Sorry if this seems dumb or silly.
But these seem to be fully different tags. On "young" there are many images I'd never find searching for "cub".
But why though?
For my understanding, a cub is a young/underaged animal.
And same seems to be for every young character on the "young" rag. To me personally, they're cubs.

But is there an official difference between young and cub? I don't really get it.

young is any character under 18, including humans and humanoids. Cub is a preteen anthro, feral, or (sometimes) taur character.

watsit said:
young is any character under 18, including humans and humanoids. Cub is a preteen anthro, feral, or (sometimes) taur character.

I know there has been plenty of discussion about what qualifies as [cub]], but the wiki still does not state anything about characters having to be preteen, and even explicitly includes underage teenagers.

themasterpotato said:
I know there has been plenty of discussion about what qualifies as [cub]], but the wiki still does not state anything about characters having to be preteen, and even explicitly includes underage teenagers.

According to a DM from an admin someone got in topic #39531, it's supposed to be for "childlike" characters rather than teenagers. Given there are posts locked young -cub, cub isn't supposed to include all young characters, which teenagers is the oldest set of.

watsit said:
According to a DM from an admin someone got in topic #39531, it's supposed to be for "childlike" characters rather than teenagers. Given there are posts locked young -cub, cub isn't supposed to include all young characters, which teenagers is the oldest set of.

That seems like an unneedfully complicated definition to me. The only utility I can think of for having cub alongside young is if someone is fine with seeing feral/anthro/taur young characters but not human/humanoid ones*. We already have the baby, toddler, child, and teenager tags to cover age groups.

*EDIT: though honestly for that it would be better to have a specific tag for human/humanoid young characters. If there's other utility the cub tag provides please inform me.

right now, the difference is that cub gets tagged on anthros, ferals, and body types in between those two like taurs, whereas young gets tagged on any body type. hence why it is better to blacklist young than cub, you'll achieve more results that way.

the argument as i know it is that there's two different statements, each by at least one staff member: Rainbow Dash says that it was always intended to mean the younger end of youth within my aforementioned perimeters, so anywhere from infants to preteens; Donovan DMC says that it is for any character that looks young and et cetera, which means teens are included. i don't know who's right here, so i really hope some more staff members chip in.

siral_exan said:
right now, the difference is that cub gets tagged on anthros, ferals, and body types in between those two like taurs, whereas young gets tagged on any body type. hence why it is better to blacklist young than cub, you'll achieve more results that way.

the argument as i know it is that there's two different statements, each by at least one staff member: Rainbow Dash says that it was always intended to mean the younger end of youth within my aforementioned perimeters, so anywhere from infants to preteens; Donovan DMC says that it is for any character that looks young and et cetera, which means teens are included. i don't know who's right here, so i really hope some more staff members chip in.

The wiki for cub has stated it covers all underage characters for just over 13 years
https://e621.net/wiki_page_versions/3152

That's how I've known it, and the only challenge I've seen to that is some that have had a different definition in their head. This wiki page has said all ages since creation, anything outside of that has been mentioned in passing or thought up without actually reading the wiki. There's been an internal idea to change the tag's meaning, but that hasn't actually happened. The most that's happened is mentions in passing and inconsistent tag locks.

I'd personally prefer cub being aliased to young, and a new term being chosen.

Throw in loli and shota, which last time admin enforced them are exclusively for explicit posts and humans only, even though those terms are utilized on safe material and determine anthros as well.

All I know is that a particular artist has some users for constantly tagging cub on their art, and just about every time the post gets reported, cub gets locked off while young stays on. Given how contentious a tag like cub can be on porn (and how vague it can be when applied to various fictional species and ferals and the like), it seems to me the admins wanted to lower the apparent age the tag applies to (while leaving young itself alone).

cub is honestly a pretty odd tag, it's definition is unlike anything else in its class, being "a young anthro and feral character, and also taurs who aren't humanoid_taurs, also not teenagers, I guess". it's imprecise and inconsistent, I don't really totally get why it remained a thing after the creation of the <adjective>_<form> tag families.

I don't see why we shouldn't retag all existing cub posts to young_feral or young_anthro and then alias cub away to young.

watsit said:
According to a DM from an admin someone got in topic #39531, it's supposed to be for "childlike" characters rather than teenagers. Given there are posts locked young -cub, cub isn't supposed to include all young characters, which teenagers is the oldest set of.

I'm just saying that if that's how the tag is supposed to be used it needs to be clarified in the wiki. Because right now I don't really know who to trust on the matter because everybody has their own interpretation.

And it wouldn't be the first time for locked tags to contradict eachother, I once came across a post that has slit_penetration male/ambiguous locked to it, even though slit_penetration would imply the ambiguous character is male.

donovan_dmc said:
The wiki for cub has stated it covers all underage characters for just over 13 years
https://e621.net/wiki_page_versions/3152

That's how I've known it, and the only challenge I've seen to that is some that have had a different definition in their head. This wiki page has said all ages since creation, anything outside of that has been mentioned in passing or thought up without actually reading the wiki. There's been an internal idea to change the tag's meaning, but that hasn't actually happened. The most that's happened is mentions in passing and inconsistent tag locks.

I'd personally prefer cub being aliased to young, and a new term being chosen.

you changed it after i (admittedly half-assed) changed it per Rainbow Dash's claim, which i cited in my edit reason. whatever's going on, there's a dispute between staff members that needs to be resolved before cub can be fixed, or safely aliased away should that be the decision.

donovan_dmc said:
I'd personally prefer cub being aliased to young, and a new term being chosen.

