Topic: [APPROVED] Mobian species BUR

The bulk update request #3433 is active.

Reason: The mobian_* species tags are just "mobian" versions of already existing species tags. There are no differences between mobian and regular species animals other than art style that mobians are Sonic-specific.

Update (5 Nov 2023): The entire script is also on Pastebin. I'll try to keep it as up to date as possible.

EDIT: The bulk update request #3433 (forum #347654) has been approved by @slyroon.

Why was mobian aliased to sonic_the_hedgehog_(series)? I think they have enough distinct features to be valid. IIRC OCs aren't supposed to be tagged to the franchise based on art style alone, and mobian is creating a lot of mistags because of it. It should either be made invalid if it is just an art style, or unaliased if it is a species.

mobian_* tags are a blatant attempt to bypass the mobian alias, but we should ask why so many people are trying to do that.

oozeenthusiast said:
Why was mobian aliased to sonic_the_hedgehog_(series)?

Looking at the tag's alias topic (topic #9227), it was aliased due to redundancy.

At the time, the wiki for the tag mobian had this definition,

Of or pertaining to the Sonic the Hedgehog universe: Mobius.

This pretty much meant that ALL characters from the Sonic universe, no matter their actual race/species (anthro, chao etc.), are Mobian by default, making the tag redundant.

Since then, the wiki has been updated, and now defines Mobians like this

Mobians are characterized by being anthropomorphic animals, possessing a wide range of aspects, species and colors. Physically, they are characterized by a curious anatomy, as they have bodies of various shapes, some more muscular, others smaller, thinner, more corpulent etc. Most possess the quality of having thin legs and some possess human-like feet.

This cleared up the definition so that Mobian now means "anthro animal character from the Sonic universe".

Also since then, new Sonic-specific species tags have been created, such as chao_(sonic) or wisp_(sonic). So if there is enough difference between regular anthros and mobians, the mobian tag might be able to be unaliased and brought back (as a species tag, since it currently is a copyright tag for some reason).

The bulk update request #3436 has been rejected.

remove alias mobian (0) -> sonic_the_hedgehog_(series) (138078)
change category mobian (0) -> invalid
remove alias sonic_style (0) -> sonic_the_hedgehog_(series) (138078)
change category sonic_style (0) -> invalid

Reason: These aliases two aliases, one of them a decade old and created assuming the usage of the latter, and the other created by former staff without a thread or reason cited, are causing fan characters to be improperly tagged to the sonic ip tag.

Mobian's current wiki currently defines mobians characters of the same species as sonic, and lists some of their characteristics. While this is a good start, I don't think it is quite satisfactory for describing how to tag mobians under twys yet. Once I have more time I will try to improve it.

The sonic series has had so many styles across different games, cartoons, comics, and now movies, that "sonic_style" does not mean anything in particular.

EDIT: The bulk update request #3436 (forum #347758) has been rejected by @slyroon.

oozeenthusiast said:
The bulk update request #3436 has been rejected.

remove alias mobian (0) -> sonic_the_hedgehog_(series) (138078)
change category mobian (0) -> invalid
remove alias sonic_style (0) -> sonic_the_hedgehog_(series) (138078)
change category sonic_style (0) -> invalid

Reason: These aliases two aliases, one of them a decade old and created assuming the usage of the latter, and the other created by former staff without a thread or reason cited, are causing fan characters to be improperly tagged to the sonic ip tag.

Mobian's current wiki currently defines mobians characters of the same species as sonic, and lists some of their characteristics. While this is a good start, I don't think it is quite satisfactory for describing how to tag mobians under twys yet. Once I have more time I will try to improve it.

The sonic series has had so many styles across different games, cartoons, comics, and now movies, that "sonic_style" does not mean anything in particular.

I just finished fixing up the wiki. Still not completely satisfied with the powers section, and a lot of characters are missing from examples if anyone else wants to contribute, but I think the wiki works and can be used to objectively exclude non-mobian characters now.

the term "mobian" is something that was only ever used in Archie comics and Fleetway comics as well as AoStH, the term has become pretty much entirely deprecated since the end of the Archie run (was also pretty uncommon in later Archie comics). the term has never been used in any canon media, Boom, the IDW comics, the movie or any other licensed or official media since 2017.

