Making robot an umbrella tag and figuring out android vs cyborg

My personal definitions are:

Android - Human-like artificial being, you can (and should, otherwise we enter the realm of canon tagging) see some details, but the skin tone and general physiology should be mostly human. Detroit: Become Human's designs come to mind. neon trim on skin, or artworks that depict the innards like post #5148496.
Humanoid Robot - Artificial being that is clearly not human (you can tell that it's a robot at first glance - unnatural skin tone, you can see the innards, like post #4637465), but has a humanoid structure. If it has a face, it probably shouldn't be able to move smoothly. At the very least it can move like a human.
Non-Humanoid Robot - Artificial being that doesn't move like a human.

Cyborgs, as previously said, are human beings with enhancements. For this i would mainly tag humans with mechanoid implants that are visibly not originally part of them, like Jet Black.

There are also mecha musume, but they're a beast of their own and will not be considered for now.

The main issue I see is setting a line, because there are a lot of fringe cases which go against my explainations above.
For instance:

- Not every "neon trim on body" is necessarily an android - eg. post #2923635
- Any post under single mechanical arm and similar artworks. Can you tell whether it's an android or a cyborg without meta knowledge? Do we just not tag them if it's too ambiguous without resorting to meta knowledge? (eg. post #4219665, see also: roboco-san)
- Any android which shows too many mechanical parts, like post #5113365 or post #3862515. I would personally tag them as android, but...
- Those stylized robots, which are clearly not human, but I wouldn't put under robot (or at least not without a sub tag for them), like post #2886965.
- Do robots with only an upper or lower humanoid body count as humanoid robots? For example that video that went viral some week ago.

I would personally put under robot anything that is clearly a machine.
Because of that, I wouldn't make android imply robot, the tag definition is too broad. Cyborgs aren't technically robots either, so that applies for them too.

mongirlfan said:

I guess the tag would have the implications like this:

• Robot
• Android
• Mecha
• Humanoid Robot
• Nonhumanoid Robot

I'm fine with this, but how do we define the difference between android and humanoid robot? Whether they have a humanoid face? Would post #5326068 then be a humanoid robot while post #5310339 is an android? Or do they need to be more human-like than that? We have a lot of inbetween cases and we need solid guidelines for a distinction to make sense.
I don't see how defining android as "humanoid robot with human face" and humanoid_robot as "humanoid robot without human face" is going to work.

I don't know about keeping cyborg separate because looking at the tag I can't see anyone caring about it right now.

Username_Hidden said:

My personal definitions are:

What exactly do you expect us to do with your personal definitions? I don't want to sound rude, but Danbooru is a community effort. If most people are not going to follow your personal definitions, then your personal definitions are useless.

While it's a bit clunky, I can't think of anything better so I support non-humanoid_robot.

Since users seem to view cyborg as a synonym for android, what if we use something more literal like robotic_parts for the concept?

AngryZapdos said:

Since users seem to view cyborg as a synonym for android, what if we use something more literal like robotic_parts for the concept?

mechanical parts

nonamethanks said:

mechanical parts

Well, I'll be a monkey's uncle.

Yeah. There's a lot of redundancy here. Originally that tag was called parts_exposed.

nonamethanks said:

What exactly do you expect us to do with your personal definitions? I don't want to sound rude, but Danbooru is a community effort. If most people are not going to follow your personal definitions, then your personal definitions are useless.

I didn't want to propose them nor expected them to be used as the definitions we could use, it was just to set a rough outline of how I feel the tags should be. I even pointed out the flaws in my own definitions in regards of tagging.
Everyone has their own idea of how the tags should be used, which is why I thought that, if we started from a general idea and then refined it as we ran across various cases, we could end up with better definitions.
That said, most of the points in the second half of my post are more general thoughts on the matter, in particular regarding stylized robots and not aliasing android to robot.

BUR #10127 has been approved by @nonamethanks.

mass update robot no_humans -mecha -humanoid_robot -android -cyborg -1boy -1girl -> non-humanoid_robot
create implication non-humanoid_robot -> robot

Let's get this out first. I'm going to go through that search before I approve this to remove all the mistagged no_humans.

