Going over leg_armor it seems to be used for three things currently:
Armor (almost always plate) covering the lower thigh or knee. Most examples under greaves leg_armor seem to be this, with leg_armor being used as a additional tag for the armor bits not covered under greaves. There are also a number of examples featuring only thigh or knee armor.
We do have cuisses (lower thigh plate) and poleyn (knee plate) tags, but those are almost never used.
Used to tag greaves when the tagger isn't aware of the term (or forgot/). Though most such examples also have upper leg armor, and often with the entire legs armored too... so maybe they are tagging the entire "leg" instead.
Used to tag weird armor pieces that go over the leg like in post #4166489.
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If we want to keep most of the tags while avoiding the so-called "vocabulary test quiz" issue mentioned by Veradux, maybe we can alias the various leg and foot armor tags to, say, plated_thigh_armor, knee_plate, plated_shin_armor and plated_shoes. Or with the anatomy part in front like shin_plate_armor (greaves are supposed to be 'wraparound' plates, including the Greek ones from classical antiquity and the modern bulletproof ones that might be called 'greaves'). This will also help improve visibility of the tags, as well as making it clear which part of the armor they are referring to.
Most of the leg armor pieces tend to be named after the Old French words for the relevant part of the anatomy anyway, like greaves ("shin") and cuisses ("thigh").
Edit: Another consideration for greaves as a separate tag is that it is often worn as the only lower body armor in conjunction with other (non-armored) footwear. So one can do greaves shoes, greaves sandals (the classic Greek/Roman look) or greaves boots -armored_boots (avoiding the implication) searches to find those combinations. Doing the same search with leg_armor instead will be noisier.
Use it for odd armour variants such as thigh_guards and chainmail_pants that doesnt have a tag. I noticed leg_guards are aliased to shin guards.
Use it for cases where the whole leg is armoured. Ranging from post #3140197 to post #4289754. Both these options would require constant cleaning.
These won't work for the same reason "everything else" tags or tags with lots of clauses never work: people are going to read "leg armor" and use the tag for leg armor.
Use it as an umbrella tag for greaves, faulds and suneate, plus everything in the previous options.
Alias all leg armour into this tag. Drastic, I agree, but expecting users to know what cuisses are is obviously not working.
It's basically one of these two options (excluding faulds, because those are not leg armor, they're detached free-moving pieces like kusazuri). We have sode and pauldrons umbrellaed to shoulder armor, and we want to keep the distinction between western and japanese armor for leg armor too, if only because japanese art comprises the majority of our content (though I'll admit several suneate posts look nothing like suneate and seem to be tagged on canon).
So I'd say we can implicate suneate to leg armor, however I don't think we need all four of cuisses, greaves, poleyn and shin guards. I am also not fully convinced that people care to tag all the different individual parts of leg armor. If we want to follow the example of shoulder armor, we'd need to alias all of the non-suneate leg armor to a single tag, and imply that too to leg armor. But the main issue is of course the name, if leg armor is to be an umbrella.
Worth noting that there's a lot of posts under armor knee_pads, so I think we could get away to just aliasing poleyn to knee pads. Sure, that tag's name suggests that it was originally meant to be for padded material of the type you see in skateboarders, not metal armor, but the fact that poleyn is an immensely obscure term means people just defaulted to knee pads instead for all kinds of knee protection (same issue we had with paws and reptile hands).
So tl;dr for my proposal:
alias poleyn -> knee_pads (optional alias knee_pads -> knee_<something> if we don't like calling them pads, which a lot of the posts under knee pads are not) alias greaves, cuisses, shin_guards -> <normal leg armor tag> imply suneate, <normal leg armor tag> -> leg_armor.
Or we can also alias greaves, cuisses, shin_guards to leg armor and only keep suneate separate as its implication. To be honest I don't even think many people are even aware that greaves is supposed to be only for the shins and that thigh armor has a different name, because browsing through it it really feels like just another name for leg armor.
Worth noting that there's a lot of posts under armor knee_pads, so I think we could get away to just aliasing poleyn to knee pads. Sure, that tag's name suggests that it was originally meant to be for padded material of the type you see in skateboarders, not metal armor, but the fact that poleyn is an immensely obscure term means people just defaulted to knee pads instead for all kinds of knee protection (same issue we had with paws and reptile hands).
So tl;dr for my proposal:
alias poleyn -> knee_pads (optional alias knee_pads -> knee_<something> if we don't like calling them pads, which a lot of the posts under knee pads are not)
I don't really like the idea of merging armor and padded material in a single tag, but I'm not sure if the current mess is because there was no alternative tag for them and people were forced to use it, or because people genuinely don't care/can't tell the difference. Maybe knee pads and knee armor as separate tags, implied to knee guards? I could help clean it up, but it's a big tag so it'll take time to fix it.
I don't really like the idea of merging armor and padded material in a single tag, but I'm not sure if the current mess is because there was no alternative tag for them and people were forced to use it, or because people genuinely don't care/can't tell the difference. Maybe knee pads and knee armor as separate tags, implied to knee guards? I could help clean it up, but it's a big tag so it'll take time to fix it.
Does have the advantage of naturally implying armor, though yeah, gardening it is going to take a while.
Part of the problem with knee pads is that it's really a chaotic combination of athletic compression thingies, like what Bea wears in her gym costume (post #4722937), and honest-to-goodness real poleyns, like post #4719979. So my knee-jerk (ha) reaction is to dislike pads and armor being together, but there's nothing to be done.
Similar issues exist with shin guards, armored boots, and all the other things.
Thus, I think it's best to go a bit heavy-handed.
Make Leg Armor an umbrella tag and then have just a handful of sectional tags for common things. Shin guards, knee guards/pads/some other vernacular, thigh armor, and something along the lines of armored boots or armored footwear. Then have those individual tags all implicate leg armor.
Essentially, I agree with nnt's proposal to an extent. I'd still like it to be a bit physically sectional, but not three different things based on material.
I was thinking more thigh, knee, shin, and footwear, but yes. It would require a bit of cleanup from people tagging all four on thighhigh armored boots, but that's not unusual.
