Everyone's talking about implications. I have no idea what they are. I know what aliases are, on the other hand, but implications, no.

What are they, what do they do, and what are they for?

Implications mean that you can't possibly have "tag a" without also having "tag b". For example, an apple is a fruit, therefore "apple" implies "fruit". There is never a time when an apple will not be a fruit. However, not all fruits are apples, which is what an alias would imply. That is why it's an implication instead of an alias.

So what this means on e621 is if you tag a picture with a tag that implies another tag, then that other tag will also be applied to the image automatically.

A real-world example on e621 is how we handle the avoid_posting tag on the site. If an artist requests that their artwork not be posted on the site, then we create an implication from "(artist's name)" to "avoid_posting". So whenever the artist's name is tagged on an image, it also gets tagged with "avoid_posting" automatically, which makes it much easier on us to identify artwork that probably isn't allowed on the site since we can just search for "avoid_posting" instead of all those different artist names.

For for more "technical" phrasing:

Alias - A feature in the system that takes all instances of X and replies them with Y. This is used to keep tags neat and unified. Examples:

• red_delicious_apple aliases to apple(because red delicious is WAY too specific!)
• 3some aliases to threesome (because that's the right spelling >_<)
• OldArtistName aliases to NewArtistName

Implication - A feature in the system that takes all instances of X, and adds Y to all of those images, so that both tags are on the image. Examples:

• big_breasts implies breasts (because if you can see big breasts, there are breasts :))
• wolf implies canine
• butterfly_wings implies wings

For more examples, you can view all of the current aliases here: http://e621.net/tag_alias and all of the implications here: http://e621.net/tag_implication ..kinda give you a better idea of how they work :)

Thank you both so much. That helped a lot! :D

So where do you go to suggest implications and aliases? I know other boorus have the actual sections you can request on, but not e621. Do I suggest in the forum or something?

Yaoilover921 said:
Thank you both so much. That helped a lot! :D

So where do you go to suggest implications and aliases? I know other boorus have the actual sections you can request on, but not e621. Do I suggest in the forum or something?

Alias suggestion page, implication suggestion page.

Riversyde said:
Alias suggestion page, implication suggestion page.

Both of these create forum threads. But yeah, go there.