Anthro wiki clearly states:

The tag should only be used on pictures that have feral animals in addition to one or more anthro characters. If an image has only anthro characters, don't apply this tag.

last person who changed wiki was an admin, so it's probably not a mistake.
But this mean that all anthro -feral pictures are wrongly tagged and should get either feral tag, or get anthro removed.

Last time I went for cleaning this I got 2 neutrals (good thing I asked an admin before doing mass change, so they're gone) but now anthro tag is useless because some people are tagging it according to wiki, some (including admins) are not.

Can I add cleaning this tag to my tagging projects without risk of getting neutral again?

Or should we change rules, so all anthro pictures would get anthro tag? (That mean, for example, implication anthrofied -> anthro)

Clearly tag should be applied to all characters with any human features.

Also, MLP should imply Anthro since they all have hair which is human.

Hammie said:

Also, MLP should imply Anthro since they all have hair which is human.

I can't tell if you're being serious or not, Hammie

And for the record, I vote for the rule change.

Renard_Queenston said:
I can't tell if you're being serious or not, Hammie

Indeed.

Hammie said:
Indeed.

... Well, anyway, your idea would fuck up both my blacklist and the current feral/anthro tagging system.

Renard_Queenston said:
... Well, anyway, your idea would fuck up both my blacklist and the current feral/anthro tagging system.

Well that escalated quickly

Broadly speaking, we have three major body archetypes that we are concerned with:

Human - Default Earth humans, Homosapien Sapien
Anthro - Any animal, plant, or other thing given bipedal shape. Your typical furry, scaly, etc.
Feral - Any non-human non-anthro creature currently found on Earth or fantastic creatures resembling them.

The Anthro wiki page currently says, "It is unnecessary and self-defeating to tag any and all posts with anthropomorphic characters anthro". I think this is wrong and dumb. This PoV needs to be justified since e621 is not just a furry image archive. More tagging means better searches.

Every single image on e621 featuring a living thing ought to have one of those three tags on it. Or Plant I suppose. Feel free to nitpick me over bacteria or fungi or whatever.

Actually come to think of it there probably needs to be
Humanoid - Elves and Orcs and Aliens and so on.
Beast - Anything that is not any of the above tags such as tentacle monsters, space amoebas, faceless Eldritch Horrors, or whatever.

I completely agree.
It might make some sense not to tag anthro if there were only two types of images on the site: feral and anthro. But that's clearly not the case.

By the way, I kind of like the idea of using the humanoid tag for...well, humanoid non-anthros. But there's currently a lot of anthros under it, so I dunno how viable that change would be.

Azazial said:

Actually come to think of it there probably needs to be
Humanoid - Elves and Orcs and Aliens and so on.
Beast - Anything that is not any of the above tags such as tentacle monsters, space amoebas, faceless Eldritch Horrors, or whatever.

Yes please on the idea of a humanoid tag. As for beast, I believe such things are supposed to be tagged monster.

I can get behind this I guess. It doesn't really make sense for us to have a tag that applies to something, but you're only allowed to tag that something if something else is also in the image.

We've basically been defending it by saying it'd be tag bloat; it'd be on almost every post on the site. But so is male and female...

Regardless, I'll wait on the opinion of a few more admins before making a tagging policy change like this.

I've never really agreed with the concept of "tag-bloat" if the tags are actually still useful somehow. There are plenty of images on the site that don't contain anthro characters, so applying "anthro" to the ones that have anthros makes perfect sense to me.

tony311 said:
I can get behind this I guess. It doesn't really make sense for us to have a tag that applies to something, but you're only allowed to tag that something if something else is also in the image.

We've basically been defending it by saying it'd be tag bloat; it'd be on almost every post on the site. But so is male and female...

Regardless, I'll wait on the opinion of a few more admins before making a tagging policy change like this.

When can we assume that other admins are ok with change/don't care/can't see topic because it isn't sticky?

I say define anthro better then I'll be behind this. is a taur an anthro? is an intelligent animal anthro? should we tag humans as anthro?

Hammie said:
Also, MLP should imply Anthro since they all have hair which is human.

