Shounen ai and Yaoi tags

[MoshiKoi]

In the comments section of a manga with both the Yaoi and shounen ai tags, I found this:
https://mangadex.org/thread/176883/1/#post_1307992
tl;dr
"Yaoi and shounen ai are mutually exclusive; putting both on a series is against their definitions"

This got me wondering a few things
1. Do we have a tag dictionary? I couldn't find one for this site.
2. What is the actual policy for the shounen ai and Yaoi genres, are they actually meant to be mutually exclusive or is putting both allowed?

 

[DANDAN_THE_DANDAN]

This is basically the shoujou-ai/yuri tag thread all over again. Haven't read the whole thing since it's like 20 pages long but the title says "Planned" so...

 

[Pokari]

The shoujo-ai/yuri debate is much worse because there are fiercely held and mutually exclusive opinions on what the tags mean in the first place (and Mangadex is pretty lax about laying down clear and complete definitions for all the tags, so finding the official stances on this stuff is hard).

Whereas yaoi/shounen-ai is pretty clear cut: Is there a sex scene, or not?

Someone once tried to enlist my help in sorting through all the series that are tagged as both (since I've somehow become one of the more visible commenters in BL-space, and have contributor privileges). I essentially said "no," partially because there's a lot of Yaoi I never want to lay eyes on, but also because of complicating and ameliorating circumstances:

- It's not clear what to do about anthologies (and having more than one completely unrelated story in a particular BL volume is REALLY common)
- Whenever series are tagged with both, in practice it just means it's yaoi. The risk of ambiguity is actually quite minimal.

Anyway, in response to your actual questions:

1. Some of the tags give a definition if you click on them (in addition to search results).

...Unfortunately the definitions were copy-pasted from somewhere early in the site's development and do not always reflect current use (For the most blatant definition drift see "smut" https://mangadex.cc/genre/32 which has since been (officially, I beleive) co-opted to mean "contains sexual content", since mangadex didn't want old Batoto's mature content flag for whatever reason) nor do they even exist for many of the more recent tags.

2. I'm not sure what official policy is, but aside from the uncertain consideration of anthologies as I just mentioned, they are mutually exclusive by tradition, more or less. (Though it's possibly not 100% consensus on that point, I think; a handful of people may have used both side-by-side to indicate a series that has some sex but also a large proportion of more general-audience romance themes, or something along those lines.)

 

[miu]

In short:

1. Not that I know of. The site does follow Manga Updates' Genres (https://www.mangaupdates.com/genres.html) and sometimes Categories if available though.

2. There is no official one, but (unspoken) rule of thumb would be:
Shounen Ai: No sex scenes
Yaoi: Sex scenes
Flagged as H: Uncensored genitals, e.g. penis, anus (I don't know about testicles though... @Plykiya @Lymus ?)

I have seen entries with both Shounen Ai/Yaoi tags but it doesn't make sense imo except it's an anthology.
For ongoing series, tags might change too, e.g. from Shounen Ai to Yaoi if there's an explicit sex scene in later chapters.

These are western definitions, in Japan it's all BL (Boys Love), Yaoi is/was originally intended for doujinshi, afaik.
As this is an English website, western definitions prevail. Hope this'll clarify it for you!

tl;dr "shounen ai" and "yaoi" shouldn't be used at the same time unless it's an anthology, but a mod should have the last word in this.

 

[Ucluk4]

From @plykiya in shoujo ai/yuri tag
https://mangadex.cc/thread/191519/10
1. Merge Shoujo Ai into Yuri and merge Shounen Ai into Yaoi
2. Rename Yuri and Yaoi to Girl's Love and Boy's Love respectively

 

[miu]

Great! That'll make it easier to tag to
I'd suggest a sub-category named Omegaverse, too if possible.

 

[Siti]

My reading from same sex manga isnt much, but from my understanding:
Shoujo ai/shounen ai = about sis/bro-mance.
Yuri/yaoi = explicit same sex love
Smut = definitely hentai
Apparently its not that simple. Lol