Wicked
Yes! The current tagging system feels -too- optional and more for personal organization rather than refining the search function. If you can officially confirm a species through an artist, it feels like more people would do that to confirm their character's legitimacy over self-tagging a species name.
I still have a pretty big gripe with the categorization system of this site, namely dubbing "creator" automatically as the species creator, rather than character creator. I know what it means, but it's still extremely uninformative to newbies who don't understand what "creator" entails, and it feels morally wrong to accept creator rights for a design when it's a MYO someone else made of my species.
So what I wanted to suggest was the ability for users to, somewhere on our accounts, apply our existing species names. From there, when people upload their characters, they'd be able to search a username up and pull up that user's species list, allowing them to click a species name to get approved. Also, because I'm sure some species names would conflict due to the simplicity of most species names, these species would be linked per user and not thrown into a massive pool of species names.
Additionally, if a user-made species does not apply, or certain users choose not to list their species, there should be an option to either write the species name yourself, or choose an 'N/A' option until it becomes available, much like how you can choose between writing an artist's offsite URL or their on-site user.
Sorry if this isn't coherent enough, but I've pretty much been thinking this since I first started on here and I'd still really like this change, even if it's just optional. It would be nice if it separated peoples' MYOs and such from the "designs" section into its own section so people could still see them attached to the species creator, but it stops implying that the species creator made them.
I would +1,000,000 this if I could, but since I can't, just a +1.
Some people don't realize that my species, even though they're not publicly CSes or anything, have names other than "kemonomimi" lol. Like, just because they look like kemonos don't mean they are, they do have separate lore and identity other than "nekomimi," "(Japanese equivalent for mouse)mimi" and stuff.This would also make it SUPER easy to show someone all examples of a certain species.
In fact, it would be really cool if you could also add the lore of the species and stuff to the species page, sort of like how DA groups used to function? That way you don't have to store the info offsite, which I'm sure is annoying even if for many people it would jsut be pretty much Ctrl-A, Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V.
Although in general I absolutely agree that the entire point for tags SHOULD be for personal organization, and the fact that most people force you to add tags for CSes is both the reason I don't make my species into CSes, and the reason I don't use CSes unless I get them from trade or something. My tags have a specific purpose and it is what the intended purpose is. To make searching for types of OCs easier. Having a million different tags (like I have to to sort my different species's characters) just because of needing to put their species in for "validation" defeats the purpose of tags. If you want to allow searching that way then go right ahead, but you shouldn't be force to just because you have one wickerbeast and one bunkit (both of which were FREE and neither of which I could find on TH when and if I even cared), for example.
+1 for this even though i've just kinda thrown my CS to the wind and am putting them all together. i dislike the creator role for CS because.... most of my CS are MYOs and designer doesn't fit it as well.
somewhat related, but if CS creators can have multiple Design Terms of Use (rather than just the global one), whenever a user credits them for their species, they can make sure that the design has the right TOS based on the closed species (which can conveniently link to the CS's world or dA page etc) which would be hella helpful
(also StrawberryLunala, a mouse eared person would be nezumimi)