I've lurked here for a while, but not very long. I have no business telling people what to do here. But I thought I'd share an opinion. I've been surfing and I notice alot of tag pollution. All these tags with 1 or 2 images they apply to, and tags on things that aren't relevant to the content of the image. Like one image had the artist's logo, a butterfly sitting on a mango, and the image was tagged "butterfly" and "mango". Or one of the four or five images and animations I cam across that had every little thing tagged, each with 20+ tags unique to one item. One had SEVENTY unique orphan tags. Rather than start a reversion war, I think I'll just speak my peace and leave it to others.

I mean things such as every "rabbit" image also having the "lagomorph" tag, and many also having "lapine". "Herm" and "intersex" overlap. "Vaginal Penetration" always has "Vaginal" and "Penetration" seperately. "dildo" "toy" "toys" "Sex_toy". Making an orphan tag for an artist instead of filling out the "source" field.

And tags on irrelevant things such as individual non-specific items of clothing such as "shirt" "pants" "belt", tags on the background color of the image, mispelled tags, Anthro tagged randomly everywhere, "gay" tags on "herm" images. Symbols as tags like ":3" and "♥"

I could keep going.

This has to be hell on your database and servers and it certainly leads to unrelated crap showing up in searches.

I'm going to keep hunting orphan tags, misspellings and synonyms.

For rabbit and lagomorph, that's just automatic aliasing to the greater species. Anything tagged with cat, tiger or lion will have feline added on automatically as well.

Some people get picky about their intersex definitions. Herms have vaginas and penises, dickgirls have breasts and dicks, while cuntboys have only the pussy. Intersex is then the unbrella term.

I guess MAYBE there could be room for different kinds of penetration acts in orgy pics, but you're right, I can't think of a case where vaginal would be an appropriate tag without penetration.

Also, if you're using the site as more than a porn repository, then tagging what clothes or other items feature might come in handy one day. If I feel like searching for pictures with strawberries in them, then just let me.

Or, from another point of view, I can imagine swimsuit or bikini being used frequently, but why disallow other kinds of clothing? Might I not search for "male+solo+dress" if I'm feeling very specific about my crossdressing? Or maybe I don't want women in skirts today.

The way I see it, people don't always look up the same things.

Somebody might look up 'dildo' someone else would look up 'sex_toy' so there's nothing wrong with having both, it makes images easier to find.

Also, people might look up 'anal' or 'vaginal' without 'penetration' added to it.

Deleting a fuckton of perfectly valid and relevant tags just because only one image uses them is not 'hunting down orphaned tags', it's tag vandalism. A perfect example is you removed the tag 'savage dragon' from a picture OF THE COMIC CHARACTER SAVAGE DRAGON. You obviously don't understand how this whole tagging thing works. Nobody be like this person.

I only partly agree with the OP, specifically the part about excessively intricate sets of implications causing the tags to appear "messy". However, I don't think that using less tags is a good solution.

This is how I currently handle the display of implied tags on my 'booru clone: http://i41.tinypic.com/ng3wr4.png

We don't care, Kitsu. We never have. We never will.

Arcturus said:
We don't care, Kitsu. We never have. We never will.

I don't care for your dodgy danbooru fork from circa 2006 :P

pfoxspam said:
I've lurked here for a while, but not very long. I have no business telling people what to do here. But I thought I'd share an opinion. I've been surfing and I notice alot of tag pollution. All these tags with 1 or 2 images they apply to, and tags on things that aren't relevant to the content of the image. Like one image had the artist's logo, a butterfly sitting on a mango, and the image was tagged "butterfly" and "mango". Or one of the four or five images and animations I cam across that had every little thing tagged, each with 20+ tags unique to one item. One had SEVENTY unique orphan tags. Rather than start a reversion war, I think I'll just speak my peace and leave it to others.

I mean things such as every "rabbit" image also having the "lagomorph" tag, and many also having "lapine". "Herm" and "intersex" overlap. "Vaginal Penetration" always has "Vaginal" and "Penetration" seperately. "dildo" "toy" "toys" "Sex_toy". Making an orphan tag for an artist instead of filling out the "source" field.

And tags on irrelevant things such as individual non-specific items of clothing such as "shirt" "pants" "belt", tags on the background color of the image, mispelled tags, Anthro tagged randomly everywhere, "gay" tags on "herm" images. Symbols as tags like ":3" and "♥"

I could keep going.

This has to be hell on your database and servers and it certainly leads to unrelated crap showing up in searches.

