There's an activity I as a tagger sometimes think of as 'tag defense'. Tag defending is when I come up on an overused tag and start stripping it off things that shouldn't have it so as to keep the definitions tight. Some tags tend to creep if not trimmed.

As an example, the hooves tag tends to spread throughout the my little pony pictures. Although the characters are stated canonically to have hooves, the default artistic style of MLP doesn't draw them in, and tagging a show-style picture with hooves is wrong. The tag has to be kept trimmed back so it stays useful. An image such as post #270565 clearly shows hooves. An image such as post #121151 clearly doesn't. (Both images are safe and mostly harmless.)

Other examples include the way the anthro tag keeps trying to creep back into being applied to everything on the site, and the way some pictures end up tagged straight, gay, or lesbian because the artist/uploader/fans know the orientation of a particular character, when that orientation doesn't apply to the picture at all.

What are some other tags that often need defended?

31h253 said:
There's an activity I as a tagger sometimes think of as 'tag defense'. Tag defending is when I come up on an overused tag and start stripping it off things that shouldn't have it so as to keep the definitions tight. Some tags tend to creep if not trimmed.

As an example, the hooves tag tends to spread throughout the my little pony pictures. Although the characters are stated canonically to have hooves, the default artistic style of MLP doesn't draw them in, and tagging a show-style picture with hooves is wrong. The tag has to be kept trimmed back so it stays useful. An image such as post #270565 clearly shows hooves. An image such as post #121151 clearly doesn't. (Both images are safe and mostly harmless.)

Other examples include the way the anthro tag keeps trying to creep back into being applied to everything on the site, and the way some pictures end up tagged straight, gay, or lesbian because the artist/uploader/fans know the orientation of a particular character, when that orientation doesn't apply to the picture at all.

What are some other tags that often need defended?

Regarding hooves, http://e621.net/forum/show/53093

hmm, I can't quite remember what tags tend to get out of hand. I do have a few projects on my profile page if anyone needs something to do

Also, when it comes to mlp, thank you for stripping these tags from pictures with no hooves shown. I sometimes (and am probably not alone) search for mlp -hooves because I just find the hooves rather distracting when trying to find those cute images

Also also, show of hands appendages, who would find beneficial a page of underused tags and cleanup to be placed and updated often on the wiki?

Rainbow_Dash said:
Also also, show of hands appendages, who would find beneficial a page of underused tags and cleanup to be placed and updated often on the wiki?

This would be very useful.

Snowy said:
This would be very useful.

Agreed

Rainbow_Dash said:
Also also, show of hands appendages, who would find beneficial a page of underused tags and cleanup to be placed and updated often on the wiki?

Very useful, yes!

Death to sticky announcement threads! Long live wiki pages!

Well I'd feel bad bumping a sticky like all the time, but what do you guys think? Wiki page or sticky thread?

Also, lets use this thread's space to make a quick list of tags you find need cleanup

-comic
comic
tagme
rating:q
invalid_tag
some of the translated (I found images that were tagged translation_request, got translated and then stripped off of the *text tags...)

And I'd say both, sticky with the first post occasionally edited with important things like announcements to changed tags, discussion or suggestions for included tags following either in the sticky or in a seperate thread ( in this case, the sticky should link to that thread and be locked otherwise, that way it is better visible if something important gets announced).
Wiki page with everything else, list of tags, short explaination why, who is in charge of the page, who is the best person to pester with questions, link to threads and possibly a list of persons who want to volunteer certain tags (like me with comic).

I will be blunt. I am a bit guilty of defending the tags.

The largest one is Herm, dickgirl, cuntboy, etc.

Images where only Artica Sparkle, or any number of other known gender characters, are portrayed as a single gender that is not usual.

I make sure to tag with "tag what you see" but have gotten in trouble/spats with admins about making sure to tag this way.

I would say to make sure that all your admins are on the same page for that confuses new users to bits seeing most admins preach TWYS and then seeing others side with "well, the character does not have eyelashes, so its male" instead of ambiguous gender or such.