Aliasing lamia → naga
Link to alias

Reason:

Those are two completely different things.

Ryuzaki_Izawa said:
Those are two completely different things.

OP is racist, talking like all snake people look the same

forum thread

Those are two *slightly* different things. Naga covers any snake/human mixes, Lamia covers a particular snake/human mix (human torso, snake tail).
They are from different mythologies, but I don't see why that should affect our tagging at all.

Those are used inconsistently in games: nagas are sometimes called lamias, and lamias are called nagas. And in some settings, they don't resemble either. For example, in Dungeons and Dragons 'Naga' are feral snakes with humanoid heads. And 'Lamia' are... liontaurs.

Which probably explains why those tags are always in need of clean up. But I'm not sure if there's anything that we can do about that. Aliasing them seems too drastic, it's not that bad of a mess.

So, basically, a naga covers all human/snake hybrids and monsters that aren't anthro snakes, while lamia covers the "taur" form of human upper torso attached to snake body?

Clawstripe said:
So, basically, a naga covers all human/snake hybrids and monsters that aren't anthro snakes

I'd describe (and tag) naga as anthro snakes. They're basically snakes with humanoid arms. Whereas lamia are comparable to harpies: half animal, half human hybrids.

Adding example thumbnails to the wiki might help keeping those in order, I'll see if I can find good ones. We have a lot of users (from Japan, for instance) who have trouble with English definitions; and using thumbnails has worked well for keeping other tags (such as cute) clean.

Just had to look into this recently actually, the wiki seems to sum it up pretty well and jives with the common understanding of the word.

I don't see a problem keeping them separate, but they ARE very similar. I vote for keeping them separate

So, -1

pro tip:
read the tag wikis

I'm surprised there is no general tag which describes creatures which are top-half human and bottom-half animal (Lamias, Centaurs, Mermaids, Arachnes, etc).

I guess this isn't highly relevant to your post, but looking up the distinction between Nagas and Lamias made me think of it, so whatever.

Forgive me if this sounds silly, but would it be completely crazy to treat lamia as a species of naga? I mean, it almost seems to me like the spectrum of "naga" actually encompasses "lamia", possibly enough to consider an implication like this.

• naga
• lamia

(Disclaimer: I'm not all that familiar with naga/lamia)

parasprite said:
Forgive me if this sounds silly, but would it be completely crazy to treat lamia as a species of naga? I mean, it almost seems to me like the spectrum of "naga" actually encompasses "lamia", possibly enough to consider an implication like this.

• naga
• lamia

(Disclaimer: I'm not all that familiar with naga/lamia)

+1 on lamia implying naga

-1 on lamia being aliased to naga (in case that wasn't already clear)

parasprite said:

• naga
• lamia

I'm not exactly against this, but what benefits would it have?
It'd make it harder to search for serpentine nagas, and -- except for possibly requiring less cleanup -- I don't see upsides.

What about any posts showing, you know, the actual Greek/Hindu creatures?

parasprite said:
Forgive me if this sounds silly, but would it be completely crazy to treat lamia as a species of naga? I mean, it almost seems to me like the spectrum of "naga" actually encompasses "lamia", possibly enough to consider an implication like this.

• naga
• lamia

(Disclaimer: I'm not all that familiar with naga/lamia)

*Scratches head... shrugs* I see no reason for it, not any reason against it :P however, it's in my personality to just say "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" but that's because I'm lazy XD

Genjar said:
I'm not exactly against this, but what benefits would it have?
It'd make it harder to search for serpentine nagas, and -- except for possibly requiring less cleanup -- I don't see upsides.

It's generally simpler to make a distinction between two extremely similar tags if one implies the other. When you do this, you can focus the discussion on "whether you tag lamia as well" rather than the more jumbled "Which do I tag? naga? lamia? both?"

It's likely to help with cleanup as you only have to fix one of the tags instead of having to go through both every time it needs a cleanup.

With this we might also be in a better position to add new tags in such as "naga_on_anthro", as we wouldn't have to bring in 2 completely new sets of tags that are likely to not get used due to how confusing they would be to people.

So, correct me if you think this wouldn't work for whatever reason:

• naga - Bottom half: snake. Top half: anthro, humanoid, or rarely some non-snake feral thing (non-snake because otherwise...well, it would just be a snake)
• lamia - Bottom half: snake. Top half: humanoid.

Which is pretty similar to how we treat taurs:

• taur - Bottom half: feral. Top half: anthro, humanoid, boob monster, etc.
• centaur - Bottom half: feral. Top half: humanoid.

parasprite said:
With this we might also be in a better position to add new tags in such as "naga_on_anthro", as we wouldn't have to bring in 2 completely new sets of tags that are likely to not get used due to how confusing they would be to people.

Naga are already covered by the anthro tag, since they're basically anthropomorphized snakes. So "naga_on_anthro" seems redundant, unless we restrict the usage of anthro to bipedals. But that'd cause problems with other species.

And Naga and Lamia are both actual mythological creatures, so implicating one to the other seems problematic. My vote would be to keep those separate, and keep using the current wiki definitions. Those seem to work well enough, I haven't seen anyone mix them up in recent weeks, after the example thumbnails were added to the wiki.

Genjar said:
Naga are already covered by the anthro tag, since they're basically anthropomorphized snakes. So "naga_on_anthro" seems redundant, unless we restrict the usage of anthro to bipedals. But that'd cause problems with other species.

And Naga and Lamia are both actual mythological creatures, so implicating one to the other seems problematic. My vote would be to keep those separate, and keep using the current wiki definitions. Those seem to work well enough, I haven't seen anyone mix them up in recent weeks, after the example thumbnails were added to the wiki.

Interesting. I was under the impression that we would be treating naga/lamia as a separate form (similar to how non-centaur taurs don't get tagged anthro). I suppose this is closer to centaur then in usage, but not as popular. I'd be fine with that.

Oh, and alias denied. Discussion is still encouraged however.