All horses have hair, in real life.

I know. Mind BLOWN. right?

Aurali said:
I say define anthro better then I'll be behind this. is a taur an anthro? is an intelligent animal anthro? should we tag humans as anthro?

I would say:
Don't know.

Definitely no. We're tagging physical traits, not intelligence. If you search for anthro_on_feral you would be probably satisfied with generic furry anthro fox fucking pony from mlp, but you won't be satisfied with pony from mlp fucking a feral horse not from mlp.

Definitely no. Anthros are mix between human and feral animals. Though I don't know if something which looks like human with strange skin cancer (like Equestria Girls) should be tagged human or anthro. But this is a problem even now (should it be tagged anthrofied or humanized).

Aurali said:
I say define anthro better then I'll be behind this. is a taur an anthro? is an intelligent animal anthro? should we tag humans as anthro?

All horses have hair, in real life.

I know. Mind BLOWN. right?

I was mostly being sarcastic.
That being said, real life horse hair is nothing like what they do to ponies in MLP.

Hammie said:
I was mostly being sarcastic.
That being said, real life horse hair is nothing like what they do to ponies in MLP.

only because no one's tried yet. horse hair grows in a way that is mimiced by the tv show.

Hammie said:
I was mostly being sarcastic.

No-one likes sarcasm

Aurali said:
only because no one's tried yet. horse hair grows in a way that is mimiced by the tv show.

http://ellcanblog.blogspot.com/2011/03/do-not-perm-horse.html

Just to make myself clear: I'm neither for or against change, but I want clear statement what are the rules. For now it's unclear when to tag it, even to admins, and tag is just useless.

Gilda_The_Gryphon said:
Just to make myself clear: I'm neither for or against change, but I want clear statement what are the rules. For now it's unclear when to tag it, even to admins, and tag is just useless.

No, the tag is useful (in my opinion).

TWYS: There's an anthro in this image; better tag anthro
There's a feral in this image; better tag feral

Simple.

Renard_Queenston said:
No, the tag is useful (in my opinion).

TWYS: There's an anthro in this image; better tag anthro
There's a feral in this image; better tag feral

Simple.

Define anthro. That's the question here.

Renard_Queenston said:
No, the tag is useful (in my opinion).

TWYS: There's an anthro in this image; better tag anthro
There's a feral in this image; better tag feral

Simple.

I said that for now, when it's unclear when to use it, tag is useless. Some people tag it every time when there is anthro on picture. Some only when there are both anthro and feral.

Aurali said:
I say define anthro better then I'll be behind this. is a taur an anthro? is an intelligent animal anthro? should we tag humans as anthro?

Humans are already humanlike, they cannot be anthropomorphized.

I'd consider most taurs to be anthros, with a few exceptions. For instance, this doesn't look humanlike to me: #228877

I wouldn't consider intelligent animals anthros, even though the wiki seems to disagree with that. It is possible for something to be intelligent, but still be completely alien to humans.

To reiterate and refine my proposal from earlier (as well as repost most of it).

Human - Default Earth humans, Homosapien Sapien. The only potential point of confusion on this I can think of is if someone is a shape shifter or demon that looks human, but they should still get the human tag in this case because TWYS even if they explicitly say "Hey I'm a demon" in the pic.

Anthro - Any animal, plant, or other thing given bipedal humanoid shape. Your typical furry, scaly, etc. A major defining characteristic of this tag is that animal shapes are put onto a human-shaped body. This most commonly takes the form of muzzles/snouts/beaks, animal ears, fur/scales/feathers, and tails/wings. Nagas and Taurs get this tag. I would also tag things like latex/goo/slime creatures with this if they have Anthro characteristics. This is only exclusive (per character) from the other 5 major tags here so you could also tag an anthro goo naga with monster or whatever.

Feral - Any non-human non-anthro creature currently found on Earth or fantastic creatures resembling them. No judgement is made about intelligence in this case. We're looking at things like unicorns that walk on all fours, Sleipnir, Cerberus, house cats, Lassie, Iguanas, Hamsters, Snakes, Fish, etc.

