forward is. Things seem a little confused right now.

Er... never mind, we'll deal with that later. There's still a whole lot of lifting to do on this front. No matter what we do, Humanoid has to go, and the same basic first steps will have to be taken regardless of what the specific end goal is.

wandering_spaniel said:
Ah, I had forgotten about gengar when I suggested near-human. Humanlike is my new favorite then. I think that one would be fine for gardevoir, and would hopefully be less confusing than humanoid

Any objections, anyone else?

wandering_spaniel said:
Ah, I had forgotten about gengar when I suggested near-human. Humanlike is my new favorite then. I think that one would be fine for gengar, and would hopefully be less confusing than humanoid

*edit: gengar not gardevoir. Although it'd be fine for gardevoir too lol

"human-like" has another problem, though, it's not a tag name, but it is a term we're already using officially on the site. "human-like" is the wording we use to describe young humanoid characters who are subject to the purge; it has a different, more specific, definition than humanoid alone does, judging by which posts got reinstated.

dba_afish said:
"human-like" has another problem, though, it's not a tag name, but it is a term we're already using officially on the site. "human-like" is the wording we use to describe young humanoid characters who are subject to the purge; it has a different, more specific, definition than humanoid alone does, judging by which posts got reinstated.

If we do decide to split the humanoid tag (which is an extremely big "if" and, again, not the current priority), that seems like the point the line would be drawn at: "would this character violate the policy if they were young and explicit".

lendrimujina said:
Problem is, the point of the tag in the first place is for those who prefer characters that are more human than anything else. (Or can't stand them.) It has to refer to humans somehow, because that's their defining feature.

Do we need an entirely separate tag for "human with like one or two animal traits"? Because that's what it's beginning to sound like. Humanoid is beginning to even sound useless for its intended definition because it's just too broad. Not all of us think the same thing when we hear it. Some people see "humanoid" and think "things that have an upright stature like Gardevoir". I see "humanoid" and think "non-furries that only qualify for the site on a technicality like Link". How can someone search / blacklist the Gardevoirs separately from the Links?

dinbyy said:

Title

other humanoids that don't have an animalistic heads but have heads like post #5048537 post #3141411 can be tagged miscellaneous_for_a_head.

wait a sec, i forgot about for_a_head, i didnt remember that was a tag but it was in the back of my head enough for me to base that tag name on it.

The tag list is taking longer than it should because I'm going through some bad stuff IRL right now. I will get to it. I'm chipping away at it.

lendrimujina said:
The tag list is taking longer than it should because I'm going through some bad stuff IRL right now. I will get to it. I'm chipping away at it.

Your real life matters way more, take care of yourself, e6 can always wait!
Wishing you lots of luck!

I do not think that changing the definition of this tag is necessarily wise. I know that currently humanoid is essentially the form tag equivalent of a wastebasket taxon, but if we intend on shifting the definition along side the name we definitely need to have coherent form classifications into which we can move the newly orphaned body types and that's gonna be way easier said than done.

we don't need more swathes of characters of unclassified form, we've already got slimes and dires and head creatures.

Having it getting it renamed to something like miscellaneous_form is starting to actually sound appealing.

dinbyy said:

edit: i forgot about something like gardevoir, i suppose heads of characters that dont fit into any of the definitions should probably have their own tag??? but i dont have any ideas for one.

so for things like gardevoir, i guess we could dump it in with one of the tags suggested like near-human or human-like. those are for trying to avoid the wrong body tag being applied on anthros yea? though for it to work i do think the upload page should get something like a graphic that appears near the toggles, or appears when you click on one of the body shape tag toggles, as text saying they are mutually exclusive doesn't seem to get the point across.

dinbyy said:
so for things like gardevoir, i guess we could dump it in with one of the tags suggested like near-human or human-like. those are for trying to avoid the wrong body tag being applied on anthros yea? though for it to work i do think the upload page should get something like a graphic that appears near the toggles, or appears when you click on one of the body shape tag toggles, as text saying they are mutually exclusive doesn't seem to get the point across.

That would mess up images with more than one character (e.g. humanoid_on_anthro).

lendrimujina said:
That would mess up images with more than one character (e.g. humanoid_on_anthro).

I wonder if it'd be better to have a sort of pseudo-form tag, kinda like what we do for semi-anthro without doing a full tag split.

dba_afish said:
I wonder if it'd be better to have a sort of pseudo-form tag, kinda like what we do for semi-anthro without doing a full tag split.

Well, I'm personally in favor of human-like becoming a tag, even if not a separate tag from currently-humanoid. Heck, maybe it should even imply the replacement term when we settle on one.

Human-like-ness has more to do with things other than one's body structure anyway.

anicebee said:
Having it getting it renamed to something like miscellaneous_form is starting to actually sound appealing.

A possibility, but a rather last-resort-y possibility.

lendrimujina said:
That would mess up images with more than one character (e.g. humanoid_on_anthro).

wait whys that?

lendrimujina said:
Well, I'm personally in favor of human-like becoming a tag, even if not a separate tag from currently-humanoid. Heck, maybe it should even imply the replacement term when we settle on one.