At this point I'm not sure there's anybody left who doesn't support this. cub has always been inconsistently defined, and the tag now seems to exist just to cause trouble.

siral_exan said:
you changed it after i (admittedly half-assed) changed it per Rainbow Dash's claim, which i cited in my edit reason. whatever's going on, there's a dispute between staff members that needs to be resolved before cub can be fixed, or safely aliased away should that be the decision.

I changed it back because it was changed without any discussion from other staff members. It hasn't been brought agreed upon between us, and what it says right now is what it has said for 13 years. I didn't change the definition at all.

This line:

While most cubs are quite young (4-10, in human years), the phrase cub can refer to all physically immature and legally underage characters, ranging from infants, to teenagers.

Has been present practically unchanged for over 13 years. One person doesn't get to change that without any internal discussion, especially when we can't agree on its usage.

donovan_dmc said:
This line:
Has been present practically unchanged for over 13 years. One person doesn't get to change that without any internal discussion, especially when we can't agree on its usage.

I think it's fair for a user to change the wiki based on a definitive statement from an admin. If the admin gets overruled or rescinds the statement, it can be changed back, but given a direct definitive statement, that is (IMO) grounds to change it regardless of how long it's been unchanged prior to the statement. It would also help to add links in the wiki to the forum topics discussing it so other readers can know why it says what it does.

watsit said:
I think it's fair for a user to change the wiki based on a definitive statement from an admin. If the admin gets overruled or rescinds the statement, it can be changed back, but given a direct definitive statement, that is (IMO) grounds to change it regardless of how long it's been unchanged prior to the statement. It would also help to add links in the wiki to the forum topics discussing it so other readers can know why it says what it does.

One admin doesn't get to overrule an unresolved internal discussion.
https://e621.net/forum_topics/39531?page=1#forum_post_372430

The wikis are a mess right now and most of staff was unaware that the cub wiki was including all under 18 characters. That's really unhelpful to us and we are going to fix it.

This is not definitive for anything, and saying "most were unaware" is overgeneralizing at best.

Dash said "we are going to fix it". They didn't say "change the wiki and spread this new definition". "We are going to fix it" refers to having an internal discussion, which is still onging.

donovan_dmc said:
Dash said "we are going to fix it". They didn't say "change the wiki and spread this new definition". "We are going to fix it" refers to having an internal discussion, which is still onging.

Has this "discussion" been continuously ongoing for the last five months, and is there any hope of a resolution?

wat8548 said:
Has this "discussion" been continuously ongoing for the last five months, and is there any hope of a resolution?

It's been ongoing for longer than 5 months. I've been pitching into it for at least 7. I'm planning on spearheading some action here soon.

donovan_dmc said:
It's been ongoing for longer than 5 months. I've been pitching into it for at least 7. I'm planning on spearheading some action here soon.

topic #41659

donovan_dmc said:
It's been ongoing for longer than 5 months. I've been pitching into it for at least 7. I'm planning on spearheading some action here soon.

frankly, why is it going on in private? from an outsider's point of view, all i can say is that Rainbow Dash said the tag wiki's wrong, they've acted upon this interpretation that cub tags exclude teens / sufficiently old-looking young characters, and then you claim that the wiki's always been correct, you've acted in the aforementioned undoing of the wiki page, and then it was left at that. if Rainbow Dash is correct, then this would be an old argument from before you were a staff member, which would explain why you believe yourself correct; if you are correct, then Rainbow Dash has explicitly acted against this and prematurely locked cub off of posts while that discussion is unresolved. these are both very serious claims, but unfortunately it's all some random user has to go off of if they look into this mess.

so... who's correct here, and more importantly why?

siral_exan said:
frankly, why is it going on in private? ...

Because, paraphrasing what various admins have said: The forum users are a bunch of obnoxious nerds that take tagging way too seriously, only being a loud minority that make the site harder to use and create too much work for them.

siral_exan said:
frankly, why is it going on in private? from an outsider's point of view, all i can say is that Rainbow Dash said the tag wiki's wrong, they've acted upon this interpretation that cub tags exclude teens / sufficiently old-looking young characters, and then you claim that the wiki's always been correct, you've acted in the aforementioned undoing of the wiki page, and then it was left at that. if Rainbow Dash is correct, then this would be an old argument from before you were a staff member, which would explain why you believe yourself correct; if you are correct, then Rainbow Dash has explicitly acted against this and prematurely locked cub off of posts while that discussion is unresolved. these are both very serious claims, but unfortunately it's all some random user has to go off of if they look into this mess.

so... who's correct here, and more importantly why?

Several people have their own interpretations. I can't imagine a tag wiki being incorrect for 13 years and never being corrected. The only time it was mentioned in a wiki was a version of young, added by a random user, and subsequently reverted by a staff member. What's in the wiki hasn't changed, and that's ultimately what has prevailed until admins started applying their own thoughts of what the cub tag is. The inconsistent application between even staff members has lead to topic #41659, which completely aliases the tag away. It won't matter who's right or wrong with that getting accepted, which it presumably will with its current 16 upvotes and 1 downvote.

frankly, why is it going on in private?

