Topic: [Tag Project] NUKING invalid_tag

Posted under General

Ok not quite nuking it.

The idea is to unalias a maximum of tags, change those tags's category to invalid. At the moment: everything "incorrect" is aliased to one "trash" tag and you won't even know which one was it.

Why?

  • It would help figure out which one is the wrong one.
  • It will allow people to use the wiki more efficiently.

invalid_tag would stay, for:

  • tags that doesn't have a good replacement
  • inaproriate or irrelevant tags.

Thoughts?

dfY6C

Privileged

For context to users who don't use it, there was some general discussion in the Discord chat that there could be less reliance on invalid_tag. Other than what was said in the OP here, here are some notes:

  • Some tags currently aliased to invalid_tag could be repurposed into other aliases or disambiguations (diambiguations being in the invalid category), such as ass_worship which should alias to butt_worship (I'm going to propose this alias soon) and touching which could be a disambiguation for other tags such as touching_penis or other touching_x tags.
  • J Mor (e621 developer) mentioned plans on changing the tag history to show what tag the user wrote instead of just what it aliased to. If implemented, this should remove some frustrations that some users have because they didn't realize which tag they put got invalidated.
  • I floated the idea to J Mor about "multiple aliasing", if aliasing a tag to multiple other tags was possible. There are tags aliasing to invalid_tag that could benefit from such a function. For example, lion_girl could alias to both lion and female at the same time, similar to how with implications one tag could imply multiple other tags at the same time. He stated that he's thought about that and that he doesn't see why it wouldn't be possible, but that it's a matter of actually doing it. For the moment, he's recommended aliasing something such as lion_girl to the species itself (lion in this case obviously) rather than invalid_tag like it is now.
Relevant chat log from Discord for those who need context

[01/22/2026 21:38] ayokeito
Hey peeps! Trying to post with the tool i've vibecoded and tagging with hydra
Here's a pic https://e6ai.net/post_versions?search%5Bpost_id%5D=148716

It adds invalid_tag
I assume it's on e6ai side? Or is it hydra adding the tag?
If so, what's the actual invalid_tag? I can't see anything wrong there

[01/22/2026 21:39] ayokeito
Or is that invalid tag is removed before the post is actually up? I'm a bit lost 🤣

[01/22/2026 21:40] latiodile
invalid tags get converted automatically by the site, you have to manually figure out which one's getting invalidated

[01/22/2026 21:40] ayokeito
I see... Do we have to add the tag for tag that was removed without user intervention? 🤔

[01/22/2026 21:40] jmor7854
No, It was removed because it's invalid.

[01/22/2026 21:41] ayokeito
I mean, now the picture is posted with correct tags, but you have to go there and actually remove the "invalid_tag"

[01/22/2026 21:41] ayokeito
What for?

[01/22/2026 21:41] latiodile
depends on the tag, ears is invalid for whatever reason

[01/22/2026 21:41] ayokeito
Yeah I imagine there's quite a few of them

[01/22/2026 21:41] ayokeito
I just don't see a value in adding "invalid_tag"

[01/22/2026 21:41] jmor7854
We can't remove autoremove tags with aliases, We can only change them to another tag, hence invalid tag.

[01/22/2026 21:41] ayokeito
I see

[01/22/2026 21:42] ayokeito
Thanks 🙂

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[01/22/2026 21:53] kaleth54
too broad

[01/22/2026 21:53] kaleth54
having ears is kind of the default state of most characters

[01/22/2026 21:53] kaleth54
it's like eyes

[01/22/2026 21:55] kaleth54
Ideally each tag would have a wiki entry. You can go directly to the wiki by pressing the question mark next to it

[01/22/2026 21:55] latiodile
question mark*

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[01/22/2026 21:56] kaleth54

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https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1421568898951807068/1464015916194070609/image.png?ex=6973ee92&is=69729d12&hm=648ac65af7fe400e06305316d9e3f5fea1f2d7a621c559eb1c6ffa7d2109edbd&

[01/22/2026 21:56] latiodile
yes, that's a question mark

[01/22/2026 21:57] kaleth54
All the information is in his wiki page
https://e6ai.net/wiki_pages/1845

{Embed}
https://e6ai.net/wiki_pages/1845
invalid tag - e6AI
Images or animations featuring this tag were given tags that are no longer actively used on the site or simply deemed unusable — too vague, broken, deprecated, or outright banned. This tag act...

