The last two times I tried to make this topic with a long argument and links it got incorrectly flagged as spam so I'll save that for next post just to get something up.

Yuri vs. Shoujo Ai in General:
-Over in Japan, this is all just called Yuri or Girl's Love - no difference in meaning. Fans generally prefer yuri, some publishers use Girl's Love because they've had a lot of success with "Boys' Love" and so they invented a term they thought would be more marketable. I'd strongly prefer the term yuri myself but neither is bad.
-The distinction between "shonen ai" and "yaoi" was created by western fans who didn't know what they were talking about and took two Japanese terms for m/m content...and didn't manage to use either one of them quite correctly. They then created a new term "shoujo ai" to describe the "girl version" of "shonen ai" for...no particularly good reason that I can see.
-There is no clear distinction between what makes something "shoujo ai" or "yuri." There never was.
-The term "shoujo ai" never existed in Japan to describe "yuri but less extreme" or "more pure" or whatever. When the words "shoujo ai" are used together like that, it instead has the connotation of "pedophilia towards girls" which is obviously not the content we're intending to talk about here.
-Was the distinction between "yuri" and "shoujo ai" created as a result of outdated homophobia in fandom from decades ago, where people were often interested in same-gender romance but weren't quite sure if it was "okay" for stories to go "too far" with it, hence the need to create separate categories to fence off those that did? Because that's an awful lot what it seems like. And do we really want to keep humoring that in 2024?

Issues with this Site in Particular:
-The only guidance or explanation given on this site's genre page for the difference between them is that Shoujo Ai is like yuri but "less extreme."
-Maintaining the distinction causes practical problems with using the site and is generally annoying. Advanced search on this site does not allow for "either/or" multi-genre searching - so if you're just looking for general F/F content, you have to make two searches (one for each of shoujo ai and yuri) for no good reason. Checking both shoujo ai and yuri shouldn't work because that would only give you database entries that have both "genres" at the same time, which by this site's definitions should be impossible. Except WAIT:
-There are over 150 series that have both the "Shoujo Ai" and "Yuri" genres for seemingly no reason: https://www.mangaupdates.com/series.html?page=1&perpage=50&genre=Shoujo+Ai_Yuri&orderby=rating&display=list This is obviously very silly. I could try to contribute and fix some of that myself but I don't think the way the site uses these categories in general is good, sensible, or consistent - so how would I determine which is "shoujo ai" and which is "yuri"? To my mind, there is no way to actually fix this without a broader change on how those genres are applied here. If it was entirely up to just me I'd obviously move everything labeled shoujo ai to yuri but I don't think such a huge unilateral move would be received well without discussion beforehand.
-If the Romance/Ecchi/Smut/Hentai Genres already used by the Database are good enough for straight content, they should also be good enough to describe F/F content. Including/excluding those as you see fit along with yuri should be good enough to satisfy everyone's database search preferences, right? If you think that's somehow not the case, doesn't that imply we need another term to describe "more extreme" straight content?

Decline of "Shoujo ai" in General:
-Some of the communities that did prominently use "shoujo ai" - like Shoujo Ai Archive and r/shoujoai - are now defunct. "Yuri" as a community name is still going strong.
-The use of the term "shoujo ai" has declined substantially in English-language fandom over the years and is often generally discouraged now, in favor of just calling it all yuri, as they do in Japan. And since "shoujo ai" was a sorta unclear term created by English-speaking fans to begin with, why keep it around here at all?
-Things have shifted to the point where, for those who don't look carefully at how this site defines genres beforehand, not having everything F/F as just yuri can plausibly cause confusion as to why all of the "shoujo ai" series didn't pop too.
-The inclusion of the term "shoujo ai" on database sites is probably responsible for a lot of what usage the term has maintained. Continuing to make a "shoujo ai" vs. "yuri" distinction here no longer accurately reflects common fan usage but rather is actively shaping the discourse, albeit for a categorization that's been losing ground and is now a minority viewpoint.

