Base anatomy tags being fur, hair, scales, skin; a tag that could be easily augmented with a color prefix, such as purple_hair, green_scales, etc. and done away with.

Do we make a big tagging project and correct the existing images that have these base tags applied to them, and then alias the lot away to invalid tag? Can anyone provide a good reason why they shouldn't be fixed and then aliased away? We got rid of tail/ear and probably a few other tags for not having enough definition, so in my opinion these other tags should go the same way.

I wanted to get everyone's thoughts on this before committing on writing up a post in the Tagging Projects page, so...thoughts?

Sounds fine to me.

I don't use any of those much personally, but I suppose someone could need them to exclude things from their searches.

'dragon -fur -hair', for instance? I've known some folks who prefer their scalies completely hairless.

Genjar said:
I don't use any of those much personally, but I suppose someone could need them to exclude things from their searches.

'dragon -fur -hair', for instance? I've known some folks who prefer their scalies completely hairless.

You could do 'dragon -*_fur -*_hair', I think. Same number of tags.

Imo fur and skin should go away for sure.
Scales should be fixed, and only include images with visible scales like this:
post #348506
Not random "assumed scaled" like these:
post #375186
post #360374

Hair I am on the fence about.
I get the desire for some to find images without, particularly when talking about scalies and aquatic critters.
Perhaps we should do away with the "hair" tag and instead implement a "hairless" tag for those specific instances?

Halite said:
Imo fur and skin should go away for sure.
Scales should be fixed, and only include images with visible scales like this:
post #348506

green_scales does perfectly fine for that one, I say get rid of all of them.

Genjar said:
I don't use any of those much personally, but I suppose someone could need them to exclude things from their searches.

'dragon -fur -hair', for instance? I've known some folks who prefer their scalies completely hairless.

I am actually the other way on this, I like searching dragons WITH hair. So removing the hair tag to a color of hair would make me have to go though all the colors just to find something -.-

The hair tag is useful.

Conker said:
I am actually the other way on this, I like searching dragons WITH hair. So removing the hair tag to a color of hair would make me have to go though all the colors just to find something -.-

You can use "dragon *_hair".

Butterscotch said:
You can use "dragon *_hair".

Nope, that failed. All I got where images of dragons without hair mostly. It doesn't work.

Here is 1 example of what i got: https://e621.net/post/show/375015

Armpit_hair shouldn't bloody count -.-

Yeah, sounds good. I agree, tags like "skin" "fur" "hair" etc should be moved to [color of]_[skin/fur/hair/pawpads/etc]. Because it's a far more useful version of the tag, and can still be searched generally via a *_fur etc method. So it's the best of both worlds.

I also agree with Halite. Assumed scales and assumed fur is a pain. It should be tagged based on texture, not species. If you want the species, you search under species or the species umbrella tag (dragon, scalie, fish, marine, cat, feline, etc). If you want fur or scales or skin, then you're going to want to see that actual texture in the images. It's kind of a mess right now. But TWYS means you should tag what it looks like in that image, not what the species normally would have.

The only problem I can think of is for line_art or sketch images. You can see there's hair or other identifiable objects and traits but, because it's uncolored, there really isn't any way [color]_[object] is going to be a very good fit for that image. Using "white_[object or trait]" for everything would only flood the white_* tags with results which have a completely different aesthetic than images which have actually been colored to be white_hair, white_fur, etc and I think it would just create a mess. Greyscale can get away with it more easily, but uncolored sketches really don't fit very well in a color-based tag system without a tag of their own. Right now uncolored images are the only images with a legitimate claim to a non-color specific version of the tag. Maybe we need something for just outlined or non-colored stuff? Would uncolored_* work? So: uncolored_hair, uncolored_fur, uncolored_shirt, etc? I think that could work for otherwise uncolored images which still need these tags.

Conker said:
Nope, that failed. All I got where images of dragons without hair mostly. It doesn't work.

