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Posted under General
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I'm not sure how valuable this idea might be, but since there seems to be an issue in that cowboy has a specific gender attached to the name, perhaps cowhand would be a preferable choice since it is gender neutral. Alternatively if distinguishing by gender is necessary, it could be used as the parent tag for both gender specific tags.
I know this idea is fairly redundant with western, but at the same time not every single western image necessarily has to be about cowboys or cowgirls (my only example: post #439226).
On a different train of thought, cowgirls are in something around 308 out of 360 images under western and cowboy -western. Most images of cowgirls are also typically solo or not with cowboys (there are some that are though) and given how common cowgirls are, if a tag like cowboy was specifically used only for male characters, there would be fairly little lost performing a western -cowboy when searching for cowgirls. Additionally it seems to me the majority of cowboys would qualify for the male tag, as most of them seem to be depicted solo or just with males. All of this would also mean if you wanted to find images of cowboys with cowgirls (or groups of people), it would be possible to find pretty much all of them then with a cowboy -male search (assuming everything was tagged).
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Mmm, cowhand gets around the cowgirl (girls that are cows) conflict without having to qualify, so that's not a bad idea even if it's not the first word most would come up with.
western is already more or less a cowgirl tag, it's just cowboys that are difficult to find. I suggest restricting cowboy to only male examples. That way a singular cowboy search nets you all the male examples, and western -cowboy if you want zero male examples.
Once again, like it's normal with complicated issues, there are many conflicting suggestions.
The best decision for now is starting with these simple first steps that simultaneously support many of the aforementioned ideas:
I can help. If someone else can help too, be my guest.
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I did exactly what I said I would do in the previous post. I spent a few hours editing hundreds of posts quickly.
Results:
1. cowboy is for (male) cowboys only
2. western if for cowboys and cowgirls together
3. The search western -cowboy is for cowgirls without cowboys
4. In addition, the tag western might have some characters that are neither cowboys nor cowgirls, but these exceptional characters are very well hidden somewhere. Example: post #439226.
5. And the following posts have cowgirls and cowboys together. They are naturally hidden within the depths of western and can't be found easily.
EDIT:
Some more.
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For Point 5, add cowboy to them anyway. If someone wanted absolutely no female examples, they can use a cowboy male search.
Hillside_Moose said:
For Point 5, add cowboy to them anyway. If someone wanted absolutely no female examples, they can use a cowboy male search.
Sure thing, cowboy is added to them.
I think this subject is over, even if other ideas like cowhand and cowgirl_(western) are valuable. They may be revisited in future discussions, if necessary.