I'm going to keep hunting orphan tags, misspellings and synonyms.

i sorta agree but at the same time, disagree...i mean some people actually use some of those wierd tags to help find the ones they cant think of. very helpful in my opinion, the bigger problem is mis-tagging an such.

Completely disagree with foxspam on this. I enjoy tag humor as well as intricate specificity. The tagging system here works to find as well as avoid things to the greater the specificity of the tags, the greater the accuracy of the search.

a possible programing fix would be:

When the user tries to submit a picture with an orphan tag a !msgbox appears advising "continuing will create the orphaned tag 'carrrot', do you want to continue" &yes &no

or

in the tags box you could include an dynamic tag suggestion, like what most search engines and word processors do.

There's already a related tag option. You just have to care enough to use it.

It's important to realize that many (albiet not all), orphaned tags are valid.

Just because the tag only exists on one picture, doesn't mean that the tag doesn't apply. This is especially true with character tags.

I mean heck, just like, 2 days ago I saw a character (some rainbow zebra herm thing), show up for a second time on the site. For months, the tag for hir name had been orphaned. Now it isn't.

Now if you see one of the pictures of hir, you can click on the character tag, and find the other one quickly and easily.

If someone hadn't placed the orphaned tag on the original image, they wouldn't be linked together now.

Check this :
http://e621.net/tag?order=date

Out of all the "new" tags, 90% are :
-mispelled
-subjective
-unnecesary synonymous (or plural/singular) of a very common tag
-a_fucking_dumb_way_to_comment_a_pic
-unnecesarily precise (take a red_necklace, who care, it's just a necklace)

I'm all for kinky and/or relevant tags, but usually, if you add something relevant that comes out having a low tag count, it either has a better synonymous, or it is undertagged.
In the latter case, you should (and you will) find more posts that could use that particular tag, as to give it more legitimity.

Characters and artists are an exception, of course.

Harmonized tags means posts easier to find, while diversity makes tagging more precise, it's all about balance.

a tags a tag, fap more, read tags less

Marbles said:

I mean heck, just like, 2 days ago I saw a character (some rainbow zebra herm thing), show up for a second time on the site. For months, the tag for hir name had been orphaned. Now it isn't.

if you mean anailaigh, she's not a herm.

Rochelle said:
a tags a tag, fap more, read tags less

Rochelle, this is actually directly linked to your fapping experience! bad tagging practices would cripple the ability to find art that you are looking for. Though I agree with Kald, I see a LOT of dumb tags recently... depending on what it is, it's best to just delete them

I have zero issues with deleting garbage and/or mispelled tags. Doing both is actually strongly encouraged. Tags like "Oh_wow_check_it_out" are jsut as horrible as people who somehow manage to tag images with things like 'femlae', 'fxo', and 'nekkid' (and the people who do, tend to do it often).

Tags that only exist once or twice in the database but are valid, however, should always be included. As long as the tag is relevant to the image, objective, and relevant (it's not redundant, or used in place of a more common tag that means the exact same thing), then it should stay. If we only had one image of a stegosaurus, for example, on the site, tagging it 'stegosaurus' is NOT an invalid tag.

I think the biggest issue is junk-tagging with commentary/lingo that, if someone were truly looking for something in the database, they'd never think of.

"What has science done" is one of the most irking tags to me, because it's pointless except for the few instances when it's actually STATED in the picture. If you wanna make commentary, make a comment, not a tag.

When these image database sites first started, it used to only be tagging for what people would logically search for. Now it's "tag everything you see", and the problem with that is there's a ton of stuff that doesn't really need tagging, like "white_background" and such.

My issue with "lagomorph" is that it's.... useless. You don't see every scientific classification label, so why bother inventing and using that one? Was the classic "Rabbine" too simple? Honestly, sometimes the trends of the Furry communities confuse me more than anything else in the internet.

how about tags that can have two different meanings? for example i have seen the tag "wet" on both images where their is a female that lets just say is "excited" and others where characters are just in a pool of water. so would this tag be placed on one or the other or left on both?

If you want that first example, I suggest pussy_juice.

temporal_crux said:
My issue with "lagomorph" is that it's.... useless. You don't see every scientific classification label, so why bother inventing and using that one? Was the classic "Rabbine" too simple? Honestly, sometimes the trends of the Furry communities confuse me more than anything else in the internet.

Funny, that. I would never think to search for "rabbine". Apparently I'm not the only one, as "rabbine" returns no search results. Google didn't help any, either. I've only ever seen anthropomorphic rabbits referred to as lagomorphs.

