Like the title asks, I've been feeling like hybrid should be broken into subtags (with, of course, hybrid remaining as an umbrella). As it currently stands, its wiki page is listing a grand total of 78,000+ posts tagged with it, with seemingly the only implications to it being real-world hybrids, wereliger, and... a surprisingly empty hybrid_taur? That's 78,000 posts of having to sift through any kind of hybrid under the sun, with little to no way to narrow down the search (especially where non-solo posts are concerned).

So my questions are... Should we make subtags for hybrid? And if so, where should the subdivisions be? Obviously we can't just tag every specific wolf-fox-dragon-cat-bird hybrid with its own tag, but... something, even something broad, would still likely help this situation to some degree.

The only suggestions I can think of are things like:

• Form-based. Hybrid_taur already exists, even if it's showing up empty for me. Hybrid_anthro and hybrid_feral could also be added (and hybrid_humanoid..?)
• Canid_hybrid, avian_hybrid, etc. Keeping it very broad, and doing the highest possible (unless we were to go a step higher up to mammalian_hybrid, for mammals or something).
• Also, as per my comment on topic #29930, maybe some kind of pokemon_hybrid tag? Or... if there could be a way to broaden that tag to include other franchise monsters, like Digimon or Yugioh, maybe that could work too, I don't know.

Basically: I'm looking for any way to split up hybrid without going too specific and bloating it with a million tags. Whichever way this goes, I imagine there will probably need to have some aliases done as well (for example, hybrid_taur -> taur_hybrid or vice versa).

Any thoughts on my tired ramblings here would be immensely appreciated.

I think taur hybrids are covered, presently, under split_form or something. I'm down for everything else though. We really need SOMETHING to change, as currently the tag is a wastebasket tag that is used as an alias for things that should otherwise be made invalid.

votp said:
I think taur hybrids are covered, presently, under split_form or something. I'm down for everything else though. We really need SOMETHING to change, as currently the tag is a wastebasket tag that is used as an alias for things that should otherwise be made invalid.

Split_form is more comparable to chimera than hybrid, as I understand it. So a split_form taur would generally have one species as the upper half, an entirely different one as the lower half, while hybrid would mix the two (or more) species together across the whole body.

Beyond that, though, I'm glad to hear that, because I was worried about this just being a total train wreck right from the start. I'm not particularly good at figuring out what the best course is when it comes to tagging, especially when I'm tired.

Some folks are super-overzealous about fighting percieved "tag bloat", unfortunately, and will alias or invalidate actually useful tags to the point where what was one tag requires you to use a massive sequence of tags to even have a chance of getting what you're after.

votp said:
Some folks are super-overzealous about fighting percieved "tag bloat", unfortunately, and will alias or invalidate actually useful tags to the point where what was one tag requires you to use a massive sequence of tags to even have a chance of getting what you're after.

sometimes we need a bit of blubber to stay afloat

edit: yes I agree we should have (more) hybrid subtags

Yeah, I feel like tag bloat is less of a concern nowadays, and I do think it will be beneficial to have other hybrid tags to utilize. However there are still several questions that should be asked before anything is done with the hybrid tags.

• Following the outline described in the OP, how should it be determined which hybrid tags should be kept and which should be aliased away (and to which tag should they be aliased to)?
• Example1: Should cat_dog_hybrid be kept, or should it be aliased to cat_hybrid or dog_hybrid (and which of these two tags should it be aliased to)? Should dragon_shark_hybrid be kept, or should it be aliased to dragon_hybrid or shark_hybrid (and which of these two tags should it be aliased to)?
• Example2: Should liger be kept, or should it be aliased to lion_hybrid or tiger_hybrid instead (or to lion_tiger_hybrid)? Should sylbreon be kept, or should it be aliased to sylveon_hybrid or umbreon_hybrid instead (or to sylveon_umbreon_hybrid)?
• If multi-species hybrid tags are utilized (like cat_dog_hybrid and dragon_shark_hybrid), what limit should there be for the total number of species included in the name of the tag ([species1]_[species2]_hybrid, [species1]_[species2]_[species3]_hybrid, etc)?

I'm willing to make a BUR for these hybrid tags and see how folks feel about utilizing hybrid subtags, but further discussion is needed first to figure out how these hybrid subtags should be organized.

Maybe it could work like the *_humanoid tags, where there's essentially an entire shadow species tag hierarchy alongside the main one?

