Topic: "Tag what you see" vs "What you know"?

So I recently stumbled across a post, and the character is tagged as female, even though everyone knows the character is male. This seems strange, because "Tag what you see" doesn't seem to make sense if "what you see" is a character you recognize, who is male.

Post in question: https://e621.net/posts/1843694?q=cobatsart

The tag history shows that this has gone back and forth for years, with tags being removed, added, re-removed, re-added, etc. It all seems to revolve around people who know what the image depicts because they understand the context, and even the artist commented that this is a male character, so is there any sort of real concencus, on people just tagging content based on first glance impressions, vs what's actually known to be true?

furryeskimo said:
So I recently stumbled across a post, and the character is tagged as female, even though everyone knows the character is male. This seems strange, because "Tag what you see" doesn't seem to make sense if "what you see" is a character you recognize, who is male.

Tag What You See means tagging what's visually apparent in an image, rather than tagging what you know about the character in an image. A character can be any sex, they can even change sex (gender_transformation, crossgender, etc.), and each image is tagged independently of any other image, so seeing a character you recognize doesn't inherently mean you see what sex they normally are.

watsit said:
A character can be any sex, they can even change sex (gender_transformation, crossgender, etc.), and each image is tagged independently of any other image, so seeing a character you recognize doesn't inherently mean you see what sex they normally are.

The crossgender tag always confused me.

That tag never be added with purely TWYS, since it would be impossible to see the original gender in that post.
You have to know the original gender of that character.

furryeskimo said:
So I recently stumbled across a post, and the character is tagged as female, even though everyone knows the character is male. This seems strange, because "Tag what you see" doesn't seem to make sense if "what you see" is a character you recognize, who is male.

Post in question: https://e621.net/posts/1843694?q=cobatsart

Please read Tag What You See for a detailed explanation of our policy and Tag Categories for the various tag types we use.

What you or anybody knows are irrelevant when it comes to general tags (i.e., the white coloured tags). We tag based on what we see (TWYS) on the post, with no regard to any lore info of the character involved.
Every other tag category is partially-bound to TWYS, such as the artist tags, character tags, and copyright tags, since you would need to credit the artist, characters, and copyrights featured in the post within reasonable standards.

Now for the fun part, if there are any conflicting lore information in the general tags that need to be addressed (namely in terms of their gender, age, or familial relations), you can use the lore tags to clarify any mismatch.
For example, if a character is canonically male but is visually depicted as being indistinguishable from a female, they would be tagged as female + male_(lore).

The tag history shows that this has gone back and forth for years, with tags being removed, added, re-removed, re-added, etc. It all seems to revolve around people who know what the image depicts because they understand the context, and even the artist commented that this is a male character, so is there any sort of real concencus, on people just tagging content based on first glance impressions, vs what's actually known to be true?

We tag based on what we see, never on what we know.

It is fine for tag edits to be reverted once or twice since people can have different interpretations, but it becomes problematic if it goes on for too long and no consensus is reached.
If you see any post with tag warring happening (i.e., edits going back-and-forth multiple times), report the post for Tagging Abuse and mention the problem. An admin will step in and make a final judgment to lock the most contentious tags.
In the case of the post you mentioned, you don't have to do anything since the contentious tags has already been locked for years.

snedmano said:
The crossgender tag always confused me.

That tag never be added with purely TWYS, since it would be impossible to see the original gender in that post.
You have to know the original gender of that character.

See topic #37640 and move the relevant discussions there.

thegreatwolfgang said:
See topic #37640 and move the relevant discussions there.

I'm not necroposting a 2 year old rejected alias request.
And honestly my question kind of fits to the title of this topic.
(Though interesting to see that I'm far from the first one to ask about this)

thegreatwolfgang said:
Please read Tag What You See for a detailed explanation of our policy and Tag Categories for the various tag types we use.

What you or anybody knows are irrelevant when it comes to general tags (i.e., the white coloured tags). We tag based on what we see (TWYS) on the post, with no regard to any lore info of the character involved.
Every other tag category is partially-bound to TWYS, such as the artist tags, character tags, and copyright tags, since you would need to credit the artist, characters, and copyrights featured in the post within reasonable standards.

Now for the fun part, if there are any conflicting lore information in the general tags that need to be addressed (namely in terms of their gender, age, or familial relations), you can use the lore tags to clarify any mismatch.
For example, if a character is canonically male but is visually depicted as being indistinguishable from a female, they would be tagged as female + male_(lore).

We tag based on what we see, never on what we know.