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[01/22/2026 21:58] kaleth54
yeaaah, good catch XP

[01/22/2026 21:58] dfy6c_80750
Shouldn't it be technically more preferable to set the tags as invalid category rather than aliasing to invalid_tag, so that people can identify which tags they are using that are invalid? (outside of abuse tags such as slurs, which should be aliased). Going off of [this](https://e621.net/forum_topics/57975?page=1#forum_post_456814) statement by a former staff member of e621, aliasing to invalid_tag would be if the tag also doesn't have a good replacement.

[01/22/2026 22:00] latiodile
i agree, outright replacing the tag adds a whole lot of guesswork if you add a lot of tags and miss one that happened to be invalidated

[01/22/2026 22:00] latiodile
and you have to figure out *which* one was invalidated

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[01/22/2026 22:00] ayokeito
Yeah, it's easier to just remove the invalid_tag rather than figuring out which of them are invalid

[01/22/2026 22:00] latiodile
e621 at least has some vague invalid tags like invalid colour, whatever the fuck that means lmao

[01/22/2026 22:01] dfy6c_80750
I think the movement to use invalid category rather than aliasing to invalid_tag is a more recent movement from there. I thought about it, I think it's a good move.

[01/22/2026 22:01] ayokeito
It's no biggie

[01/22/2026 22:01] ayokeito
At this point just trash invalid_tag via cron server-side 🤣

[01/22/2026 22:01] dfy6c_80750
Certainly not the biggest deal but every little bit helps, I suppose. A nice convenience, if you will

[01/22/2026 22:02] ayokeito
No real reason to keep it, but I guess the *reason* is the same why we should replace the tag with something instead of just deleting it

[01/22/2026 22:02] latiodile
just outright replacing it with a vague invalid tag also makes *valid* replacement tags suffer because people will just remove the invalid tag instead of changing it to a valid alias

[01/22/2026 22:02] ayokeito
Legacy code, I guess

[01/22/2026 22:02] dfy6c_80750
invalid_tag still has a use, for aliasing slurs and other abuse tags (the wiki article for invalid_tag had the full-on n-word hard-r as an "example" of this, but has since been removed, you get the point though)

[01/22/2026 22:02] ayokeito
I don't think a lot of people are bothering with API anyway

[01/22/2026 22:03] latiodile
this is a problem even on the official uploader

[01/22/2026 22:03] ayokeito
Do we need to know someone tried to use a slur?

[01/22/2026 22:04] dfy6c_80750
Aliasing that to invalid_tag so people don't see that on a post's tag list is what the purpose is

[01/22/2026 22:04] ayokeito
But if we're aliasing before the post is even up, we can delete the tag without aliasing

[01/22/2026 22:05] ayokeito
Then the tag is useless

[01/22/2026 22:05] dfy6c_80750
Trolls can attempt to put tags after the post is up if they really hate someone, it's not just for before the post is up

[01/22/2026 22:05] dfy6c_80750
It's just one countermeasure for trolls

[01/22/2026 22:06] kaleth54
100% agree. I'm often dreaming about nuking that tag even.

[01/22/2026 22:07] kaleth54
nah, code is not to blame for that.

[01/22/2026 22:08] ayokeito
Then I still don't understand why it's impossible to just delete whatever is considered invalid 🤭
But I don't mind, deleting a tag is not a big deal for me
Not gonna work around it on my side

[01/22/2026 22:09] latiodile
i could say something about lazy taggers but i won't out out of not coming off as an assole

[01/22/2026 22:09] kaleth54
The aim is to tell the uploader that a tag was removed/transformed

[01/22/2026 22:10] kaleth54
it would be way worst if it was removed silently

[01/22/2026 22:10] dfy6c_80750
I think a reason for not auto-deleting is because of alternative tags/disambiguations. You will have tags such as "wide" which are too vague by themselves, but if someone tags that on a post, there may be a wiki page associated with those vague tags which guide the user on better, less vague tags that probably would've applied more accurately to that post.