Actual real-world species hybrids such as Ligers, Tigons, Mules, Hinnies, Zebroids, I think should be an obvious keep from the get-go. Breed admixtures for domestic animals, less so unless it is an exceptionally common mixture (enough to be recognised as it's own distinct breed in purebreed shows, I would say).
Fictitious ones I would say to hold off on unless it is mentioned and given a name in-setting. For franchises where people frequently hybridise the species in it, such as pokemon, a pokemon_hybrid should suffice as a blanket tag for all such characters. Similarly, digimon_hybrid might also be a valid option for that franchise, although hybridisation is not as common a thing there.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canid_hybrid
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equid_hybrid
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felid_hybrid

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_genetic_hybrids#Animals

In summary; if it's a real-world hybrid and has a specific name, we should use it. If it doesn't have a name, a general <clade>_hybrid tag should be used.
For the purely fictional hybrids of animals that cannot breed, using both clade tags should suffice (a cat-dog hybrid would be getting tagged with cat, dog, and all the implied tags anyway, any theoretical bloat would be negligible). I would make the argument that furry-fandom specific and extremely widespread fictional hybrids that are widely known by specific names (judgement of staff on sufficient knowledge), such as the age-old "Folf" furries like, should probably be treated as the real-world circumstances above.
For creatures originating in fiction, if they are something like pokemon, they should use a pokemon_hybrid tag, unless the hybrid is either acknowledged by name in-franchise or becomes such a massive, ubiquitous name and so common to see that people would feasibly benefit from a specific tag for it. Again, up to staff judgment.
Fictional/mythical creatures that are commonly portrayed as hybridising should probably just follow the "what's biology" rules above and just have the parent clade of the actual creature, plus a <fictional species>_hybrid tag for the other parent. Ergo, a dragon-wolf hybrid would have canid_hybrid and dragon_hybrid (possibly draconic_hybrid) tagged to it.

Just my thoughts on the matter. We really do need to keep in mind that the point of tagging shit is to make it easier to find, and while there is a balancing act to play to avoid just cluttering the site with useless shit, right now we're leaning a bit too far into the "we're kneecapping ourselves for no good reason" territory.

Admittedly, in my opening post, I was trying to just give rather reserved suggestions on "here's some stuff we could do, in any combination, or all of." I've been trying to keep it from going too specific due to concern of this entire discussion being scrapped for adding far too many tags (and as a whole, I've been unsure of what the staff and site community would think of the subject). Even now, I'm still concerned about over-doing it with these tags, but something definitely needs to be changed so hybrids are easier to search.

d.d.m. said:
I'm willing to make a BUR for these hybrid tags and see how folks feel about utilizing hybrid subtags, but further discussion is needed first to figure out how these hybrid subtags should be organized.

If you want to handle the BUR, feel free. Making them stresses me out, unfortunately.

Gryphons are implicitly chimeric creatures, and would likely use chimera tags for swapping out parts rather than hybrid tags.

votp said:
Gryphons are implicitly chimeric creatures, and would likely use chimera tags for swapping out parts rather than hybrid tags.

I disagree, at least with the "implicitly" part, and I'd argue a lot of those "chimeric" gryphons are closer to the current definition of split_form than anything else, but... I can understand why that would be the answer I'd get.

That's one of my questions answered, at least. Gryphons aside, if anyone has any more thoughts on specific hybrid subtags, that would be great. I'm not sure that mine's the most efficient way of organizing these tags, and I'd like to know if anyone else had any more suggestions, before any mock-up or BUR is put together.

wat8548 said:

Maybe it could work like the *_humanoid tags, where there's essentially an entire shadow species tag hierarchy alongside the main one?

I think this general format would be a good template to reference for most of the hybrid tags. The general format of [species]_hybrid can have implications to their base [species] tag.

votp said:

Actual real-world species hybrids such as Ligers, Tigons, Mules, Hinnies, Zebroids, I think should be an obvious keep from the get-go. Breed admixtures for domestic animals, less so unless it is an exceptionally common mixture (enough to be recognised as it's own distinct breed in purebreed shows, I would say).
Fictitious ones I would say to hold off on unless it is mentioned and given a name in-setting. For franchises where people frequently hybridise the species in it, such as pokemon, a pokemon_hybrid should suffice as a blanket tag for all such characters. Similarly, digimon_hybrid might also be a valid option for that franchise, although hybridisation is not as common a thing there.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canid_hybrid
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equid_hybrid
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felid_hybrid