Even on other database sites, the "shoujo ai" vs. "yuri" distinction is falling out of favor:
-It's all just "yuri" on anilist.
-Myanimelist eliminated the Shoujo Ai/Yuri distinction in their database in 2021 and just call it all "Girl's Love". That's not the term I'd prefer (yuri) but it's not terrible.
-The Novelupdates staff is in agreement that the genres should be merged on their database but were not able to make it happen due to difficulties in how their site was coded and the workload involved in fixing things.

Use of Yuri by Publishers:
-English language publishers of Japanese F/F romance are increasingly using "yuri" to describe all f/f manga and novels.
-These publishers include Seven Seas, Kodansha U.S., Yenpress, and Jnovel. I originally had nifty links to their yuri sections but I suspect those were what set off the spam filter so you'll have to look them up yourselves.
-That's probably a majority of the current market for English translations of Japanese yuri novels and manga.
-And even the publishers who don't use the term yuri (Viz and Tokyopop offhand) still put everything that this site calls "shoujo ai" and "yuri" into the same category. I don't think any of them use "shoujo ai" as a genre, either.

An Actual Guidelines Emerges...but Doesn't Work Very Well.
-The "Yaoi/Yuri Forum Rules" state it's an extension of the Adult (18+) forum - which suggests a view that "Yaoi"/"Yuri" is specifically the 18+ version of "Shonen Ai"/"Shoujo Ai." Well, it's nice to actually have a firmer guideline to examine. But a lot of the most prominent and well-regarded content labeled "Yuri" here is NOT 18+. You know how I just brought up English language yuri publishers? Most of them provide age ratings for their releases! Here's the age ratings for things with official translations in this site's "yuri" genre, sorted by average score:

Bloom into You: Teen (13+)
Girl Friends: "Older Teen." The Amazon listing claims a "Reading Age" of 16 years and up.
Sweet Blue Flowers: "Teen Plus: May be suitable for older teens and adults."
My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness: "Older Teen." The Amazon listing claims a "Reading Age" of 16 years and up.
Run Away with me, Girl: 16+
Murcelago: 18+ M (Mature) (Too bad that this is one of the ones this site put in both "Shoujo Ai" and "Yuri"...)
Hana and Hina After School: Teen (13+)
Beauty and the Beast Girl: Teen (13+)
Vampeerz: Nothing from the publisher I can see. Amazon listing claims a "Reading Age" of 16 years and up
I Can’t Believe I Slept With You!: Older Teen (15+)
Kisses, Sighs, and Cherry Blossoms Pink: "Older Teen." The Amazon listing claims a "Reading Age" of 16 years and up.
Kase-san and Yamada: Teen (13+)
Cheerful Amnesia: T (Teen)
Kashimashi Girl Meets Girl: "Older Teen." The Amazon listing claims a "Reading Age" of 16 years and up.
My Solo-Exchange Diary: "Older Teen." The Amazon listing claims a "Reading Age" of 16 years and up
I Can't Say No to the Lonely Girl: The Amazon listing claims a "Reading Age" of 13 years and up
Citrus: Older Teen (15+)
Maka-Maka: I can't find a specific rating but this one seems to be porn. We'll go with 18+.
Failed Princesses: Teen (13+)

I stopped after the top 50. Couldn't find much about age ratings for manhwa and webtoons.

As you can see, almost all of them have tamer ratings than an R-rated movie and a lot of them are the equivalent of PG-13. Do we really think content judged appropriate for 7th graders is still so "extreme" it needs its own category? The idea that a work being open about lesbian sexuality automatically makes it "too extreme" for a lot of people (but that the totally chaste or subtexty works are fine actually) seems heavily outdated - it's not 2004 anymore.

Conclusion
-Shoujo ai and Yuri should be combined into one genre.
-Alternatively, if given the green light to do so I COULD just manually move everything to yuri myself and then ask for the remaining references to shoujo ai to be removed but I figure the administrators probably have a quicker and easier way to do the first part?
-Even if you for some reason wanted to preserve "shoujo ai" vs. "yuri" here, regardless of where you think the line is, I doubt you could argue the current database and guidelines do a particularly good job at dividing them.

