The bulk update request #1517 is pending approval.

remove alias ent (0) -> treant (336)
remove alias tree_creature (0) -> treant (336)
create implication ent_(tolkien) (0) -> middle-earth_(tolkien) (386)

Reason: Ents are a species from the Tolkien universe, while Treants are the generic fantasy equivalent. Similar to the difference between a hobbit and a halfling.

"Tree creature" follows the *_creature tag naming standard and should be implied by both Ent and Treant, among others.

Treants are ents, just with altered name to avoid copyright issues. No visual difference, so the those tags should stay aliased. Trying to separate them would work about as well as trying to sort out orc_(tolkien) from orc.

My main issue is having the ability to imply a copyright tag. However minute the differences are, ents (at least from the LoTR films) can be distinguished from D&D treants. Moreover, the treants from other franchises (WoW for example) look significantly different.

I think the best solution for these kinds of species that occur across franchises is to have them all imply a generic version (ie. Ents from LoTR, treants from WoW and DnD and wherever else they appear all imply a generic treant tag), and only tag the individual franchise versions when they can be definitively identified. I think the generic tag will be used in the majority of cases regardless.

Same for orcs. Elder Scrolls orcs look fairly different from the ones in the LoTR films. They can both imply the current generic orc tag - but, again, it’ll probably only occur in a minority of cases, with most of them retaining only the generic orc tag. This would at least be a fairly low-effort solution, since there aren’t really a whole lot of orcs or treants/ents on this site, so adding the correct franchise version should be trivial.

scaliespe said:
However minute the differences are, ents (at least from the LoTR films) can be distinguished from D&D treants. Moreover, the treants from other franchises (WoW for example) look significantly different.

There is no canon depiction of Tolkien's ents, beyond what's described in the books. The ones from the graphic novel version are just as 'valid' as the movie. Tolkien's ents have been drawn in numerous ways over the years, and some of those match treants. (Of course they match, because they're from the same source: the books.)
And same applies to D&D's treants: they've looked different in every edition. Ranging from Groot-like to literal depictions of Tolkien's ents (1e) - see https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Treant.
There is no way to separate them by twys, and we do not tag species by outside information — wouldn't help in this case anyway, since often the source doesn't even mention what franchise the tree creature is from.

Using the current wiki thumb as an example:
post #716551
Is that a treant or an ent? Impossible to tell by twys.

Forthermore, using the hobbit tag as a basis for the split is a good demonstration of why it doesn't work. Most things under hobbit fall into these two categories:
1. Outside information: Actors from the movie, visually indistinguishable from humans. Which isn't a surprise, as the actors were humans. These wouldn't even be approved anymore, and the existing ones should be moved under human.
2. Random collection of humanoids as in post #114469, post #2714050, post #432279, post #593146, post #214914, and post #902477. All of which could just as well be halflings. Sometimes the presence of other characters (Smaug in particular) might suggest 'hobbit', but that's not how twys works.
The hobbit tag is equally invalid, and should be aliased away into halfling.

I think the films being the most well-known form of LoTR in visual media would make it about as close as we can get to a canon depiction, as it’s probably the one most people are familiar with. And to that end, I’d think an image depicting the ents precisely as they appear in the films should ideally be taggable as such, and have the tag imply middle_earth. I suppose the more comprehensive solution would not be to pick a single depiction as canon, but to have separate tags not only for each different LoTR depiction, but for each of the various DnD depictions, kinda like how we have a plethora of tags for each different depiction of dragons that occur across the many franchises that use them, even when the differences are minute: red_dragon_(dnd), red_dragon_(dragon_quest), nightwing_(wof), ender_dragon, sky_dragon_(cave_story)… et cetera.

Given, however, that there are only a handful of ents/treants on the entire site compared to the 200,000+ dragons, this is probably overkill.

So, if we’re not going to do that, that brings up another question: why call them treants and not ents? Is DnD preferable to LoTR for some reason?

How about this: if we’re going to say they have that much variability in design, why not alias them both to tree_humanoid? The only thing all the depictions have in common is that they are trees in roughly human shape, with arms and legs and humanoid faces. Given the wide range of appearances of treants particularly in DnD, it doesn’t seem possible to say that there’s anything that definitively distinguishes a “true treant” from any other tree humanoid. It’s also a more franchise-neutral term that can easily include tree-people from other sources that don’t use either name.

Speaking of which, tree_humanoid inexplicably implies treant, which doesn’t make any sense. That implication should probably be removed in this BUR as well.

Side note: you may have a point regarding hobbits, since their “canon” (as close to canon as you can get, anyway) depiction really is nothing more than a short human.

scaliespe said:
Speaking of which, tree_humanoid inexplicably implies treant, which doesn’t make any sense. That implication should probably be removed in this BUR as well.

Now that I look at it carefully, it seems that every tag relationship involving treant is incorrect. The aliases should be independent tags or aliased to a broader tag, the implications should be indirect (that is, with tree_creature in the middle) and I agree regarding tree_humanoid.

Right so…
1. Remove all tag relationships with treant
2. alias treant, tree_ent, treefolk, treeant, ent -> tree_humanoid
3. alias living_trees, living_tree, sentient_tree -> tree_creature
4. imply tree_humanoid -> tree_creature
5. imply tree_creature -> flora_fauna, tree

Think that’ll do?

scaliespe said:
Think that’ll do?

I might call treants/ents/etc tree_creatures and less tree_humanoids, at least for the styles I'm familiar with. A tree_humanoid would be a humanoid, a body, head, and limbs that look mostly human, with minor tree-like details like bark for hair or branches for hands/fingers. A Morrowind-style Spriggan would be a tree_humanoid, something that could be confused for a person at a distance, while an LOTR Ent could be confused for a tree.

Right. I don’t think we can alias them to tree_creature, though, as that’s much broader and would include things that are definitively not ents, like exeggutor. So… living_tree, maybe? Or perhaps just keep ent/treant in that case. I had kind of wanted to avoid ent/treant due to those being tied to specific franchises, but that might be the best name for them in this case. Though, if so, I feel that ent should be the preferred tag, as it’s the “original” name for the species, while treant is just the knockoff version created to avoid copyright issues. LoTR is also more well-known and has a much more mainstream audience than does DnD.

Attempt number two:
1. Remove all tag relationships with treant
2. alias treant, tree_ent, treefolk, treeant -> ent - or maybe living_tree
3. alias living_trees, living_tree, sentient_tree (if not used in place of ent) -> tree_creature
4. imply tree_humanoid -> tree_creature
5. imply ent -> tree_creature
6. imply tree_creature -> flora_fauna, tree