Humanoid - Elves and Orcs and human-like Aliens and so on. Klingons, Hobbits, Androids, and so on. The important distinction here is primarily facial and body structure in that they -don't- look Anthro but -also- don't look like baseline Homosapiens. They are almost always plantigrade, but not exclusively as Satyrs probably go here too.

Monstrosity - Anything that is not any of the above tags such as tentacle monsters, space amoebas, faceless Eldritch Horrors, or whatever. Maybe Monster is a better tag for this as someone else brought up earlier. Or even better, how about "Monstrosity"? In fact, I really like that one. The important characteristics here are that it's beyond Feral. Where as even a Chimera is probably Feral, a Monstrosity is just twice as weird and alien to what we know here on Earth.

-----
Discussion:
So where do traditional Human/Horse centaurs go?
I would tag them as Humanoid, Taur, Horse, Centaur. I don't think they quite fit the characteristics I've laid out that define Anthros, but they're not Feral either. I can not currently think of a better way to tag them that doesn't semi-awkwardly shoehorn them into one of the above categories.

Your definition of one of these tags suck and you suck.
Okay, so how can we make it better? Poke holes in my logic and tell me where my categorization falls short. Give me examples of hard to tag things under this proposed system.

My proposal:

Human - Same.

Anthro - Same, but not applied to taurs (you even say "I would tag them as Humanoid, Taur, Horse, Centaur. I don't think they quite fit the characteristics I've laid out that define Anthros"). I'd leave taurs only tagged as taur.

Feral - Same.

Humanoid - Same.

Monstrosity - Same guidelines, but I think monster is a better sounding tag.

tony311 said:
My proposal:

Human - Same.

Anthro - Same, but not applied to taurs (you even say "I would tag them as Humanoid, Taur, Horse, Centaur. I don't think they quite fit the characteristics I've laid out that define Anthros"). I'd leave taurs only tagged as taur.

Feral - Same.

Humanoid - Same.

Monstrosity - Same guidelines, but I think monster is a better sounding tag.

Is that same as in keep it the same as it already was or make alltthe options the same?

tony311 said:
Anthro - Same, but not applied to taurs (you even say "I would tag them as Humanoid, Taur, Horse, Centaur. I don't think they quite fit the characteristics I've laid out that define Anthros"). I'd leave taurs only tagged as taur.

Monstrosity - Same guidelines, but I think monster is a better sounding tag.

Monster works for me.

I guess that if taurs would not be tagged anthro then they would just get {Species}, Taur. Centaurs are kinda a special case for our purposes because most of the rest of the Taurs that we deal with are only one species instead of two like Centaurs.

Aurali said:
Is that same as in keep it the same as it already was or make all the options the same?

I think he means "same as above" in this case.

Azazial said:
I guess that if taurs would not be tagged anthro then they would just get {Species}, Taur. Centaurs are kinda a special case for our purposes because most of the rest of the Taurs that we deal with are only one species instead of two like Centaurs.

Maybe this is a bad idea, but how about hybrid?
It could be adapted to cover 50/50 creatures such as Centaurs, which are half human and half horse.

Genjar said:
Maybe this is a bad idea, but how about hybrid?
It could be adapted to cover 50/50 creatures such as Centaurs, which are half human and half horse.

I agree with this. Human Centaurs should get the "Hybrid" tag.

I am not so sure about other taurs. For example we have other 'pure' taurs such as
post #229328
post #130175
post #173139

While on the subject, does a naga count as a taur?

Renard_Queenston said:
While on the subject, does a naga count as a taur?

No. Nagas are not taurs. Their tag is different but similar. I would recommend they be treated under the same rules but not be considered the same. Hybrid tag similar to centaurs.
eg.

post #292475 (Snake + Naga)
post #290012 (Human + Naga)
post #267084 (Snake + Naga)
post #238924 (Snake + cat?)
post #199412 (Giraffe + Naga/Snake?)
post #147796 (male feline bottom, male snake mid, male horse top (see source))

Sorry Naga/Lamaia fans, I am not from your lust/fandom so feel free to correct me.

