Topic: [REJECTED] Tag implication: eevee -> eeveelution

The tag implication #70329 eevee -> eeveelution has been rejected.

Reason: I know, this one might be a little controversial. But I think it is accurate to the way that people understand "eeveelution" as a species tag. While it's true that eevee is not literally an evolution of eevee, eevee is within the category of Pokemon that are typified by all the "eeveelutions" -- it is the common denominator for all of them, sharing all the traits generally.

If you search "solo eevee eeveelution", you will see hundreds of examples of people manually tagging this combination to describe a single character. Eevee has all the traits that people who search "eeveelution" are looking for, so it just feels like a useful and somewhat intuitive inclusion

EDIT: The tag implication eevee -> eeveelution (forum #471706) has been rejected by @furrypickle.

I don't think I need to point out that eevee itself is not an eeveelution, which - by definition - is an evolved form of eevee. Having Eevee imply Eeveelution would just produce a lot of incorrect tag usage.

bird-tm said:
I don't think I need to point out that eevee itself is not an eeveelution, which - by definition - is an evolved form of eevee. Having Eevee imply Eeveelution would just produce a lot of incorrect tag usage.

You are correct that you don't need to point it out, due to it literally already being in the first post

What we have NOW is "a lot of incorrect tag usage," by your definition, as evidenced by the hundreds of pages of solo images labeled BOTH "eevee" and "eeveelution".

The point is that people who search for "eeveelutions" also want to find eevees. Tags are meant to be useful, not lore-accurate

bauser said:
What we have NOW is "a lot of incorrect tag usage," by your definition, as evidenced by the hundreds of pages of solo images labeled BOTH "eevee" and "eeveelution".

Then it would be best to remove eeveelution from posts that don't have an eeveelution.

bauser said:
The point is that people who search for "eeveelutions" also want to find eevees. Tags are meant to be useful, not lore-accurate

They can search ~eevee ~eeveelution. There are also people that want to search for eeveelutions, which may or may not also have eevee but does have an eeveelution. This implication would mean searching eeveelution would return a bunch of posts that have just eevee, and searching eeveelution -eevee would exclude posts that have eeveelutions with eevee also present.

Relevant: there is a tagging project to remove eeveelution from posts that do not feature any eeveelutions.

The tag implication eevee -> eeveelution (forum #471706) has been rejected by @furrypickle.

watsit said:
Then it would be best to remove eeveelution from posts that don't have an eeveelution.

They can search ~eevee ~eeveelution. There are also people that want to search for eeveelutions, which may or may not also have eevee but does have an eeveelution. This implication would mean searching eeveelution would return a bunch of posts that have just eevee, and searching eeveelution -eevee would exclude posts that have eeveelutions with eevee also present.

Nobody is searching "eeveelution -eevee".

That's not a thing people look for

That is the point

You can't really prove what people are and aren't searching unless you happen to be a server admin who can look at every query the site recieves. In any case, if you want to appeal to the common usage of the tags then it should be noted that solo eevee eeveelution yields ~450 posts and solo eevee -eeveelution yields ~5800, or over 10x more than the former.

Objectively, having eevee imply eeveelution would limit the functionality of the tag: it would lose the ability to return posts that contain Eevee but not any of its evolutions. In exchange, it would grant a functionality that you can already get by searching ~eevee ~eeveelution as mentioned by watsit. It would be a net loss in functionality for the tag.

It makes sense on paper, but doesn't quite reach the mark in practice. You see, every numbered Pokémon actually counts as its own species. My source: Pokemon (species) on Bulbapedia, which says

"A Pokémon can change species by means of Evolution, which more closely resembles growth and development or metamorphosis rather than evolution in the real world."

This is why every Pokémon has its own species tag; every differently numbered Pokémon counts as its own species (despite if Pokémon who don't share a number are part of the same evolution line). By that knowledge, I now realise that the wikipage for the eeveelution tag should get an errata to clarify that 1: the tag doesn't imply any of the eeveelutions are part of the same species and 2: that none of the Eeveelutions are the same species (including eevee), they only share an evolution line to eevee.