This is only an idea, not an official proposal or anything that's being voted on. I'm just curious as to what people think.

It's no secret that we have a bit of a problem sometimes when it comes to tagging genders according to TWYS. I'm not concerned about all the disputes regarding stuff like a character being tagged dickgirl when it's "actually" a herm according to the source. There's not a lot that can be done there, as we don't want to tag things as herms if you can't actually see that it's a herm as opposed to a dickgirl.

What I AM wondering if we can improve upon is cases that concern ambiguous_gender. Why? Hear me out here. We have an exception for TWYS for character names, and it's worked out fairly well, all things considered. Part of the exception states that "there must be at least SOME evidence that the character is who it's claimed to be, but it does not have to be definitive proof.". That means for posts like post #482468, it can be tagged "Fluttershy" because that's what the official external source says, and there's no evidence in the picture that conflicts with that claim. This also means that if the external source claimed that this was "Lisa Simpson", it could be tagged with Lisa_Simpson, because there's no evidence in the picture that conflicts with that. The (or my) reasoning for this has been that if we didn't allow the tagging of a character because there's not 'enough' proof in the picture for it, then the post would end up having NO character tag on it at all, which removes crucial context from the image that the artist/source was originally providing. Also, having a character tag on it versus not having one on it wouldn't really hurt searching that much, just people who may have blacklisted that particular character or show/game/etc. In other words, the addition of a character tag isn't really destructive to the post in any way, unlike changing a species tag or gender tag, which WOULD dramatically modify search results (it'd show up in results for one tag INSTEAD of another tag).

So what I'm wondering is if this logic can be applied to genders as well, to help settle tagging disputes in ways that make a bit more sense than how they tend to go right now. Take the following pool for example: https://e621.net/pool/show/3924 According to the source, all of the scaly characters in these images are female. Yet a quick look at the tagging history, and current tags, for those posts demonstrate that users have had quite a bit of debate over whether they should be tagged female, cuntboy, or ambiguous_gender. And it's easy to see why, considering that the only apparent female trait on these characters is the vagina, which could even be considered a male genital slit if you wanted.

So like the exception for character names, my idea for a small exception to TWYS for genders is as follows: "You may use an official source to tag the gender of a character in a post ONLY if the character has the NECESSARY evidence of that gender." What "necessary evidence" means is that if the character has what can be considered a vagina, but otherwise appears to be ambiguous, then the source's information can be the deciding factor in determining which gender should be tagged. In the example pool I posted above, it's obvious that users can't decide if the characters look female, or if they look like cuntboys. They have the necessary evidence for BOTH GENDERS, and that means that the source gets to decide what the gender gets tagged as, rather than ultimately ending up tagging it something silly like "ambiguous_gender" just because we can't decide between two particular genders.

This does NOT mean that characters that have literally no evidence of gender can be tagged anything other than "ambiguous_gender". My idea only concerns characters where there is at least some evidence for a particular gender, but not enough evidence to decisively conclude that it is that particular gender, just like how we do for character names now.

Also, like the exception for character names, I don't consider this to be a destructive tag change, despite the fact we have the ambiguous_gender tag. It's true that this exception would end up meaning we'd have many "ambiguous_gender" posts suddenly having a different gender tag on them, but in my mind that's no different than if we had an "ambiguous_character" tag for posts where we couldn't conclude who the character was. If there's evidence of a particular character, and the source says it is in fact that character, then it can be tagged with that character. Likewise, if there's necessary evidence for a particular gender, and the source claims that it is in fact that gender, then it can be tagged with that gender.

I'm sure there would be some issues that would come up with this exception, which is why I'd like to hear feedback regarding it. Honestly, the first thing that pops into my mind is that it would probably end up being even more confusing for some users than the TWYS exception for character names, and we'll have more mistagging simply because people don't understand what the exception is really saying.

And please, for the love of god, keep your replies civil and constructive. Gender and TWYS are two of the most hotly debated issues on the site, so combining discussion about them into one forum thread is obviously asking for trouble. I'm not saying my idea is right, I'm just offering it as a potential solution to help settle future tagging debates in a way that makes sense for most people, while also helping artists make sure their work is properly tagged to the best of our ability within the confines of TWYS.

Assuming everyone could be trusted to pay attention to what the rule is actually saying, this could be good. As people are though, I think it would be a disaster.

My opinion is that it would be better if the admins just adopted this policy as a unit for the purpose of settling debates over tags when they're noticed or reported.

Meaning that the majority are still bound solely by TWYS, but the admins will all follow same guideline in these specific cases of gender tagging when issues arise.

Right now, in the example pool you mentioned, it seems even the admins can't agree how they should be tagged. A set guideline for how to solve the issue would be a good thing there.

When we were discussing the character name exception people expressed concern about that exception opening the door for more, and more exceptions.
Essentially a slippery slope argument.

We were promised that this was not the case, and that the character name exception was a unique situation, and would not be used for further exceptions.

Nyteshade said:
Assuming everyone could be trusted to pay attention to what the rule is actually saying, this could be good. As people are though, I think it would be a disaster.

My opinion is that it would be better if the admins just adopted this policy as a unit for the purpose of settling debates over tags when they're noticed or reported.

Meaning that the majority are still bound solely by TWYS, but the admins will all follow same guideline in these specific cases of gender tagging when issues arise.

Right now, in the example pool you mentioned, it seems even the admins can't agree how they should be tagged. A set guideline for how to solve the issue would be a good thing there.