We didn't want 1000 voices screaming something at once. It's public now if you really want to participate, aliasing is the solution those of us that talked came to.
topic #41659

donovan_dmc said:
Several people have their own interpretations. I can't imagine a tag wiki being incorrect for 13 years and never being corrected. The only time it was mentioned in a wiki was a version of young, added by a random user, and subsequently reverted by a staff member. What's in the wiki hasn't changed, and that's ultimately what has prevailed until admins started applying their own thoughts of what the cub tag is. The inconsistent application between even staff members has lead to topic #41659, which completely aliases the tag away. It won't matter who's right or wrong with that getting accepted, which it presumably will with its current 16 upvotes and 1 downvote.

We didn't want 1000 voices screaming something at once. It's public now if you really want to participate, aliasing is the solution those of us that talked came to.
topic #41659

y'see, i can imagine a wiki being incorrect for an absurd amount of time, because i got a record for *gender*/*gender* tags removals when they matched the wiki's definition, by a staff member telling me the wiki was wrong and a discreet discussion between them never resulted in the wiki being fixed. i had to argue that i'm not a psychic and so, shouldn't be punished for being mislead by acting on faulty information, and that's been risked when Rainbow said the wiki was wrong this whole time.

in addition, i'd like to clarify that i didn't mean this discussion needed to be judged by the masses and drowned in opinions, i meant this wasn't always like this. back in the IRC days, "private" discussions between staff members and whatever random users were in the channel at the time, occurred whenever a tag was being discussed. this completely avoided the problem of secret discussions that no one could prove or disprove, since said random users could chime in with "yes, i was there and saw it happen". now, these discussions seem to exclusively happen in the staff's private channel, and not in the similar, but open to (let's call it) the "closed public" tag discussions channel of our server. this is a critical flaw when it comes to problems, instead of being able to find all the unbiased evidence what we can find now, amounts to two hearsay arguments.

so who's to trust here? this might end up being irrelevant if the tag gets aliased away, but will all our solutions to problem tags that nobody can research on, be to just remove the tag rather than make better ways to let people understand the problem?

You make it out like cub hasn't always been a problem tag. It's had conflicting definitions for years. The sheer amount of positive votes to negative votes shows that people just want to be rid of the tag.

donovan_dmc said:
You make it out like cub hasn't always been a problem tag. It's had conflicting definitions for years. The sheer amount of positive votes to negative votes shows that people just want to be rid of the tag.

that's not my argument, lest i would have shown it in your thread. i'm saying it is not a good idea to keep the average user, who are affected by staff decisions the most, out of the loop when it comes to important staff decisions. stuff like the changelog is fine, possibly making an announcement if it's monumental like the paysite content updated ruling (originally, paysite content was allowed so long as it was over 2 years old. that's now changed.). maybe cub isn't seen as monumental to you or the other staff members, but it can have negative effects on users like the old pairing tags, on me. what i'd like to see is the tag discussions channel used by staff members more often, or even create a new one where only staff can talk, but others can see so they can know whether to start or stop certain actions before a decision is (possibly not) said on the site.

siral_exan said:
that's not my argument, lest i would have shown it in your thread. i'm saying it is not a good idea to keep the average user, who are affected by staff decisions the most, out of the loop when it comes to important staff decisions. stuff like the changelog is fine, possibly making an announcement if it's monumental like the paysite content updated ruling (originally, paysite content was allowed so long as it was over 2 years old. that's now changed.). maybe cub isn't seen as monumental to you or the other staff members, but it can have negative effects on users like the old pairing tags, on me. what i'd like to see is the tag discussions channel used by staff members more often, or even create a new one where only staff can talk, but others can see so they can know whether to start or stop certain actions before a decision is (possibly not) said on the site.

We have those conversations in private because we don't want to need to watch what we say. They're brought publicly when needed, such as now. I for one don't want normal users seeing or participating in those conversations until they're brought publicly, as this one has been. We keep them internal for a reason. If we wanted to hash them out publicly, we would. It will ultimately be a staff decision, so we talk amongst ourselves to see what we think will be the best move going forward, then present that and see what people think of it.

donovan_dmc said:
We have those conversations in private because we don't want to need to watch what we say. They're brought publicly when needed, such as now. I for one don't want normal users seeing or participating in those conversations until they're brought publicly, as this one has been. We keep them internal for a reason. If we wanted to hash them out publicly, we would. It will ultimately be a staff decision, so we talk amongst ourselves to see what we think will be the best move going forward, then present that and see what people think of it.

i'm sorry, but what? "we don't need to watch what we say" sounds like "we don't want others' opinions because we may say what they don't like", but then when a decision is made, are those users just damned? why are you gonna be a staff member if you don't want the lash back of any decision you make, since it's not like some random user can't see cub get removed, get angry about it, and bitch to whichever staff members they do choose. in addition, "they're brought publicly when they are needed, as this one has been" is not true, this needed to be brought up whenever Rainbow Dash started acting against the current wiki definition but instead nobody noticed or cared until now. had it been brought up back then, the problem about two different interpretations over the intended use for cub, would not exist since they'd have an opportunity correct themselves or explain their reasoning, instead people are now confused since two staff members say and acted on two different things.

i say the reason for keeping them internal is bad, it relies on self-governing to make sure everyone's on the same page before they do or say anything. in addition, it causes a "just trust me" argument, you still refuse to cite any proof that these discussions even happen; had i not the experience of the IRC channel and the aforementioned record, all i could do is either argue or trust... and it still is a staff decision, it's not like letting other users see what's going on suddenly makes them the deciding factor. finally, it never looks like a "presented" change, people were blindsided by the paysite content rule, the revised relevancy standard (thus causing grandfathered_content), and even this new name restrictions, these were all done with no user knowing it would happen and were just enforced suddenly. whether they were necessary or not, people can feel like it's forced rather than be able to learn about it and make their own conclusion before being affected by it.

us users don't have a say for any administrative action or change on the site, but that doesn't mean we deserve to be blind to those.

siral_exan said:
i'm sorry, but what? "we don't need to watch what we say" sounds like "we don't want others' opinions because we may say what they don't like"

That isn't what it is and I'm pretty sure you know that. Things like specific users get mentioned within some discussions, and that isn't appropriate for a public conversation.

siral_exan said:
"they're brought publicly when they are needed, as this one has been" is not true, this needed to be brought up whenever Rainbow Dash started acting against the current wiki definition but instead nobody noticed or cared until now.

