I’d like to propose a change to a couple of tags.
infidelity has 1400+ images, with the description “Cheating, adultery, or having an outside affair.”
adultery has 450+ images, and no description.
I think both tags are potentially useful, but both are being misused. I’m aware that cleaning this up would be a challenge, but please
consider the utility of separating two concepts:
First, “infidelity” is normally defined as
violation of rules or
disloyalty or breach of
trust. While “adultery” does show up in some definitions, “infidelity” carries a connotation of
unethical action that goes against a partner’s expectations or their trust. I think “cheating” is a good synonym; it means that there is a rule that is being broken.
Currently, depribooru’s infidelity tag is used for
any situation where a married character has sex with someone other than their spouse,
unless there is clear evidence of polyamory or open relationship, and even that’s not terribly consistent. Several ship tags imply infidelity. I think it’s a disservice to assume, from a tagging perspective, that that any extramarital sex is a breach of trust. Open relationships exist, as does polyamory.
Especially on a site which features all sorts of unusual pairings, practices, and fetishes, such an assumption is counterproductive.
Of course, some folks would like to filter out any images that feature disrespect of monogamous marriage, which brings me to my second point:
Adultery has the simpler and less-loaded meaning of “a married person having sex with a person who is not their spouse”. The
New York penal code defines it as such. Thus the adultery tag can amply cover any cases of married characters engaging in extramarital sex, whether that involves a breach of trust or not. It’s sensible for an image to be tagged “adultery, polyamory” when it is clear no infidelity is taking place, and “adultery, infidelity” when it is clear that someone is cheating. Where the situation is unclear, “adultery” is fine by itself; it merely describes the action and passes no judgement.
Why this matters:
Excuse me for being a bit self-centered here – though I hope I am not alone – but I enjoy seeing images of married characters exploring extramarital pairings, but I do
not, in general, like to see obvious cheating. In images where the situation is ambiguous, I like to assume that extramarital sex is totally within-bounds and no one is being betrayed. (I’m an optimist that way.) As it stands now, I must search for polyamory, which will miss a lot of potentially wonderful images, or infidelity, which will include images I don’t want to see.
TL;DR: When married ponies have extramarital sex, they may be cheating, not cheating, or it may be unclear. Being able to easily filter/search for the three options by tags would be just swell.
Proposal:
Any images currently tagged “infidelity” should be changed to “adultery”, as this is (mostly) how the tag is being used now. This obviously won’t be perfect, but it will work for 90%+ of current images. The definition of adultery should be: “A married character having sex with someone who is not their spouse. This includes polyamory, open relationships, and cheating.”
The “infidelity” tag should be defined as: “Adultery, where it is clear from the dialogue or context that a character is being unfaithful or cheating. Do
not use where there is possiblity of open relationship or polyamory.”
If this change is implemented, I’d be willing to help with or lead the cleanup. With the change, “adultery” would be a tag I’d browse frequently and I’d make it a point to fix up the tags as appropriate. I can even commit to systematically going through all the images so tagged; at an average of 10 per day I alone could get through them all in 4.5 months.
Thanks for listening, and I hope I made a good argument. I really do think this change would be very useful.
Edit: One more link to clarify the difference:
http://wikidiff.com/infidelity/adultery