Butterflies

Characters with one character along with some butterflies or other bugs should not be tagged “solo”.

Yes they should, unless the bugs are being characteresque. You wouldn’t decline to tag one character sitting by a tree as solo unless the tree is talking back. Even boulder (pet) with Maud is more often tagged as solo than not.

@Background Pony #3790  
But butterflies are animals. Trees and rocks are not animals. So it really isn’t fair. They should at least be tagged “solo focus”.

Neither random animals, trees or rocks are characters, and that’s what the solo tag is about: “image with only one character.”
 
Harry the bear or the butterflies Discord turned into in The Return of Harmony? Sure, they’re characters, so Fluttershy pictures with them aren’t solo anymore. The critter of the week she’s feeding or talking to for exactly one scene in the episode, like the window dressing they are? Not so much.
 
An important point of tagging is to allow people to find what they’re looking for when they’re browsing the site, and I’d rather not miss pictures like these two when looking for solo screencaps.
 
A picture or two of only Rainbow Dash flying high in the sky next to some birds suddenly aren’t solo anymore, even though they’d be window dressing about as much as a night picture with the Mare in the Moon. Even though she’s the focus, maybe the point even, of the picture. What people would be looking for when browsing the site with tags.
 
Solo focus says “an image with multiple characters with the focus being on just one, generally in the center with the other character(s) obscured or mostly offscreen,” and is usually used on cropped screencaps and/or fanarts from what I’ve seen. Not quite the same as a full picture intended as such.
 
If the butterfly talks back in the picture, yeah, not solo, because they’re actually a character. If it’s just there looking pretty? Yes, solo.

@Knight of the Raven  
All animals are characters. Otherwise it isn’t fair.

@Whistle Blossom  
Please stop removing the “solo” or “no pony” and similar tags from images.
 
These tags have very specific meanings that go back to the beginning of this site - 9 years ago - and you can not unilaterally change what they mean for everyone else on the site.
 
How these tags work here, especially tags like “solo female”, and what they mean has been a community decision, and removing these tags from images where the tag is appropriate given its current definition, is not very considerate to everyone else.
 
So please, discuss your ideas about how the presence of unnamed characters like butterflies should affect the meanings of these tags, but please stop removing these tags from images - their definitions have not changed.

@Ciaran  
The answer is no.

@Whistle Blossom  
I really hope you will reconsider. Asserting your own definitions for site-wide tags, especially such common and important tags for searching, is not fair to anyone else on the site.
 
Please stop.

@Ciaran  
Fine.

@Whistle Blossom  
Please tell us more about why you think the definition of the ‘solo’ tags are not ok as they stand. For example, why do you think the tag does not apply to this image?
 

@Ciaran  
Because I think of all animals as equal.