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_genetic_hybrids#Animals

In summary; if it's a real-world hybrid and has a specific name, we should use it. If it doesn't have a name, a general <clade>_hybrid tag should be used.
For the purely fictional hybrids of animals that cannot breed, using both clade tags should suffice (a cat-dog hybrid would be getting tagged with cat, dog, and all the implied tags anyway, any theoretical bloat would be negligible). I would make the argument that furry-fandom specific and extremely widespread fictional hybrids that are widely known by specific names (judgement of staff on sufficient knowledge), such as the age-old "Folf" furries like, should probably be treated as the real-world circumstances above.
For creatures originating in fiction, if they are something like pokemon, they should use a pokemon_hybrid tag, unless the hybrid is either acknowledged by name in-franchise or becomes such a massive, ubiquitous name and so common to see that people would feasibly benefit from a specific tag for it. Again, up to staff judgment.
Fictional/mythical creatures that are commonly portrayed as hybridising should probably just follow the "what's biology" rules above and just have the parent clade of the actual creature, plus a <fictional species>_hybrid tag for the other parent. Ergo, a dragon-wolf hybrid would have canid_hybrid and dragon_hybrid (possibly draconic_hybrid) tagged to it.

Just my thoughts on the matter. We really do need to keep in mind that the point of tagging shit is to make it easier to find, and while there is a balancing act to play to avoid just cluttering the site with useless shit, right now we're leaning a bit too far into the "we're kneecapping ourselves for no good reason" territory.

vulkalu said:

Admittedly, in my opening post, I was trying to just give rather reserved suggestions on "here's some stuff we could do, in any combination, or all of." I've been trying to keep it from going too specific due to concern of this entire discussion being scrapped for adding far too many tags (and as a whole, I've been unsure of what the staff and site community would think of the subject). Even now, I'm still concerned about over-doing it with these tags, but something definitely needs to be changed so hybrids are easier to search.

So. My thoughts on this, which I will try to keep concise:

• First of all: I would personally make some kind of real_world_hybrid tag so people can search for or blacklist either real hybrids or fictional ones. And then have liger, etc. implicate this tag.
• Which means, yes, I'm of the opinion that liger and the like should be kept as they already are (although I must admit, I don't understand why liger implicates lion but not tiger, while tigon doesn't implicate either, but that's besides the point).

• Second: I would alias away all combo tags that are of fictional hybrids.
• Example 1: I would alias cat_dog_hybrid -> mammalian_hybrid / mammal_hybrid, if it's decided we should have it, otherwise alias to hybrid
• Example 2: I would alias fox_coyote_hybrid -> canid_hybrid, because both are canids
• I am very hesitant about things like folf, even if they are popular. When would a hybrid be deemed "popular enough" to get its own tag? Who decides that? The staff, whenever they actually have time to look at that? Or on some arbitrary minimum post requirement? And if they do become allowed, does it stay "folf", or does it get renamed to its component parts? Personally, I'd argue to keep such tags aliased away, although some could be moved to more appropriate tags, like canid_hybrid, where applicable.

• Third: Following the above, I would alias all hybrids of copyrighted species away to an appropriate tag.
• Example 3: I would alias sylbreon -> pokemon_hybrid
• Personally, I would also alias away anything like umbreon_hybrid, if only because there's so many Pokemon species, and I'm not sure if there's enough hybrids to justify making all of those tags, but I'll leave that part up for everyone else to discuss and agree upon, since I'm not super opposed to it either, and I don't look at Pokemon hybrids enough to know how much there really is.
• To be clear on this, this also somewhat goes for real species too. I'm still uncertain if we should have a *_hybrid tag for every species under the sun. I would probably go as low as canine_hybrid or canis_hybrid, as opposed to domestic_dog_hybrid, although I don't feel as strongly about it when it comes to real species.

• Fourth, and this point's more of questions than my actual thoughts, but... I understand we would most likely wind up with a dragon_hybrid tag--they're a common enough species to hybridize. My questions are as follows:
• Should we split that up into eastern_dragon_hybrid, western_dragon_hybrid, wyvern_hybrid? What about feathered or furred dragons? Wingless? Or just leave it at the base dragon_hybrid and leave anything else up to the already existing, normal western_dragon, etc.?
• What about gryphons? Should there be a gryphon_hybrid tag, for all of the various gryphons that are not the typical eagle + lion? Or should that sort of thing just be left to using the other *_hybrid tags + gryphon? Should gryphons like that even get any hybrid tags, even when the lion part is replaced with, say, a crocodile, or is that sort of thing best left to sets? To be honest, I've never been certain how gryphons were handled on this site, outside of seeing people say not to use hybrid for the typical eagle + lion gryphons.