We did notice and care. No one has been brave enough to spearhead a corrective project. Anyone could have done that. Anyone, but no one has. Why? Because it's a massive issue to tackle that no one wanted to even start on. Dragging it out into the public doesn't change that. There have been several forums on it already, and nothing came of it.

siral_exan said:
you still refuse to cite any proof that these discussions even happen

If by that you mean I refuse to leak internal staff discussions, yes, I'm not doing that.

You're making out having any internal discussion as if it's something heinous that should never happen. Internal discussions are necessary and will continue happen. Not every little detail needs to be public.

siral_exan said:
and even this new name restrictions

That restriction has existed for years, it isn't anything new. The only new thing is showing a notice. Something technical like name restrictions isn't really user choice anyways, it's a technical choice. They've been restricted in the way they are to fit our needs. A discussion around that wouldn't provide anything useful. They aren't being forced to change their name right now, it's a suggestion currently, with the implication that it will be required at a future date.

donovan_dmc said:
That isn't what it is and I'm pretty sure you know that. Things like specific users get mentioned within some discussions, and that isn't appropriate for a public conversation.

no, i didn't know that. i don't know anything you guys do until it's done, you keep it private!

We did notice and care. No one has been brave enough to spearhead a corrective project. Anyone could have done that. Anyone, but no one has. Why? Because it's a massive issue to tackle that no one wanted to even start on. Dragging it out into the public doesn't change that. There have been several forums on it already, and nothing came of it.

i'm not referring to cub, i'm referring to Rainbow Dash. you say they acted against this discussion, that means they committed tag lock vandalism. is that true or not?

If by that you mean I refuse to leak internal staff discussions, yes, I'm not doing that.

i'm sorry, is this now supposed to be private discussions about the cub tag, or external? you've been the only one here saying it's happened, if it happened then where's the other staff members saying "yes, it happened"? screenshots aren't the only way to prove something, though i won't lie and say "i didn't want those" since it would be a lot easier to know what you're talking about if i could see it. i just have to trust you instead.

You're making out having any internal discussion as if it's something heinous that should never happen. Internal discussions are necessary and will continue happen. Not every little detail needs to be public.

i'm making out a "internal discussions of this magnitude, should also keep users in the loop so they can act accordingly". that way, they don't risk records or can save themselves a headache, something i was not afforded.

That restriction has existed for years, it isn't anything new. The only new thing is showing a notice. Something technical like name restrictions isn't really user choice anyways, it's a technical choice. They've been restricted in the way they are to fit our needs. A discussion around that wouldn't provide anything useful. They aren't being forced to change their name right now, it's a suggestion currently, with the implication that it will be required at a future date.

and that's news to me, because it did not come up until now.

siral_exan said:
i'm sorry, is this now supposed to be private discussions about the cub tag, or external? you've been the only one here saying it's happened, if it happened then where's the other staff members saying "yes, it happened"? screenshots aren't the only way to prove something, though i won't lie and say "i didn't want those" since it would be a lot easier to know what you're talking about if i could see it. i just have to trust you instead.

If you can't even take the word for it that it was talked about you have other problems.

I'd like to remind you of faucet's post above because frankly this is giving me these exact feelings.

siral_exan said:
i'm sorry, but what? "we don't need to watch what we say" sounds like "we don't want others' opinions because we may say what they don't like", but then when a decision is made, are those users just damned?

I think one argument in favour of not talking about these things publicly is that it prevents people from reading a single message, misinterpreting it as the final say on the matter and making changes to wiki pages based upon that misinterpretation. By keeping these discussions private they don't have to "watch what they say" in the sense that nobody is going to go ahead and make big changes based on a misunderstanding.

You could see it happen with cub because suddenly there were multiple people saying that it had been decided that the definition had changed because one admin said that most of staff wasn't aware of the wiki definition and that they were "going to fix it". Which could mean the wiki definition should be changed, but it could also mean making all staff aware of the current wiki definition so that there won't be discrepancies in moderation.

earlopain said:
If you can't even take the word for it that it was talked about you have other problems.

I'd like to remind you of faucet's post above because frankly this is giving me these exact feelings.

i wonder why i (if this shows) have trust problems when it comes to staff members making silent decisions. i can't help but see a problem with "we've made a change / want to make a change, but let's keep quiet about it while users continue to act against our (possible) desires". however, i do appreciate your response, i don't like arguing and i don't like when it's with one person. i'll withdraw my stance on the matter though i greatly dislike the outcome.