OK, thanks. I just thought that since a taur is usually a human with an animal's lower body, then nagas could technically count.

I agree with Azazial proposal, but maybe we could change feral tag name.
Currently non-anthro tag is aliased to feral. Can't we change the alias other way around? Because I think that current, and proposed, usage of feral tag is similar to what's written here.

"Non-Anthro" is a much more broad term than feral. Humans, Trees, Elves, and Cows are all non-anthro. I think that "Feral" is a good term for describing what it does, but I'm not opposed to exploring alternative tag names.

Azazial said:
"Non-Anthro" is a much more broad term than feral. Humans, Trees, Elves, and Cows are all non-anthro.

All the result I get when I search for Non-Anthro in google are similar to definition in wikifur:

Non-anthro, also known as non-morphic (full non-anthropomorphic), is a term used to describe characters or fursonas that do not share almost any human characteristics traits associated with full furry/anthros beings.Less commonly, it is used to describe just a regular, feral, non-sentient animal.

Non-anthros will most commonly behave and look like the common feral animal they are associated with in nature (hexapeds, octopeds, pedes, pentapeds, Quadrupeds, winged, etc). The human ability of grasping is not possible, limited, or possible due to their normal animal appendage or organ abilities (pincers, prehensile tails, tongues), or learned behaviors (otters, raccoons, apes).

The trait that separates them from their wild self is the ability for intelligent, human-like thought, normally via speech, expressed by articulation of the motor system via the vocal apparatus, or thought.

Examples of non-anthro characters in mainstream animated media can be found in such movies as The Lion King, Lady and the Tramp, 101 Dalmatians, All Dogs Go to Heaven, Bambi, The Fox and the Hound, The Land Before Time series, and Balto.

Humans, elves, and trees do not fall under this definition.

Both non-antrho and feral are not really exactly what the tag is supposed to mean, but I think that:

a)IMO non-anthro word doesn't suggest that intelligence/whether character is wild should be taken into account as much as feral word does.
b) Non-anthro has two possible meanings ("Less commonly, it is used to describe just a regular, feral, non-sentient animal. "), and union of those two meanings means exactly what feral tag is used now.
c) I think that less artist/character owners would get butthurt that feral animal was tagged non-anthro than that their non-anthro character was tagged feral.

I was taking a very literal interpretation of "non-anthro" as in everything is either anthro or non-anthro. I'm really not a fan of the term because of that reason. I prefer "Feral" over non-anthro because it's a more specific term and I feel that if possible it's better to use specific terms over more general ones.

I agree that it's a potential point of contention with character owners and artists but we've delt with that before with the Feral tag its self and intersex characters. I did a quick, non-scientific survey of some bronies I know and they generally seemed okay with the term Feral.

I had considered Quads but for reasons that you highlighted that's not a viable umbrella term like Feral. Do you have any other suggestions for things we might call the tag besides non-anthro?

BUMP
So should tagging rules for anthro change? Any possible disagreement I see here is not about whether anthro tag should be placed where there is at least one anthro character. (Unlike current rule where anthro is valid only when there is also feral character on pic. Which is rather artificial rule, and it's not really respected.) We can have discussion what exactly is anthro / what is better term for what is now tagged feral after rule changing.

I tried to suggest implication anthrofied -> anthro, but was rejected probably because of current rules.

I doubt that any one admin will step forward and make a decision as long as there continues to be no head admin.

tony311 said:
My proposal:

Monstrosity - Same guidelines, but I think monster is a better sounding tag.

Bumping just to point out that monster is already used tag. However its definition is rather unclear.
On the one hand it states:

A monster is any fictional creature, usually found in legends or horror fiction, that is somewhat hideous and may produce physical harm or mental fear by either its appearance or its actions.

on the other hand all monster_girls are implying this tag.

The monster tag would need some clean up. At ~3300 images it's not too monumental of a task though. The existing definition isn't really any different than the proposed definition that we're working with in this thread.

Do Monster_Girls get the Monster tag? Just because it's part of their name doesn't mean that should automatically be the assumption. I am inclined to say yes, however.

Most of them such as Goo Girls and various fucked up things (post #349529) clearly get Monster.

