TL;DR: Read the three heading questions

A few questions:
If I understand correctly, posts that are meant to be a sequence (e.g., a comic; multiple single-frame pieces that show something chronologically; posts that, while related, are different pieces and meant to go together) should be added as a pool. Parent/child relationships are for alternate versions, derivations of a piece, or when a visually-identical but higher-resolution post replaces its predecessor.

1. Is the above correct?

[If not, ignore this entire post lol]

If so, there are MANY [url=https://e621.net/posts?tags=transformation]transformation[/url] pieces that should be in pools, but have instead been associated using parent/child relationships. I usually don't correct these, as typically the first post in the sequence will have the second post as its child, the second will have the third as its child, etc. It works well enough, although it can be annoying to get to the first piece from the middle if it is a long sequence.

However, I've recently noticed a few sequences that have the first piece as the parent to every other piece in the sequence (I just fixed the posts found in https://e621.net/pools/35706, but have yet to fix the sequence involving https://e621.net/posts/4187127). I've grown tired of these sloppy associations. I now have two questions:

2. Can I get help for correcting existing sequences like this?

I know I said the parent/child thing, while incorrect, is usually fine, but it would be so nice to have it fixed. (A dangerous thought, I know :) )

Historically, I haven't been involved in the e621 community, so while I've noticed new tags like transformation_via_sex and species_transformation, I don't know if this curation of the "transformation" posts has been a centralized effort or simply individual enthusiasts. College starts up for me; I know I won't get very far in correcting these sequences before I become too busy and eventually abandon the project. (Honestly, I'm just hoping I can remember to check this post :P ) Any guidance on how I could connect to others who care about this kind of stuff would be helpful.

3. How can we make this not a problem in the future?

While correcting previous mistakes is good, preventing more from happening is even better. I'm guessing that the best way to do this is to message each person who incorrectly uses parent/child relationships as I notice them and ask them to use pools, but I'm holding onto hope that there might be some way to get the message out to those in the tf (transformation) community in one fell swoop. At the very least, I'd like to hear ideas on what we can do.

https://e621.net/posts/4192294?q=parent%3A4192294
https://e621.net/posts/4192875?q=parent%3A4192871
https://e621.net/posts/4198377?q=parent%3A4196289
A few examples of what I typically see (parent/child "chain" instead of a pool).

For the ones where the parent relationships form a chain, I made a tool to convert it to a pool: topic #39306.
Ones where one parent has a ton of children are harder, since order information is lost. I generally grab the list of children, create the pool manually, and bulk remove the parent from the children in that case.

There was one post that had over a hundred children, though they were already in a pool.

arben_sear said:
If I understand correctly, posts that are meant to be a sequence (e.g., a comic; multiple single-frame pieces that show something chronologically; posts that, while related, are different pieces and meant to go together) should be added as a pool

When it's more than two or three posts, yes. A two-post sequence can still use parent/child links. Sometimes it occurs because the poster doesn't know better, other times it happens because it grew into a sequence unexpectedly over time and didn't need to be a pool until the unexpected third or fourth page comes out.

arben_sear said:
I usually don't correct these, as typically the first post in the sequence will have the second post as its child, the second will have the third as its child, etc. It works well enough, although it can be annoying to get to the first piece from the middle if it is a long sequence.

Those are actually the ones in most need of correction, because parent-child chains like that should be avoided. They're terrible for navigation, whereas when all posts have the first page as a parent, you can at least see/access the whole sequence from the first page similar to a pool. But yes, when there's more than two posts in a sequence, it should use a pool.

It's not just transformation that suffers from this problem, though. I've also seen short comics and other non-tf sequences use parent-child links, and I've seen some sequences use parent-child links and a pool (posts in a pool shouldn't also be linked as parent/child).

Admittedly I've been a bit lazy on properly fixing them when I notice sequences using parent-child links, primarily because I have a difficult time coming up with a name for a pool if there isn't an apparent title in the description of the posts.

arben_sear said:
If I understand correctly, posts that are meant to be a sequence (e.g., a comic; multiple single-frame pieces that show something chronologically; posts that, while related, are different pieces and meant to go together) should be added as a pool. Parent/child relationships are for alternate versions, derivations of a piece, or when a visually-identical but higher-resolution post replaces its predecessor.

1. Is the above correct?

[If not, ignore this entire post lol]

Although not explicitly stated, the consensus among staff is that if the posts that are meant to be in a sequence, but have max 2 (or 3) posts (and no more likely to be made in the future), it's better suited for parent-child relations than in a pool.