That's the whole point though, no? Impi did things without consulting neither staff or other users, and to my understanding was eventually removed for this. Here things were discussed first internally (which I am now officially confirming to quell any doubts you may have). Now the discussion is being brought out into the open.

earlopain said:
That's the whole point though, no? Impi did things without consulting neither staff or other users, and to my understanding was eventually removed for this. Here things were discussed first internally (which I am now officially confirming to quell any doubts you may have). Now the discussion is being brought out into the open.

and i appreciate that, but it didn't look like that 5 months ago. all i could see is Rainbow Dash's statement and actions, then later Donovan's statement and actions, so while a discussion was actually occurring in the background, from just an e6 user's point of view it looked like nothing was happening. then, people agreed that cub, loli, and shota should be done away with and (possibly) improved, when it seemed like the solution was to find out who was correct and act on that.

so now we're probably gonna get rid of cub. though i'm not against this change per say, since it's rather redundant with it matching young's definition but just for furry (except animal humanoid) characters, and does cause problems when people blacklist it instead of young, it also feels like it could have been changed much earlier and potentially make it worth keeping around. it feels less like a good choice and more of a "final solution", which won't look good to the people using it and now only using young. so, does anyone think it could have been fixed?

donovan_dmc said:
One admin doesn't get to overrule an unresolved internal discussion.
https://e621.net/forum_topics/39531?page=1#forum_post_372430
This is not definitive for anything, and saying "most were unaware" is overgeneralizing at best.

Dash said "we are going to fix it". They didn't say "change the wiki and spread this new definition". "We are going to fix it" refers to having an internal discussion, which is still onging.

It wasn't just a single admin. NotMeNotYou, Millcore, and bitWolfy also all locked -cub +young well before RainbowDash started. And the statement "Looks teenager, but not childlike. We'll update the wiki here soon, but that's how we've been meaning to use the split." seems pretty definitive to me. The later post doesn't contradict or cast doubt on what the original statement said and meant, which clearly indicates the admins were in agreement that the wiki should never have included teenagers, which is also inline with the locking behavior we see from them.

I think this is a pretty dangerous stance you're asking us to take. We're supposed to obey what the admins say and do, not second-guess them (and when it's four admins doing it, that seems extra dangerous to ignore). Especially when we see people get in trouble for following the wiki which goes against what they say/do (i.e. mass-tagging cub on posts that have teen-looking anthro/feral characters).

themasterpotato said:
I think one argument in favour of not talking about these things publicly is that it prevents people from reading a single message, misinterpreting it as the final say on the matter and making changes to wiki pages based upon that misinterpretation. By keeping these discussions private they don't have to "watch what they say" in the sense that nobody is going to go ahead and make big changes based on a misunderstanding.

That's exactly what happened, though. Because all this discussion is going on silently behind closed doors, we can only repeat what's been said and done publicly. If something gets misinterpreted, we don't have the larger discussion to point to and see where the misinterpretation happened, or if something gets taken out of context, we don't have the greater context to look at for a better understanding of the situation. All we have is what's been said, where it seems like a damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don't situation. If we take what the admins say at face value, and change the wiki and tag use accordingly, we get in trouble for changing something that there's silent on-going discussions going on about, while if we ignore them because they didn't make a public statement and change the wiki themselves yet, we get in trouble for not following what they say or do. People who read the wiki and tag accordingly will run afoul of what the admins say, while if a user tries to correct the wiki based on admin statements, they get bapped for changing it instead of waiting for an admin to change it (while it's also been stated that we don't have to wait for an admin to change wiki entries if we see it's incorrect; they can lock wiki pages for tags that only they should change).

watsit said:
It wasn't just a single admin. NotMeNotYou, Millcore, and bitWolfy also all locked -cub +young well before RainbowDash started. And the statement "Looks teenager, but not childlike. We'll update the wiki here soon, but that's how we've been meaning to use the split." seems pretty definitive to me. The later post doesn't contradict or cast doubt on what the original statement said and meant, which clearly indicates the admins were in agreement that the wiki should never have included teenagers, which is also inline with the locking behavior we see from them.

Dash has said things about changing the definition, sure. Have the others? I asked NotMeNotYou specifically for the definition that he has in mind, and he said nothing about it excluding teenagers (This is in spoilers because I'm collecting multiple staff member's opinions, and don't want them influencing eachother). Tag locks are not a definitive statement.

watsit said:
I think this is a pretty dangerous stance you're asking us to take. We're supposed to obey what the admins say and do, not second-guess them (and when it's four admins doing it, that seems extra dangerous to ignore). Especially when we see people get in trouble for following the wiki which goes against what they say/do (i.e. mass-tagging cub on posts that have teen-looking anthro/feral characters).

What users have gotten in trouble for that? Did they by chance get in trouble from dash? They are the one that has primarily been preaching the preteen requirement from the staff side. I don't know anyone else actually pushing that definition. Any records for that should be disputed, as they are very likely to be invalid, if they are actually for adding cub to anthro/feral posts where young is already present.

watsit said:
And the statement "Looks teenager, but not childlike. We'll update the wiki here soon, but that's how we've been meaning to use the split." seems pretty definitive to me.

Okay sure, dash has said they fully believe the other definition is the one that should be used and on the wiki. That doesn't overrule every other staff member's feelings on the matter. Making a change based on that would be excluding all of us, as it was never brought up. The change was not discussed, thus nothing changed. We did ask around for who thought of the same definition. A few did, though most didn't.

donovan_dmc said:
Dash has said things about changing the definition, sure. Have the others?

