Should Non-humanoid Characters get Character Count Tags?

An argument ended up flaring up in topic #12251 over whether or not non-humanoid characters should get character counts or stay under the no humans tag. I'm creating this thread mainly as a way of containing that argument and letting that thread resume its role for tagging help (and so that I can go the fuck to bed), but hey, if a change I want happens because of it, I won't complain.

I'm going to open this by reiterating what I said in that thread before things got ugly: the lack of charcounts for characters like Kirby (or in the case of that thread My Little Pony characters) has always been something that low-key annoyed me. Often times, these characters are just as sapient and depicted in similar ways as to humanoid characters, but often end up shoved under the no humans umbrella due to not being humanoid. I'm not even sure the people who browse no humans want to see things like Kirby in there, but what do I know.

However, that's not to say they should be tagged as xgirls/boys/others like that argument devolved into, as the people who browse those tags sure as hell don't want things like horses in there. My proposal was to instead be over if "xcreatures" charcount tags could be implicated in these cases for sentient nonhumanoid characters, so people can search/filter them the same way as with our current charcounts. I don't know what the exact limits would be except that sentience is probably key here (so don't put nonsentient pokemon in there), but I think it'd be beneficial in the long run. How good of an idea is this, I ask?

I don't see the benefits of gender or character counters for these types of characters. When I search "hatune_miku 1girl 1boy" I am looking for hetero or her and Kaito. If I search "Persona 2boys male_focus" I'm looking for yaoi of the franchise.

If we had 1creature, or 2creatures I still can't whittle down the characters to those specific gendered interactions which is the primary purpose in my eye of the gender counts. Kirby doesn't have any humans in it, there are very few characters that have gender counters by our current standards, and I honestly think its beneficial at the moment so I can search "Kirby_(series) no_humans" and find actual images of the series and not a vtuber girl with a Kirby stuffed animal.

Thank you for making this thread!

Let me start by saying I agree with Knowledge Seeker that we should have counter tags for some nonhumanoid characters. I think counter tags should be applied to any character that is heavily anthropomorphized in the work, meaning it has significant human traits. Examples of what I'm talking about are post #7793152, post #7815227 and post #7539148.

I don't think we should have an "xcreatures" tag. The idea is nice, but I think we would be signing ourselves up for having to decide whether a certain pokemon or other character should be a "creature" or "boy/girl" dozens of times over. I think it would be a disaster.

I also don't think that having counter tags should be exclusive with no humans. We already see this, for example with kirby 1boy no_humans and I think it's fine.

Lastly, to address the concerns about tag pollution: I don't see tag pollution being a huge issue for any of the characters mentioned in this thread. I don't think there are a lot of people trying to search for "only the human characters from Kirby" (or My Little Pony or whatever). In fact, what I'm suggesting is to keep the current status quo for most posts. But I am interested in hearing any characters for whom adding counter tags would create significant pollution so if any examples come up please do mention them.

Oh dear, what hell broke out in that thread after I went to bed?

I still think there isn't much benefit to not tagging post #7539148 as 2girls + yuri, but no humans in addition is probably fine.

I usually don't add charcounts to things like Ginga or Warrior Cats characters unless anthropomorphized, since they just look like normal animals, but in cases like MLP they're very clearly girls.

Yeah, in hindsight I agree the creature counter seems like its own can of worms.

Heartcatcher said:

Yeah, in hindsight I agree the creature counter seems like its own can of worms.

As much as I agree that creature counters may be less than ideal in some ways...

... but in cases like MLP they're very clearly girls.

Yeah sorry but no, they do not, and I definitely wouldn't want to see post #7539148 when searching 2girls yuri.

岩戸鈴芽 said:

As much as I agree that creature counters may be less than ideal in some ways...

Yeah sorry but no, they do not, and I definitely wouldn't want to see post #7539148 when searching 2girls yuri.

I think I misworded, I meant that characters like that are very visually designed to be characters and of a specific gender as compared to generic animals, and it becomes a bit of a grey area as a result, because they're not what most people want to see when searching for 2girls, but they're also not what most people want to see when searching animal_focus, but they don't quite fall into furry due to being quadrupedal.

While I personally disagree with you on that post, that's not really relevant to the overall discussion since that's just my own view.

岩戸鈴芽 said:

Yeah sorry but no, they do not, and I definitely wouldn't want to see post #7539148 when searching 2girls yuri.

You might not want to see that when searching 2girls yuri but somebody who's searching for my_little_pony 2girls yuri would right? My suspicion is that people care more about accurate results when searching a particular copytag than generic countertag-only searches (I don't tend to use these, do other people?). Similarly, if I was searching for animal focus I would probably not want to see that.

Of the two options, I think it's much more intuitive and a better experience for taggers and searchers to tag it as 2girls yuri instead of animal focus.

gfz said:

You might not want to see that when searching 2girls yuri but somebody who's searching for my_little_pony 2girls yuri would right? My suspicion is that people care more about accurate results when searching a particular copytag than generic countertag-only searches (I don't tend to use these, do other people?). Similarly, if I was searching for animal focus I would probably not want to see that.

Of the two options, I think it's much more intuitive and a better experience for taggers and searchers to tag it as 2girls yuri instead of animal focus.