"Mobian" is too vague for my liking. "It can be this, but there are exceptions" doesn't help narrow it down, and stuff like "Their snout is always an off color from the rest of their face" we already have a tag for, called countershade_snout. The current description:

Mobians are anthropomorphic animals, possessing a wide range of species and colors. Most are short with thin legs, thin arms and large heads .. Their most consistent feature is their short rounded snout that extends to their cheeks with a small black nose. Their snout is always an off color from the rest of their face, ... Almost all mobians have brightly colored fur with no or few markings. Mobians also normally have large eyes and human-like feet.

Notice those "most"s and "almost all", indicating they can be different, leaving no bound on what it can apply to. This makes these "mobian":
post #3517840 post #3589574
It sounds like it's trying to be a replacement for sonic_style.

darryus said:
the term "mobian" is something that was only ever used in Archie comics and Fleetway comics as well as AoStH, the term has become pretty much entirely deprecated in since the end of the Archie run (was also pretty uncommon in later Archie comics). the term has never been used in any canon media, Boom, the IDW comics, the movie or any other licensed or official media since 2017.

I don't think being canon is an important factor for considering if a tag is valid. Mobian is definable, useful, and easy to understand, there's a reason it's still used so often by fans. These characters still have traits in common even if sega has chosen not to give them a name. It may not currently be official, but so are other fan created terms like eeveelution or bat_pony.

watsit said:
"Mobian" is too vague for my liking. "It can be this, but there are exceptions" doesn't help narrow it down, and stuff like "Their snout is always an off color from the rest of their face" we already have a tag for, called countershade_snout. The current description:
Notice those "most"s and "almost all", indicating they can be different, leaving no bound on what it can apply to. This makes these "mobian":
post #3517840 post #3589574

Yeah, that is the best argument against the tag. For everything you could say about mobians, there's one or two examples that contradict it. While mobian is easy to define in the context of sonic games, accounting for other mascot characters makes it very difficult. I wish I could nail the definition down better, but because of these ambiguities invalidating the tag is also a good option. I at least wanted to try arguing for the tag because there are taggers that are trying to use the tag. On uncontroversial tags, tagger discretion can do a lot to keep tags consistent in spite of softer definitions.

watsit said:
It sounds like it's trying to be a replacement for sonic_style.

That's because it is. Sonic_style is currently aliased, and the mobian alias was made with the idea that sonic_style would be used instead. I wouldn't have proposed it if the conclusion from topic #9227 was still in effect.

mobian wikipage said:
Their snout is always an off color from the rest of their face, normally matching the color of the fur on their chest.

there's several characters in canon and in licenced media that have the snout be the same color as the rest of their face. Vector only has a diffrent shade of green around his lips, the rest of his snout is the same darker green as the majority of his face. from the Archie run one example is that most lynx characters, notably Nicole, have faces with no countershading. and nearly all of the antro characters originating from AoStH and the fleetway comics also have no countershading at all on their faces.

even if "mobian" was an actually definable term, I really don't see the point of having this tag anyway, since it's pretty much just going to be the same as sonic_(series) anthro

darryus said:
there's several characters in canon and in licenced media that have the snout be the same color as the rest of their face. Vector only has a diffrent shade of green around his lips, the rest of his snout is the same darker green as the majority of his face. from the Archie run one example is that most lynx characters, notably Nicole, have faces with no countershading. and nearly all of the antro characters originating from AoStH and the fleetway comics also have no countershading at all on their faces.

Vector and Nicole do complicate things. There's a lot of things you can say mobians tend towards, but it's frustrating that there's nothing concrete.

darryus said:
even if "mobian" was an actually definable term, I really don't see the point of having this tag anyway, since it's pretty much just going to be the same as sonic_(series) anthro

It's so art of fan characters like below can have a tag and found without the sonic_(series) tag.
post #3622590 post #3602453
It also could help avoid false positives of images with sonic_(series) and non mobian anthro characters, but I doubt that'll ever be of any significance.

Edit: There's also a niche use with alternate_species mobian -sonic_(series) if you're looking for stuff like below.
post #3629590 post #2327882 post #2224346

oozeenthusiast said:
It's so art of fan characters like below can have a tag and found without the sonic_(series) tag.

