I've wanted to go on a personal tagging crusade to clean up and use some of the odd tags like udder_nursing and multi_nipple, but I've found a strange discordance between a few existing tags.

To begin, we've obviously got breasts and nobody here needs to argue what those are.
For whatever reason, we've picked up belly_nipples, teats, multi_teat, multi_nipple, and multi_breast. This has opened up the breasts_and_teats tag.
Over on udders, there's currently udder_nursing, udder_milking, and multi_udder perpetually competing with crotch_breasts. (Not that it's a difficult distinction)
I haven't seen a matching tag for breast_milking to the multi_nipple/belly_nipples/teats//multi_teat set, but I'd think tagging a piece with both would cover the situation.

We've got some noise on this in topic #32331, topic #40930, and topic #46504

I've got my internal definition (not acting on it) that teats represent the hollow and elongated nipples at the end of a mammary gland of an udder.
If we're not going by my definition, doesn't that mean that there are four competing tags (belly_nipples, teats, multi_teat, multi_nipple) for anything like post #3234729?

Over on the multi_nipple wiki, it directly references post #1164584 as an example, yet states "NTBCW: multi_teat, which is the tag to use for nipples that are not generally associated with humanoid breasts."
Then we have posts tagged awkwardly like post #4860178, where the multi_teat are all on a single udder/udders (not a multi_udder) and a column of multi_breast.
Or even post #3175496, where they're tagged multi_teat, but are arguably just multi_breast if you don't get pedantic about crotch_breasts.

crotch_breasts themselves open up another set of contradictions with the wiki plainly stating "Note that for tagging purposes teats (including crotch breasts) are generally not tagged with breasts or nipples."
Additionally this wiki page states "multi_nipple - more than two nipples; seen in dogs, cats, etc. (generally reserved for when the breasts aren't clearly visible)"
Are these vintage definitions from the MLP flood? Did the terminology change without a BUR or a re-tagging flurry?

What does anybody else think of this? Could we work on coordinating definition for the concepts and figure out which tags are breaking the balance?

I've dug further on my own and found the old thread topic #12929, which was derailed by melon farmers. Preceding that was the ancient alias suggestion topic #14588 with Titanmelon's clarification forum #204871 and Keahizu's truth from academia forum #59679. I've found that crotchboobs from 2016 was aliased to the modern crotch_breasts. belly_nipples seems to only be a year and a half old.
teats seems to have historically been attributed incorrectly as a combination of feral + nipples - breasts, but still applied haphazardly. Sometimes it would be applied to subjects that are anthro, do not/would not have udders, and do not have mammary tissue below the navel:
post #42068

I've also found the (wiki) orphaned tag long_nipples.

I suggest harmlessly aliasing belly_nipples to multi_nipple.
I also suggest working on a massive project to clear teats (wiki and posts) of any non-human nipple association to purely the academically defined or visually similar ruminates' nipple. Likewise, cleaning up the wiki pages to permit multi_nipple to be used with both feral and anthro, making crotch_breasts an alternate to breasts, and clearing up the udders to define it as a developed mammary structure of multiple mammary glands supporting attached teats. multi_udder seems to have no problem with that definition.
With that, breasts_and_teats becomes tricky. Still worse would be multi_teat, which is an absolute mess with the current ambiguity.

flightlessspider said:
teats seems to have historically been attributed incorrectly as a combination of feral + nipples - breasts, but still applied haphazardly. Sometimes it would be applied to subjects that are anthro, do not/would not have udders, and do not have mammary tissue below the navel:
post #42068

teats is simply another word for nipples:

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/teat
1: the protuberance through which milk is drawn from an udder or breast : nipple
2: a small projection or a nib (as on a mechanical part)

It doesn't have to be on udders, nor does the breast itself need to protrude out like on most female humans. In the context of this site, it's best thought of as the extant nipples that go down the abdominal area on many non-human mammals (and being that art is imperfect/stylized/etc, and the presence of fictional creatures here, distinguishing between nipples on the abdomen/belly and crotch area isn't worth it, IMO).

watsit said:
(and being that art is imperfect/stylized/etc, and the presence of fictional creatures here, distinguishing between nipples on the abdomen/belly and crotch area isn't worth it, IMO).

Right, but isn't it worth providing the (visually apparent) context for udders that aren't inflated? The belly nipples on carnivores don't look the same as goat teats in art I've seen.

flightlessspider said:
Right, but isn't it worth providing the (visually apparent) context for udders that aren't inflated? The belly nipples on carnivores don't look the same as goat teats in art I've seen.

Perhaps a tag like flat_udders could be for uninflated udders. Or perhaps a tag like udder_nipples to distinguish between the nipples on udders like bovids have, vs nipples on other mammals (cats, deer, dogs, etc).

watsit said:
Perhaps a tag like flat_udders could be for uninflated udders. Or perhaps a tag like udder_nipples to distinguish between the nipples on udders like bovids have, vs nipples on other mammals (cats, deer, dogs, etc).

I feel like adding more tags to this mess might make it worse. Then again, I've got bad intuition about group efforts. I think the flat_udders would be a disaster, but udder_nipples or similar could help.
I was looking through a few combos and found one of my old favorites dudders, and his pieces are tagged just about how I'd like. Something new, though: somebody added bovine_teats and bovine_udders, and has been going around on their own crusade to do just what I've been considering. I've also noticed that the X_teats tags don't implicate multi_teat, which at this stage works out well enough.

flightlessspider said:
If we're not going by my definition, doesn't that mean that there are four competing tags (belly_nipples, teats, multi_teat, multi_nipple) for anything like this?
post #3234729

and again, wouldn't this tagging be a problem even with "teats" per the normal person's definition? It's tagged with breasts and featureless_breasts, but it's tagged with multi_nipple and nipples. It's then tagged with breasts_and_teats, which is obvious as it's tagged with... breasts and teats. Then it's also tagged with multi_teat, because there's this weird ambiguity that "teats" still has human-defaultism with 2 "teats" despite the tag being used specifically for non-human nipples. The most prominent mammaries in culture besides human are bovid, right? Why would this tag even exist?