curious, not to be anal, we have enough of that around here
*rimshot*

but why is there no distinction in the tagging of collie images and border collie images. I know the two breeds are similar, but we have enough anal tagging going on that I'm surprised there is none of that going on with the different breeds of dogs. I did a search for border collies and Every single breed of collie came up, border collies too. For some reason all collies are now border collies.

I mean, I could go through and change every damn one of them, but before we go that far, I wanted to ask if there was a reason things were sitting as they were? As dumb as it sounds, maybe someone decided border collies were more popular, so suddenly all collies should be called border collies. If that's the reason, ill just change it myself. If there was a more legitimate reason, I'm all ears.

http://www.akc.org/breeds/border_collie/
http://www.akc.org/breeds/collie/

cjkrythos said:
I mean, I could go through and change every damn one of them

Actually, no, you couldn't. Someone set it up so collie is aliased to border_collie. You need to get someone with the ability to edit the alias lists to get rid of that before you could get started on fixing it.

Yeah, sort of anal, but I would appreciate the distinction between roughs and borders.

If there's enough visual difference, then I'd be for it. I know that there's a dozen different subspecies of wolf out there, but visually? brown wolf, black wolf, gray wolf, red wolf... how to tell if that's an arctic wolf, or a gray wolf with white fur? or an albino red wolf? It's totally up to the artist's word and that's jsut not right.

For dog species, though... it's not so easy to paint everydog with the same brush. I would agree that the aliasing ought to be broken... roughs and borders are visually very distinct. :)

well, here, how about I phrase it a different way. why dont we just change it to just "collie" rather than look like goobers trying to apply a completely wrong label to the breed? There are dozens of different breeds of collies(even before you bring in toy breeds), so yes, I can see why we dont categorize them completely, but mostly I just wondered why we cant tell the distinction between collies and border collies. My grandmother owned a border, and my best friend owned a collie. So, I can honestly say they are not the same dog. Not just because of the color, but also the personalities and everything else as well. The only thing that stays the same is the length of the fur, but that happens to be the trademark behind the whole "collie" breed. If you want to apply it backwards and just say "collie" for all of them, that would make sense. It would apply a general description of the general group of dogs rather than applying the name of a particular sub-breed of dog to an entire group of dogs.

As for wolves, there really is generally no difference between the different colors of wolf besides the genes for fur color, so that actually means less sense to change than this. I started obsessing over the study of wolves in high school which is one of the reasons I became furry.

And I honestly don't think anyone linked the tag "collie" to the tag "border collie" as there was no "collie" tag present. All relevant images up there are tagged "border collie"

And yes, I suppose I am being anal, but as furries, I figured the least we can do is try to look like we know SOMETHING about the animals we are masturbating to.

http://www.e621.net/tag_alias?query=collie&commit=Search+Aliases

that's the page in question . also if you go to border_collie You'll note the line 'The following are aliased to this tag: collie'

Basically.... what the above text means is that any time anyone tries to tag 'collie', the system says "wait what? no' and switches it to Border_collie.

Everyone who's posting is agreeing with ya. Rough Collies and border collies are totally different. and, more importantly, they don't just ACT differently, they LOOK different--and for e621, where the goal is tag what you SEE, that's most important.

Basically, right now, someone who didn't know enough about collies decided that border collies and rough collies were the same thing, put in an alias and moved on with life without looking back. They probably aren't even here anymore.

In an idea world, I think, we'd remove the alias... all of the images currently tagged border_collie would be retagged to show what kind of collie they are. (rough_collie vs border_collie), and then there would be some careful humming and hawing:

Right NOW, border_collie Implicates dog... (that means, every time, the tag border_collie is put on a picture, it also automatically tags dog).. which is a good thing :) ... the question is, should border/rough also implicate collie? are there enough other 'collie' types to make it worth having a separate 'collie' tag? I'm a cat person, so I don't know, but I suspect not.

Hmm.. normally, I'd say that there's not much you can do about all this just now, due to adding new aliases and implications being broken... but!

You COULD go though all of the border_collie pictures, and tag the rough collies as rough_collie, and any other 'distinctive' breed of collies could be tagged as appropriate also... just as long as you do NOT tag collie as it'll auto alias back to border_collie. :) But if my tentative googling is correct, 'collie' it self shouldn't be needed as a tag.

So.. go forth, tag lots! :D

And while you're at it, throw some 'additional bonus' tags into pictures that might not be adequately tagged...

Though one particular tag I'd like to see added that isn't represented that you might trip over, is merle_fur. It deserves a tag :D So, if you pass any merle patterned animals, toss merle_fur on them.

I believe an admin once said that the tag system is more for helping people find images than for perfectly describing every aspect of an image.

How many people do you think is going to search for a specific subset of a breed of dog?

Many, Furz. Think about how popular Doberman, and Rottweiler dogs are? or German Shepherds? for those who are fond of that particular visual style of furry, being able to find them is important.

The word 'collie' refers to a 'distinctive type of herding dog'... however, most collie types do not have the word collie in their name. A good 'comparison' here might be monkeys. We all know what monkeys are, A Spider Monkey is a monkey. A howler Monkey is also, clearly, a monkey. We all can tell that a Vervet Monkey is a monkey. But what about Gibbons? and Macaques? Lemurs, and Tamarins? They're all monkeys also, even if they don't have monkey in the name.

Here are some Collie-type dogs that you probably didn't know were collies: Australian Cattle Dog, Australian Shepard, English Shepherd, Old english Sheepdog (yes, the huge, shaggy, super fluffy dog. Sam the Sheepdog, Ambrosius, Barkly, and so forth), shetand Sheepdog... and several others.