I'm not sure what you're talking about, to be honest. I just compared the first two pages of results for dragon hair and dragon *_hair

Not only did almost every image feature dragons with hair on their heads, but the results were nearly identical between the two searches. The biggest discrepancies between the results were due to undertagged hair (a pic with only the hair tag and no [color]_hair tag), which was easily fixed and needed fixing anyways. If the occasional armpit hair bothers you, you can either add a "-armpit_hair" to your search. OR even suggest that armpit_hair be changed to armpit_pubes. Misrepresenting search results isn't helpful though.

Conker said:
Nope, that failed. All I got where images of dragons without hair mostly. It doesn't work.

Here is 1 example of what i got: https://e621.net/post/show/375015

Armpit_hair shouldn't bloody count -.-

Would you be ok with removing the hair tag if there was a hairless tag?
Then you could -hairless

Skin.

A skin tag could be the key I need to finally start sweeping quasihumans out of my search results. Orcs, elves, et cetera. Wouldn't be as good as a tag that marks 'character is of a nearly human species', admittedly.

31h253 said:
Skin.

A skin tag could be the key I need to finally start sweeping quasihumans out of my search results. Orcs, elves, et cetera. Wouldn't be as good as a tag that marks 'character is of a nearly human species', admittedly.

Except anything with a bare penis, or visible vagina could be tagged with "skin".
I'd say around 90% of images on the site technically should be tagged as "skin".

Halite said:
Would you be ok with removing the hair tag if there was a hairless tag?
Then you could -hairless

But armpit hair is seen as hair, and not hairless....so there is my problem

Conker said:
But armpit hair is seen as hair, and not hairless....so there is my problem

Perhaps "bald" instead of hairless, or in addition to.
Meaning only a lack of hair on top of the head?
So, complete lack of hair, body and head, would be hairless, and bald tagged.
And hair on the face, body, armpits, etc. but none on the head would simply be tagged bald.
And we get rid of "hair" as a tag.

What about B&W art? It's not exactly possible to tag scales and such with color, if there's no color in the first place.

Halite said:
Perhaps "bald" instead of hairless, or in addition to.
Meaning only a lack of hair on top of the head?
So, complete lack of hair, body and head, would be hairless, and bald tagged.
And hair on the face, body, armpits, etc. but none on the head would simply be tagged bald.
And we get rid of "hair" as a tag.

Bald also has images with body hair like armpit hair.

Bald is only for head hair, not body hair. That is the problem, whe nI search for dragon and _hair, I notice a lot of images with body hair, but not head hair.

Mind you I want to see dragon images with head hair, yet the tag isnt helping with that. As body hair sadly is part of this. Also not all dragons are tagged with bald to -bald tag it. There is the problem

Genjar said:
What about B&W art? It's not exactly possible to tag scales and such with color, if there's no color in the first place.

Also scales which have a lot of different colors. That would be a problem

Conker said:
Bald also has images with body hair like armpit hair.

Bald is only for head hair, not body hair. That is the problem, when I search for dragon and _hair, I notice a lot of images with body hair, but not head hair.

Mind you I want to see dragon images with head hair, yet the tag isnt helping with that. As body hair sadly is part of this. Also not all dragons are tagged with bald to -bald tag it. There is the problem

Also scales which have a lot of different colors. That would be a problem

So, we need a body_hair umbrella tag for any hair except for head hair.
A bald tag.
And a hairless tag.

That way, dragon with no hair = "dragon hairless"
Dragon with head hair, and no body hair = "dragon -bald -body_hair"
Dragon with body hair, but no head hair = "dragon bald body_hair"
And, dragon with body and head hair = "dragon hairless"

As for tags not being applied correctly, as always, the answer is fix it.
Bad tagging isn't an excuse not to use a tag.

Halite said:
Except anything with a bare penis, or visible vagina could be tagged with "skin".
I'd say around 90% of images on the site technically should be tagged as "skin".

I think you are overestimating. Nevertheless, the gist of your argument stands, and thus my own is demolished. Good show!