I will reiterate this again, tag terms with 'human' in them cannot be used, anthros are quite literally already human-like by definition. Both humanoid and anthro as tags are essentially different ratios of human-likeness.

lendrimujina said:
It's no secret how utterly useless the humanoid tag family has become. To recap, due to the common definition of the word outside of e621, most images that use it mistake it for a synonym of anthro. Even if the wiki says otherwise, most people don't read the wiki page for every single tag that they use.

Remember the underlying point of this thread of yours was to minimize usage of humanoid as a stand in for anthro if not eliminate the mistagging entirely.

I for my part dont honestly think there needs to be a change, the tag already works as good as a tag to cover stuff between human and anthro or human and other is going to work I believe. However I dont mind a name change but it has to be something that actually addresses the issue,human-like or near-human are simply not that.

ryu_deacon said:
I will reiterate this again, tag terms with 'human' in them cannot be used, anthros are quite literally already human-like by definition. Both humanoid and anthro as tags are essentially different ratios of human-likeness.

Remember the underlying point of this thread of yours was to minimize usage of humanoid as a stand in for anthro if not eliminate the mistagging entirely.

I for my part dont honestly think there needs to be a change, the tag already works as good as a tag to cover stuff between human and anthro or human and other is going to work I believe. However I dont mind a name change but it has to be something that actually addresses the issue,human-like or near-human are simply not that.

I think you're greatly misunderstanding the reason the humanoid tag is so misused. The "human" part by itself is not the problem. The problem is that "humanoid" — the ENTIRE WORD as a whole, not the individual parts of it — is an existing term outside the context of e6 with its own connotations, often used in sci-fi and fantasy circles to indiscriminately refer to any species that's intelligent and bipedal. Other terms that have the word "human" in it would not have this particular problem.

Also, "human-like" is a separate term already defined in the site rules in that the similarity to humans beyond vague body shape is the important part. If you want to eliminate all mentions of "human" in regard to anything that are not 100% realistic homo sapiens, then you'll have to change the site rules too.

If you think the "humanoid" tag is fine as-is, is at all meaningful, and can still be saved, then suggest some other way to fix the hundreds of thousands of mistags.

lendrimujina said:
I think you're greatly misunderstanding the reason the humanoid tag is so misused. The "human" part by itself is not the problem. The problem is that "humanoid" — the ENTIRE WORD IN WHOLE, not in part — is an existing term outside the context of e6 with its own connotations, regardless of its etymology.

It is the problem if the issue is that people are using anthro and humanoid interchangeably because both are understood to be characters with human qualities. And this: "existing term outside the context of e6 with its own connotations, regardless of its etymology." also applies in the same way to human-like which is why it cannot be used

lendrimujina said:
Also, "human-like" is a separate term already defined in the site rules in that the similarity to humans beyond vague body shape is the important part. If you want to eliminate all mentions of "human" in regard to anything that are not 100% realistic homo sapiens, then you'll have to change the site rules too.

If the people are not reading and following the wiki definition then they will also not be understanding human-like in how e621's rules referencing it were most recently actively applied in addressing the young humans issue. That issue is irrelevant to this discussion really.

lendrimujina said:
Or if you think the "human" part is just that toxic despite it being the important part, come up with your own replacement term that both adequately covers what it needs to while also being difficult to misinterpret.

I actually kinda did that in my first post here: Kemonomimi, but also made clear in that message that there may not really be a better tag to actually cover everything than what we already have as humanoid, but as a extra, maybe 'sapien'..

we could specify humanoid's name and do something like "humanoid_non-fur." its not perfect since the lines between what can be considered furry and not can be a little confusing, but otherwise that's kind of a non-issue since they are so rare. for example, more abstract/fictional yet vaguely animalistic traits from irl nature might be confusing, especially if its not mainstream or popular enough, maybe like say jiralhanae. but it shouldn't be a big problem

dinbyy said:
we could specify humanoid's name and do something like "humanoid_non-fur." its not perfect since the lines between what can be considered furry and not can be a little confusing, but otherwise that's kind of a non-issue since they are so rare. for example, more abstract/fictional yet vaguely animalistic traits from irl nature might be confusing, especially if its not mainstream or popular enough, maybe like say jiralhanae. but it shouldn't be a big problem

Even if we ignore messes like satyr, you know that mammal_humanoids with tails or animal ears still have fur on them, right?

anicebee said:
Even if we ignore messes like satyr, you know that mammal_humanoids with tails or animal ears still have fur on them, right?

then "humanoid_non-furry."

Humanoid to me is human with animal features like ears and tails or semi transformed

Things like bipedal creatures like Pokémon Kirlia and Gardevoir would just be under the umbrella of Species - Pokémon

Just like Bipedal Digimon would be Species - Digimon

Anyway
My point is not to make this system more complex than it is otherwise we end up getting into semantics and then you have to be super specific while also making over 50% of the things tagged with the tag not under the tag (I'm looking at you Uncensored Tag that got turned into 3rd Party Edit tag fucking up most of what was using the tag)

lendrimujina said:
I think you're greatly misunderstanding the reason the humanoid tag is so misused.