If you want to handle the BUR, feel free. Making them stresses me out, unfortunately.

• I only just now realized that hybrid did have some implications at the bottom of all those aliases. For the time being, I'm not going to handle these specific hybrid tags (folf, sylbreon, cat_dog_hybrid, etc). I think more basic tags should be handled first (canine_hybrid, scalie_hybrid, etc), in order to see if there's enough folks who want more hybrid tags to be utilized. While some of these specific hybrid tags do have popular appeal, I personally think it would be better if these specific hybrid tags followed the [species]_hybrid format (real world hybrids can be an exception, for tags such as liger and tigon).
• I think that dragon_hybrid (and most other fictional species) can be used with the other dragon tags to find stuff like dragon_hybrid + eastern_dragon. Though it could be a good idea to use more specific dragon_hybrid tags at some point later on (like eastern_dragon_hybrid).
• Copyrighted species (like pokemon) can be handled later as well, but I think specific subtags for copyrighted species tags like pokemon_hybrid would be a good idea later on. But for now I think these should be handled similarly to dragon_hybrid; folks can use tags like pokemon_hybrid in conjunction with specific species tags to search for specific hybrids (like pokemon_hybrid + sylveon + umbreon).

In summary, the more complex hybrid tags are set aside for further discussion, but I'll be making a BUR for the hybrid base tags sometime soon.

Thank you for your aid in this effort to make useless tags like hybrid infinitely less useless.

I'd just like to clarify that I am against any special pleading for "popular" fictional hybrids such as "folf" or "sylbreon", on the basis that it would be impossible to objectively determine where to draw the line. I agree that the current mass aliasing to hybrid is needlessly harsh, but at the same time it happened for a reason. If we allowed every sparkledog to have its own species tag then we might as well give up on character tags.

There is already a pokémon_humanoid tag, so that seems like a good precedent if we're going the route of matching the "humanoid" tags.

On a similar note, I note that dragon_humanoid already has a quite extensive list of implications.

votp said:
Actual real-world species hybrids such as Ligers, Tigons, Mules, Hinnies, Zebroids, I think should be an obvious keep from the get-go. Breed admixtures for domestic animals, less so unless it is an exceptionally common mixture (enough to be recognised as it's own distinct breed in purebreed shows, I would say).
Fictitious ones I would say to hold off on unless it is mentioned and given a name in-setting. For franchises where people frequently hybridise the species in it, such as pokemon, a pokemon_hybrid should suffice as a blanket tag for all such characters. Similarly, digimon_hybrid might also be a valid option for that franchise, although hybridisation is not as common a thing there.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canid_hybrid
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equid_hybrid
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felid_hybrid

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_genetic_hybrids#Animals

In summary; if it's a real-world hybrid and has a specific name, we should use it. If it doesn't have a name, a general <clade>_hybrid tag should be used.
For the purely fictional hybrids of animals that cannot breed, using both clade tags should suffice (a cat-dog hybrid would be getting tagged with cat, dog, and all the implied tags anyway, any theoretical bloat would be negligible). I would make the argument that furry-fandom specific and extremely widespread fictional hybrids that are widely known by specific names (judgement of staff on sufficient knowledge), such as the age-old "Folf" furries like, should probably be treated as the real-world circumstances above.
For creatures originating in fiction, if they are something like pokemon, they should use a pokemon_hybrid tag, unless the hybrid is either acknowledged by name in-franchise or becomes such a massive, ubiquitous name and so common to see that people would feasibly benefit from a specific tag for it. Again, up to staff judgment.
Fictional/mythical creatures that are commonly portrayed as hybridising should probably just follow the "what's biology" rules above and just have the parent clade of the actual creature, plus a <fictional species>_hybrid tag for the other parent. Ergo, a dragon-wolf hybrid would have canid_hybrid and dragon_hybrid (possibly draconic_hybrid) tagged to it.

Just my thoughts on the matter. We really do need to keep in mind that the point of tagging shit is to make it easier to find, and while there is a balancing act to play to avoid just cluttering the site with useless shit, right now we're leaning a bit too far into the "we're kneecapping ourselves for no good reason" territory.

There is a pokemon_fusion tag already. Most commonly it's used when drawing art of sprites created through a fusion generator, hence why the tag name uses 'fusion' and not 'hybrid'