A few months ago, most MLP stuff wasn't tagged feral. I even made a thread to ask about one of what I saw as one of the more difficult cases, that being Gilda the Gryphon. Now a search for 'friendship_is_magic feral' returns 17 pages of images, the style of which is not always that vastly different from the style of those images that aren't tagged feral.

Technically, this means most MLP stuff is still not tagged feral, as there's like 200 pages of it. Still. It's a significant shift, and I've personally witnessed the way dedicated retagging campaigns can change patterns in the future.

If MLP stuff is considered a 'cartoonish feral' style now, there's a lot of new tags to add! Not that there's anything wrong with that.

31h253 said:
If MLP stuff is considered a 'cartoonish feral' style now, there's a lot of new tags to add! Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Ya it is odd any of it is feral given that it is drawn so cartoonish. Does seem feral at all to me

Given the setting I wouldn't consider very many of them feral. Feral is usually for characters that are completely animalistic in nature. Most of the time they are talking, or interacting in "human" or civilized ways.

For the purposes of tagging, "feral" refers to characters who are less anthropomorphized than is typical in the fandom, like walking on four legs (typical being: standing on two legs, some sort of hand capable of manipulation, a bit of human feature in the face, etc). So I do think that yes, many mlp images should probably be tagged feral.

Alright how about this, if they do not appear to possess any higher thought process (such as manipulating objects, talking, etc.) then we tag as feral. On the other end, if they appear to be human-like in body physique, we tag them anthro. Reasonable?

You can't really discern thought processes and sentience from a still image. It's better to focus on physical characteristics, such as the amount of legs used to walk with and the presence of opposable thumbs.

Higher thought process as demonstrated through picking up objects, holding things, reading, stuff like that. If they are doing something an animal could not, they are not feral. Either way that's a lot of posts to clean up

(insert macro picture of dog wearing glasses and appearing to read book here)

hey I beat t-man here and I got my burger

We have found ze solution.

anthro ponies (like this one) are obviously diferent from regular ponies even though they are technically both anthro to begin with. The tag is used to differentiate between anthro ponies and the regular canon ponies.

The same is applied to feral ponies. Even though they may all be feral by default, only ones like this need the tag. If we slap either one on by default, then that doesn't really help people searching for either type of the above mentioned.

Rainbow_Slash said:

ok you have either feral or anthro. fim ponies arent anthro, so there you go. *whispers* this has pretty much already been decided

How about the semi-anthro tag for the borderline ones?

The character may have hands or humanlike eyes and expressions, say, but still have fairly animalistic proportions or poses.

Neither tagging anthro nor feral (like ippiki said) would imply anthro by default (see the anthro wiki), which fits the series' theme/art-style

Semi-anthro is a thing

..right?

It's not tagging them anthro by default, it's just not tagging them as feral or anthro, because using either one as a default doesn't help narrow searches

Rainbow_Slash said:
But tagging them all as feral doesn't help any

Howso?

null0010 said:
You can't really discern thought processes and sentience from a still image.

Sometimes you can. Example:
post #215842

null0010 said:
Howso?

I think that feral and anthro should be reserved for the more extreme cases of both, so as to not just have it on every single regular pony pic

Snowy said:
Sometimes you can. Example:
post #215842

That dragon is just prodding a mysterious object. It doesn't know what it is, what it does, or how to operate it. It's just your biases being projected upon the image.

Can we spell out very clear usage definitions here, so we can close this ugly can o worms?

Snowy said:
Sometimes you can. Example:
post #215842

Wow, nice image

Seeing this image I have two points of view:
1) As null0010 said, maybe it's just poking that thing, exhibiting curiosity, looking at the patterns that occur at each tap, wich leads to learning
2) The dragon just came in from the window

Maybe we could look at the description of the original image, and from there start guessing (or just slap either tag)

The artist said is was the dragon Kindle, using her Kindle. Still looks feral

Aside, is it really necessary to have feral on every regular pony? We know they are feral, so why not use it to express ones that are feral to the point of being downright animalistic in nature?

My only reason wanting to not apply them to every pony from the show is this.

Someone looking for regular ponies has only to type in fim -feral -anthro and they'd get show ponies.

someone looking for anthro ponies would bring up posts that depict ponies with hands, clothes, human proportions, etc.

someone looking for feral ponies would have results of ponies that are outright animal in nature, like wearing collars and leashes, no sign of intelligence, futashy is a good example

feral is not used to represent intelligence.

it never has been. it's always been used to label a picture of a four-legged furry character drawn with mostly animal physical features.

that was a bad example, but still I have to fix the tags either way, what do you want the standard to be?

How about tagging them on a per-image basis (as was agreed upon for previous feral vs. anthro discussion)?