We want to make it resolveable at any level, I would hope. That is, not everyone will manage to understand the subtleties involved in this type of policy, but everyone who successfully does would be reducing the amount of stuff that admins are asked to deal with.
To be clear, are you saying that you believe the work generated by a general policy will outweigh the work saved?

savageorange said:
To be clear, are you saying that you believe the work generated by a general policy will outweigh the work saved?

Basically. Most of the time I think TWYS for gender works fine. The real back-and-forth arguments are a relatively small case that often involves admin. Biggest issue currently is that there is no set, and consistent, way that the admins decide the argument at the moment.

The suggestion by Char, applied specifically to the admin rulings, would make it much easier I think.

If the policy went into effect for everyone, I think you'd end up with a *lot* of gender tagging based on source that doesn't match image, even if the rule specifically says not to do so. I especially think there'd be a lot of dickgirl vs herm warring going on in the tags (moreso than now).

Nyteshade said:
... I think you'd end up with a *lot* of gender tagging based on source that doesn't match image, even if the rule specifically says not to do so. ...

A shit-load.
There was a sizable amount of it when the character name exception was applied.
Adding this to the mix and we'll be fielding a huge amount of arguments caused by it.

Halite said:
When we were discussing the character name exception people expressed concern about that exception opening the door for more, and more exceptions.
Essentially a slippery slope argument.

We were promised that this was not the case, and that the character name exception was a unique situation, and would not be used for further exceptions.

this

I'm against it. If I'm looking for pics of characters with ambiguous gender then I expect to find something that looks ambiguous and doesn't matter if it's in fact a male/female/herm.

My personal opinion: Currently, I can't really decide between Char's original suggestion or Nyteshade's "admin policy" version. The latter sounds just slightly better to me. In any case, I really think that something should be done, because in cases where even the admins are having problems, well, nothing too good can come out of that.

Halite said:
When we were discussing the character name exception people expressed concern about that exception opening the door for more, and more exceptions.
Essentially a slippery slope argument.

We were promised that this was not the case, and that the character name exception was a unique situation, and would not be used for further exceptions.

Yes, I'm well aware I promised this. People thought that we'd soon just let the official sources for artwork determine everything about a post.

And that's not what's happening here. As I clearly stated in my idea, this isn't a case of "it looks like a dickgirl but the source says it's a herm so it gets tagged herm", because that's a complete violation of TWYS. What I'm talking about are cases where the character has necessary evidence for TWO (or more I suppose) genders, and the users being unable to decide which gender it should be tagged as. As users have demonstrated over and over, particularly with scaly characters, a flat-chested female sometimes looks exactly the same as a cuntboy. What I'm saying is that tagging it as AMBIGUOUS simply because of that doesn't really make much sense, it's OBVIOUSLY one or the other, so let the source be the determining factor at that point.

The source doesn't really have PRIORITY, it's just used merely as a tie-breaker. I think it makes more sense during a tag debate to finally say "what does the source say?" instead of continuing on the tag warring forever, or eventually ending up on something like "ambiguous_gender" when the gender clearly isn't ambiguous. "It looks like a female but it could also be a cuntboy" isn't ambiguous in my opinion, because there's obviously some trait it has that is disqualifying it from being any of the other possible genders.

But let's take this a step further and look at the current definition for ambiguous_gender:

Used when the gender of a character in the image is not apparent from the image (no genitals or other clues are visible), and/or when there are mixed signs as to whether the character is male or female (wide_hips plus broad shoulders, etc. )

So, this is saying that the ambiguous_gender tag should be used only when no genitals or other clues are visible (which means a visible vagina disqualifies its use) or when there are mixed signs as to whether the character is male or female (which, honestly, means that every single cuntboy and dickgirl on the site would be ambiguous_gender, since there are mixed signs as to whether the character is male or female). If we're wanting to 'correct' that definition, and say it actually means "mixed signs as to whether the character is male/female/herm/maleherm/cuntboy/dickgirl".. well I'm not really sure HOW we'd correct that, since the majority of those tags can't be applied if the genitalia isn't visible, and the first part of the definition of ambiguous_gender specifically mentions the absence of genitalia.

The only conclusion I can reach from this is that if there is visible genitalia, then the character can not possibly be an ambiguous_gender. You may not be able to tell whether it's a female or a cuntboy, but you can OBVIOUSLY tell that it's not a male, dickgirl, herm, or maleherm, because there's a visible vagina, but none of the other traits that would be required for the other genders.

And again, yes, such an exception would obviously be confusing to many users, no matter how clearly we end up stating it. I think an exception like this would have its best chance of success if we could also finally have the ability to lock/prevent certain tags on posts, so that the administration's decisions regarding how posts should be tagged is actually enforceable, rather than just making a declaration, only for someone to come back and change the tags again after everyone has stopped paying attention.

NotAPervert said:
I'm against it. If I'm looking for pics of characters with ambiguous gender then I expect to find something that looks ambiguous and doesn't matter if it's in fact a male/female/herm.

But when you say ambiguous, do you mean you just can't tell the gender of the character at ALL (as in there is 0 indication) or that you can't tell if it's definitely EITHER one gender or another, based off of a visual cue in the picture?

I've always considered ambiguous_gender to be a tag used when there was a lack of identifying information, not when there was conflicting information.
I was recently told otherwise, and that's fine if it's the way things are supposed to be.
I'm happy to use it that way though.

As for situations with conflicting information, I always relied on admin rulings for those situations.
I'd prefer that, and if there's an exception for this, I'd rather it stay in the hands of the admins as well.
Giving out even a small gender exception for anyone to use will cause so much tag warring it will be painful.