Do they need to? They're an admin, what they say is what we non-admins have to adhere to. Unless we have reason to bring the issue up with NotMeNotYou, we should take what they say as true. In either case, their statements did indicate others:

Looks teenager, but not childlike. We'll update the wiki here soon, but that's how we've been meaning to use the split.

The wikis are a mess right now and most of staff was unaware that the cub wiki was including all under 18 characters. That's really unhelpful to us and we are going to fix it.

If that's untrue, that it's just their preference that others aren't on board with, that would seem to be an abuse of power to make it appear as if it's a consensus among staff and have less reason to bring up the issue with NMNY. Though given how long they've been an admin (going by their positive records, they were already one as of 2014), that would seem unlikely behavior on their part.

donovan_dmc said:
I asked NotMeNotYou specifically for the definition that he has in mind, and he said nothing about it excluding teenagers (This is in spoilers because I'm collecting multiple staff member's opinions, and don't want them influencing eachother).

That's a bit unfair to question them that way, since it's avoiding the specific detail we need clarification on. They're giving a basic response based on what they vaguely remember about the wiki, which is exactly the thing in contention. And as I pointed out, they have themselves locked -cub +young on multiple posts contrary to the wiki, so asking a general question and getting a general answer doesn't really clarify the specifics at issue.

donovan_dmc said:
What users have gotten in trouble for that? Did they by chance get in trouble from dash?

It's difficult to find, unfortunately. I've tried looking at some posts that I knew were hit with the mass-tagging, but all I'm finding for people that have been banned who had added cub to young posts just has the reason "Ban evasion", with no link to the original account (or it was done long enough ago that the record they got would be scrubbed by now), so I can't verify any records, or find the original ban reason without knowing the original account(s) of these evasion accounts. This search also doesn't want to seem to work (find post edits that added cub on posts that have -cub young in the final tag lock), which makes it harder to track down instances.

donovan_dmc said:
Okay sure, dash has said they fully believe the other definition is the one that should be used and on the wiki. That doesn't overrule every other staff member's feelings on the matter.

Unless we have reason to take it up with NMNY, an admin telling us what to do is what we should do (and what an admin says does overrule whatever moderators and janitors may say). So if an admin tells us cub doesn't apply to teenagers, that's how we should handle the tag until we're told differently by another admin. The alternative would be to ignore what an admin is telling us, which would be at our own peril.

I'm not to continue going around and around in circles in this topic for weeks on end. Nothing productive is going to come out of this. One admin has stated their opinions on a definition and claims it's going to be changed, but that hasn't actually happened. That's where it still sits. No conversation around changing the wiki has been brought up, ergo any changes by normal users were undone.

If you believe I'm abusing my position as a staff member, I encourage you to report me directly, or report this forum post to escalate the matter.

Okay, I have arrived.

Unlocking this just so we can discuss it a wee bit. But no more circles.

Now, I said that we were going to fix the tag (which we are) and that my interpretation of the tag was not how it is used (which is also true). But beyond that I didn't say much else.

So, what's the argument about? Well, essentially we can't agree on what tag would be used in place of cub to indicate (young-preteen) and that has been hanging us up. We all agreed that cub, loli, and shota need to get the axe, and we want to separate the very young (like literal children) from the just slightly young (like upper teenagers). We don't want to keep using cub (as it's a mess) and we don't want to use human only terms. Worse, we don't want to use human only and gendered terms.

What happens next? Well, we start to dismantle and prepare the tags to get rid of cub. We'll try to find something to separate very young from not so young, but no promises. Loli and shota are also something we want to get rid of, but that's a bit harder because default blacklist.

Please for the love of god, give us tags for Basic, Stage 1, Stage 2, Baby stage pokemon. Please... Stop lumping pokemon into cub/young, please.

rainbow_dash said:
Okay, I have arrived.

Unlocking this just so we can discuss it a wee bit. But no more circles.

Now, I said that we were going to fix the tag (which we are) and that my interpretation of the tag was not how it is used (which is also true). But beyond that I didn't say much else.

So, what's the argument about? Well, essentially we can't agree on what tag would be used in place of cub to indicate (young-preteen) and that has been hanging us up. We all agreed that cub, loli, and shota need to get the axe, and we want to separate the very young (like literal children) from the just slightly young (like upper teenagers). We don't want to keep using cub (as it's a mess) and we don't want to use human only terms. Worse, we don't want to use human only and gendered terms.

What happens next? Well, we start to dismantle and prepare the tags to get rid of cub. We'll try to find something to separate very young from not so young, but no promises. Loli and shota are also something we want to get rid of, but that's a bit harder because default blacklist.

talentlesshack said:
Please for the love of god, give us tags for Basic, Stage 1, Stage 2, Baby stage pokemon. Please... Stop lumping pokemon into cub/young, please.

That is unlikely to solve anything. People were already getting upset at their art being tagged baby_pokemon when it wasn't a baby in age. The "stage" of a pokemon doesn't indicate anything about how they look, it's not reflective of their age or anything, it's just a lore classification, which is why that got aliased away. And since we use TWYS, they'd still be tagged young if they look young regardless of whatever stage they are.

I'm just sick and tired of my artwork being walled off to users who aren't logged in simply because some administration decides it so, even if it's against the grain of the userbase. https://e621.net/posts/4091966
All I'm asking for is a solution to this tired argument.

