Ropes, wires - singular or plural?

We have a policy of using the singular form of a tag in most cases, however there are exceptions, or borderline cases.

It was suggested to alias ropes and wires to their singular forms, but I'm mixed. What do people think? Which should we go with? Can they just be made singular or are they so often used in the plural form that they should stay that way?

I'm leaning slightly singular on ropes and slightly plural on wires.

Neither really feels like a natural plural, although wires to tend to come in bunches.

I'd probably set both for singular.

Wires isn't really a natural plural but it feels wrong singular, a quick browse didn't show me any instances where I would go "well that's one wire" they virtually all appear in clusters.

post #438364 might be a case of singular wire. I'm sure there are others. I vote to keep them both singular.

I vote singular.

"There's some rope in this picture, and there's some wire in this one." It doesn't sound too awkward.

I vote singular for rope.

I'd vote plural for wires... but is there a difference in use between wire and cable (and perhaps cord as well)? cables has already been aliased to cable.

Voting singular. As Soljashy demonstrated, people can say things like "that bunch of wire" or even just "that wire", with "rope" lending itself even more.

Singular is best, soljashy gives a good example.

Could we define the cable tag to refer to the electronic variety, while using wire to refer to non-electronic variety? The current use for the most part makes the cable and wire tags identical. 100% or nearly 100% of the images under wires is used on the same thing as cable/cables, likewise most of the images under wire are identical in to what's under the cable tag.

There are a few images (~12 or so) under wire that depict non-electronic wires (such as post #184246 and post #316840). The only one that is kind of hazy is post #308170 showing pikachus chewing through an electrical wire.

NWF_Renim said: Could we define the cable tag to refer to the electronic variety, while using wire to refer to non-electronic variety?

We could, though it'd be a confusing distinction for most people. Of course that's what a good wiki entry is for.

Aliased both to singular.

Late, but "singular" cable and wire can also be used mass nouns, and I think that form sounds best for our usage.