Others are less clear:
post #326231 - seems antho to me?
All manner of Lamia & Naga were discussed at the start of this page. (hybrid+species)
post #338658 I vote monster but could go as human, hybrid, bird?
post #321047 I'd go with Humanoid here since plant girls aren't quite Human
post #350230 Other plant girls are a lot more monstrous though.
post #326223 Very clearly Monster to me.

Azazial said:
Do Monster_Girls get the Monster tag?

It's in its wiki page.

Species: monster girl

Technically a species?

Monster Girls are any sort of monster depicted as a human-like girl.

The following tags are aliased to this tag: monstergirl

This tag implies the following tags: monster

The following tags are implicated to this tag: monster_girl_profile

For what I understand this tag has now another meaning (and IMO is now as ambiguous as creature tag), so if you want use it instead Monstrosity for purpose you suggested then first implication needs to be removed, and over 3400 pics (including over 1200 monster girls) with this tag need to be checked and possibly retagged.

It would be confusing and therefore lame to have both "Monster" and "Monstrosity". Just because the wiki page exists currently doesn't mean we can't rework it.

Are you saying that the current definition for Monster is ambiguous or that the proposed reworking of these tags is ambiguous?

Just from glancing over the first few pages of the Monster tag as it presently stands I think that the tag is in need of a review pass anyways.

Azazial said:
Are you saying that the current definition for Monster is ambiguous or that the proposed reworking of these tags is ambiguous?

Current definition. If there would be decided that monstrosity would be used tag, then I would suggest aliasing monster to invalid_tag like creature tag. Definition is subjective ("somewhat hideous", "may produce physical harm or mental fear"), and implication confuses it even more. (does every monster girl satisfy these conditions?)

I also think that having both monster and monstrosity is awkward.

BUMP

3 months passed, and if I remember correctly there is still no clear statements whether current rules on anthro tag are valid (Therefore every pic under anthro -feral is incorrectly tagged. There's a lot of them.) or should rules be changed to something which is more intuitive. (Tagging anthro when there is at least one anthro character on pic.)

I don't even know if I have a say in this, but I definitely vote for the latter. Tagging anthro when there is an anthro seems like a no-brainer.

BUMP

3 5 months passed, and if I remember correctly there is still no clear statements whether current rules on anthro tag are valid (Therefore every pic under anthro -feral is incorrectly tagged. There's a lot of them.) or should rules be changed to something which is more intuitive. (Tagging anthro when there is at least one anthro character on pic.)

Gilda_The_Gryphon said:

BUMP

3 5 months passed, and if I remember correctly there is still no clear statements whether current rules on anthro tag are valid (Therefore every pic under anthro -feral is incorrectly tagged. There's a lot of them.) or should rules be changed to something which is more intuitive. (Tagging anthro when there is at least one anthro character on pic.)

You do realize you've been saying the EXACT SAME THING over and over again?

Renard_Queenston said:
You do realize you've been saying the EXACT SAME THING over and over again?

And I will say it again, and again till I get answer whether anthro tag should work like it's now written on its wiki (So everything that is given by anthro -feral search is wrongly tagged, and need to be retagged.), or should it be changed to, IMO, intuitive definition. I got 2 neutrals because of this mess - it's personal.

Gilda_The_Gryphon said:
And I will say it again, and again till I get answer whether anthro tag should work like it's now written on its wiki (So everything that is given by anthro -feral search is wrongly tagged, and need to be retagged.), or should it be changed to, IMO, intuitive definition. I got 2 neutrals because of this mess - it's personal.

I don't know why this hasn't gone through yet. Tony, Char, NotMeNotYou, EDFAdmin1? There's pretty much been a consensus on this (Heck, even I agree with everything here except Monster Girls still getting a Monster tag), so can we start getting this moved into effect?

Is every bipedal creature considered anthro? I'm just curious because post #400102 got tagged "anthro" and "anthro_on_feral" and I don't see any anthros in it myself (and even if the Goodra was anthro, it wouldn't be doing anything with a feral).