Also, I think we do see frequent use of scientific classifications among furries: Canines, felines, equines are all references to scientific families of animal. Lagomorph is really only divergent for referring to an order of critter, rather than a family such as leporidae. I suppose too many people would confuse "leporine" with "leopard", or something. Or it's used to ensure that pikas are not left out.

And yes, it surprised me to learn that this there is a real animal called a "pika", not to be confused with pikachus. :P Check out the wikipedia article. They're cute.

ikdind said:
Funny, that. I would never think to search for "rabbine". Apparently I'm not the only one, as "rabbine" returns no search results. Google didn't help any, either. I've only ever seen anthropomorphic rabbits referred to as lagomorphs.

<b>Lap</b>ine. (from the latin, like the rest.)

Canine, Feline, Equine, Lapine...

temporal_crux said:
"What has science done" is one of the most irking tags to me, because it's pointless except for the few instances when it's actually STATED in the picture. If you wanna make commentary, make a comment, not a tag.

temporal_crux said:
My issue with "lagomorph" is that it's.... useless.

You seem to either not be aware of, or are ignoring the fact that you can click on a tag assigned to the image in order to see similar images.

I have, in fact, clicked on lagomorph before in order to see related images. Ditto for "What has science done?"

leo_nine said:
<b>Lap</b>ine. (from the latin, like the rest.)

Oh, hey, whaddya know. Cool.

Rabbine was part of the Yahoo Chat! community, I guess. It was a catch-all for rabbits, rodents, gerbils, hamsters, etc. Lapine was directly for rabbits. Rabbine was created to include the other fellows because at the time, there was a rather viscous movement against "non-pretty" (feline, canine) anthros, such as rodent-based (calling them all "Vermine" as a joke.... Furry-on-furry hate is amusing sometimes). So the lapine community agreed to make "rabbine" the all-inclusive.

Marbles said:
You seem to either not be aware of, or are ignoring the fact that you can click on a tag assigned to the image in order to see similar images.

I have, in fact, clicked on lagomorph before in order to see related images. Ditto for "What has science done?"

You seem to be ignoring the fact that you can tag a picture "shit" when you think it's a useless junk picture that no one should bother looking at... but yet there's no excrement in the picture. Tagging a picture with commentary ruins the tagging process.

temporal_crux said:
Ignore Marble's post. Rant like an idiot.

>:(

Marbles said:
>:(

And I'll gladly do it again. I clarify: Commentary tags have no basis in accuracy, only objective views. To me, tagging something "what has science done?" is the same as tagging a random artist as "this_artist_must_be_inbred". Unneeded, and does nothing to enhance the picture.

It's a valid tag that describes mutated bizarre things.

http://e621.net/post/show/67104/
http://e621.net/post/show/61257/
http://e621.net/post/show/61466/
http://e621.net/post/show/19042/

Are all excellent examples of the tag being used.

Hell the tag has been in use for 3 years and has been applied to ~400 images. While it may not be the best tag in the world, it is effective for describing a certain class of images that otherwise lack an effective descriptive word. It is not a subjective tag. Maybe there's a better word for the tag out there, but this tag is what the community has been continued to use for an extended period of time.

Ditto for Lagomorph. It is just as stupid for you to walk in and say "THIS CONVENTION IS WRONG! CHANGE IT!" Same as it would be for us to walk into your little Yahoo Community and demand you stop using the term Rabbine.

Lagomorph, and "What has Science Done?" are both tagging conventions that e621 has established and been using for years. They are neither "right" nor "wrong" but rather they simply exist.

Just a simple search of "what hat science done" will produce 70% commentary rather than actual science-affected images, mind you. if i went and tagged 1000+ images as "monkeypoopwithbrains" just because, then yes, that's a lot of images with a tag... but it's a tag that doesn't belong with the image.

related commentary tags: what, lolwut, no seriously what, what the fucking fuck, what in the unholiest depths of hell, what is this i don't even, rule 34 (ALL PORN IS RULE 34, no need to label it), nightmare fuel, where is your god now, boner murder, eye bleach please, cannot unsee, i did it for the lulz, jesus fucking christ, there goes my childhood, epic, win, fail, fucking stupid, fucking awesome, tubecock ....

No real need to continue with the list, I think. None of these produce anything SEEN in the picture. Just commentary.

temporal_crux said:
if i went and tagged 1000+ images as "monkeypoopwithbrains" just because, then yes, that's a lot of images with a tag... but it's a tag that doesn't belong with the image.

