Help: Tags
← E621 Wiki – Tags
Contents: Guidelines | Categories | Changing Tag Category
Read More: Aliases | Implications | Bulk Update Requests
Search Cheatsheet
Tags
Tags are keywords that you can use to describe posts.
They serve a dual purpose: they allow you to both find the content that you like, and to filter out stuff that you dislike.
Tags may belong to various categories, and may interact with each other via relationships.
See the cheatsheet for examples of the search syntax.
↑ Guidelines
When tagging a post, you must follow the following guidelines.
Tag What You See
Full article: Tag What You See.
Unlike many other art sites, e621 has a tagging policy called "Tag What You See", or TWYS for short.
TWYS states that all General category tags on a post must be directly evident from within the post itself.
For example, a solo picture of a character who appears male must be tagged male.
That remains true even if the artist or the character owner themselves state that the character is not male, or if text within the image states that the character is not male. These tags refer strictly to a character's outward appearance and nothing more.
This policy exists to make search results more predictable and objective.
Note that you can use Lore tags to describe the stated genders of the characters, rather than the visible ones.
Tags in other categories are not entirely subject to the Tag What You See principle:
- Tags in the Lore category are meant to convey the artist's intentions or other background information that cannot be reliably determined via TWYS, such as gender identity or familial relations.
- Tags in the Character and Species categories are partially dependent upon TWYS: that is, external information can be used to help identify what character or species is supposed to be depicted in the post in cases where it isn't obvious, but it cannot actively conflict with what is seen in the post. For example, you can tag character a if the artist claims that a disembodied hand in the post belongs to character a, unless the hand looks nothing like character a and instead looks exactly like it belongs to character b. In that case, TWYS overrides the artist's word.
- Tags in other categories are valid if the information that they convey is objectively true, such as the artist's name, the image's aspect ratio, or the IP holder of the characters in the post.
Minimum tag requirements
Code of Conduct 2.2 - Tagging, Rating, and Sourcing Abuse
All posts are expected to have at least ten general, non-implied tags upon upload. This refers to tags in the General tag category: Artist, Character, Species, Copyright, Lore, Meta, and Invalid tags do not count towards this requirement. "Non-implied" means that a tag which is added by implication from another tag does not count. For example, forest implies tree which implies plant. If you add the forest tag, both tree and plant will be added automatically. However, only the first tag counts towards the minimum tag requirement.
This restriction will be eased if the post does not have ten distinct tags that are reasonably applicable to it. For example, extremely simplistic posts such as some zero pictured images may not depict enough to create ten tags.
Contentious or objectionable content must always be tagged upon upload. This includes any strange, unusual, or extreme fetishes depicted within the post.
Forbidden characters
Tags may only contain English letters, numbers, and some symbols.
No unicode characters, or characters belonging to languages other than English, may be used.
The following characters are reserved for potential future uses.
No new tags containing them can be created.
- %,#\\*: anywhere in the tag
- -~: as the first character
Note that some existing tags already contain such characters.
These tags predate the rule change, and will likely be phased out at some point in the future.
↑ Categories
There are eight categories (or "types") of tags on e621. They help to organize the many tags listed on this site and its many, many posts.
This page will provide a quick rundown of what they are for and how to change the categories of tags from one to another.
artist
Arguably the most important tag on any post is the one that identifies the person who made the post itself.
This (usually) isn't the e621 member who uploaded the post, a person who edited the post, and certainly not anyone who merely commissioned or requested the post.
Artist tags are essential, as we maintain and respect an Avoid Posting List.
If you are unable to identify the artist, then unknown_artist should be used. If the artist does not want to be identified, then anonymous_artist should be used instead.
There are a few non-artist tags that are deliberately typed as "artists" in order to bring attention to them.
- avoid_posting and its variant conditional_dnp tags identify artists with DNP or conditional DNP status
- epilepsy_warning is used for flashing lights in animated, Flash, and video posts that could trigger epileptic seizures
- sound_warning is for any loud sound playing in Flash and video posts
- jumpscare_warning is for posts featuring loud sounds (typically screams) accompanied by unsettling or scary visuals.