BUR #10128 has been rejected.

create implication walker -> non-humanoid_robot

And this implication should be fairly obvious. Humanoid mechas like gundams should never be tagged with walker, unless I'm missing something.

nonamethanks said:

BUR #10128 has been rejected.

create implication walker -> non-humanoid_robot

And this implication should be fairly obvious. Humanoid mechas like gundams should never be tagged with walker, unless I'm missing something.

Calling everything that falls under the category of walker a robot doesn't make sense, because walker is a reference to how a non-humanoid (or even imo non-animal based) vehicle moves more than anything else. You have WWII tanks with legs like post #1665959, pedal powered legs like post #5294590, and both pedal powered legs and walking cars in post #2458692.

Well hold up, I agree that post #5294590 is a grey area, but post #1665959 or post #2458692 absolutely are robots. If you remove the pedals from post #2458692 that's just a gekko. And in what world are cars with legs not considered robots? Even news articles about hyundai's car with legs called it a robot.
What definition of robot are we aiming for here? Because if we want them to be autonomous, then even most gundams would not count as robots.
There's a lot of stuff like post #5294608, post #5268762, post #4986064 that are robotic vehicles.

Note that walker already implies mecha so the robot tag would be pulled in anyway through that. The mecha tag right now is a mix of gundam-likes and giant robot vehicles including spider tanks and animal-shaped vehicles.

Just because a vehicle uses legs to move doesn't mean it's a robot. Implicating walker to mecha was not well thought out (even if most walkers will be sci-fi and robotic in nature), because then vehicles like Dragline excavators would be "robots" and "mecha" because they walk. And before claiming that it's not the same manner of walking, if a robot uses the same style of walking no one would hesitate on calling that a walker.

The reason your article for the car even calls it a robot is because it uses robotic legs, but simple mechanical legs can also be a means of movement otherwise we'd never have toys that could walk. They don't need complex movement, just the ability to move one limb forward like with these kinetic art that use wind to push forward and move the legs forward.

NWF_Renim said:

Dragline excavators would be "robots" and "mecha" because they walk.

I don't think that's what the walker tag is meant for. It's just for non-humanoid machines with legs like the AT-AT, we don't need to make it more complex than it's meant to be.

Except that's exactly what post #1665959 is more or less. A central leg that serves as a rest while the other two legs simply lift it up and waddle it forward, it's the exact same manner of movement. No robotics needed.

A heavy dose of common sense must be applied here. post #1665959 is a robot tank that walks. It's a walker. There's a big difference between that and something like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RP4PuhywXm8, otherwise my old uncle in his rocking chair during an earthquake would also count as a walker.

I took a glance at walker and didn't see any machine like that excavator tagged with it. I'm not sure if we need to worry about this kind of issue if nobody's tagging them that way.

The bulk update request #10128 (forum #211623) has been rejected by @nonamethanks.

People are just going to keep tagging those as non-humanoid robots even without the implication, but I'm just going to reject this for now for the sake of the argument.

I still think that humanoid robot is too vague a term for what we want to use it for, for the reasons I already mentioned, and nothing said since has resolved this issue.

Additionally, no one here has yet pointed out the fact that android has more incredibly problematic aspect associated to it - it can also refer to bioengineered artificial beings, not just mechanical ones that happen to look human. This issue is present not just in English (i.e. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? among other famous works, which ironically traces its roots back to how 'robot' was originally used), but also in Japanese (the Pixpedia article for 人造人間/Artificial Humans acknowledges both the term bioroid (バイオロイド) as well as replicants under its definition). Of course, most folks would still refer to androids was 100% mechanical, but in light of canon tagging, this becomes an issue.

Damian0358 said:

I still think that humanoid robot is too vague a term for what we want to use it for, for the reasons I already mentioned, and nothing said since has resolved this issue.

I mentioned it in forum #211603, both androids and the current definition of humanoid robots are technically humanoid robots. I don't have a solution on naming these two tags unambiguously. Note that also humanoid mechas like gundams risk being tagged with humanoid robot (and indeed mecha humanoid_robot has several posts).