No. Because monkeypoopwithbrains is not a descriptive tag. And that would be tag vandalism. You seem to be completely incapable of understanding the difference between a valid tag, and tag vandalism. Here, I'll help you tell the difference you little piece of shit.

temporal_crux said:
rule 34 (ALL PORN IS RULE 34, no need to label it)

Valid tag. This one has been discussed before. All porn is not Rule 34, only porn of mainstream characters. Porn of generic non mainstream furries are not Rule 34.

Zigzag is not Rule 34.
Pepe Le Peu is Rule 34.

Part of the reason this tag it exists is so that people who do not wish to see porn of their childhood memories such as Winnie The Pooh, Carebears, or Mickey Mouse, can blacklist it. Other examples would include Looney Tunes, or Disney Movies.

temporal_crux said:
nightmare fuel

Valid tag. Exists for blacklisting.

temporal_crux said:
cannot unsee

Potentially a valid tag, but admittedly used wrong most of the time. It would be valid on any image intended to draw your attention to looking at something in a way you have not before.

Classic example:
http://29.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_kz8g046k4t1qzxzwwo1_500.jpg

temporal_crux said:
tubecock

Valid tag. It is a description of a specific art style for drawing penises.

temporal_crux said:
what, lolwut, no_seriously_what, what_the_fucking_fuck, what_in_the_unholiest_depths_of_hell, what_is_this_i_dont_even, rule_34, nightmare_fuel, where_is_your_god_now, boner_murder, eye_bleach_please, cannot_unsee, i_did_it_for_the_lulz, jesus_fucking_christ, there_goes_my_childhood, epic, win, fail, fucking_stupid, fucking_awesome...

I agree with Marbles. You're using the existence of some bad tags as evidence against perfectly valid tags. "what_in_the_unholiest_depths_of_hell", for instance, is probably best retagged as "nightmare_fuel". "no_seriously_what" seems to be a mix of "what" and "nightmare_fuel". I'm going to guess that "what_the_fucking_fuck" leans more heavily towards nightmare_fuel.

Personally, I tend to dislike memes as tags. "4str", for instance. I recently asked about it in some pic's comments and got rebuffed. Since I normally filter the scalies out of my search results anyways (and the image in question was a scalie image that hadn't been well-tagged), I figure what the hell. I don't care that much. I'll let the people who care about an image care about its tags.

ikdind said:
Personally, I tend to dislike memes as tags. "4str", for instance.

Yeah that's an invalid tag, as it has a much more easily accessed tag, "muscles"

But Marbles, what you call "perfectly valid tagging" probably started as people being stupid, and then it just not being dealt with.

@ rule_34 ~ If it exists, there is porn of it.
Rule 34 basicaly states "Porn exists". That makes it a needless tag. Anything and everything can be used as a fetish, and Rule 34 is the spawn of /b/ stupidity that tried and to find a REASON that any fetish can exist in graphical form. Therefore, no need for it to be a tag.

@ nightmare_fuel ~ Doesn't give me nightmares, nor any person over the age of 12 that has been on the internet more than 20 minutes. Conclusion? Invalid tag.

@ tubecock ~ You show me a picture of a penis that isn't in some way a tube, then you got an argument. If you're referring to Gideon's sausage wraps, then perhaps is it should be labelled that, "sausage_wraps".

Stupidity and community memes are not a valid form of tagging. I go by empirical tagging, not "I wanna be cool, so here's my commentary" tagging.

Rule_34 has nothing to do with fetishes. It has to do with porn of "people or characters that you wouldn't expect to see porn of." If you aren't capable of differentiating between the two, maybe you shouldn't be tagging pictures.

Nightmare_Fuel is an appropriate tag for anything that is particularly squickish. It is a catch all term for unusual things that people shouldn't have to specifically seek out and blacklist in order to not see if they don't want to see potentially disturbing things.

Example: A person should not have to blacklist "woman_with_diarrhea_projectile_shitting_into_her_own_mouth" in order to not have to see tubgirl. That is something that most people would find disturbing, and thus would be appropriate to tag "nightmare_fuel" so it can be blacklisted by people who don't want to see it.

temporal_crux said:
@ tubecock ~ You show me a picture of a penis that isn't in some way a tube, then you got an argument. If you're referring to Gideon's sausage wraps, then perhaps is it should be labelled that, "sausage_wraps".