The general argument and a lot of my specific points probably also apply to "shonen ai" vs. "yaoi" but I am less knowledgeable about and interested in that content.

In my experience many shoujo-ai rely on implied relationships and undertones whereas yuri tends to be more direct with romantic and sexual relations between women.
I've given up on shoujo-ai since many have left me feeling yuri-baited; no progress in relationships and subtle hints at GL only for the work to end ambiguously or far too open-ended.
I don't see why separating shoujo-ai and yuri is an issue outside of semantics. Taking away the ability to filter the two would be a detriment.

There are indeed works like that which you describe out there.

You don't need Shoujo ai and yuri to be separate to filter those out though. You could just check the boxes for both Yuri and Romance within the same search.

One problem is that "Shoujo Ai" here as it stands, even excluding the series that have also been put under the "yuri" genre (because that's just silly), frequently do NOT equate to just subtext or yuribait series:
https://www.mangaupdates.com/series/ko3mx9t/sasameki-koto
https://www.mangaupdates.com/series/eq8dzz8/still-sick
https://www.mangaupdates.com/series/sintmu7/adachi-to-shimamura-novel
https://www.mangaupdates.com/series/vg5qj3b/urasekai-picnic-novel
https://www.mangaupdates.com/series/2ohz2dw/asagao-to-kase-san
https://www.mangaupdates.com/series/y03rvhm/watashi-no-oshi-wa-akuyaku-reijou-novel
https://www.mangaupdates.com/series/yc009m1/the-magical-revolution-of-the-reincarnated-princess-and-the-genius-young-lady-novel
https://www.mangaupdates.com/series/nvlizuu/strawberry-panic-novel

I agree that some shoujo-ai labeled works are more than subtext, but too many fall short. As someone who has been reading GL for 10+ years I've definitely benefited from the separate tags. I've also experienced the various categorizations of GL across the internet and find the split categories to work well when it comes to the degree of GL within a story.
As an end user I have found the categorization here to be superior to sites that lump all GL under one category. Arguing to remove something that works so well would be accepting inconvenience for no good reason.

I agree there is merit in merging if the problem gets worse, but even then, I am not sure how much people would like that. I understand a difference (and it is that soft-core yuri vs hard-core yuri difference, not even subtext...just less explicit) and many other people do as well, but it's clear there are equally as many people who don't...to the point that people tag some works as both Yuri and GL as you pointed out. I also agree that the distinction does cause a practical issue in categorization. What is considered soft-core to one person might be hardcore to another. Who is the judge of subtext or subtlety or the line between GL and yuri? It's more a feeling, tbh.

I think there just needs to ultimately be more nuance to the search to allow both to be checked and have it understand it's "show me things tagged Yuri AND/OR Shoujo Ai." The goal should be to get people to tag correctly (expanding and specifying definitions...but will people read this? Or should adding a series come with more fail stops to prevent mistagging?) and hopefully, for people in those tags often to correct mis-tagging when they see it. It's not terribly hard to do two separate searches to see everything tagged between them, but it's slightly annoying to me.

The same issue exists in Shounen Ai and Yaoi, just to confirm. If the term shoujo ai is being phased out in general in favor of yuri by major Japanese publication house, has never been a term recognized by OG language publishers, and other sites are making the move to streamline, I think that's the most convincing argument here beyond "there is no difference between yuri and shoujo ai" because to overseas fans (whom this site primarily serves), there has, through the years, been a difference among fans, in my experience. (I personally don't care, which is why I would be pro-merging for easier browsing.)

http://i.imgur.com/LxhWm.jpg (will reformat this some day…)

I agree!

I think that whatever the term is, it should be overarching, and anything else be a subgenre to it.

So...

FF/GL/WLW/Yuri should be the main sort.