All that will happen is a shift of the fight from "what's visible" to "is there enough conflict to justify the exception".

I'm actually in support of this completely. Under the current system something is clearly not working well. As good as TWYS is, it isn't perfect. And even if the problem is on a relatively small number of posts, if it can be fixed somehow we should try to fix it in the best way possible, shouldn't we?

It would be a start if this were adopted as the admin's policy used when settling disputes, but other than giving the situations in which it would apply more consistency (which is a very good thing), it doesn't change much. The same tired tag wars will happen until an admin finally gets dragged in to make a decision. The added consistency, as well as the fact that the artist's side is more likely to be taken, may cut down on the aftermath of people continuing to tag war after the admin ruling, but at that point, the admins have been saved very little work.

I'm not at all convinced that allowing users to make use of this exception is going to bring about "The Tagageddon," and personally believe some people here might be making a mountain out of a molehill. I hate to risk the backlash from saying this, but there seems to be at least a little bit of sacred cow-ism surrounding TWYS.

I think allowing this exception, exactly as Char has proposed it, can only be beneficial to the site. Both in work and headaches saved (for both admins and regular users) as well as helping to build bridges to artists and character owners without abandoning the core functions of the site. Will there be a bit of a shakeup at first as people adjust? Sure. But people will adjust and learn how to apply the exception properly. Especially if experienced users remain polite, calm, and clear when explaining how the exception is supposed to work.*

I posit that the majority of those who don't - or rather, won't - learn were going to be problem taggers anyway, whether they had an exception to abuse or not, thus little - if any - "new" work would be created for the admins. I feel that the benefits outweigh the negatives here.

At the very least, it would be worth it to try a trial run of this exception. If it turns out to be a bust, then it can be changed to the admin only version people seem to like, or even nixed entirely if needed.

I could be missing something here, but I thought that the reason these issues come up isn't because be need more tags or different policy, but because sometimes people get caught between what these words mean as identities vs what these words/tags mean as descriptive tag categories.

We have:
visible breast + vagina = female
visible breast + vagina + penis = herm
visible breast + penis - visible vagina = dickgirl
visible flat chest + vagina = cuntboy
visible flat chest + penis = male

So it's simply a descriptive formula with tags for each. As far as I understand it, the problem with that pool is not so much that people disagree about what is visible, but instead disagree over the possible interpretations over what they're seeing. Which I think is exactly why we have TWYS as a policy in order to avoid that. Yes, it's reptilian, so yes some artists may choose my make their intended-female-characters look flat chested. In the end though it is still tagged descriptively. And descriptively, it is still flat chest + vagina, which on this site equals "cuntboy", or maybe even "cuntboy" + "girly" (if applicable), regardless of author's original intentions, interpretations, outside context, etc. Because the tag is not an identity for the character, it's simply a description of ____ +/- ____ in common gender characteristics. The identity can be explained in the description, but not the tags. Or at least that's my understanding of it. If this is the case, I'm not sure that any of this new policy suggestion is really necessary, except to simply enforce what already is in place?

furrypickle said:
I could be missing something here, but I thought that the reason these issues come up isn't because be need more tags or different policy, but because sometimes people get caught between what these words mean as identities vs what these words/tags mean as descriptive tag categories.

We have:
visible breast + vagina = female
visible breast + vagina + penis = herm
visible breast + penis - visible vagina = dickgirl
visible flat chest + vagina = cuntboy
visible flat chest + penis = male

So it's simply a descriptive formula with tags for each. As far as I understand it, the problem with that pool is not so much that people disagree about what is visible, but instead disagree over the possible interpretations over what they're seeing. Which I think is exactly why we have TWYS as a policy in order to avoid that. Yes, it's reptilian, so yes some artists may choose my make their intended-female-characters look flat chested. In the end though it is still tagged descriptively. And descriptively, it is still flat chest + vagina, which on this site equals "cuntboy", or maybe even "cuntboy" + "girly" (if applicable), regardless of author's original intentions, interpretations, outside context, etc. Because the tag is not an identity for the character, it's simply a description of ____ +/- ____ in common gender characteristics. The identity can be explained in the description, but not the tags. Or at least that's my understanding of it. If this is the case, I'm not sure that any of this new policy suggestion is really necessary, except to simply enforce what already is in place?

That's the majority of arguments I see.
Not what this is hoping to address though, I think.

furrypickle said:
We have:
visible breast + vagina = female
visible breast + vagina + penis = herm
visible breast + penis - visible vagina = dickgirl
visible flat chest + vagina = cuntboy
visible flat chest + penis = male

Having this list as the sole guideline for gender tagging tends to be problematic because of how many things really can't be judged that way.

In a way, Char's suggestion is already in use (said use mostly ignored for convenience and clarity) in the case of most cartoon characters. If it wasn't, you've have most of the MLP, Pokemon, Digimon, Looney Toons, etc stuff labeled ambiguous gender. Instead we tend to go by what the source show tells us are the guidelines for gender in those universes/art styles.

The problem with rules (and the reason the legal system is so screwed up) is that a single policy can never anticipate all the possibilities that can arise. When you try to close holes, you make new problems. Another policy, more problems, etc.

I just think that some sort of standard should be in place for solving the conflict when it arises, but I fear what sort of new problems/issues/conflicts would arise and need solved if the policy was changed across the board.