I'm sick of being a target for weaponized tags, basically.

https://e621.net/posts?tags=youjomodoki - 17 pages of canon, on-model pokemon, but less than one page with cub/young tags applied. What gives? You guys say to be the solution to the problem, but then I get a gun put to my head that if I don't tag my own work as cub, I'll be red marked for it.

watsit said:
That is unlikely to solve anything. People were already getting upset at their art being tagged baby_pokemon when it wasn't a baby in age. The "stage" of a pokemon doesn't indicate anything about how they look, it's not reflective of their age or anything, it's just a lore classification, which is why that got aliased away. And since we use TWYS, they'd still be tagged young if they look young regardless of whatever stage they are.

talentlesshack said:
I'm just sick and tired of my artwork being walled off to users who aren't logged in simply because some administration decides it so, even if it's against the grain of the userbase. https://e621.net/posts/4091966
All I'm asking for is a solution to this tired argument.

I'm sick of being a target for weaponized tags, basically.

https://e621.net/posts?tags=youjomodoki - 17 pages of canon, on-model pokemon, but less than one page with cub/young tags applied. What gives? You guys say to be the solution to the problem, but then I get a gun put to my head that if I don't tag my own work as cub, I'll be red marked for it.

Pokémon are and will continue to be tagged based on apparent physical appearance, not evolutionary stage lore. If you still really want this, evolutionary stages would only work as lore tags, which still only supplement the general tags like young.
You should make a separate thread and BUR if you want to pitch that idea, instead of hijacking this one. This thread was not re-opened to debate Pokémon ages.

rainbow_dash said:
So, what's the argument about? Well, essentially we can't agree on what tag would be used in place of cub to indicate (young-preteen) and that has been hanging us up. We all agreed that cub, loli, and shota need to get the axe, and we want to separate the very young (like literal children) from the just slightly young (like upper teenagers). We don't want to keep using cub (as it's a mess) and we don't want to use human only terms. Worse, we don't want to use human only and gendered terms.

baby, toddler, child, teenager (or adolescent if we can ever manage to make that switch). The only flaw with these tags is lack of usage, but generally speaking those with the most violent reactions to visually underage characters tend to object to everything that falls under the current young umbrella, which is not changing. Everything else is a matter of catering to individual preferences, which can be solved through the time-honoured system of crowdsourced tagging and telling people to fix the tags instead of complaining.

It's a bit sad that we can't have a child_(lore) tag to be implied by tags such as parent_and_child_(lore) due to the language conflict, but there's no way the family meaning of that word would manage to outcompete the age classification. I have been wondering if maybe an offspring_(lore) tag might be viable instead.

Based on physical appearance according to the administration you mean? Didn't the -cub/+young start on Dacad's posts and after they went CDNP for it? I figured it was relevant.

onefattycatty said:
Pokémon are and will continue to be tagged based on apparent physical appearance, not evolutionary stage lore. If you still really want this, evolutionary stages would only work as lore tags, which still only supplement the general tags like young.
You should make a separate thread and BUR if you want to pitch that idea, instead of hijacking this one. This thread was not re-opened to debate Pokémon ages.

Crowdsourced tagging doesn't work when a couple of admins decide the fate of a piece against literally everybody else. I'll just add this again, in case you haven't seen it. https://e621.net/posts/4091966

It also doesn't work when I'm told that if I don't add the tags myself, that I'll be banned from this website. That's not crowdsourced tagging. Not at all. I'm not trying to be argumentative, I just want a solution.

wat8548 said:
baby, toddler, child, teenager (or adolescent if we can ever manage to make that switch). The only flaw with these tags is lack of usage, but generally speaking those with the most violent reactions to visually underage characters tend to object to everything that falls under the current young umbrella, which is not changing. Everything else is a matter of catering to individual preferences, which can be solved through the time-honoured system of crowdsourced tagging and telling people to fix the tags instead of complaining.

It's a bit sad that we can't have a child_(lore) tag to be implied by tags such as parent_and_child_(lore) due to the language conflict, but there's no way the family meaning of that word would manage to outcompete the age classification. I have been wondering if maybe an offspring_(lore) tag might be viable instead.

Once more, this thread was not re-opened to debate Pokémon ages. Go make your own thread for that.

talentlesshack said:
Based on physical appearance according to the administration you mean? Didn't the -cub/+young start on Dacad's posts and after they went CDNP for it? I figured it was relevant.

if i may add
post #4424340 looked like cub and so i tagged giving my statement that it doesn't look to be just tagged with young and more leaned to cub
made my statement about the tag in the comment section
people agreed with upvotes

and NMNY went and locked the tags to not be applied again
https://e621.net/post_versions?search%5Bpost_id%5D=4424340
this isn't the first time that something like this has happened
i don't want to point to favoritism because it's not likely but kinda looks to have some targeted stuff
i just wanna know their line of thought of these stuff
the reason for doing changes is literally there and it's not used so i can only see staff doing this as "nuh uh" than giving a far better argument towards why and how a post is or isn't young/cub
all i ask is rightful opinions so i can debate better than just point my paws and claws to people

talentlesshack said:
Based on physical appearance according to the administration you mean? Didn't the -cub/+young start on Dacad's posts and after they went CDNP for it? I figured it was relevant.

These inconsistently-applied tag locks and differing definitions of what constitutes "young" but not "cub" are part of the reason why we've come to the conclusion that aliasing away the cub tag is the best solution, something that is all but certain to occur now based on the amount of support for it in the BUR thread.