[01/22/2026 22:10] ayokeito
I don't really post to e6ai anymore myself, but one person said it's either this or they won't post

[01/22/2026 22:10] ayokeito
I just added e6ai as a platform

[01/22/2026 22:11] ayokeito
I'm not judging 🙂

[01/22/2026 22:12] ayokeito
See, the problem is everything "incorrect" is aliased to one "trash" tag and you won't even know which one was it. If it just left the tag and marked it as invalid, that would be another question completely

[01/22/2026 22:13] ayokeito
I remember it showed some tags in red? Or am I hallucinating? Was it tags with too few posts? Like 1 or 2?

[01/22/2026 22:13] latiodile
that's the argument, unaliasing it from that one trash tag to help figure out which one is the wrong one

[01/22/2026 22:13] ayokeito
Something like this would work for "wide"

[01/22/2026 22:14] dfy6c_80750
Oh there is certainly a lot of what you said, and there's probably going to need to be work towards prioritizing invalid categories instead. But I used wide as an example because it's one of the most recent examples that actually isn't aliased to invalid_tag, but is in a invalid category

[01/22/2026 22:16] kaleth54
You're preaching to the choir, there's only work to do to unalias stuff, change category, look at all the invalidated tags

[01/22/2026 22:25] jelloponies
This is an interesting idea

[01/22/2026 22:27] jelloponies
Invalid is a tag category and can be used like you guys are suggesting if that's something we see value in

[01/22/2026 22:31] jelloponies
It'd be some BUR to unalias everything from invalid_tag and change the category instead. Then of course lock the tag category on all of the tags which would probably have to be done manually by an admin

[01/22/2026 22:32] jelloponies
Definitely worth thinking about

[01/22/2026 22:34] jelloponies
I know not tons of people check the forum but it might be worth making a post with the hopes of gauging what the userbase thinks of it...

[01/22/2026 22:46] dfy6c_80750
I don't think _everything_ has to be unaliased from it, like I said above slurs and other abuse tags still have a place in being aliased to invalid_tag if anything. In most other cases for regular unoffending tags, then yeah invalid category is not a bad way to go

[01/22/2026 22:47] kaleth54
https://e6ai.net/forum_topics/957

{Embed}
https://e6ai.net/forum_topics/957
[Tag Project] NUKING invalid_tag - e6AI
Ok not quite nuking it.The idea is to unalias a maximum of tags, change those tags's category to invalid. At the moment: everything "incorrect" is aliased to one "trash" tag and you won't even know...

[01/22/2026 22:53] technical_grid
If you showed us the autogenerated tags, we could propably find the culprit

[01/22/2026 23:14] jmor7854
Nmm,nmc; that's a question for whoever approved the alias.

[01/22/2026 23:16] jmor7854
In any case, it's worth noting you guys are forgetting that there's a list of all the tags aliased to something on its wiki page.

[01/22/2026 23:18] jmor7854
The point is to use it when there *isn't* a valid replacement; what could you possibly replace ears with to make it valid?

[01/22/2026 23:18] latiodile
elaborate on what kind of ears it is?

[01/22/2026 23:18] jmor7854
Shouldn't that be tagged already?

[01/22/2026 23:18] dfy6c_80750
Nah, I've seen that. The problem is that when people put a vague tag and don't know what they should be putting instead. If they go figure out what tag is invalid, they still may not know what to actually use unless they're guided, which is usually what disambiguations are for. The reply was meant for the forgetting a list comment, wrong reply sorry

[01/22/2026 23:19] latiodile
no, not something that comes to mind immediately

[01/22/2026 23:19] latiodile
especially if you're unsure of what kind of ears they're supposed to be so you use the global tag

[01/22/2026 23:20] jmor7854
That sounds a lot like you still wouldn't know what to tag, otherwise you'd have tagged it in the first place.