They are all EQUIVALENT terms to be used by the various readers who don't know one is the same as another.

THEN you can use the subgenre of
Shoujo Ai/Clean/"Christian"(hah!)/No Smut
for the pearl clutching prudes who insist up and down that any depiction of same-sex relations that goes beyond hand holding and a chaste kiss should not seen in the company of those ribald tomes!

Let this apply to ALL tags and search options

For any story that has the central focus on the relationship of a couple/throuple/n+ of ANY persuasion, give the overarching "pairing" (BG vs BL vs GL)

THEN
you can limit with your self-defined terms for spice levels, erotica>adult>teen.

Not saying WHAT you are, but the readership the level of frankness that the content shows is not suitable for.

So I can identify myself as a reader of teen, adult, AND erotica within straight AND queer (masc and/or fem focused) relationship content.

And filter as desired from there.

Cheers!

"No matter where you go, there you are."
Buckaroo Banzai

please keep shoujo ai pure
I'd sign that petition

I agree there is merit in merging if the problem gets worse,

One year later and it got worse.

In my post a year ago I mentioned there were over 150 series classified as both yuri and shoujo ai?

Now there are over 250.

None of the problems with the lack of guidelines have been solved and the way these terms are being applied is still wildly inconsistent to the point I don't they're useful here. I maintain the easiest solution is to just stop using shoujo ai and change everything there to yuri, which also has the advantage of being more consistent with how yuri fans understand and define the genre at this point.

Barring some database sites stuck in the mid-2000s (and even some of those have come around), English-language yuri communities largely do not use the "shoujo ai" term anymore and people are often advised to stop when it comes up. I don't think there was ever a super good reason to start using it but there's definitely no real case it to be made for it in 2025.

I support this motion. Shoujo-ai is a label that we all used back in the day out of ignorance. A Japanese person would be very confused if they saw how we use it. And nowadays many English readers just use yuri anyway. Which is the correct term. If you want to differentiate the degree of adult content, you can use the 'Genres' (like smut?) or the tags (we've got thousands of tags..)

I concur.

Honestly, Shoujo Ai and Yuri aren't even always published in separate magazines. And then there's the self-published work…

Actually, I think that the same should be done with Shounen Ai and Yaoi: 338 have both labels.

There is no possible justification for the shoujo ai or shounen ai genres. They are nonsensical term, that don't exist in Japan (other than in the sense of pedophilic relations, that is. Hetero ones, typically)
As has been pointed out.

The "pure" vs "impure" distinction, should be made in the exact same way as with hetero relationships. Those don't have that kind of separate genres.
As has been pointed out.

As for works that only have subtext... there are subtext-tags If the work only has subtext, it should only be labelled as subtext.
Why they are tags, but yuri/yaoi are genres, I dunno, but that's a separate issue.

edit: I see that yuri/yaoi/shounen ai/shoujo ai are not labelled as genres, but as demographics ...which makes absolutely no sense, in any way whatsoever.

Oh, and I forgot to mention: The term Yaoi, does explicitly refer to pornographic gay content.
As such, I'd suggest shounen ai and yaoi, be changed to BL. (Boys Love)

...and BL, which is made by and for women, with no regard for being the least bit similar/relevant to actual man/man relations (and in many cases, knowingly and intentionally, having completely different male biology, compared to reality) should not be confused with works that invole real man/man relations, made for actual gay men.

Hence, there should, as in Japan, be a separate genre for that. The current term, in Japan, is apparently ML. (Mens Love) I've previously heard it called Gei Comi (shortening of the English Gay Comic), or Bara. Note that yuri (lily) was coined as a equivilent/similar/inspired term to bara. (rose)

I saw this thread, from the "Latest Topics", on the front page. Then I notice it's in the "Yaoi/Yuri"-section
...
Why isn't it in the "Suggestions & Bugs"-section?

(I also noticed that there is nowhere, for asking stuff about the site, or in any way discuss things about it, other than if making suggestions or reporting bugs...)