Merge walking_stick with cane

BUR #7436 has been approved by @nonamethanks.

create alias walking_stick -> cane

Walking stick is almost entirely made up of various types of canes. post #480711 is one of the only examples I could find that wasn't just a cane or mage staff, and I'm not sure there's much value in a tag specifically for a handful of posts featuring a stick being used for walking support.

stuff like post #4515320 are not canes or staffs (they're hiking poles).

worth mentioning that the clause in the walking_stick wiki that tries to distinguish it from cane doesn't really seem to exist outside danbooru

Unlike a cane, these are intended as a temporary means of stability instead of a mobility aid for those with an injured leg

until i see some citations to support that distinction, i say yes let's go ahead and merge them

also hiking poles appear to be just glorified canes

skylightcrystal said:

stuff like post #4515320 are not canes or staffs (they're hiking poles).

I found a few more, those should just get their own tag, as they're clearly not sticks, and are distinct from canes.

I've gone through walking stick and removed all the examples of hiking poles I could find, and gave it a simple wiki. If we don't want it we can just nuke it or alias it to cane or something. I think it's distinct enough to be worth tagging though, might be more examples under other tags.

I'll go through again and remove everything that isn't a cane or stick when I have the time.

BUR #7466 has been approved by @nonamethanks.

create alias trekking_pole -> hiking_pole
create implication white_cane -> cane

Submitting this complementary BUR.

For reference, wikipedia seems to use the terms "walking stick" and "walking cane" interchangeably, so I see no reason why we should split hairs over the two terms. The main difference seems to be on whether the end of the stick has some sort of support or tip (usually a rubber flat tip) for better stability, in which case it counts as a cane, but I don't think we need that distinction here. At a glance in the first few pages I see several walking sticks with rubber tips without the cane tag in our gallery, so it doesn't look like people care about the distinction. If we want to distinguish them then cane at a minimum should still imply walking stick, because keeping them separate is not going to work for us. But I don't think anyone cares to put in the effort to keep this distinction.

There's also trekking_pole, because of course there is. I don't care which one we decide to go for as the main tag, so long as they're merged. Speaking of which, should this tag also imply cane? For the sake of our sanity I don't think the two should be mutually exclusive.

As a side note, perhaps having "cane" as the main tag if they're merged will discourage people from tagging random sticks as walking sticks.

Makes no difference to me if we use trekking or hiking, I would've used the former if I knew we already had a tag for it. Not entirely keen on implying it to cane, but I wouldn't argue about it.

If the first BUR is looking to be approved, what should we do with the posts that really are just ordinary sticks being used for walking support?

Probably just move them to holding stick, unless we want them to be findable via stick walking_stick?

Leaving walking stick unaliased would probably just allow people to fill it up with canes and other things again, so holding stick might have to do.

The bulk update request #7466 (forum #197943) has been approved by @nonamethanks.

The bulk update request #7436 (forum #197792) has been approved by @nonamethanks.