Hence my preference for just a standardized admin policy. There will still be situations that could still be debated despite the policy, but the admins are a small enough group that they will be more easily able to come to consensus on how to deal with those special cases than if the entire user base was in on the argument.

It's not a perfect solution, but it seems better than what we currently have. So I'm all for it. There's some images of non-mammalian females that I've avoided posting, simply because I know that posting those would lead to tag wars.

I don't see any problem with the current system. If I want characters who look ambiguous, I search ambiguous_gender.

The character could have purposefully been drawn that way, despite having a definite sex if you dug up information on the character, what about that?

Though there is some appeal to saying "If it is stated to be X, and it could conceivably be so (you wouldn't second guess such an assertion), then tag X." Because if I do a search for e.g. female, it's sometimes the case that actual females are ambiguous, and that should be reflected in the results, right? I don't actually know if this is very useful to us, though, that defeats the point of TWYS.

Consider: What if I want to search for ambiguously drawn females? What if that looked no different than ambiguously drawn males? What if that just proved the point we need to TWYS in this situation?

TWYS exists because we only care about what we see. Usually. I'll grant an exception for characters, because in that case I may want to see how some artists want to portray a character, even if it's otherwise unrecognizable. The only other place we do this is in the artist tag itself (it's a fact about the post, not necessarily what's visible in it).

Genjar said:
It's not a perfect solution, but it seems better than what we currently have. So I'm all for it. There's some images of non-mammalian females that I've avoided posting, simply because I know that posting those would lead to tag wars.

That's not good, to avoid posting here because of the tag wars. Honestly, I do not think it is possible to enforce a system that perfectly covers all types of furry art. There is nothing stopping an artist from drawing a picture of naked Daniel Radcliffe and insisting that it's a "big-breasted hermaphrodite".

However, I think that it is important that, if we decide on this as a new system, we prevent some special snowflake situation coming up and causing tag wars. Like "oh the light source is clearly coming from the southwest and it makes it look like it has no boobs, so it's clearly a male" or something. Remember, some people just want to fight.

But yeah, I'm behind Char on this one. Yes, it will involve a lot of work, but it's one step closer to attracting more artists on the site.

Timon from Lion King: "It starts . . ."

The same people that complain about TWYS will still complain if this change comes in about the next thing that bugs them. I guarantee. Isn't the whole reason you guys added the description thing is so people can write explanation shit? I personally don't like the possible change, at all.

Hell, at least the character change was not important to the pic. We are now going to assume non pictured body parts . . .

CamKitty said:
Hell, at least the character change was not important to the pic. We are now going to assume non pictured body parts . . .

In what way do you think we're going to start assuming non-pictured body parts? I mentioned at the very beginning of my post that we wouldn't be doing things like letting dickgirls be tagged as herms; they still have to have the necessary evidence to validate their gender. The difference is when the evidence is there (flat-chested female scaly with visible vagina, for instance), but people can't decide "is this female or is this cuntboy"? That's not assuming non-pictured body parts, that's just trying to make sense of the body parts that you are seeing.

Arguments in those situations typically end up having to be resolved with "we'll just tag it as ambiguous_gender", but I don't think that's how we should be doing it. On e621, ambiguous_gender means "there are no indications of the gender of the character". But when there's a vagina visible, that is an indication of gender. "Ambiguous" doesn't mean "well I can't decide if it's this one gender or this other gender, but I know FOR SURE that it's not any of these 4 other genders". In that case, we really need a better solution, and finding one that will ultimately end up at least mostly working for both artists and users is what I'd like to accomplish here. :P Thus my idea for allowing gender tagging information from the source in such situations.

CamKitty said:
Timon from Lion King: "It starts . . ."

The same people that complain about TWYS will still complain if this change comes in about the next thing that bugs them. I guarantee. Isn't the whole reason you guys added the description thing is so people can write explanation shit? I personally don't like the possible change, at all.

Hell, at least the character change was not important to the pic. We are now going to assume non pictured body parts . . .

For the kobold picture that Char linked, the description idea didn't work because the uploader took a synopsis of the text that the artist wrote and wrote their own. Thus, it cannot be used accurately.

The idea behind the change is that we weren't able to solve the problem with existing tools, so Char is trying to change our tools to better serve the userbase.

If you dislike the idea as it is, what would you change to make it better?

EDFDarkAngel1 said:
If you dislike the idea as it is, what would you change to make it better?

Call me idealist, but I liked TWYS before any changes. I get the changes are kinda to appease bruised egos and all that. Char's idea is likely a good change for the site, I just fear how many more slight changes will be made to TWYS. Say I am playing the devil's advocate I guess . . .

CamKitty said:
Call me idealist, but I liked TWYS before any changes. I get the changes are kinda to appease bruised egos and all that. Char's idea is likely a good change for the site, I just fear how many more slight changes will be made to TWYS. Say I am playing the devil's advocate I guess . . .

You say bruised egos, which makes me think you don't understand the problem the way we see it. The problem is that these images are being claimed as tagged poorly based on the information the artist put on their site, but not their image.

TWYS accomplishes most of that, but with the aforementioned problems, how would you resolve the issues that TWYS cannot solve?

EDFDarkAngel1 said:
The problem is that these images are being claimed as tagged poorly based on the information the artist put on their site, but not their image.

That sounds like a bruised ego. "I'm going to pick up my ball and leave because this picture of an arm isn't tagged the character name and female." I get why the site did it, but you can't say it wasn't just to make people (important people) less angsty about the site :o.

