Curious to get some feedback on to why leading out on a flop after you call a PF raise of another player is considered "donking" out. Its almost as if the poker community views this as a donkey play like 100% of the time. This is interesting because many advocate that "always" doing this or "never" doing that is not in the repertoire of winning players. Meaning that in theory, any successful player would mix it up depending on table/player dynamics and so forth. "donking out" is a universal term and almost implies this is never a correct strategy. Would anyone agree that this can be a very profitable move against a lot of different player types? If so, why do HH with someone other than the initial raiser leading out get labeled as "donks out WTF/LOL/???"

It's not always bad. There was just a stage when mostly bad players did it, so it got that name. Now it is called a donk bet, but it's not just made by donks. There are times when, for example, you don't want the flop to check through and the PF raiser may not bet, when a don bet is perfectly fine.

It just got that name a long time ago when good players had figured out that the PFRer will usually c-bet (at the time, it seemed lie pretty much always) so the good player should let them hang themselves a bit. These players identified people who didn't have this idea figured out as donks, and therefore named the lead into the PFRer a "donk bet."

I think you are taking the term "donk bet" or however you want to say it.
"donks the flop", "donked into x players" whatever.
and you are assuming that just because its called "donking" that only donkeys do it but that assumption is wrong.

I am pretty sure I have read some threads about donk bets, that actually go as far as to say that its not a "donkey" play just called a "donk" bet

I just assume it is called that because people assume you are a fish when you bet into a PF raiser or whatever like take initiative of a hand on the turn or some **** like that.

basically what I am trying to say is that I think you are taking it too literally.
Its just a term.

thinking of it just as taking control of a pot or taking initiative in a hand.

The bolded is not true. Not sure where you heard that. It is referred to as a "donkey bet" or "donk bet" because in general, you usually want to check to the PFR to allow them to bet their entire range and not allow them to simply fold their air when you have a strong hand. If they won't cbet with nothing then obviously leading out is far superior than checking in a situation where say... its a 4 way pot with the PFR on the BTN, you hold 88 in the SB and the flop is 894 if the guy won't bet AK then checking is dumb because we allow a free card to roll of every time the PFR checks.

Things are done for reasons... doesn't matter whether it's always or never. Ifplayer A "always" goes all-in when checked to... then it makes sense for us to "always" check to him when we have a set... see?

If you are asking the question, generally donking out is a bad idea. A more sophisticated player might donk out with a flop that contains a A that has a FD with a set that has an Ace on the flop because the pre flop raiser might interpret this as an Ax hand that doesn't give away a free card to the flush draw. AK or AQ is likely to call 1 or 2 bets.

That said, I thank the player silently that decides to donk out when I have second pair or worse as the pfr and they bet on a slightly dangerous board.

I actually encountered a terribad small-balll tournament player about a month ago who had never heard this term and got really insulted when I used it.

I believe it originally got its name in reference to players who would call raises OOP and fire at flops if they caught a piece of it because they misunderstood absolute vs. relative hand strength. However, now it's just what it's called.

A semi-bad reg type player will always call or raise with TPTK/overpair if you donk into them with a set and will give up a ton of money confused by your play specifically because they assume it's weak.

I tend to donk sets more on flush draw type boards than dry ones for reasons Venice10 stated above.

I like donk bets, but I don't do it a lot because the time to do it doesn't come up all that often.

It's interesting to see how people react to donk bets. Some go absolutely bonkers and put in a massive raise against what is obviously a polarized range/only the nuts.

It's important to take note on how people handle donk bets, it can reveal so much about what people know about the game.