tied_up vs bondage

According to its wiki page, tied up is for physical restraint in a purely comedic or otherwise non-sexual context, in contrast to bondage, which is sexual. But almost the entire front page of tied up is sexual. Oops!

There also seem to be some obviously non-sexual examples (Mystia in post #1325590) that are tagged as bondage, but there seem to be fewer of them. This could of course be because there's simply more content of sexual bondage than non-sexual binding on Danbooru.

For cleanup, I think a good start might be to remove tied up from all explicit and questionable images tagged bondage, and then start examining images tagged bondage to look for ones that should be tagged tied up instead. Of course, we may want to rename some tags before trying to fix the problem, since these problems normally stem from confusion or ambiguous names. What to change the names to will be a tricky question, though.

A long time ago I made some posts about this (topic #11114 and topic #12123), but I've more or less given up since.

My opinion remains that as long as the tag name doesn't inherently make it clear that it's not for sexual bondage, it's forever doomed to be misused. Too many Danbooru users never read wikis.

In topic #11114, 7HS said:

post #1867687 - I'm not actually sure what to do with shibari that isn't blatantly erotic. My instincts say it's "sexual bondage" even if the picture itself isn't pornographic, but I recognize it's a matter of opinion.
post #1864844 - As above but the crotch rope pushes it towards belonging in bondage.

This brings up a good point, but I actually think that shibari-style forms, especially elaborate ones, are generally indicative of something being sexual bondage. You don't need to get fancy with rope if you simply want to restrain someone, and tying-up in a comedic context usually just involves rope wrapped around the victim.

Shibari does have roots in hojoujutsu, which is the martial art of tying up a resisting opponent, but I doubt that we're going to see much totally nonfetishistic art of that. Generally speaking, shibari means bondage.

I think that has less to do with tag names but we enforce tagging way less than what we used to do.

Provence said:

I think that has less to do with tag names but we enforce tagging way less than what we used to do.

I really don't think it's possible to force every uploader and tagger to read wikis, not with the constant influx of new users we get. Making tag names clear is the only long-term solution unless we want to spend a lot of work for very little gain.

nonamethanks said:

I really don't think it's possible to force every uploader and tagger to read wikis, not with the constant influx of new users we get. Making tag names clear is the only long-term solution unless we want to spend a lot of work for very little gain.

Sure, you can do that but even then you fail (like with topless/nude).

Provence said:

Sure, you can do that but even then you fail (like with topless/nude).

Well, there is obviously a point where you can't go further, but "tied up" only being usable for safe posts is pretty far from that.

nonamethanks said:

Well, there is obviously a point where you can't go further, but "tied up" only being usable for safe posts is pretty far from that.

Then suggest a tag that it should be renamed into.

If we want to make it clearer, I think we'd have to include something like _(nonsexual) to the tag name. Although if we're going that route we'd probably be better off then having both sexual bondage and nonsexual bondage share the same tag name. We could go about it like this:

tied_up -> bound
tied_up_(nonsexual) -> bondage_(nonsexual)
tied_up_(sexual) -> bondage_(sexual)

or could go

tied_up -> bound
tied_up_(nonsexual) -> bondage_(nonsexual)
tied_up_(bdsm) -> bondage_(bdsm)

Provence said:

Then suggest a tag that it should be renamed into.

Maybe we could actually try to think of solutions instead of having a passive aggressive back and forth about the futility of making an effort to improve tagging habits?

NWF_Renim said:

tied_up -> bound
tied_up_(nonsexual) -> bondage_(nonsexual)
tied_up_(sexual) -> bondage_(sexual)

or could go

tied_up -> bound
tied_up_(nonsexual) -> bondage_(nonsexual)
tied_up_(bdsm) -> bondage_(bdsm)

That feels like an incredibly blunt solution, but I can't think of anything that tied up could be renamed to that would be obviously used for "nonsexual bondage". Bondage (nonsexual) doesn't look good at all, but it would at least get the point across. It is however contradictory to the current definition of bondage, which states It's specifically for sexual intent. I wouldn't equate something like post #4074370 with "bondage", even if the word "nonsexual" were affixed to it.

Under the current definitions, it actually looks like "tied_up" is redundant. "bound -bondage" is logically equivalent. The simplest solution might be:

tied_up -> bound
bondage -> sexual_bondage

Oryuu said:

Under the current definitions, it actually looks like "tied_up" is redundant. "bound -bondage" is logically equivalent. The simplest solution might be:

tied_up -> bound
bondage -> sexual_bondage

If the intent is nonsexual bondage, bound definitely isn't being used for that. It doesn't have a definition currently, but it's not a nonsexual counter to bondage, being bound with ropes can be both for sexual and nonsexual purposes. Bound is more a counterpoint to restrained, the former being when one's limbs are tied together and the later being when one is being kept from leaving an area (the two are not mutually exclusive, either).

blindVigil said:

If the intent is nonsexual bondage, bound definitely isn't being used for that. It doesn't have a definition currently, but it's not a nonsexual counter to bondage, being bound with ropes can be both for sexual and nonsexual purposes. Bound is more a counterpoint to restrained, the former being when one's limbs are tied together and the later being when one is being kept from leaving an area (the two are not mutually exclusive, either).

Bound is the supertag implied by both tied up and bondage. That's why tied up is redundant.

Oryuu said:

Bound is the supertag implied by both tied up and bondage. That's why tied up is redundant.

That's not how that works. Bound is for any character being bound, regardless of sexual intent. Tied up is supposed to be for nonsexual cases of a character being bound. The fact it's being misused for both sexual and nonsexual cases doesn't change that. Tied up and bondage both imply bound because it is the umbrella tag and they are subsets of it. The current redundancy between tied up and bound only exists because the former is being misused.

If tied up were being used correctly, then you could make the exact same argument that bound -tied_up renders bondage redundant. But we don't say that, because tied up and bondage, in theory, serve different purposes, and bound is the catch all under which all cases of tied up and bondage fall.

To add onto this, umbrella tag/single subtag setups just do not work. The pubic hair and dark skin tags are evidence of this. In a perfect world dark_skin -dark_skinned_female would find all examples of dark skinned males. However, that search excludes posts featuring dark skinned characters of both sexes, it includes posts where users have failed to add dark skinned female, and it forces users to use two tags to search for something that's very easily categorized under a single tag of its own. Trying to say that "tag -tag" renders another tag redundant just creates unnecessary complication for something otherwise very simple.

I just noticed another issue. The definition of bondage specifies physical restraint, but there's such thing as nonrestrictive bondage. This is especially common for shibari under clothes (post #4083395, post #3991175, post #4075158, post #3867458, post #3733029). Some, such as, post #3984200, show nonrestrictive bondage (the shibari under clothes) in conjunction with restrictive bondage (the cuffs).

Is this intentional? Is this why shibari does not imply bondage bound? If shibari is meant to refer exclusively to physically restraining shibari, then the wiki page should mention that, because it's a significant difference between the definition of the tag and the definition of the word.

Shibari is just "rope bondage".
It doesn't mean it has to be sexual.

Sorry, I meant bound. Is this why shibari does not imply bound?

Oryuu said:

Sorry, I meant bound. Is this why shibari does not imply bound?

I don't see why not.

I wouldn't call post #4243790 [nsfw] "bound". She's in no way actually restrained, she's practically wearing an accessory.

blindVigil said:

I wouldn't call post #4243790 [nsfw] "bound". She's in no way actually restrained, she's practically wearing an accessory.

These breasts look kinda bound.

Anyway, the bound tag has no wiki.
So, before we discuss further implications or aliases, it'd be best to first define what we understand under "bound".