Like I said, I get the changes for the sake of peace with artists (and I get that it is important). Ideally the objective TWYS system would be fine, but it upsets some people. I don't have a different idea, because I liked it even before the last change. It makes a lot of sense to me. Some special cases come up, but usually get resolved, and maybe THAT should be when the source should be used to make all these exceptions :o

I think a good question to ask would be: What constitutes "female-looking" or "male-looking"? Facial structure and genitalia alone don't suffice, because you have girly/masculine characters and about 10 different genders. I agree that there should be some exceptions to TWYS (mainly in regards to tagging characters) but making an exception for genders under the "less than ambiguous" idea doesn't exactly outline what's reasonable suspicion. You could argue that this should be tagged with dickgirl, because Charr females look very similar to males.

In regards to the reptiles/kobold issue, It's a matter of perspective. You can't determine if a reptile if female by the same standards of determining if a mammal is female. I think that it isn't violating TWYS if we tag that pool with female characters, because they're reptiles.

SirAntagonist said:
I think a good question to ask would be: What constitutes "female-looking" or "male-looking"? Facial structure and genitalia alone don't suffice, because you have girly/masculine characters and about 10 different genders. I agree that there should be some exceptions to TWYS (mainly in regards to tagging characters) but making an exception for genders under the "less than ambiguous" idea doesn't exactly outline what's reasonable suspicion. You could argue that this should be tagged with dickgirl, because Charr females look very similar to males.

In regards to the reptiles/kobold issue, It's a matter of perspective. You can't determine if a reptile if female by the same standards of determining if a mammal is female. I think that it isn't violating TWYS if we tag that pool with female characters, because they're reptiles.

Let's just ban gender altogether. (joke)

I don't really understand why some people want to claim that bruised artist egos are at fault here. The fact that tagging wars take place due to an inflexible policy and subjective indicators of sex doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the creator of the pieces in question.

I like TWYS. As a general rule, I don't think it can be beaten for simplicity and effectiveness. Its implementation is the reason this site is so easy to use in the vast majority of situations. It isn't perfect though, and pretending that it is and refusing to make any room for exceptions or flexibility can be harmful, in my opinion. Inflexible rules with no room for discretion bring to mind zero tolerance policies at schools that end with third graders being expelled for bringing gun shaped keychains to class. These kinds of policies are nonsensical.

For the vast majority of situations, TWYS as a hard, fast rule works just fine, but it's obvious that it doesn't work in every situation. If it did, tagging wars over gender wouldn't be happening.

I may be wrong, but I'm under the impression that when the word "gender" is used here, it's used to mean biological sex, and not the gender the character would consider themselves psychologically. (You can't see a character's perception of their own gender, after all.) So, I'm going to approach this from a physical standpoint.

It seems pretty obvious to me that no one is asking to be able to take an artist's word that their burly lumberjack character who chops down trees with his 37 inch cock is a female and should be tagged as such. I don't think I've ever seen that be the case.

Where things start to break down for me, personally, are the blurry lines between flat chested females, tomboys, "cuntboys," and ambiguous gender. I would never search the cuntboy or ambiguous gender tags under normal circumstances. They're just not for me. As a result, I end up missing a lot of images that I would be perfectly happy accepting as female because they've fallen into those two categories simply due to inflexible gender distinction rules and TWYS.

Now, that said, I never get into the tagging wars over this. I haven't touched them in years. These days, when I do uploads, I tag questionable characters to the best of my ability based on my interpretation of the tagging rules and my own subjective idea of what constitutes feminine enough for female or ambiguous gender. After that, I let those who are going to have their battles over the tags work it out amongst themselves. Those tag battles are inevitable. Sometimes they even get sparked again after an admin has already come along and made a decision about the appropriate tag.

The current situation does affect what I'm able to search for though, and it seems to me that a lot of grief could be saved by using the source as the deciding factor in this specific situation. Especially in cases where there's so much potential for ambiguity. What constitutes feminine with reptiles and birds? With fish or other non-mammalian creatures? When is it a flat chested female and when is it a cuntboy?

I just can't see the harm that would come from using the source to decide in these specific cases. Wouldn't that be a better situation for everyone involved? People who want to find females would be able to find females. People who want to find cuntboys will be able to find cuntboys. The ambiguous gender tag would end up with the characters who have no visible genitalia and have ambiguous secondary sex characteristics. And many of the battles over which tag to use would be able to be easily settled with a quick look to the source.

I think Char's suggestion is reasonable. It may not fix every single issue, but I feel like it's a step in the right direction. I also believe that Char's suggestion would cut down on a lot of the fighting that goes on in a more direct and permanent way if the admins were able to physically lock in their decision in some way. As it is, admin decisions only seem to stick until everyone forgets about the argument. I've seen cases where someone who was unrelated to the original argument comes along after the fact and undoes an admin's decision without anyone noticing, and that's just silly.

So yeah, that's my two cents about the whole issue. I am for Char's suggestion.

otterface said:
...
I may be wrong, but I'm under the impression that when the word "gender" is used here, it's used to mean biological sex, and not the gender the character would consider themselves psychologically. (You can't see a character's perception of their own gender, after all.) So, I'm going to approach this from a physical standpoint.
...

Not even that much, gender tags indicate the visible gender identifying information.
Even biological sex is farther than we attempt to tag.

Char said:
...
But when there's a vagina visible, that is an indication of gender. "Ambiguous" doesn't mean "well I can't decide if it's this one gender or this other gender, but I know FOR SURE that it's not any of these 4 other genders". In that case, we really need a better solution, and finding one that will ultimately end up at least mostly working for both artists and users is what I'd like to accomplish here. :P Thus my idea for allowing gender tagging information from the source in such situations.