Clearly, we wouldn't call the Old English sheepdog a collie, even though he IS a collie. However, we WOULD tag him as and Old English Sheepdog (I'd link it, but right now, old_english_sheepdog and sheepdog are both messy.. I"ll tidy them up later)

... As for helping people find images... A generally specific dog breed (dalmatian - 228 images) is a lot easier then dog+white+spots (14 images - 4 dalmations, 1 white dog with a few spots, 2 snow leopards with dogs, 4 dogs with white fur and spots (including white spots), one white dog with giraffe like spots, one purplespotted dragon thing with a dog aaand one orgy where nothing is a dalmatian.). Dog+firefighter was actually better, as all 6 of it's results were dalmatians.

Part of the problem is that many images are not tagged with fur colors, or markings and their colors. so, even dog+black+white only results in 94 images. And even if everything was tagged perfectly, that would still get every dog-with-a-snow-leopard, every patchy colored canine, every dog-with-a-panda, or white-tiger-and-a-dog or black dog in snow, and so forth. Basically speaking... Dalmatian is a LOT easier to search for. :)

And how would you quantify some of the harder to put words to coat colors?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rough_Collie_600.jpg - Mr. Rough Collie is clearly white and orange with some black and.. brown and.. peach and.. guard hairs are clearly.. this color and.. err..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:ACD_MK_Mishak.JPG or what about Mr Aussie Cattle Dog? (Who has the most awesome coat EVER)... he's clearly white and orange and brown and black and covered in spots and... by the way, he's also a collie-type.

How about something as simple as a doberman? Using coat colors alone does nothing to make them easier to search for.

My far above example concerning wolves actually has the same sort of problem. white+wolf gets you every wolf with any white on it, or a wolf with any white fured critter. But generally speaking. Not one of the red_wolf pictures we have looks at all like a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:07-03-23RedWolfAlbanyGAChehaw.jpg red wolf.... which, really, doesn't look all too different from a mexican wolf: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mexican_Wolf_065.jpg or a arabic wolf: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Canis_lupus_arabic.JPG .... and when you get down to it... Mr. Red wolf looks very similar to a coyote: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Coyote_by_Rebecca_Richardson.jpg

TL;DR - dogs need breeds. Collie is a 'family' of breeds, most of which don't have collie in the name. Dogs have confusing coat colors that make it hard to search for them, without specific breeds. Thus, dogs need breeds. No one wants to bicker about if it's a pembroke welsh corgi or a cardigan welsh corgi, but a corgi isn't a golden retriever or a great dane.

so, in other words, this is more than just a problem with rough and border collies. It's dogs and any number of other breeds of animals, including as it is possible, some housecats out there. Ive noticed that housecats just tend to be labeled as cat or feline. There is no subsection of identification with them either. Granted, markings often mean little to some furs when housecats are concerned, but I imagine to others, they mean a lot more.

And, to make matters worse, If I were to change the tags, who is to say the owners of the images wouldnt come forward and insist that the rough collie I tagged isn't really a border collie with abnormal fur coloring? So yeah, ill have to think about how to approach this one before actually doing anything. I had hoped that this would be a little simpler, but after reading all that, I realize it wont be quite so much.

I guess I'll have to tackle this subject later.

cjkrythos said:

Well, if you can tag easily identifiable dogs and cats their receptive base breed, then go for it - like Siamese cats or Collie dogs.

There is a fine line between being accurate to what you can gage from an artist drawing/concept - to being overly anal in trying to determine if the Siamese cat in question is the difference between an Oriental Shorthair or an Burmese.

cjkrythos said:
so, in other words, this is more than just a problem with rough and border collies.

Well.. yes and no and yes. I think the TL;DR of my post was basically... these dogs really look different. they should be tagged diffferently. These others dogs are tagged specifically, so other unique looking dogs should be also.

It's dogs and any number of other breeds of animals, including as it is possible, some housecats out there. Ive noticed that housecats just tend to be labeled as cat or feline. There is no subsection of identification with them either. Granted, markings often mean little to some furs when housecats are concerned, but I imagine to others, they mean a lot more.

House cats don't reallly... HAVE breeds in the same clear way dogs do. A dalmatian will always look like a dalmatian. you can see a have dalmatian, easily also. but a siamese is just a cat with a light body type, with color points. There are many cats with color points who are not siamese.

That said, It WOULD be nice to see 'tabby, calico, color point' and maybe 'domestic_long_hair' and 'domestic_short_hair'

I dont' think,. visually, you'd beable to pin down many of the other cat breeds... ocicats and bengals are both awesome in real like, toygers and tabbys and so on and so forth... but in an illustration, how do you tell a ragdoll from a Norwegian forest cat from a maine coone? In 95% of cases, it's not really going to be 'possible'. there are special cases of course.. persians, (or is tat a Himalayan or an angora?) and manx are both pretty clear... a few other 'special' breeds that would stand out... but I think we'd be best just labling cat body patterns and breeds like what the vet might try and write on the sheet.

because no one wants to play the game of 'is that a black cat or a bombay'?

And, to make matters worse, If I were to change the tags, who is to say the owners of the images wouldnt come forward and insist that the rough collie I tagged isn't really a border collie with abnormal fur coloring?

one out of several thousand images isnt' worth worrying about. if they change it back, they change ti back, so be it. thato en image can be quibbled about at that time.

So yeah, ill have to think about how to approach this one before actually doing anything. I had hoped that this would be a little simpler, but after reading all that, I realize it wont be quite so much.

I guess I'll have to tackle this subject later.

I may have made things over complicated :P it's really not that complicated:

The rule is thus: tag what you see.

If you can't ID what you see, then tag it generically. if there are 2 posts with a specific thing, then maybe it needs to be tagged more generically instead.