Content tag addition/discussion thread

[Teasday]

Spiritual successor to the wildly popular Trigger warnings thread!

Please read the pinned Off-Topic Posting/Trolling Warning thread carefully and be aware that this thread is on an especially tight leash after the last one. Expect to get just straight fucking banned for shitposting in this thread because I don't feel like herding cats with this one.

To that end, the topic of this thread is what new tags should be added to or modified in the Content category. The topic is definitely not trigger warnings in and of themselves, their effectiveness, health implications or their place in MangaDex, neither philosophically nor in the user interface. If you wish to discuss these topics, make a separate thread in General or something.

The reason for this is that the proposed new Content tags may be tags people might consider as analogous to trigger warnings, but not necessarily limited to that: see the Ecchi and Smut tags as an example. They should be tags that describe types of content that may have such a strong effect on the enjoyability of the title that the user would want to be informed of it beforehand; typically in the sense that the user would want to avoid the content, but also possibly in the sense that some other user might want to seek it out, such as Gore. Content in this case refers to depictions and material that could not be described in terms of a format, theme or genre.

That said, the trigger warning thread produced an assortment of tags related specifically to that topic, as expected:
- Physical Abuse
- Psychological Abuse
- Substance Abuse
- Child Abuse
Others, such as Mental Illness and Self Harm as well as alternative terms for the aforementioned tags, were suggested but remain less convincing or well-defined for now.

The obvious problem with these tags is the scope of their application, and this is something that has to be dealt with by writing proper definitions for them. For example, nobody expects to see the Physical Abuse tag in a slapstick gag manga, and I don't believe anyone is advocating for anything like that, so these terms are to be defined so as to deal with serious matters only. As such, you're free to raise concerns about the specifics, but please leave out hyperbolic discussion about these tags taking over manga you don't think they belong to. I think we all already understand the problem without it.

Again, though, this thread isn't exclusively limited to trigger warning -esque tags, so if you have suggestions for subjects you perhaps find more positive but understand why others would want to hide for whatever reason, feel free to bring them up. We don't necessarily have a strict upper limit on how many tags we'll add, but everyone should keep in mind that essentially the less we need, the better.

edit: Since it was brought up, let me make it clear that we currently have no intention to implement any kind chapter-specific tags, and this thread is not meant for discussing them.

 

[Teasday]

Reserved

 

[Zephyrus]

Let me be clear on what Tea is saying here. He is referring to a permanent global ban from MangaDex, *not* a mere permanent comment ban.

I will assist him in keeping the peace in this thread. Let me reiterate: Shitposting will be be *harshly* punished.

 

[Vofuro]

First off, thanks for recreating this threat properly It changed from its original purpose and I'm really glad you now show its actual purpose.

Spoiler

Also, "wildly popular" is a nice way to put it

Second, I still want to point out that the tag "Physical Abuse" may need to be renamed. Even if there are descriptions, people do not necessarily read them, so it might be mis-tagged still, see historical manga. Also, please see this thread for the discussion of current tags and their possibly new descriptions: https://mangadex.org/thread/171979/1
It will also help to see what's already there as tags.

Also, can we write the descriptions to the new tags here, too? While we are at it, I mean.

 

[Teasday]

_{@Vofuro posted:}

Also, can we write the descriptions to the new tags here, too? While we are at it, I mean.

It would definitely help, yeah.

 

[Vofuro]

About stuff I also don't want to read: Sexualised loli/shota.
I'm not sure whether the loli tag right now is supposed to apply to all children, but it pretty much is, I see it often with harmless daughter-father pairings and the like.

So - what to do about that? We do have an animals tag for fluffy animals, and I'm actually for tags for children - but I do want to avoid reading stuff with kids in sexy underwear posing seducingly.
Add another tag? "Sexualised children" or something? Because in loli/shota they don't always have sex with them, do they? I have no clue.

--------------

Psychological abuse isn't the same as physical abuse. There are manga out there where the main goal is breaking the victim's psyche, either intentionally or not, and there's some where they just physically abuse/torture the body. See Colorful Recipe for the first, and Tokyo Ghoul for the second.
Sometimes they can go together, but not necessarily.
Simply "abuse" is very general and could apply to an over-enthuastic tsundere as well. Also, one would assume the simple word of "abuse" and a proper description might stop people from tagging slaptstick comedy or the like.

Edit: Also, psychological abuse may contain gaslighting, isolating people, manipulating them and so on. It doesn't need to contain any physical violence at all.

Descriptions for tags are usually two, three sentences, so that's a bit long and too complicatedly written, but it's a good starting point. The main point is that the character should be fairly present in the story (main cast or so) and is suffering obviously due to his addiction.

