I was looking through the history on this subject and I couldn't really find a conclusive reason behind this, so I'm just asking, why was this functionality removed?

I appreciate not every species has fully accepted gender specific names, but for those that do, why not have them as allowable tags? Because at the end of the day if you're searching for, for example, lionesses, there is now no way to tightly define that search using other tags. Sure, the said picture might also be tagged lion, and female, but having the gender specific tag there gives the ability to tighten the search further. Removing those tags just removes functionality. I've seen the words redundant being bandied around for gender specific tags, but I don't see that myself, because their removal has now eliminated the ability to perform a search that used to be possible.

If people don't want to use them, then they don't have to; the other less specific tags would still be there, but I can't seem to follow the thinking behind removing tags because not everybody uses them. As long as the non-gender-specific tags are there as well, what's the problem?

Because there's no need for the "lioness" tag when you can just search for "lion female". The purpose of the tag is already covered by other tags.

That's my point though - it isn't. "lion female" will happen across some lionesses, true enough, but it'll also bring up a lot of other images that fall into the category of, separately, lion and female. For example, male lions, female other species and so on in any sort of combination you can come up with. As I say the ability to get the results you used to be able to get with the specific tag has now been lost.

I guess the gripe I have is, the removal of gender specific tags has removed the ability to associate a gender with a species. Obvious thing to point out, I know, but there's no way to replicate that any other way. Provided the non specific tags are still there, all removing the gender specific tags does is remove the ability to do a tighter search, which is what has happened.

So... you want unnecessary tags so that you don't have to dig through some extra pictures?

If it means a more convenient searching facility, then certainly I do. How can they be called unnecessary if they can achieve something that can't otherwise be achieved? You don't lose anything by having them. It's not as if they impair the searching ability of anyone who doesn't wish to use them, but if they're there, they can be used. A little bit of redundancy in a system like this is what makes it work so well; you can go too far with pruning of 'unnecessary' tags.

It's not as if there's some sort of critical limit on the number of tags the system can handle, and vicious continual pruning is needed. Provided the basic, non-specific tags are there still, gender, species, artist, and so on, then the overall negative effect with having those extra tags is precisely zero.

You both have a point though

Searching for lion female can bring up:

• A female lion

• A lion (male, female or other) and a female (not necessarily a female lion)

• Any combination of the above

This was discussed in forum #14568 about a year back, and everyone still had mixed opinions about it, since there would be a need to tag all the various genders (male, female, herm, cuntboy, dickgirl, etc.), not just female & male

This basically quintuples the amount of tags needed for one species, and multiplying that by all the different species tags, gives us way more tags than we'd probably know what to do with (though, that could be made easier through the use of implications, such as lioness -> female & lioness -> female for example)

But then there'd be no umbrella tag for a single species, unless we create another tag, that covers all genders of a specific species

I'm all for introducing gender-specific tags, especially if it helps to narrow down searches even more, but there's a lot to take into consideration before doing so; namely how the tags would be handled in relation to the entire tag system, and how everyone would respond to the changes (positively or negatively)

Naturally it opens up a bit of a pandoras box in that respect. My thought was, for the given example, that as is the case with dogs and bitches for example, there is only really a specific title for the female of the species. Dog is synonymous with dog as a species and a male dog, just as is the case with 'lion'.

I mean with the way you can specify to not show certain tags, that can get around the need to specifically tag every iteration in some cases. For example while 'lion' would show males and females, lion -female would naturally limit it to males, and whatever else wasn't covered by the basic male/female definitions.

To me though, it'd be logical to keep the basic species name as the umbrella term, even if for certain things it implies a certain gender. Otherwise you'd be having the problem of the specific searches getting in the way of the general ones.

I just think it's something worth pursuing. The option should be there to narrow down your search if you want to. There shouldn't be the limitation to stick to broad ranging tags and have to dig through images just because, in some peoples' eyes, the ability to search more specifically is unnecessary. As long as its done in a properly tiered manner, so that specific tags don't get in the way of broader searches, then I'm all for it.

One solution might be the ability to group tags, although, this comes with it's own difficulties.

ktkr said:
One solution might be the ability to group tags, although, this comes with it's own difficulties.

I think this is the way we're ultimately going to end up going, but we're also going to need to seriously redesign the way tags are edited on posts to make it as easy as possible. Otherwise, we'd just be drastically increasing the workload on admins needing to fix whatever terrible grouping some user has done with the tags.

Believe me I completely understand the frustration from not being able to TRULY search for exactly what you're wanting and we do plan on addressing that, it's just going to be a while though. =/ I can't think of any other website off the top of my head that has this "tag grouping" functionality already.

Shoka said:
I was looking through the history on this subject and I couldn't really find a conclusive reason behind this, so I'm just asking, why was this functionality removed?

I appreciate not every species has fully accepted gender specific names, but for those that do, why not have them as allowable tags? Because at the end of the day if you're searching for, for example, lionesses, there is now no way to tightly define that search using other tags. Sure, the said picture might also be tagged lion, and female, but having the gender specific tag there gives the ability to tighten the search further. Removing those tags just removes functionality. I've seen the words redundant being bandied around for gender specific tags, but I don't see that myself, because their removal has now eliminated the ability to perform a search that used to be possible.

If people don't want to use them, then they don't have to; the other less specific tags would still be there, but I can't seem to follow the thinking behind removing tags because not everybody uses them. As long as the non-gender-specific tags are there as well, what's the problem?

We'd need to split every species in male_x, female_x and miscellaneous_x, creating cisgenderpeoples worst nightmare.
I am not against it, but we'd need to retag every single image...

Search efficiency vs. Management efficiency
Sorry, I just don't know which side of the debate I support more.

Char said:
I think this is the way we're ultimately going to end up going, but we're also going to need to seriously redesign the way tags are edited on posts to make it as easy as possible. Otherwise, we'd just be drastically increasing the workload on admins needing to fix whatever terrible grouping some user has done with the tags.

Believe me I completely understand the frustration from not being able to TRULY search for exactly what you're wanting and we do plan on addressing that, it's just going to be a while though. =/ I can't think of any other website off the top of my head that has this "tag grouping" functionality already.

A program that can identify the relationship between tags integrated into the search engine would be nice. Of course, that's a lot of time, money, programming, and could put extra stress on the site preformance and memory (I think on the stress part)

I think that if/until we get a more in-depth tagging system, having just species tags and gender tags is Good Enough™. It's very simple, and I don't think it's such a huge problem that you sometimes have to do a bit of manual thumbnail scanning to find posts in the exact configuration you want them in.