First off - I love how the tags in question currently work; do not misinterpret this forum post as advocating any changes to them.
I also like and agree with the info already in the wiki articles... but adding more - especially usage guidelines - could help resolve some confusion.
Tags/wikis involved:
non-mammal_balls
non-mammal_breasts
non-mammal_ears
non-mammal_hair
non-mammal_navel
non-mammal_nipples
non-mammal_vulva
And I'm less worried about what the standard usage turns out to be, than about having some level of consensus or central authority on what it is. Then I'll gladly comply. We just need consistency.
Unfortunately, we don't seem to have that. If I were the only one confused, it wouldn't be a big deal; once I know that I'm using a tag wrong I can just stop using it and let better-informed people sort it out. But in the case of these non-mammal tags... I've encountered images with edit histories where more experienced users undo and redo the same edits multiple times, and based on some sarcastic/rhetorical remarks in the "reason for change" field, the editors seem... frustrated with eachother, or even adamant that they are using the tags correctly and the other editor's usage isn't. That strikes me as a bigger issue than a noob like me being wrong and needing to stop editing certain tags. It sounds like informed people have conflicting opinions.
The issue seems to revolve around how certain we must be that something is, in fact, not a mammal before these tags become appropriate. It does make sense that this would not be exhaustive with the mammal tag - some fictional organisms are not sufficiently mammalian to be tagged as such, but also too ambiguous to apply any of the non-mammal tags (assuming the ambiguous creature has the anatomy corresponding to the tag).
With non-fictional species, there seems to be clear consensus already. Anthro variants of real animals too.
The conflicting opinions seem to arise with more fanciful mythical beasts. The most polarized debates I've encountered yet were regarding a furred dragon from a franchise which has not clarified if dragons in their fictional setting are regarded as mammals, nor what mammalian traits (other than fur) they have, if any. So e6 should probably take an official stance on furred dragons, perhaps furred scalies in general, or at least give guidelines for deciding when a franchise or copyright does not specify. But I can imagine all kinds of other edge cases sparking similar debate (has anyone here run into examples?), so it might be helpful to preemptively address a variety of them, such as mammal × non-mammal chimeras, or perhaps cartoon species where the franchise does not officially declare the species' canonical taxonomy/integuments/mammal-diagnostic apomorphies, and large amounts fanart/fanfic/etc has sprung into existence based on opposing interpretations on the matter.
Any opinions? Rules of thumb? Related observations? Suggestions? Criticisms? Etc?
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