The main point of tagging either or, is usually for

• Ease of finding what you're looking for
• Allowing people to blacklist what they don't want to see
• Making it easier to sort by interspecies type (anthro on feral, bestiality, human on anthro, etc.), which further helps people to blacklist what they don't want to see

Therefore, the quickest simplest thing to do would be tagging them on a per-image basis, discussing them in the comments section in the need be

It might require much debate, but once we can all come to some sort of agreement, there'll be that much less complaints & nitpicking with regards to whatever's being discussed

For what it's worth, my opinion is that tagging them feral is silly. I think people who are searching for feral images usually aren't looking for MLP, so it throws them off, as well. At the very least, it requires them to add an extra qualifier to their search: -my_little_pony.

It may be technically correct by definition, but in spirit and mentality, it just doesn't make sense.

If admin have already made up their minds, no amount of debating it will change that. But I can't say that I'm going to be contributing to that effort. Sorry! :/

I have no idea what's going to be/has been decided, but I just disagree with having to use one or the other. As it applies to mlp, it seems as though it isn't necessary.

I'd suggest an additional toon qualifier. There is at least a pony (lyra) which refuses to act feral-ish, even if she's otherwise similar to all the other ponies. Along with the other ponies sometimes acting in a non-feral manner. Hence the feral/anthro qualifier is simply insufficient to put all the MLP in one basket.

Lyokira said:
Hence the feral/anthro qualifier is simply insufficient to put all the MLP in one basket.

So instead of implying fim->feral, only apply the feral tag to the ones where it makes sense, which is still most of them, except for examples like post #222084?

I'm in favor of using mlp, feral for ones like with futashy; mlp anthro, for ones like you just mentioned (mostly human physique) and just using pony for the rest by default. I mean someone looking for fim pony, knows what they look like by default

"MLP" and "FIM" cannot be implied to feral, as their is a very BROAD spectrum of artwork that is not feral, and not even anthro {Humanized variants} of them. Therefor that would invalidate that tag on those pictures. Thus making this a non viable implication.

So can I leave both "feral" and "anthro" off that great middle area by default and use them for more extreme cases?

Rainbow_Slash said:
So can I leave both "feral" and "anthro" off that great middle area by default and use them for more extreme cases?

Yes, they would be used for more extreme cases. A general absence of anthropomorphic qualities/feral traits would warrant the use of the feral tag on an MLP picture, where as anthro would be applied normally to anthro pictures, as the characters are normally quasi-human quadrupedal ponies.

This thread just confused me. Can someone summarize the findings? Preferably not Rainbow Slash. Edit: Nothing against you RS, I just can't tell if your agenda for the tag is really agreed with by others.

DobiesHot said:
For what it's worth, my opinion is that tagging them feral is silly. I think people who are searching for feral images usually aren't looking for MLP, so it throws them off, as well.

WRONG. When I search for "feral", I don't mind MLP. Those ponies are feral enough for me to satisfy my needs.

At the very least, it requires them to add an extra qualifier to their search: -my_little_pony.

WRONG. Pretty much ANY search requires adding "-MLP" if one doesn't want to see MLP. Yes, there're so many pictures with ponies.

On the whole, I think most MLP pictures should be tagged as feral. That's what they are.

Yes, most are feral. That's why I suggested using it only for more extreme examples, as in if it applies to almost all by default (and anthro applies to something completely different) then it doesn't serve much use.

FeralBeast said:
WRONG. When I search for "feral", I don't mind MLP. Those ponies are feral enough for me to satisfy my needs.

Okay, so you're the exception. Whatever.

Rainbow_Slash said:
Yes, most are feral. That's why I suggested using it only for more extreme examples, as in if it applies to almost all by default (and anthro applies to something completely different) then it doesn't serve much use.

And while we're at it, let's not tag them with "pony", because that applies to almost all of them!

And let's not tag "female", because they're usually female.

Tagging something with two things by default isn't helpful. What I'm saying is that we don't need either or when that either or is so slanted

Rainbow_Slash said:
Tagging something with two things by default isn't helpful. What I'm saying is that we don't need either or when that either or is so slanted

Rainbow Slash, I'm not sure that logic matters when the people you're talking to are more interested in looking witty than having a two-way discussion.

The point is that people looking for feral images should be able to find the MLP images that fit the tag without having to make two separate searches ("feral" and "mlp -anthro").

Here I thought this might come down to something simple like 'two legs anthro, four legs feral'. Silly me.

Snowy said:
The point is that people looking for feral images should be able to find the MLP images that fit the tag without having to make two separate searches ("feral" and "mlp -anthro").

Snowy, I mean this sincerely and not snarkily -- thank you. When you say it that way, I can see your logic. That makes sense.

31h253 said:
Here I thought this might come down to something simple like 'two legs anthro, four legs feral'. Silly me.

That's pretty much the definition. But for some reason, many pony fans just doesn't like the idea of calling their beautiful ponies "feral."

null0010 said:
That's pretty much the definition. But for some reason, many pony fans just doesn't like the idea of calling their beautiful ponies "feral."

Yeah, that would make them furries. which they are so NOT