Just another reminder, if the button on the upload form was deleted, this problem likely almost completely dissolves with no need to change the tag.

Though, I think the site terminology design often takes for granted the expectation for users to keep a detailed knowledge of site terms, which leads to the Humanoid situation when they decide to stick preset form tag buttons in while assuming that everyone who views the upload page has pre-agreed with the site definition of all tags in question. But in-depth users of the site are a small minority, and lately we're also attracting an increasing number of users who may not have a lot of English experience. I found an account who was tagging all their anthro uploads humanoid feral.

magnuseffect said:
Just another reminder, if the button on the upload form was deleted, this problem likely almost completely dissolves with no need to change the tag.

honestly, just a blurb about what each section of buttons even mean would help a lot. that upload form is meant to ease uploaders into the tagging system by showing them what are some of the most important tags, but it kinda fails to actually elucidate on any of the ways the tags should be used. even just saying something like "each character in a scene should be exctly one of the following" would probably help.

oh, it actually does say that they're mutually exclusive, is that new or did I just not notice it before? it does fail to explain what the pairing tags are, but that's it.

I'm pretty sure this comment isn't true anyway, the "tagging anthro dogs as dog_humanoid" problem has existed long before the new tagging form, or autocomplete, or any other e6ng feature.

dba_afish said:
I'm pretty sure this comment isn't true anyway, the "tagging anthro dogs as dog_humanoid" problem has existed long before the new tagging form, or autocomplete, or any other e6ng feature.

Search animal_humanoid anthro posts by year and you'll observe that it balloons from a page or two sub-20 pages a year pre-2020 to tens of pages a year post-2020
Sure it's always been a problem, but people weren't just slapping buttons willy-nilly before the buttons.

Edit: Okay maybe it's not quite that clear-cut, but it still^{wait no, it is and I just needed to go more than a year before to show it} goes from (and I'm also not going through the full trouble of weeding out posts that have a genuine animal_humanoid plus an actual anthro)
8 pages in 2016 animal_humanoid anthro date:01/01/2016..31/12/2016
10 pages in 2017 animal_humanoid anthro date:01/01/2017..31/12/2017
13 pages in 2018 animal_humanoid anthro date:01/01/2018..31/12/2018
15 pages in 2019 animal_humanoid anthro date:01/01/2019..31/12/2019
to
24 pages in 2020 animal_humanoid anthro date:01/01/2020..31/12/2020 with the new upload page dropping in March
36 pages in 2021 animal_humanoid anthro date:01/01/2021..31/12/2021
44 pages in 2022 animal_humanoid anthro date:01/01/2022..31/12/2022
64 pages in 2023 animal_humanoid anthro date:01/01/2023..31/12/2023

magnuseffect said:
Search animal_humanoid anthro posts by year and you'll observe that it balloons from a page or two a year pre-2020 to tens of pages a year post-2020
Sure it's always been a problem, but people weren't just slapping buttons willy-nilly before the buttons.

there's no animal_humanoid button.

and, of course there are more posts that are mistagged, there are more posts in general, "the amount of posts we get per day has been rising more or less exponentially since the site's launch. we saw almost as many posts in the first half of 2021 as we saw in the entirely of 2019.

dba_afish said:
there's no animal_humanoid button.

My hypothesis there is that the presence of the humanoid tag in the upload form gets people searching for more specific versions of the tag. Maybe I'm nuts, but I think that's how people unfamiliar with the site are getting there.

and, of course there are more posts that are mistagged, there are more posts in general, "the amount of posts we get per day has been rising more or less exponentially since the site's launch. we saw almost as many posts in the first half of 2021 as we saw in the entirely of 2019.

Who knows, the new upload form did coincide with when everyone got locked indoors for a while, but I think there's more to it than that being coincidence, and the situation has continued to accelerate since, when before the number of pages was going up at a fairly steady rate despite that the site has always been accelerating.

magnuseffect said:
My hypothesis there is that the presence of the humanoid tag in the upload form gets people searching for more specific versions of the tag. Maybe I'm nuts, but I think that's how people unfamiliar with the site are getting there.
Who knows, the new upload form did coincide with when everyone got locked indoors for a while, but I think there's more to it than that being coincidence, and the situation has continued to accelerate since, when before the number of pages was going up at a fairly steady rate despite that the site has always been accelerating.

I mean, as it is you're kind comparing apples and oranges, just listing a bunch of raw numbers like that fails to give any useful information. since the volume of posts per year that are mistagged as animal_humanoid when the character is anthro is necessarily going to be affected by the total posts per year you're going to have to control for that in order for your data to make sense.

I haven't forgotten about this, Hurricane Helene just swept right over me so I had more pressing things to worry about.

lendrimujina said:
I haven't forgotten about this, Hurricane Helene just swept right over me so I had more pressing things to worry about.

glad you're safe, hurricane season can be really tough.