[01/22/2026 23:21] jmor7854
Making a simple category change pretty much useless.

[01/22/2026 23:21] latiodile
people already put shockingly little effort to tag, i just feel like having a hostile alias like invalid tag just makes the process worse

[01/22/2026 23:22] jmor7854
Any alternative suggestions?

[01/22/2026 23:22] latiodile
the suggesion was already suggested, replace invalid tag with just putting the tag in the invalid category

[01/22/2026 23:22] sparkzicity
I think that's dumb

[01/22/2026 23:22] jmor7854
...that's just as hostile

[01/22/2026 23:23] sparkzicity
It encourages people to still use shitty tags

[01/22/2026 23:23] dfy6c_80750
We recently had wide as an example. People who tag wide certainly mean something else and they're technically on the right track but just need a little push towards what they actually mean. In that case it would usually be wide_hips, but could mean a couple of other things

[01/22/2026 23:23] dfy6c_80750
https://e6ai.net/wiki_pages/2951

{Embed}
https://e6ai.net/wiki_pages/2951
wide - e6AI
This tag is invalid as it is too vague by itself and needs to be replaced and/or removed. One of these other tags was probably more fitting for the post such as:wide_hipswide_eyedbroad_shoulders (w...

[01/22/2026 23:23] latiodile
it's less hostile than having like 40 tags and having ssome disappear mysteriously and replaced with invalid tag

[01/22/2026 23:23] latiodile
it helps figure out what the fuck disappeared

[01/22/2026 23:23] sparkzicity
And it'll take someone else to remove them

[01/22/2026 23:24] dfy6c_80750
(I did write that page so it's a little bit of biased example btw)

[01/22/2026 23:24] jmor7854
Oh, I'm sure it's been used in cases where it shouldn't, both on e621 & e6ai; I'm saying there's cases where it's 100% sensible to just completely kill the tag with an alias to invalid.

[01/22/2026 23:25] jmor7854
And having a Christmas tree of red showing you that each & everything you did was wrong is less hostile how?

[01/22/2026 23:26] jmor7854
This is a matter of perspective.

[01/22/2026 23:26] dfy6c_80750
invalid_tag still has a place even with category invalid existing, for sure

[01/22/2026 23:26] latiodile
i give up, my opinion clearly holds no weight

[01/22/2026 23:26] latiodile
i'm going back to my loras

[01/22/2026 23:27] jmor7854
I'm not saying it holds no weight, I'm saying there's other opinions here. Some would say silently sweeping as many tag screw-ups as possible into a single dead tag is less hostile. This isn't an objective improvement.

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[01/22/2026 23:28] jmor7854
Neither is objectively more or less hostile than the other.

[01/22/2026 23:29] kaleth54
I think feeling hostility from a website feature is pretty dumb.. That's not meant to be taken personnal

[01/22/2026 23:29] latiodile
different meaning of hostility

[01/22/2026 23:29] latiodile
hostile features means something that isn't user-friendly

[01/22/2026 23:30] latiodile
like the size error from slop's bot that somehow absolutely everyone missed my point for

[01/22/2026 23:31] kaleth54
I had to remove invalid_tag on over a hundred post today, and I cleaned it up recently too:
people that don't care to remove invalid_tag will also not remove tags in the invalid category

[01/22/2026 23:31] dfy6c_80750
It's case by case for each tag, like the nice tag should probably go to invalid_tag (which it currently does). There's nothing vague about that, it just doesn't make sense to "disambiguate" that, like nice_what? Putting nice_something as a tag is subjective, there's no reason that should be in invalid category, for that example invalid_tag makes more sense.

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[01/22/2026 23:32] __drla
my experience with invalid_tag is that I was left wondering what tag I got wrong, and if there was a correct tag I was supposed to use instead, but couldn't figure it out, because it left no trace.