Anonymless said:
Is every bipedal creature considered anthro? I'm just curious because post #400102 got tagged "anthro" and "anthro_on_feral" and I don't see any anthros in it myself (and even if the Goodra was anthro, it wouldn't be doing anything with a feral).

Since there is nothing defining the bipedal Goodra from its natural form, it is feral, and thus I've removed those two tags from it.

I vote for just changing the wiki already. If the imagine has an anthro, it gets tagged with anthro; it's as simple as that.

ceti said:
I vote for just changing the wiki already. If the image has an anthro, it gets tagged with anthro; it's as simple as that.

This.

Can we move the current definition of anthro to something like anthro_with_feral (then alias a few things like anthro_plus_feral, anthro_and_feral, anthros_plus_ferals, anthro_plus_ferals, etc )?

(Anthrofied would ofcourse be left alone.)

I think we can agree the that current setup is counterintuitive, which is why there is argument. With what I have, the query

-feral -human -humanoid -still_life -monster -robot -naga -taur

would give only anthros.

At that point anthro could aliased to anthro_with_feral or even set to invalid_tag?

Please?

ragswift said:
Can we move the current definition of anthro to something like anthro_with_feral (then alias a few things like anthro_plus_feral, anthro_and_feral, anthros_plus_ferals, anthro_plus_ferals, etc )?

I think we can agree the that current setup is counterintuitive, which is why there is argument. With what I have, the query

-feral -human -humanoid -still_life -monster -robot -naga -taur

would give only anthros.

At that point anthro could aliased to anthro_with_feral or even set to invalid_tag?
(Anthrofied would ofcourse be left alone.)

Please?

No, that's a horrible and unnecessary idea.

Renard_Queenston said:
No, that's a horrible and unnecessary idea.

I'm fine with it the way it is, personally. My suggestion would just resolve the confusion in a simple manner, is all.

...

Renard_Queenston said:
No-one likes sarcasm

Speak for yourself.

I have no problem with people sticking anthro on anthro images. We do that with feral, afterall.

There seems to be a consensus in favor of permitting the use of the anthro tag anywhere with an anthro character. The arguments in this thread seem to be over the details. Therefore, can we get rid of the following lines from the wiki?

It is unnecessary and self-defeating to tag any and all posts with anthropomorphic characters anthro --

Exception

The tag should only be used on pictures that have feral animals in addition to one or more anthro characters. If an image has only anthro characters, don't apply this tag.

Since that has survived multiple edits by admins (well, admins at the time, though they are not presently admins), which lends authority to it, it would probably be good for the change to be made by an admin.

Okay, I made a change to wiki removing this part. I can't see opposition here, but if someone is against please revert it and give reasoning. If it's not going to be changed for a while I consider it accepted.

Gilda_The_Gryphon said:
Okay, I made a change to wiki removing this part. I can't see opposition here, but if someone is against please revert it and give reasoning. If it's not going to be changed for a while I consider it accepted.

So, what exactly did you change? :/

There is view history option in the wiki.

https://e621.net/wiki/diff?title=anthro&to=11&from=10

Gilda_The_Gryphon said:
There is view history option in the wiki.

https://e621.net/wiki/diff?title=anthro&to=11&from=10

K. Cool.

Anthrofied wiki entry should also be changed, assuming that nobody objects to this. And maybe we could get that implicated to anthro later?

Genjar said:
Anthrofied wiki entry should also be changed, assuming that nobody objects to this. And maybe we could get that implicated to anthro later?

My plan was to wait a week, claim that it means that everybody agree on new anthro wiki, and then bump forum #80368

I'm not knowledgeable enough on the issue to make a proper suggestion one way or another, but it would be nice if "Anthro" versus "Anthrofied" were taken care of...I don't know if others are as finicky as me about the art and searches, but I find the two tags make things complicated given 3/6 of what I look for in a certain search requires "Anthro", 1/3 uses both tags, and 1/6 requires "Anthrofied" to find while filtering out the usual for that search.

7 day after change nobody reverted my changes. So I assume that nobody is against new, IMO more intuitive, rules in tagging anthro tag. So I proceed with implications.