I've definitely been irked by the complete lack of counters, and moreso by the addition of animal focus on non-humanoid characters, but suddenly treating them as humans and tagging them as 2girls is just not the way to go. Even if the interaction and/or intention is for them to be more human-like, in the end it's a horse. In lieu of a better solution I wouldn't be against a creature count tag despite the potential problems, but regardless of that I doubt many people would, like me, like to see something like post #7539148 under 2girls yuri, even if my_little_pony were present.

If I search 2girls I do not want to see a picture with two horses and no girls.

You don't think a My Little Pony fan searching for 2girls yuri my_little_pony would expect to see post #7539148?

I'm not a fan of the series so maybe we need a testimony or something, I'm curious about this. Because to me, it matters mostly for the people who are uploading & tagging this copyright. If counter tags aren't useful to people searching the MLP tags we don't need them, I think we all agree on that.

CoreMack said:

If I search 2girls I do not want to see a picture with two horses and no girls.

You can make this argument about a lot of things. Robots not girls. Aliens are not girls. Whatever bel'veth is is not a girl. I don't think "If I search for 2girls with no qualifications, I should only see normal human women and absolutely nothing else" is really a reasonable ask of a site with the amount of fantasy bullshit we have here. You're going to see 99% Blue Archive characters and if you're lucky, maybe some horses or aliens or something. I really don't see the problem.

Also, supposing we do decide that all of these shouldn't have countertags, how do we go about enforcing it? People who are fans of League of Legends are going to tag Bel'Veth as female because that's what she is in League canon. Same with My Little Pony and everything else. It would require an enormous amount of effort to monitor and correctly tag this standard for what counts as a girl across thousands of of copyrights and innumerable characters.

gfz said:

You don't think a My Little Pony fan searching for 2girls yuri my_little_pony would expect to see post #7539148?

Not only MLP uses the 2girls tag. Even if they do, the everyone else doesn't, so too bad. Such practices would be fine on an MLP booru, but that's not what this is.

gfz said:

You can make this argument about a lot of things. Robots not girls. Aliens are not girls. Whatever bel'veth is is not a girl. characters.

This has already been handled by the "humanoid" part.

gfz said:

You don't think a My Little Pony fan searching for 2girls yuri my_little_pony would expect to see post #7539148?

I'm not a fan of the series so maybe we need a testimony or something, I'm curious about this. Because to me, it matters mostly for the people who are uploading & tagging this copyright. If counter tags aren't useful to people searching the MLP tags we don't need them, I think we all agree on that.

We aren't a furry-centric site, counting animals as girls would be disruptive to the overwhelming majority of the userbase and can't be done just for that hypothetical mlp fan's sake. Realistically, they'd come here for personification yuri and e621 or derpibooru for everything else. 1girl is for humans plus humanoids, which can include aliens, monster girls etc. That Bel'veth post is mistagged since she's not humanoid at all in it.

My opinion is the same as the last time this came up. Counters for girls/boys should be humanoid only. What counts as "humanoid" can sometimes be murky but characters clearly shaped liked animals are not. Animals, monsters, creatures, etc. should have their own counters, and also should not be counted as "other" (which I also think should strictly apply to humanoids).

I think that 1girl/1boy is perfect for pets, animals, creatures, objects and such. If I want to search for a female pikachu then pikachu solo 1girl seems to be a natural choice, to find pictures like post #629671. (I've found it on gelbooru, because it is 1girl there, but not on danbooru.)

If people ask why are post #4732720 and post #5140233 tagged with 1other, just say that we tag characters, and the broom is sentient enough to have sex on its own free will. It makes sense, people should accept it, and then use it. I don't see the advantage of having a gender counter for different types of characters, when .. characters usually have genders the same way.

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It seems to me that there is a consensus that the current policy is that only humans and humanoids should have gender counters. Is that in the wiki somewhere? 1girl, 2girls ... 6+boys should be modified accordingly, and linked to the guide.

reg_panda said:

I think that 1girl/1boy is perfect for pets, animals, creatures, objects and such. If I want to search for a female pikachu then pikachu solo 1girl seems to be a natural choice, to find pictures like post #629671. (I've found it on gelbooru, because it is 1girl there, but not on danbooru.)

If people ask why are post #4732720 and post #5140233 tagged with 1other, just say that we tag characters, and the broom is sentient enough to have sex on its own free will. It makes sense, people should accept it, and then use it. I don't see the advantage of having a gender counter for different types of characters, when .. characters usually have genders the same way.

That is ridiculous. No sane individual would accept that. Including literally anything capable of some degree of sentience in the gender counts would create an unsalvageable mess.

No, that's not true. It would be exactly as much as mess, as chartags are right now (since gender counter are supposed to work in tandem with chartags). Are chartags an unsalvageable mess right now?

Is it a character? Then count its gender in the gender counter. It can't be simpler.

thats a dogshit idea lol, if you tag ein_(cowboy_bebop) as 1boy you need to get your head checked

Maybe a separate counter for animals could be good? 1animal, 2animals... 6+animals
Tho that still leaves out P*kemon (🤮) and other non-animal creachers.

What about: tag humans and humanoids + some franchise exceptions, like tag MLP (people already do that).

Not anthro pokemon can be tagged with male_pokemon, female_pokemon (no counter). This sounds very redundant, and people will mass mistag it because of its name, but something similar could work.

I checked a ton of ein_(cowboy_bebop) pictures, and noone tagged ein as a boy, ever. Even I didn't do that, for post #7480782.