I'm currently looking through Pokemon posts, and something's been on my mind lately.
Gender tags (1boy, 3girls, etc) are typically given with human or humanoid characters in mind, but I'm wondering if there's any real guideline for including non-human characters (such as Pokemon) when giving gender tags to a post.
At the risk of answering my own question, I'd like to think the rationale for such a thing is the following:
The Pokemon has clear visual differences between genders.
From what I've seen, the general consensus atm is that Pokémon shouldn't get gender tags because 99% of people searching for gender tags are trying to find posts featuring human characters (or at least humanoid characters). It might be accurate to tag a black Hippowdon or a Pikachu with a heart-shaped tail as female, but I'd wager that nobody searching for gender tags wants safe animal posts to count towards them. Plus, we use the "tag what you see" policy so it doesn't matter if a Pokémon canonically only has one gender. I tend to agree with this mindset for the most part, but I think that there are some scenarios where we should tag the gender of Pokémon.
For bestial Pokémon (Hippowdon, Pikachu, Nidoran etc.), if its genitals are visible or if it being a boy or a girl is a key focus of the post, then I'd say that their gender could be tagged (excluding posts such as post #3264723, which I believe are common enough to warrant an exception). Only a tiny amount of safe posts would be affected this way, and people who want to find questionable/explicit posts featuring bestial Pokémon (yes, they do exist for some reason) are still able to search for them. However, if we do that we should also make a new tag for users to blacklist such posts (I'd suggest bestial) because furry only applies to Pokémon that are humanoid and based off of animals (Emboar, Lopunny, Scizor etc.). We could also just update the furry wiki to also include these posts, but having tags that apply to more than one concept is dubious.
For humanoid Pokémon, I'd suggest tagging their genders if there are no humans in the post and the Pokémon appear particularly masculine or feminine (Sawk and Throh, Gardevoir, Gothitelle etc.). If there are humans or other non-human characters we tag with a gender (such as Midna), then I'd suggest tagging their genders when their genitals are visible or they are emphasised to have a gender through other means. This could be through physical traits such as a muscular build / chiselled jawline on a male or a curvy figure / breasts on a female, or through something such as an implied relationship/attraction between other characters and the Pokémon.
Anyway, that's my take on it. I know the majority of searches for gender tags are made with human results in mind, so I tried to think of solutions that would be the least intrusive to such searches. If anyone wants to suggest improvements (or tell me why I'm wrong) then feel free.
