"Panthers," and specifically "black panthers" are impossible to find via tagging, even though a fair number of images of them exist. It's honestly kind of frustrating, since the tag "panther" is just an alias to "pantherine" and there's no alternatives. Having something like a black_panther tag would be nice, since a lot of folks have characters that qualify as one but can't be tagged as such.

The thing is that panther and black panthers are not any specific species. There is no animal called black panther. It's just a popular term for melanistic pantherines, and having own tag for it is equilevant of having tag "white_canine". Just search pantherine melanistic.

kahen_kilon_vittu said:
The thing is that panther and black panthers are not any specific species. There is no animal called black panther. It's just a popular term for melanistic pantherines, and having own tag for it is equilevant of having tag "white_canine". Just search pantherine melanistic.

It would still be useful if black_panther was an alias for those two, or something like that. The term has a wikipedia article after all, clearly it's a rather popular distinction. Moreso than white_canine.

Lewdkio said:
It would still be useful if black_panther was an alias for those two, or something like that. The term has a wikipedia article after all, clearly it's a rather popular distinction. Moreso than white_canine.

You can't alias one tag to two tags. You can only alias it to one tag.

black panther got aliased to pantherine due to it being a description rather than a species. there are a couple of sets for it.

https://e621.net/set?name=panther&shortname=&username=&order=name

kahen_kilon_vittu said:
The thing is that panther and black panthers are not any specific species

Argh. This is not a biology site. This is a furry porn site, and "black panther" is a perfectly valid trope in furry porn.

This bio-systematics insanity needs to end ffs. Species do not work like that!

hslugs said:
Argh. This is not a biology site. This is a furry porn site, and "black panther" is a perfectly valid trope in furry porn.

This bio-systematics insanity needs to end ffs. Species do not work like that!

is about as valid as red dog

Well panther is the species, if you want a specific colour, such as a black panther, you can do something like panther black_fur, which gives 108 pages, if that helps.

Admittedly they aren't all black panthers, as some are duo with a panther and a black canine, for example, but it's not too bad.. You can also add solo to narrow it down further.

hslugs said:
Species do not work like that!

They actually do work exactly like that. Nearly any big cat born with a black coat of fur is called a black panther in at least some part of the world, or whatever the native language's equivalent word for "big cat" is.

Beyond that set:blackestpanthers contains all submissions that were tagged black_panther before we cleaned it up to actually make sense.

Yo, there's not a panther tag anymore either now. Good job breaking your site on purpose.

doomcup said:
Yo, there's not a panther tag anymore either now. Good job breaking your site on purpose.

Panther got aliased to pantherine, your panther tag is literally just tagged pantherine now. So, good job not reading the forum?

melanistic pantherine pretty much nails it, though it's a shame that you have to be a biologist to fully utilize the site.

How about mentioning the melanistic tag in the pantherine wiki? Although most people probably screm in the forums before looking at the wiki :/

MyNameIsOver20charac said:
melanistic pantherine pretty much nails it, though it's a shame that you have to be a biologist to fully utilize the site.

How about mentioning the melanistic tag in the pantherine wiki? Although most people probably screm in the forums before looking at the wiki :/

Other slang terms for the color scheme like "reverse albino" alias to it, so it's not impossibly hard to find or figure out

Even so, another option could be for a user to search panther black_body or other similarly formatted searches

doomcup said:
Yo, there's not a panther tag anymore either now. Good job breaking your site on purpose.

good job not realizing how aliases work and making yourself look silly on purpose

ImpidiDinkaDoo said:
Other slang terms for the color scheme like "reverse albino" alias to it, so it's not impossibly hard to find or figure out

Even so, another option could be for a user to search panther black_body or other similarly formatted searches

Once again assuming that everyone knows what a 'panther' actually is.

MyNameIsOver20charac said:
Once again assuming that everyone knows what a 'panther' actually is.

just tell people about the set

I think I get what the problem is. People were using the panther tag as a species tag (instead of using it as a genus) because the term panther is often used as a synonym for leopard (and sometimes people think it is a different specie). So now when people are searching for "black panther", they are actually trying to search for "melanistic leopard". But because panther is now aliased to pantherine, they can't find what they are looking for.

And the alias has brought another problem because now there are posts that should be tagged with leopard are not because panther wasn't aliased to leopard. For example, this search should be empty.

Panthers are not just leopards, jaguars and mountain lions are also often called panther depending on location.
Which is why the alias has been made to point to pantherine, because it's correct.

So wait, what is the "proper" name for "pantherine" then?

Haljkljavahlibrz said:
So wait, what is the "proper" name for "pantherine" then?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantherinae

Anyone wanting to narrow down panther more, enjoy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panther

This whole exchange is stupid. Why do furries have to be biology majors to look up pics? Why can't you just go by common usage??

Also pantherine also includes lions and tigers, but what if you don't want lions and tigers?

I mean it's your site, do what you want, but don't be surprised if people get peeved about it.

doomcup said:
This whole exchange is stupid. Why do furries have to be biology majors to look up pics? Why can't you just go by common usage??

Also pantherine also includes lions and tigers, but what if you don't want lions and tigers?

I mean it's your site, do what you want, but don't be surprised if people get peeved about it.

melanistic panther -lion -tiger

I thought aliases were intended to simplify use of the site, not unnecessarily complicate it? Also, I don't understand why 'black_panther' aliases to 'pantherine' as you get results of pantherine species that are most definitely not black in colouration. 'Black panther' is well understood to refer to a specific colouration of various species and the tag should reflect that for simplicity's sake.

If you don't want the tag panther, then I think aliasing panther to melanistic would be a lot better than the current panther -> pantherine alias. Instead of just giving 80% false positives and making no sense to the average user, this would give mostly the intended results, and those who look at the returned tags might even learn something about the system :D

DeeJayDragon said:
I thought aliases were intended to simplify use of the site, not unnecessarily complicate it? Also, I don't understand why 'black_panther' aliases to 'pantherine' as you get results of pantherine species that are most definitely not black in colouration. 'Black panther' is well understood to refer to a specific colouration of various species and the tag should reflect that for simplicity's sake.

Because that's not possible at the moment with the way our aliases work.
This might become a thing if we can get it to work properly on the new site, but no promises there.

If people really want to help make the tagging experience better for everyone, they would promote the use of the melanistic tag. I didn't know it existed and will tag it if I see it missing.

Here is a tagging project for those interested. pantherine black_fur -melanistic -tiger -lion

MyNameIsOver20charac said:
If you don't want the tag panther, then I think aliasing panther to melanistic would be a lot better than the current panther -> pantherine alias. Instead of just giving 80% false positives and making no sense to the average user, this would give mostly the intended results, and those who look at the returned tags might even learn something about the system :D

I don't think aliasing a species to an adjective is an intuitive thing, nor would it be an adequate solution. Aliasing black_panther to melanistic_panther would be more useful and more in line with other fur pattern tags like calico_cat

TheVileOne said:
If people really want to help make the tagging experience better for everyone, they would promote the use of the melanistic tag. I didn't know it existed and will tag it if I see it missing.

Here is a tagging project for those interested. pantherine black_fur -melanistic -tiger -lion

I don't think aliasing a species to an adjective is an intuitive thing, nor would it be an adequate solution. Aliasing black_panther to melanistic_panther would be more useful and more in line with other fur pattern tags like calico_cat

What would be better to help out in tagging melanism more is to do a search instead on pantherine black_body -melanistic -tiger -lion, as body is the broad tag for body type colors (fur, skin, scales, etc). This way you catch anything not tagged with black_fur specifically.