But as previously mentioned, "mobian" isn't really a definable species. The Sonic series doesn't even seem to use it consistently, sometimes meaning anything from Mobius, and other times to mean "anthros from the Sonic universe". Fan characters aren't an official part of the Sonic universe, other characters simply in a "Sonic style" are neither from Mobius or the Sonic universe. We don't tag the "Sonic style" because it's too vague, and other series can have a similar style; Klonoa could easily be mistaken for being in the "Sonic style" if you didn't know who he is. It becomes a vanity tag, something to tag because you want it, and with no way to determine if the tag is actually valid.

oozeenthusiast said:
It's so art of fan characters like below can have a tag and found without the sonic_(series) tag.

why would mobian not imply sonic_(series)? it is like-- a term from Sonic stuff.

watsit said:
But as previously mentioned, "mobian" isn't really a definable species. The Sonic series doesn't even seem to use it consistently, sometimes meaning anything from Mobius, and other times to mean "anthros from the Sonic universe". Fan characters aren't an official part of the Sonic universe, other characters simply in a "Sonic style" are neither from Mobius or the Sonic universe. We don't tag the "Sonic style" because it's too vague, and other series can have a similar style; Klonoa could easily be mistaken for being in the "Sonic style" if you didn't know who he is. It becomes a vanity tag, something to tag because you want it, and with no way to determine if the tag is actually valid.

Reluctantly +1. I've changed my bur to invalidate both tags.

There is still a problem to be solved though. Right now the only way to search for sonic style characters is to go through invalid uses of the sonic_(series) tag. While it would be correct to remove the sonic_(series) tag from all the images like the ones in my second post, not having anything to replace the tag with would be a problem. Going through sonic_the_hedgehog_(series) fan_character, characters like this are very popular, and I'm not sure there's a good way to tag them if mobian doesn't work. Maybe a tag that includes characters with the same features as mobians regardless of context, including most sonic characters, most mickey mouse characters, klonoa, and many other characters that look similar? That seems broad to the point of being worthless, but maybe it isn't?

darryus said:
why would mobian not imply sonic_(series)? it is like-- a term from Sonic stuff.

My bad, it should imply that if it becomes a valid tag.
Mobian characters are in a weird position. If being a mobian distinct enough to be a tag, then there's a discernible reason for them to get the sonic_(series) tag and mobian is useless. If being a mobian is not distinct enough to be a tag, then there is no reason for them to have the sonic_(series) tag and the mobian tag is useful.

oozeenthusiast said:
Reluctantly +1. I've changed my bur to invalidate both tags.

There's no reason to invalidate them. Leaving them aliased to sonic_the_hedgehog_(series) gets rid of them well enough, and doesn't leave extra tags around that we have to keep cleaning up (them being in the Invalid category doesn't prevent people from tagging or searching them, so people can still try to use them as valid tags).

watsit said:
There's no reason to invalidate them. Leaving them aliased to sonic_the_hedgehog_(series) gets rid of them well enough, and doesn't leave extra tags around that we have to keep cleaning up (them being in the Invalid category doesn't prevent people from tagging or searching them, so people can still try to use them as valid tags).

The alias causes images with just fan OCs and no species, characters, locations, or object related to the IP to receive the series tag. I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure fan characters are not supposed to be tagged that way.

oozeenthusiast said:
The alias causes images with just fan OCs and no species, characters, locations, or object related to the IP to receive the series tag. I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure fan characters are not supposed to be tagged that way.

I believe that the general consensus is that fan characters (or characters drawn as if they exist in an other universe) should be tagged with the copytag of the parent series. the most recent discussion was at topic #35428.

oozeenthusiast said:
The alias causes images with just fan OCs and no species, characters, locations, or object related to the IP to receive the series tag. I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure fan characters are not supposed to be tagged that way.

They're not, but if there are images without any official stuff getting tagged as sonic, such a mistag can be fixed as much as any other (and a person regularly making such a mistag can be told to be careful and avoid it in the future). But setting them to the Invalid category instead lets people try to use it as a valid tag even though it's invalid. Another way to look at it, as it is now, posts someone tries to tag with mobian or sonic_style will sometimes result in being tagged as sonic_the_hedgehog_(series) validly (if the tag wasn't already there), and sometimes invalidly. Only some resulting posts will need cleaning. But by setting them to the Invalid category, every post someone tries to tag with mobian or sonic_style will be invalidly tagged and need cleaning.

watsit said:
They're not, but if there are images without any official stuff getting tagged as sonic, such a mistag can be fixed as much as any other (and a person regularly making such a mistag can be told to be careful and avoid it in the future). But setting them to the Invalid category instead lets people try to use it as a valid tag even though it's invalid. Another way to look at it, as it is now, posts someone tries to tag with mobian or sonic_style will sometimes result in being tagged as sonic_the_hedgehog_(series) validly (if the tag wasn't already there), and sometimes invalidly. Only some resulting posts will need cleaning. But by setting them to the Invalid category, every post someone tries to tag with mobian or sonic_style will be invalidly tagged and need cleaning.