See, this is your problem problem.

There are a lot of things where there isn't a right or wrong way to tag it.

Cock or penis? e621 convention says Penis.
Clit or clitoris? e621 convention says Clitoris.
Vagina or pussy? e621 convention says Pussy.
Oral or blowjob? e621 convention says Oral.

You're coming in, and basically picking a lot of tags and saying "I'd rather have it called this." There is no reason that "Rabbine" is a more valid tag than "Lagomorph." There is no reason that "sausage_roll" is a more valid tag than "tubecock"

Seriously. Learn to be flexible. Different places have different terminology. Grow up, and deal with it.

Marbles said:
Yeah that's an invalid tag, as it has a much more easily accessed tag, "muscles"

Well, I cared enough to look up the meme, and actually it has nothing to do with muscles and everything to do with women in Dungeons & Dragons. Apparently some ancient flavor of DnD gave a character a -4 penalty to STR if that character was female. Thus any pic of a woman who might be from DnD could fall into the meme, such as female scalies accompanied by anything from the fantasy genre. Or, for that matter, any female accompanied by anything from the fantasy genre.

Labeling the meme to a picture that calls out the meme, such as post #64403, is unambiguously an appropriate use of the tag. Less so post #64399, which does not specifically call out the meme, but whatever. I asked about it because there was a third post at the time that was also tagged after the meme, which didn't obviously have anything to do with DnD, so I started to wonder if the tag was useful or being used appropriately.

@ikdind: Ahh, thanks for that. Yeah, probably only the first example is appropriate. I really don't like memes in tags unless the meme itself is specifically referenced in the image.

@temporal_crux: Oh hey, look, tags in the wiki!

http://e621.net/wiki/show?nordirect=1&title=rule_34
http://e621.net/wiki/show?nordirect=1&title=lagomorph
http://e621.net/wiki/show?nordirect=1&title=god_save_us_all
http://e621.net/wiki/show?nordirect=1&title=gideon_hoss
http://e621.net/wiki/show?title=what_has_science_done

:/ some tags get really retarded, deleted one that said you_made_katara_better this morning..

Marbles said:
http://e621.net/wiki/show?nordirect=1&title=god_save_us_all

did you read this one? XD

Yes though, I see a redundancy in a bunch of tags, wonder if I should request a bunch of them to be aliased.

Aurali said:
Yes though, I see a redundancy in a bunch of tags, wonder if I should request a bunch of them to be aliased.

That would probably be a good idea. Those assorted tags all mean the same thing, but are a valid descriptive quality of the image.

Then I give up on it. You'll defend using a wiki, even though as I've said before and elsewhere, that wikis eventually take rumor that's become popular and use it as evidence. Memes come and go, and in 10 years, will someone honestly look up a meme, or an actual descriptor?

"Those tags all mean the same thing, but are a valid descriptive quality of the image." <--- Draw ONE picture that contains the very essence of each of these "valid" tags. Show me an actual picture worthy of the label, rather than naming a bunch of things that are only related because of the COMMENTARY TAGS PEOPLE HAVE STUCK ONTO THEM. Until you can do that, you're just farting around on a forum, defending what you like but offering no real substance to it.

@temporal_crux
How would you tag pictures that are currently tagged as 'nightmare fuel' or 'rule 34' or 'what has science done'?
All these tags refer to certain theme in those pictures and are currently very useful. If they were removed we would lose information about the pictures and gain nothing!

I do understand that these are not as black and white tags as you seem to want. It may be hard to tag a borderline picture that has 'nightmare fuel' quality to it but most of the time the tag is well deserved. Personally I don't care if I miss a borderline picture because I blacklist 'nightmare fuel'. If the tag didn't exist I'd have to blacklist all the nightmarish qualities that these kind of pictures may contain and/or all the artists that draw these kind of pictures.

Why do you complain about clearly useful tags?

If you browse 'what has science done' pictures you should catch on quite quickly what is the theme in those pictures (or you can check from wiki). It has formed into a convention to describe certain kind of pictures with the tag and if the tag is popular and used quite consistently, why scrap it?

'rule_34' could be renamed 'popular_culture_characters_in_sexual_situation' but who would remember that. Everybody knows, or should know, what rule 34 means. Atleast on a site like this.

To use the specific, rather good previous example: "what" "nightmare_fuel" and "rule_34" tags in particular are those weird situational grey area tags that, while not strictly in line with the usual purely objective guidelines for tagging, have sort of evolved over the years as useful unifying tags for certain otherwise hard to define concepts that are tricky to tag. So, I've come to accept them and their place.