- unknown_artist_signature is for posts where there is an artist's signature on it, but the artist who made it could not be immediately identified
character
Any identifiable fictional or real world individual who can be seen in a post, even if they're not actually "there".
A statue or a kigurumi modeled after a character, or the cover of a solo music artist's album, would still be tagged as their corresponding characters
Characters can range from mere fursonas to globally famous copyrighted characters like Mickey Mouse, Bugs Bunny, and Mario. Fan characters are also covered here.
If you cannot identify a character, but you do know that they either are owned by someone or come from the real world, then unknown_character should be used.
copyright
Any recognizable brands and franchises (as well as the companies who own them) that can be identified through the use of their characters, settings, or other recognizable elements.
Parodies of copyrights are also tagged with the copyrights that a post is parodying. Specific holidays like Christmas, Easter, and Halloween are also given copyright status.
The real world is also a copyright tag, for what it's worth.
species
The bread and butter tags of this curated furry image archive, covering many real and fictional creatures.
Cats, dogs, horses, fish, scalies, aliens, robots, spirits, Pocket Monsters, Digital Monsters, regular monsters, and the dreaded but mostly harmless humans are among the many kinds of creatures that you can find here.
If you can't properly identify a species, then there are two tags you can use: unknown_species for creatures with identifying features, and ambiguous_species for creatures that cannot be determinable at all.
general
These plain-colored tags are for anything else that don't fit with any of the aforementioned four categories. Genders, objects, distinguishing features, locations, fetishes, sexual positions, sexual acts, and so on.
New tags are automatically categorized as general tags. Artists, characters, copyrights, and species that haven't been properly re-typed to such yet are most likely typed as general tags as well.
Tags that describe facts about the image itself, rather than what's in it, are placed in the meta category.
Some of these tags are added automatically, like hi_res. Others, like 16:9 or 1:1 are added by dedicated bots.
Tags describing what year the image was made also belong in this category, from 2022 all the way back to 6th_century_bc.
lore
Unlike other categories, lore tags are entirely outside the realm of TWYS. Instead, lore tags provide information that is either incorrect when following TWYS, or simply cannot be confirmed visually in the image itself, yet still relevant to the post.
Keep in mind that standards TWYS tags should still be used where applicable. Lore tags do not replace them.
Whenever a submission must be tagged as something that is "wrong", a lore tag should be added to provide the correct information.
The most common use for lore tags is to correct gender tags – for example, a post that is tagged gynomorph might also need a herm_(lore) tag if that's what the character is, despite there not being any evidence of that in the image itself.
Conversely, some fetish tags (like incest) cannot always be definitively confirmed through the image itself, and thus belong in the lore category.
New lore tags can be requested on the forums.
invalid
Some tags are too ambiguous or broad to be useful, so they are placed in the invalid category.
They should be replaced with better-fitting or more specific tags.
Please, do not simply remove invalid tags without fixing the issue.
↑ Changing Tag Category
Tags can be re-categorized as needed. If the tag is newly made or given a different category in error, then changing them is simple.
However, once a tag gets added to at least 100 posts, its category gets locked. In that case, you may request the category to be changed via a Bulk Update Request.
Important!
Creating a wiki page that begins with a category's metatag (ex. character:a_furry_man) does not affect the tag whatsoever.
There are three main ways to change a tag's category.
Method 1
Visual guide: https://imgur.com/a/rXe2zcp
1. Add the tag to a post, like you would any other tag.
2. After saving the changes, find the tag in the post page's sidebar, and click on "?" next to it.
3. On the page that opens, click on "Edit Tag" link in the subheader.
4. Set the tag's category to "Artist" / "Character"
Method 2
This method only works if the tag already exists.
Visual guide: https://imgur.com/a/47T22Et
1. Open the tag search, and find the desired tag: https://e621.net/tags
2. Click on "Edit" next to the tag in the list
3. Set the tag's category to "Artist" / "Character"
Method 3
This method will only work if the tag does not exist.
Visual guide: https://imgur.com/a/VLrOgK3
1. Add the tag to a post, but prefix it with character: or artist:. Ex. character:a_furry_man
2. That's it, you are done.