If that's the extent of the change, fully agreed.

But I would simply say "If multiple contradictory tags could be applicable, just pick one (preferably using an external source)". That keeps TWYS and it keeps ambigous_gender defined the way it is, or at least as I understand it, "No male/female distinction visible."

@Otterface:
Tagging wars happen because ontology is hard and kind of subjective. and occasionally politics-lol.

You've convinced me that Char's suggestion is worth trying as is.
A visual guide to tagging gender would help the adoption of such a policy IMO.

(and slightly OT, this is why I'm starting to think 'tag groups' is a good idea for e621, so we can have wiki articles, eg 'gender' that taxonomize an entire set of related tags, rather than depending on somewhat spotty 'see also' linkage)

@CamKitty:
See above. TWYS doesn't necessarily fit with what people want to search for.. 'girly' vs 'female' vs 'ambiguous_gender' for example -- some pics you would tag ambiguous_gender under strict TWYS but people want to find them under girly or female. It's a matter of how those particular people see the image, occasionally in contradiction with what the artist officially says about the character or image.
Yeah, bruised egos are a factor at times, but definitely not the whole story.

@Halite:
Eh, IMO 'biological sex' is close enough to how we're using 'gender' here -- the physical evidence of which bits they have; Maybe 'physical sex' would have been an improvement.

ThenIThought said:
If that's the extent of the change, fully agreed.

But I would simply say "If multiple contradictory tags could be applicable, just pick one (preferably using an external source)". That keeps TWYS and it keeps ambigous_gender defined the way it is, or at least as I understand it, "No male/female distinction visible."

This is how I like to think of it. You're still tagging what you see. But in those cases where it's a wash whether it's a female or a cuntboy or whatever, we defer to the artist's word rather than either choosing an arbitrary tag (female or cuntboy) or tagging it ambiguous_gender and omitting it from both searches.

Basically, if it really doesn't matter which tag it gets, why not at least go with the one the artist intended?

More exceptions to TWYS? Slippery slope etc etc.

Don't mess up Ambiguous_gender for usage of ambiguously gendered individuals, please. It works mostly fine as is; The only time that I can see this being a reasonable proposition is as was stated by one user, to handle tag wars where an admin has to step in. As a general use function, I couldn't disagree harder.

To the person bringing up ponies et al- They have canon genders and are big-name characters that the average person can be expected to know as per standards of information. Individual characters cannot be expected to be known.

Pyke said:
More exceptions to TWYS? Slippery slope etc etc.

Well, TWYSNWYK was more of a guideline before it was a hard-and-fast rule. The idea is that the tagging system should be useful and return relevant results. I don't see a problem with saying "given multiple valid options, defer to the artist". That would probably make a lot of people happy.

The only wormcan would be diehard fans of artists who label their character by a different gender definition than we use. For instance, an artist who labels their cuntboy or dickgirl as a herm, because the artist doesn't appreciate the finer details of gender, as we do... but I feel that those wars will never be truly decided in a way that is satisfactory to everyone.

123easy said:
Don't mess up Ambiguous_gender for usage of ambiguously gendered individuals, please. It works mostly fine as is; The only time that I can see this being a reasonable proposition is as was stated by one user, to handle tag wars where an admin has to step in.

I'd be okay with tagging them as ambiguous gender, if it actually worked.
But it rarely does, because eventually somebody replaces ambiguous with whichever gender they happen to see. Even after the admin decision has been made. Such as those kobold pics: those were already tagged as ambiguous by an admin, but then Esme went ahead and tagged them as cuntboy. And here we are.

Maybe I'm jaded, but gender tag wars never seem to end.
Sometimes it takes years, but sooner or later they start again.

Genjar said:
I'd be okay with tagging them as ambiguous gender, if it actually worked.
But it rarely does, because eventually somebody replaces ambiguous with whichever gender they happen to see. Even after the admin decision has been made. Such as those kobold pics: those were already tagged as ambiguous by an admin, but then Esme went ahead and tagged them as cuntboy. And here we are.

Maybe I'm jaded, but gender tag wars never seem to end.
Sometimes it takes years, but sooner or later they start again.

And that's a perfectly acceptable situation for the admins to step in according to what was set forth by that previous poster. Go "This is the gender according to the artist, DEAL." and if people don't, lock it to the correct tags and be done with it with appropriate warnings/neutrals/reds all around as per tag vandalism.

In the case of kobolds and other scalies, for whatever reason some people have decided that they MUST be female if they're flatchested (and I mean actually flatchested, not budding or tiny-breasted), 'because reptiles don't have breasts' (totally ignoring that these are anthropomorphized creatures that aren't even necessarily reptiles but might belong to another scale- or scute-bearing species, fantastic or not; as with Kobolds, which are a fantasy creature typically related to dragons, and of which the females are depicted with breasts within most mainstream artwork that has been created for them, as one example), rather than following actual tagging form that sets tags as just groups of other tags (such as the 'breasts + vagina + feminine body structure = female' basic equation).

Eh, I'm willing to give this slippery slope compromise a trial run, and should be fun to watch it devolve into a rancid mess.

Basically, if we can't figure out what a character's gender is, other than it's not ambiguous, then and only then do we ask the source?

Clawstripe said:
Basically, if we can't figure out what a character's gender is, other than it's not ambiguous, then and only then do we ask the source?