It is fine for tag edits to be reverted once or twice since people can have different interpretations, but it becomes problematic if it goes on for too long and no consensus is reached.
If you see any post with tag warring happening (i.e., edits going back-and-forth multiple times), report the post for Tagging Abuse and mention the problem. An admin will step in and make a final judgment to lock the most contentious tags.
In the case of the post you mentioned, you don't have to do anything since the contentious tags has already been locked for years.

Thanks, I suppose that makes sense. Just seemed weird since we all *know* the character is male, and having wide hips and cross-dressing doesn't make someone female, so what it *looks like* will be dependent on the viewer.
I guess what's confusing is,, the 'why' behind TWYS. In a situation like this, the tags cause confusion, because they aren't seemingly accurately describing what we know to be in the photo, so when does TWYS help vs confuse? I had to ask because the tags seemed off, but in other cases, like gender swapped characters, they're presumably tagged as such, because we know they've been swapped, right? I don't really care at the end of the day, I just needed to ask because it seems like a grey area, and I figured we *could* see that this character was male, the evidence was in the author literally telling us. That's just how I see situations like this, not trying to dig up old problems.

furryeskimo said:
Thanks, I suppose that makes sense. Just seemed weird since we all *know* the character is male, and having wide hips and cross-dressing doesn't make someone female, so what it *looks like* will be dependent on the viewer.
I guess what's confusing is,, the 'why' behind TWYS. In a situation like this, the tags cause confusion, because they aren't seemingly accurately describing what we know to be in the photo, so when does TWYS help vs confuse? I had to ask because the tags seemed off, but in other cases, like gender swapped characters, they're presumably tagged as such, because we know they've been swapped, right? I don't really care at the end of the day, I just needed to ask because it seems like a grey area, and I figured we *could* see that this character was male, the evidence was in the author literally telling us. That's just how I see situations like this, not trying to dig up old problems.

The why is to prevent tag warring, the situations where it causes problems are outliers rather than the norm (rather than needing to argue about identities or canon things, objective factors in the image are used)
While I would rather a more hybrid system the current implementation of TWYS is pretty core to the site

furryeskimo said:
the evidence was in the author literally telling us

This is a problem of definitions and people's tendency to uh.. remove the subscripts from terms. To illustrate what I mean:

The author isn't telling us that the character "is-male"_{per TWYS}; Doing so verbally is impossible as the definition of tags such as 'male' on e621 are strictly visual.
The author is telling us that the character "is-male"_{per their canon}. That's lore.
In other words, there is the word 'male' that E621 is using, and the word 'male' that the author is using, and they look the same, sure, but.. they don't actually connect.

'The author actually telling us that the character is male_{in e621's terms}', simply is the same thing as 'giving clear visual indicators, in that exact picture, that the character is male'. No amount of text will provide any evidence whatsoever. 'My character is male and is often tagged female on e621' contains no contradictions.

Even the notion of having a canon gender is problematic (for e621's system which focuses on 'the content of individual posts'); crossgender which you mention AFAICS exists because people want (something like) it, but it's not 'in good theoretical standing' -- we just can't figure out how to sensibly eliminate it.

Lore tags are in a similar position to 'crossgender', although personally I suspect they are much less functional (maximal coverage is important for search functionality).
I would guess they are most effective on comics, since that is the major case that really doesn't align well with E6's 'what can be seen in this exact post' approach.

There's much more that could be said and has been said in previous threads (eg TWYK leads to privileging knowledge-hoarders -> gatekeeping individual fandoms, tag wars, etc).

furryeskimo said:
I guess what's confusing is,, the 'why' behind TWYS.

See TWYS for the reasoning (it's a different page from the main article).

In a situation like this, the tags cause confusion, because they aren't seemingly accurately describing what we know to be in the photo, so when does TWYS help vs confuse? I had to ask because the tags seemed off, but in other cases, like gender swapped characters, they're presumably tagged as such, because we know they've been swapped, right? I don't really care at the end of the day, I just needed to ask because it seems like a grey area, and I figured we *could* see that this character was male, the evidence was in the author literally telling us. That's just how I see situations like this, not trying to dig up old problems.

What the author tells us (lore/canon info) is completely irrelevant.
TWYS is there to make sure people follow tagging standards instead of putting whatever they want on the post.

For example, we could have a canonically 1000-year old vampire appear as a young/underaged girl. The author says that that they are an adult, and if we tag it as such, a lot of people are going to be upset as to why a seemingly underaged character slipped through their blacklist.

In the case of the post you mentioned, it was deemed by an admin the head admin that there is sufficient visual evidence to point to the character being female rather than male. Any confusion between this tagging and lore-accurate information should be clarified by their respective lore tag, i.e., male_(lore).
Of course, you are welcome to contest any locked tags by reporting the post as Tagging Abuse and mentioning your reasons, because we do sometimes revert locked tags if there was enough counter-evidence to suggest otherwise.