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[01/22/2026 23:32] latiodile
that is quite literally what i was arguing

[01/22/2026 23:33] latiodile
but i get the disagreement 😔

[01/22/2026 23:33] dfy6c_80750
That's what the proposal is about, to make that situation potentially better. I don't think it can ever be perfect as there are just some tags that don't make sense being standalone even in invalid category, but that's what we're trying to figure out.

[01/22/2026 23:34] jmor7854
I just don't see how it's a problem for users if a tag they didn't even manually add gets wiped away unless there are natural alternatives, which is when disambiguation tags should be used. If you can't remember what tags you added, then I think that's more the problem.

I've been planning to change the history to show what the user entered & not just what it resolved to, but time's been on short supply recently.

[01/22/2026 23:34] latiodile
"christmas tree of red tags" isn't a good solution either, when there's a lot of tags it's easier to glaze through them, especially if the difference between the colours for invalid and species tags is very close

[01/22/2026 23:35] kaleth54
tags are grouped by category, that's not even a problem

[01/22/2026 23:35] jmor7854
Are you saying the 2 solutions are similarly bad now? I'm confused on what you think the best case scenario would be.

[01/22/2026 23:35] kaleth54
you don't need to know what color it is

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[01/22/2026 23:37] kaleth54
J Mor, is there a way to search posts by tag category?

[01/22/2026 23:37] kaleth54
That's my only misgiving, to clean posts, we will have to go through the list of all invalidated tags

[01/22/2026 23:38] kaleth54
nvm, I'm dumb and tired

[01/22/2026 23:38] jmor7854

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[01/22/2026 23:38] jmor7854
https://e6ai.net/help/cheatsheet

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[01/22/2026 23:38] kaleth54
thanks

[01/22/2026 23:38] jmor7854
Np 👍

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[01/22/2026 23:38] sparkzicity
https://e6ai.net/posts?tags=invtags%3A%3E0

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https://e6ai.net/posts?tags=invtags%3A%3E0
invtags:>0 - e6AI
e6AI

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[01/22/2026 23:49] kaleth54
Really, if we can find posts with invalidated tags that easily, if the invalid tags have their own section in the tags' section, what's the harm to rely on invalidated tags instead of invalid_tag?

[01/22/2026 23:50] dfy6c_80750
Also, it might be worth waiting to see that change of showing what the user entered and not just what it resolved to that J Mor mentioned, no rush though

[01/22/2026 23:51] dfy6c_80750
We can still have disambiguations though obviously

[01/22/2026 23:51] kaleth54
My aim is not to go all in on one side

[01/22/2026 23:52] jmor7854
It's not supposed to be one sided; these are approved one at a time for a reason.

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[01/22/2026 23:52] kaleth54
But I think we could reduce our reliance on invalid_tag tag

[01/22/2026 23:53] kaleth54
There's certainly a clean up to do: like, ass_worship is aliased to invalid_tag for some reason

[01/22/2026 23:54] kaleth54
I feel like thrashing tag is the "easy way out"

[01/22/2026 23:54] dfy6c_80750
Well that one just sounds like it could alias to butt_worship

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[01/22/2026 23:55] kaleth54
there "touching"

[01/22/2026 23:55] kaleth54
that should be a disambiguated tag

[01/22/2026 23:55] jmor7854
What's the harm? None. It's that for some, there's also no *point*. And imo, if the user truly has zero idea what tag they missed, then I'd say that's only further driving home the point. I'd say clarifying on the wiki "if your tag was aliased to this, then there's probably not a real tag for it" or something would be fine.

If anyone wants to review the current aliases, [here](https://e6ai.net/tag_aliases?commit=Search&search%5Bconsequent_name%5D=invalid_tag&search%5Bstatus%5D=Active) it is.
-# Edit: Switched search to only active aliases.

[01/22/2026 23:56] jmor7854
I'd say that's a productive way to handle it.

[01/23/2026 00:05] jmor7854
Actually, if you want my advice, basically all tag like these should be aliased to either the species (recommended) or the gender; I don't know why NMNY decided to invalidate.

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[01/23/2026 00:05] jmor7854
There's like a whole page of just this.