It's sort of the opposite situation of where we have both 'young' and 'cub' tags - the whole endless debate over how 'young' is 'young' neccessitates two basically redundant tags for a single concept to prevent headaches, whereas the former three use a single unique tag to unify a bunch of harder to pin down concepts, instead.

That is not to say I'm particularly crazy about any attempts to create more along either of these lines - quite the opposite - however, I understand that in some exceptional situations tags outside the normal encouraged scope can be both useful and relevant. Just use your head. Use them sparingly, and avoid getting overly stupid with them.

Call me dumb, but i just realized some tags exist only because people are copying tags from Danbooru and the likes, regardless of the existing tag base, of their spelling, and of their synonymous.

What a fucking laziness...

Being one of the people here who edit tags by the thousands, taking my time to watch a picture thoroughly, trying to find small revelant elements, trying to figure which parts the artist tried to put the emphasis on... i feel like i'm being the fool of the story.

pfoxspam said:
This has to be hell on your database and servers and it certainly leads to unrelated crap showing up in searches.

I think its safe to say everyone has noticed the random tags that pop up on images, seemingly more so on animated images. They like to receive the "humor" tags.

Now, I only browsed over the 4 pages of discussion, so I may have missed an answer to this. Like I have quoted, this seems to be the OP's primary concern.

My question is, would it really be that detrimental to the server just because of a few overly specific tags?
I cant see that being the case.

I think since different people call the same things by different terms it might be essential to have synonymous tags. I do agree that we should hunt down mispelled tags because they are such a pain in the ass to find. I also think we should communicate with each other to set standards for certain tags, such as space or no space between two words so that we won't be seeing both

Just as a note:
One of the best ways to check for misspelled tags is to check the new tags list every now and then. Generally speaking, any unused tag is purged after... I don't know exactly, but 24 hours, or a week, or something -- so usually a misspelling will result in a newly-created tag.

Also, the synonymous tags aren't exactly necessary because aliases work with the search engine as well. If two terms are ENTIRELY redundant, just alias one to the other.

Something like this would be an example of tag pollution no?
http://e621.net/wiki/show?title=battering_ram_in_a_coffee_cup

a tag made pretty much as a joke, something no one would think of searching for (as it is an inside joke), and has other, much better and prominent, ways of being described.

Aurali said:
Something like this would be an example of tag pollution no?
http://e621.net/wiki/show?title=battering_ram_in_a_coffee_cup

a tag made pretty much as a joke, something no one would think of searching for (as it is an inside joke), and has other, much better and prominent, ways of being described.

Weeelll, not really. That tag is on several images now and it makes perfect sense as once you see such an image you immediately grok the "in joke" :P

You're close, though. I have seen several tags (and I may go back and remove them) that are typos where someone started to type a word and just abandoned it, unfinished, only to type the word again correctly.

Tag pollution is any tag that serves no purpose or describes nothing in the picture. "first" and "moar" or a little heart or other unicode character would be examples.

Orphan tags, as explained earlier, are tags that do not appear on any image and are automatically removed from the DB nightly.

New (widowed would be a good term) tags are ones as you described (used on only one image) until they are used again as your example was.

Orphan/widowed are typesetting terms, too, btw :P

Keep in mind that just because a tag appears on an image and does describe something in it doesn't automatically make it valid. For example, if it's already described in a clearer, more descriptive, more popular tag.

tony311 said:
Keep in mind that just because a tag appears on an image and does describe something in it doesn't automatically make it valid. For example, if it's already described in a clearer, more descriptive, more popular tag.

Clearer to whom? Agreed with tags like "vag" and "vagina" and "snatch", for instance, but "vagina", "vaginal", "Vaginal Insertion", "Vaginal Play" are all perfectly valid and describe finer variations of "vagina".

Upon thinking about it, although popularity may have some merit as a tag standard, it also needs to be moderated (and not by members) or terms like "moar" and "obvious [something] is obvious" will creep in.

About the unicode characters/emoticons as tags, I actually use them. If a heart ♥ is displayed in the image, that pretty much means the character is enjoying whatever they are doing, which I prefer over them disliking it or crying. Hence, I use this tag.

Ryukurai said:
Tag pollution is any tag that serves no purpose or describes nothing in the picture. "first" and "moar" or a little heart or other unicode character would be examples.

The ♥ tag is one of the most relevant on this site, i don't see what wrong with it.