i think there should be minimum requirements for tags. this is what should be the minimum(may not apply to all art.)

gender

sexual orientation

species

artist

visible sexual parts

character name

character series

if it's animated

if it's interactive

Well, if you can have people put the genders, artists, and species, it's already quite a start.

If people don't know the artist, they should put the site they got the pic from.
If the site is some random image board, they should put in source the file name (they are formated differently on each site, it helps).
In any case, put "unknown_artist" ; some people browse the list of regular basis and update the tags.

The number of character (solo...) combined with genders and sexual orientation can help people find what they want. Here are the kind of combo i find useful :
-male + solo
-female + solo
-male + gay (implies 2 males)
-female + lesbian (implies 2 females)
-gay + threesome (implies 3 males)
-lesbian + threesome (implies 3 females)
-bisexual + threesome (implies M/M/F or F/F/M)
-male + duo (implies safe pic with 2 males)
-female + duo (implies safe pic with 2 females)

Well that's the general pattern i see. Also reserve "trio" for safe pics. If there is more than 3 characters having sex it's an "orgy", if it's not a sexual situation it's a "group".

For the species, it can be sometimes hard, we are no zoologist ; i personally can't tell the difference between a cheetah, a leopard and an ocelot.
But at least put the specie group (canine, feline...).

For the character name, it's kinda optional unless it's a really widely known character (*cough* renamon, krystal...) ; for the other cases, other people will update the tags.

One last important thing i'd like people to pay attention to : do SEARCH tags before turning them into characters or artist. There's nothing more irritating than artists tagged as character or vice versa.
If you really want to add that character or artist (say, an artist has a fursona you want to add), then just put "_(character)" or "_(artist)" at the end of the tags.

My general rule of thumb is that if your tagged images are under 6 tags, you're lazy. If your tagged images show a pattern at 2 or less tags, it's bannable. I provide for wiggle room either way. Given how many things are in even a basic image, finding 6 tags should not be hard nor time consuming.

and if you see an image without a tag you know about, by all means add it, not post a comment saying "someone should add this tag" or "shouldn't this tag be there" or anything simular.

I tag 6 or more, and add tagme to it some times, because i dont know how to write all sex positions n shit :/

luvdaporn said:
and if you see an image without a tag you know about, by all means add it, not post a comment saying "someone should add this tag" or "shouldn't this tag be there" or anything simular.

but how does one tag? i hate to be that ignorant guy on the forum. but i cant find it any where else.

Click "Edit" right at the bottom of the image, add the tags to the box, and click Save Changes.

I like to add the year the image was made (if available)...just for the hell of it.

Also, if the image is dated from the year 2000 or earlier, I tag it with "vintage".

It'd also be nice if people stopped splitting two or more part artist names/whatever into separate tags. I looked back at a few of my old uploads and on one, there were 4 two-part tags (ex. bent_over) split apart (bent, over).

It's not necessary really, and only serves to confuse other newbies.

With tagging I wish their was a way to specify gender when looking at a fetish with out adding the tag. Lets say a female is preforming fellatio while a male is fingering himself and I really like this image. instead of doing a search with all those tags to find similar images, only to get ones like the male preforming oral and fingering while the female is just some tan in the backround, I could specify what gender is preforming the act. Is their a way to do this?

dadadadukenukem said:
specify what gender is preforming the act. Is their a way to do this?

Not without inventing new tags, no, and that kind of tag granularity quickly spirals out of control with possible (and likely confusing) name combinations.

Maybe once Google invents the artificially intelligent image classification and search program, e621 can run another donation drive to license the technology and let you search for your rather specific (if somewhat common) criteria.