[01/23/2026 00:12] dfy6c_80750
I don't know how this could work from a development perspective, but would it be possible to implement multiple tag aliasing? To clarify, similar to how implications let you imply multiple things at once, could there be an implementation that works to allow something like lion_girl to alias to both lion and female? It's just an idea, I don't mean to pile it on you as more work, I just wonder how feasible that is.

[01/23/2026 00:13] jmor7854
It's something I've been thinking about.

[01/23/2026 00:13] ayokeito
Removing X amounts of tags without any explanation or warning is as user-unfriendly as it's gonna get TBH

[01/23/2026 00:13] ayokeito
It's like "no, gtfo"

[01/23/2026 00:13] jmor7854
Possible? Yes, I don't see why it wouldn't be. It's more a matter of actually doing it.

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[01/23/2026 00:14] ayokeito
I mean, at least it's not taking down a picture... That's a start

[01/23/2026 00:14] jmor7854
We already alias tags.

[01/23/2026 00:15] jmor7854
And we're not gonna leave 5 million invalid aspect ratios up.

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[01/23/2026 00:18] ayokeito
Yeah, see, I understand the existense of "invalid_tag" as sort of "fu" to whoever is using trash tags. I honestly see no other reason for it to even exist.
Do we expect someone to:
1) Use a trash tag
2) Notice "invalid_tag"
3) Realize it actually replaced a tag
4) Sit and try tags to see which one was aliased
...
Is there a reality where uploader decides to do all that? 🤔

[01/23/2026 00:18] jmor7854
It's not an insult

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[01/23/2026 00:18] ayokeito
Instead of just shrugging it off and moving on?

[01/23/2026 00:19] jmor7854
It's a way to remove tags that have no real alternative for tagging, & should thus just be removed.

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[01/23/2026 00:20] ayokeito
So why aren't we just removing them? What is this aliasing for? For someone to sit and go through removing invalid_tag in their free time?

[01/23/2026 00:20] ayokeito
Like this?

[01/23/2026 00:20] jmor7854
I already told you.

[01/23/2026 00:20] jmor7854

[01/23/2026 00:22] jmor7854
This is the closest we can get to autoremoving without opening the hood & grabbing a wrench, & us metaphorical mechanics are already spread thin.

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[01/23/2026 00:23] kaleth54
It is supposed to be the uploader's responsibility, and is considered regular mistagging

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[01/23/2026 00:23] kaleth54
Someone who regularly mistag post can be punish

[01/23/2026 00:28] jmor7854
I also don't really understand why there would be emotional investment for those users who are already using automated tagging assistance. The machine got something wrong; that happens all the time. That's why it's the user's responsibility to review the output & make sure its correct. If a user frequently lets invalid tags slip through, that's a sign they aren't paying enough attention. As Kaleth said, it's *their* responsibility to correct *before* submitting, not *our* responsibility to help them fix it after the fact.

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[01/23/2026 00:32] ayokeito
I don't have any emotional investment tbh, I'm just pointing out that aliasing tags to a common trash tag is as opaque as it can be.
I'll be honest with you, it didn't even cross my mind to go inside that tag and realize it's a catch-all for them.
I thought it just signals that some of the used tags are invalid.
I didn't expect it to just dev/null them and THEN stay.

If it's the easiest solution, so be it, as I've said, it doesn't bother me to delete a tag. On the other hand, we have people in this chat who clean up this trash tag regularly, so here's that. I'm not one of them, so I don't really care.

[01/23/2026 00:33] ayokeito
I'm 110% fine with things staying as they are now

[01/23/2026 00:35] ayokeito
One thing I would suggest is maybe renaming it to something like removed_tag? To let people know some action was performed? That it's not just there. Idk

[01/23/2026 00:36] ayokeito
invalid_tag_removed?

[01/23/2026 00:36] ayokeito
<:furry_shrug_male:1332128204558827600>

[01/23/2026 00:37] jmor7854
🤷‍♂️ It would be trivial to do, but that's a matter for the admins to decide.