Yes, pretty much this. It would be used in cases such as the kobolds that I linked in my original post. They're clearly not ambiguous (because of the visible genitalia) but they still posses the necessary evidence that could define them as either female or cuntboy. In that case, let the source be the deciding factor.

On further reflection, I probably should have said: If we collectively can't figure out the gender (other than it being non-ambiguous), then and only then does the mediating admin ask the source?

Sorry. I should have remembered to stick in the qualifiers, as that better specifies when someone should ask and who that someone should be.

Char said:
Yes, pretty much this. It would be used in cases such as the kobolds that I linked in my original post. They're clearly not ambiguous (because of the visible genitalia) but they still posses the necessary evidence that could define them as either female or cuntboy. In that case, let the source be the deciding factor.

They sorta ARE ambiguous, because you can't tell for sure if it's one or the other. Just not entirely ambiguous instead of partially ambiguous.

Personally, I've considered suggesting going by 'simplest gender', with male and female being the simplest, herm the most complex, and the other two being inbetween. If there's disagreement that a character is female or cuntboy, then 'simplest gender' would indicate it should be tagged "female".

However, taking the original source's intent into consideration instead when a tag disagreement goes on might be better in the long run since it wouldn't ruffle as many feathers and bruise too badly as many egos. Hopefully.

Clawstripe said:
On further reflection, I probably should have said: If we collectively can't figure out the gender (other than it being non-ambiguous), then and only then does the mediating admin ask the source?

Sorry. I should have remembered to stick in the qualifiers, as that better specifies when someone should ask and who that someone should be.

If we make it an exception to the TWYS rule, then the idea is that admin intervention wouldn't be necessary, since the admin is just going to uphold our policy. The source would never really be "asked", because they usually make it pretty clear on the source page what the gender of the character is. If the source doesn't specify the gender anywhere, then it's possible they don't have any opinion of what the gender "should" be themselves. I suppose someone could still directly ask them if they wanted to, but it probably won't be necessary.

Again, the exception would be if the character has the necessary evidence that identifies it as either one gender or another (as opposed to NO evidence, which makes it ambiguous). Overall that should be a relatively paltry amount of posts on the site, as it's mostly going to apply to images of flat-chested females or cuntboys.

123easy said:
They sorta ARE ambiguous, because you can't tell for sure if it's one or the other. Just not entirely ambiguous instead of partially ambiguous.

But is that what you want to see when you're searching for ambiguous_gender? post #460421 and post #458267 are both tagged with ambiguous_gender right now. Both have a pretty obvious vagina, but the heads are ambiguous. Would a person searching for ambiguous_gender expect to see vaginas in their face?

Right now, if we stuck a penis on those characters instead of a vagina, I have 0 doubt in my mind that they'd be tagged male and no one would be saying "it could also be a flat-chested dickgirl", because the only evidence you have to go by is that it has a penis. But for some reason the reverse isn't true; with an ambiguous face, and a vagina, people still want to say "well it COULD be a male with a vagina, or it could be a flat-chested female". What is still qualifying it as male at that point? The flat chest that we've already established isn't really reliable when it comes to tagging scalies? Does the flat-chest suddenly count as proof of male if the character has a dick, but then doesn't matter if the character has a vagina?

As I mentioned, completely relying on TWYS in such scenarios simply leads to problems. In those cases, where it's not completely clear what gender a character is, I'd rather see it tagged according to what the source says (again, as long as the necessary evidence for it is in the picture) rather than letting tag wars continue or falling back on "ambiguous_gender". I don't feel that "ambiguous_gender" should encompass characters where you can clearly see their genitalia; that tends to remove a whole lot of ambiguity (as I illustrated with the vagina/dick example above).

Another good example is the tagging of feral characters, such as post #497903. No one is arguing to call that character a cuntboy, nor ambiguous_gender. Why is that, when it possesses the exact same evidence for gender as the kobold examples above?

To answer my own question a bit, anthropomorphism begins playing a role in how we perceive gender to some degree, as I mentioned in the Charr gender tagging thread about a month ago. But even then, I mentioned that "human-like facial features are what they're depending on to clue them in as to whether the character is male or female (assuming no other obvious male/female features are present on the body)", and also concluded that gender tagging for Charrs would continue to be a mess, which is hardly what we want it to be.

Thus, my proposal here to try to clear up some of these situations by simply appealing to the source when there is OBVIOUS evidence of gender, but when that evidence alone isn't completely decisive. Again, this is very much like how the exception for character names works as well. With character names, the source can be referenced for the appropriate character tag based on the evidence we have in the image, and what the source says can't conflict with what's apparent in the image. Likewise, with this proposed gender exception, the source can be the deciding factor when tagging the gender of a character, but the evidence necessary for that gender must be apparent in the image (so it's actually even more restrictive than the character name exception). They still can't say it's a herm if there's not evidence for that (both dick and vag visible), but they can say it's female/cuntboy if there's evidence for that (vagina visible, ambiguous face/body-build).

Sorry for being long-winded, I'm just trying to make it as clear as I can.

Char said:
If we make it an exception to the TWYS rule, then the idea is that admin intervention wouldn't be necessary, since the admin is just going to uphold our policy. The source would never really be "asked", because they usually make it pretty clear on the source page what the gender of the character is. If the source doesn't specify the gender anywhere, then it's possible they don't have any opinion of what the gender "should" be themselves. I suppose someone could still directly ask them if they wanted to, but it probably won't be necessary.