Admins are brought in to resolve tag deadlocks based on user reports made when tag wars occur. This is necessary to prevent further tagging abuse from either side of the debate. If an admin doesn't rule in your favor, it's not because they personally have it out for anyone. Dacad has an art style that presents much ambiguity in regards to secondary sexual characteristics that we use to determine age in tagging, hence why his art is constantly the subject of tag wars.

Yes, but the Charmeleon post that I keep referring to was NOT involved in a tag war at all. Admins just rushed in and tag locked it and no matter how many users argue with the administration, including and up to banning people for discussing it, it still sits to this day as "cub," against literally every single user in the thread.

Please show me where the tag war is : https://e621.net/post_versions?search%5Bpost_id%5D=4091966

onefattycatty said:
These inconsistently-applied tag locks and differing definitions of what constitutes "young" but not "cub" are part of the reason why we've come to the conclusion that aliasing away the cub tag is the best solution, something that is all but certain to occur now based on the amount of support for it in the BUR thread.

Admins are brought in to resolve tag deadlocks based on user reports made when tag wars occur. This is necessary to prevent further tagging abuse from either side of the debate. If an admin doesn't rule in your favor, it's not because they personally have it out for anyone. Dacad has an art style that presents much ambiguity in regards to secondary sexual characteristics that we use to determine age in tagging, hence why his art is constantly the subject of tag wars.

That's enough. This thread wasn't reopened for personal bickering. Make a new thread and send it there.

Before this re-closes: is there a difference between young rating:explicit vs loli/shota? Why do we keep those two tags but not cub?

onefattycatty said:
Dacad has an art style that presents much ambiguity in regards to secondary sexual characteristics that we use to determine age in tagging, hence why his art is constantly the subject of tag wars.

a bunch of artist that i know here not just only including TalentlessHack here, have fuck ton bunch of ambiguity in regards to age and even sexual parts, staff and admins would consider something as male or female when it could just be ambiguous

I say and quote an certain staff member who i wont say the name in regards to what it was said to me when i couldn't determine the age of something

when i still today think this is the most entirely bullshit i have ever heard in my 21 years of life
i have never been told that
i tried searching for this and i still wanna see if there is actual sources relating to this information because i could find nothing
aliasing the cub tag to young will fix like 40% of the problems
it would be 50% because the 10% it's on the staff doing stuff like this
staff is not perfect, they aren't robots, ai or creation of god, they can do mistakes here and there
but the problem for some it's to not understand the other views and sides of the userbase/artist and usually just see as they see fit
opening forums it's easy and an admin could just straight away ask the community if they are doing something wrong and how it could be fixed or be better

i'm not saying all the staff is like this, some staff are chill and can understand the views of others and discuss about it
while the other tiny amount don't
i'm speaking this generally, not targetting anyone specifically

Edit: i may make or not a forum to this thing specifically being discussed

talentlesshack said:
Yes, but the Charmeleon post that I keep referring to was NOT involved in a tag war at all. Admins just rushed in and tag locked it and no matter how many users argue with the administration, including and up to banning people for discussing it, it still sits to this day as "cub," against literally every single user in the thread.

Please show me where the tag war is : https://e621.net/post_versions?search%5Bpost_id%5D=4091966

Take it up with NotMeNotYou.

wat8548 said:
It's a bit sad that we can't have a child_(lore) tag to be implied by tags such as parent_and_child_(lore) due to the language conflict, but there's no way the family meaning of that word would manage to outcompete the age classification. I have been wondering if maybe an offspring_(lore) tag might be viable instead.

Hijacking this thread to say that child_(lore) would be redundant because it's the same as parent_and_child_(lore), like how father_(lore) is basically the same as father_and_child_(lore)

dimoretpinel said:
Before this re-closes: is there a difference between young rating:explicit vs loli/shota? Why do we keep those two tags but not cub?

We aren't planning on keeping them, but that's a can of worms for another day.

dimoretpinel said:
Before this re-closes: is there a difference between young rating:explicit vs loli/shota? Why do we keep those two tags but not cub?

Loli and shota apply to sexualized young female and male characters respectively. It can also apply to Questionable posts. A non-Safe post with a young character doesn't have to mean the young character is sexualized, so there can be posts that are young -rating:safe and not loli/shota.

LOL, see the other post. topic #41659

watsit said:
Loli and shota apply to sexualized young female and male characters respectively. It can also apply to Questionable posts. A non-Safe post with a young character doesn't have to mean the young character is sexualized, so there can be posts that are young -rating:safe and not loli/shota.

But irritatingly, there's also non-sexualized shota/loli, like clothing styles (Gothic loli, magical girl/boy, etc.).

:edit: OK, read this. Kind of glad I waited until going through the other thread first.

faucet said:
Because, paraphrasing what various admins have said: The forum users are a bunch of obnoxious nerds that take tagging way too seriously, only being a loud minority that make the site harder to use and create too much work for them.

GUILTY - I mean I plead the 5th!

Hey, just to add to some things, why are some tags being appended on deleted posts?
https://e621.net/post_versions?search%5Bpost_id%5D=3982445
https://e621.net/post_versions?search%5Bpost_id%5D=2650065
https://e621.net/post_versions?search%5Bpost_id%5D=2551333
Some mine, some others, and it's not just [young_anthro] being appended to these posts, it's more than that, so a bot change doesn't make too much sense.
Some insight here would be nice.

Locking this once more since all that's really happened is people trying to hijack the thread. I scripted edits that added young_anthro & young_feral to cub anthro & cub feral posts, respectively. Post status was not considered when these edits were made.