Is there a way to set them so that they can no longer be tagged? I was under the assumption that was what the invalid category did.

oozeenthusiast said:
Is there a way to set them so that they can no longer be tagged? I was under the assumption that was what the invalid category did.

Unfortunately not.

the system should really just be like "NO STOP YOU HAVE AN INVALID TAG AAAAAAA" and not let you upload

+1 there's nothing about mobian_(insert species here) tags that makes them distinct from the typical anthro species, other than being drawn in the Sonic style. These tags only open up the possibility of posts that lack the actual species tags.

The bulk update request #3580 is active.

create alias mobian_chacal (0) -> jackal (27929)
create alias mobian_dog (1) -> domestic_dog (411614)
create alias mobian_werehog (2) -> werehog (1836)
create alias mobian_chameleon (2) -> chameleon (5324)
create alias mobian_weasel (1) -> weasel (18192)
create alias mobian_cheetah (1) -> cheetah (23883)
create alias mobian_swallow (1) -> swallow_(bird) (2273)
create alias mobian_bandicoot (1) -> bandicoot (11856)
create alias mobian_albatross (2) -> albatross (290)
create alias mobian_deer (2) -> deer (98476)
create alias mobian_raptor (5) -> dromaeosaurid (15307)
create alias mobian_pronghorn (4) -> pronghorn (429)
create alias mobian_beetle (0) -> beetle (3482)
create alias mobian_crocodile (0) -> crocodile (19440)
create alias mobian_sheep (9) -> sheep (42137)
create alias mobian_walrus (1) -> walrus (1315)
create alias mobian_octopus (1) -> octopus (2475)
create alias mobian_koala (1) -> koala (2273)
create alias mobian_monkey (3) -> monkey (15388)
create alias mobian_canary (1) -> canary (444)

Reason: Same reason as BUR #3433 / topic #35709
A second BUR was created due to the BUR script limit of 25.

Update (4 Nov 2023): Excluded mobian_hedg and mobian_at typo tags from BUR to make space for two new tags (mobian_hawk, mobian_canary) due to the BUR script limit of 25.

EDIT: The bulk update request #3580 (forum #350292) has been approved by @slyroon.

The bulk update request #5759 is active.

create alias mobian_armadillo (1) -> armadillo (1896)
create alias mobian_mouse (0) -> mouse (57398)
create alias mobian_skunk (2) -> skunk (34303)
create alias mobian_donkey (0) -> donkey (12022)
create alias mobian_pika (1) -> pika (185)
create alias mobian_humanoid (0) -> humanoid (522409)
create alias mobian_dolphin (1) -> dolphin (14817)
create alias mobian_bee (0) -> bee (10209)
create alias mobian_quokka (1) -> quokka (213)
create alias mobian_cattle (3) -> cattle (52127)
create alias mobian_hyena (3) -> hyena (55098)
create alias mobian_platypus (0) -> platypus (1028)

Reason: Here we go again... Same reason as BUR #3433 & BUR #3580 / topic #35709
A third BUR was created due to the BUR script limit of 25.

EDIT: The bulk update request #5759 (forum #380407) has been approved by @slyroon.

The bulk update request #3433 (forum #347654) has been approved by @slyroon.

The bulk update request #3580 (forum #350292) has been approved by @slyroon.

The bulk update request #5759 (forum #380407) has been approved by @slyroon.

The bulk update request #3436 (forum #347758) has been rejected by @slyroon.

This decision is a bad one.

dirtymac said:
This decision is a bad one.

as a lifelong, diehard Sonic fan, I can say with 100% certainty, this is a totally reasonable decision. "Mobian" is literally a synonym of anthro there is no reason that it needs to exist, let alone have a mobian_* variant for literally every species that anyone would draw in the Sonic artstyle.

_{also, these were being applied to characters like infinite_(sonic) and surge_the_tenrec who weren't from Mobius because they're only in canon or IDW universes where Mobius does not exist.}