Again, the exception would be if the character has the necessary evidence that identifies it as either one gender or another (as opposed to NO evidence, which makes it ambiguous). Overall that should be a relatively paltry amount of posts on the site, as it's mostly going to apply to images of flat-chested females or cuntboys.

But is that what you want to see when you're searching for ambiguous_gender? post #460421 and post #458267 are both tagged with ambiguous_gender right now. Both have a pretty obvious vagina, but the heads are ambiguous. Would a person searching for ambiguous_gender expect to see vaginas in their face?

Right now, if we stuck a penis on those characters instead of a vagina, I have 0 doubt in my mind that they'd be tagged male and no one would be saying "it could also be a flat-chested dickgirl", because the only evidence you have to go by is that it has a penis. But for some reason the reverse isn't true; with an ambiguous face, and a vagina, people still want to say "well it COULD be a male with a vagina, or it could be a flat-chested female". What is still qualifying it as male at that point? The flat chest that we've already established isn't really reliable when it comes to tagging scalies? Does the flat-chest suddenly count as proof of male if the character has a dick, but then doesn't matter if the character has a vagina?

As I mentioned, completely relying on TWYS in such scenarios simply leads to problems. In those cases, where it's not completely clear what gender a character is, I'd rather see it tagged according to what the source says (again, as long as the necessary evidence for it is in the picture) rather than letting tag wars continue or falling back on "ambiguous_gender". I don't feel that "ambiguous_gender" should encompass characters where you can clearly see their genitalia; that tends to remove a whole lot of ambiguity (as I illustrated with the vagina/dick example above).

Another good example is the tagging of feral characters, such as post #497903. No one is arguing to call that character a cuntboy, nor ambiguous_gender. Why is that, when it possesses the exact same evidence for gender as the kobold examples above?

To answer my own question a bit, anthropomorphism begins playing a role in how we perceive gender to some degree, as I mentioned in the Charr gender tagging thread about a month ago. But even then, I mentioned that "human-like facial features are what they're depending on to clue them in as to whether the character is male or female (assuming no other obvious male/female features are present on the body)", and also concluded that gender tagging for Charrs would continue to be a mess, which is hardly what we want it to be.

Thus, my proposal here to try to clear up some of these situations by simply appealing to the source when there is OBVIOUS evidence of gender, but when that evidence alone isn't completely decisive. Again, this is very much like how the exception for character names works as well. With character names, the source can be referenced for the appropriate character tag based on the evidence we have in the image, and what the source says can't conflict with what's apparent in the image. Likewise, with this proposed gender exception, the source can be the deciding factor when tagging the gender of a character, but the evidence necessary for that gender must be apparent in the image (so it's actually even more restrictive than the character name exception). They still can't say it's a herm if there's not evidence for that (both dick and vag visible), but they can say it's female/cuntboy if there's evidence for that (vagina visible, ambiguous face/body-build).

Sorry for being long-winded, I'm just trying to make it as clear as I can.

If dick + flat chest, then they aren't a herm because no vagina, and they aren't a dickgirl because dickgirl is defined as breasts + dick. So yeah, that would be a male. Ferals get a pass on requiring breasts and other human characteristics for gender and instead rely on the creature that they're based off of (which is why the kerfuffle over dickgirls and ponies, with those that are ignoring that they're canonically female in a well-known series and don't normally have giant dicks hanging off them >_>;)

It's either a cuntboy or a female, with the likelihood of it being female as it's a scalie being far higher because reptiles actually getting realism in the fandom for whatever reason. It's just that they are partially ambiguous in gender because of the furry culture's acceptance of 'cuntboy' as a whole new sexual catagory, when it's literally just female - breasts, physically.

As for liking those listed under ambiguous_gender specifically? Not really; it's simply the next best thing available ever since androgynous (which they fit into though their genders are not entiirely ambiguous) got aliased to it and attempts to get it revoked have been stonewalled previously.

Either way, I was simply correcting your statement that they aren't ambiguous at all, and that they aren't completely ambiguous, only partially ambiguous.

A point I thought of.
If this happens, we would need to specify that the source must be one where the tags/gender identification is provided only by either the character owner, or artist, and that it is provided in text form by one or both of those persons.

If we fail to make that clear then the people who source from other booru-like sites where there is community based tagging could claim inaccurate information to be true just because it's labeled in the source.

Halite said:
A point I thought of.
If this happens, we would need to specify that the source must be one where the tags/gender identification is provided only by either the character owner, or artist, and that it is provided in text form by one or both of those persons.

If we fail to make that clear then the people who source from other booru-like sites where there is community based tagging could claim inaccurate information to be true just because it's labeled in the source.

Right, this is the exact same requirement to the exception for character names too. The information must come from an official source, which is usually either the artist or character owner.

Char said:
If we make it an exception to the TWYS rule, then the idea is that admin intervention wouldn't be necessary, since the admin is just going to uphold our policy.

True, but it'll be the admin who has the clout to make the final decision.

The source would never really be "asked", because they usually make it pretty clear on the source page what the gender of the character is. If the source doesn't specify the gender anywhere, then it's possible they don't have any opinion of what the gender "should" be themselves. I suppose someone could still directly ask them if they wanted to, but it probably won't be necessary.

Sorry about that. I didn't mean literally asking, just figuratively asking, ie. "consider the source when nobody agrees". Essentially, my posts were just trying to condense your suggestion as much as I could without losing the point, and I wanted to remove some potential ambiguity from my first attempt. Whether I succeeded or not is arguable.