 

[ZipFile]

Reposting my proposal from the previous thread.

Idea is to go Steam-way with tags. More precisely:
[ol]
[*] Add content description section on the manga page. Current description section might be renamed to synopsis to avoid confusion.
[*] Cherry-pick few tags from Steam.
[/ol]
Tags in subject:
[ul]
[*] Adult
[*] Family Friendly
[*] Mature
[*] NSFW
[*] Nudity
[*] Sexual Content
[*] Violent
[/ul]
Not on Steam but worth mentioning:

• Profanity

Adding

NSFW

and

Family Friendly

should probably be discussed. Since

NSFW

cover other tags, and it should never be tagged together with

Family Friendly

. Proper implementation would probably be something similar to boorus rating tag, which is not really a tag but rather enum field (safe/questionable/explicit).

 

[dokkotak]

@Vofuro i agree re: sexualized loli/shota

my attempt at above tags and descriptions:

interpersonal abuse to include psych and phys abuses between people in non-humorous intent or setting
- domestic abuse, above description, in family setting, specific for parental, sibling
- relationship/spousal abuse, above description, specific for between lovers, spouses

substance abuse - addiction/overuse of drugs/alcohol
animal abuse - violence against animals
child abuse - violence from adult to child
bullying - violence between kids

too simplified?

 

[Vofuro]

@ZipFile
(Great username btw)

I actually like these tags, but these are really open for discussion. Where's the line between "mature" and "adult" f.e.? The rest I can see to a degree, but I think they would be really hard to consistently implement.

Also +1 "profanity", didn't think of that, but that usually is a thing people look for as well, isn't it?

@dokkotak
you know, I really like "interpersonal abuse". It would cover domestic abuse, too, same with relationship abuse, making them unnecessary.
And psychological abuse is only possible if you've got an relationship with your victim, isn't it? I can't think of any way you can do that otherwise. Only problem I have is that it's a bit wordy as a tag.

I agree with "substance abuse", "animal abuse", "child abuse".
Not sure about the bullying tag, because it's just such a common plot device (especially in manhwa). It would be used in 90% cheaply for a short time, and then there's the the 10% that are actually focussing on the topic seriously.

 

[Teasday]

Pretty sure an NSFW tag is denied right off the bat. We have not only the Hentai flag but Smut (= sexual content that's not quite porn) and Ecchi (= anything from nudity to "softcore" that's not quite Smut) to cover a variety of sexually explicit categories, so those already inherently imply NSFW. Other Content tags can also be used to exclude even more stuff if necessary. Also, what's NSFW depends entirely on the person and doesn't really tell you anything about the actual content. Family Friendly is pretty much just the negation of NSFW, so I'm finding it even harder to justify.

Any tag that depends on the translation is denied automatically for reasons that should be obvious at this point, and this includes Profanity. All tags should be applicable to the original work.

 

[Teasday]

_{@Vofuro posted:}

About stuff I also don't want to read: Sexualised loli/shota.
I'm not sure whether the loli tag right now is supposed to apply to all children, but it pretty much is, I see it often with harmless daughter-father pairings and the like.

So - what to do about that? We do have an animals tag for fluffy animals, and I'm actually for tags for children - but I do want to avoid reading stuff with kids in sexy underwear posing seducingly.
Add another tag? "Sexualised children" or something? Because in loli/shota they don't always have sex with them, do they? I have no clue.

Is this really a problem? I would assume that most if not nearly all manga with seductive lolis is accompanied with at the very least the Ecchi tag, if not marked as outright Hentai.

 

[ZipFile]

@Vofuro
Steam is a game store, so I believe mature and adult tags maps to corresponding ESRB ratings.
Mature definition by ESRB:

Spoiler

May contain intense violence, blood and gore, sexual content and/or strong language.

Adults Only definition by ESRB:

Spoiler

May include prolonged scenes of intense violence, graphic sexual content and/or gambling with real currency.

In vernacular, Mature = edgy, Adults Only = straight up sex/abuse/etc. Essentially, defines quality/emphasis of Gore/Sexual Violence/Smut tags.

 

[Vofuro]

@Teasday

As I just recently got the pleasure of seeing a sexualised loli, I've got to say that not everything is tagged that. I've got hentai off by default and I usually watch out for the Ecchi tag, as I just don't fancy it; I could have missed the ecchi tag, I'll need to see if I can still find that manga.
But that's why I'm hesitant to touch anything with a loli tag and usually check via mangaupdates first.
Maybe others have experienced similar?

@ ZipFile
I actually hardly use the tags on Steam, so I've got little knowledge on how they are actually given and such. But now that I think about it, they are essentially age recommendations, aren't they. And don't we have them via shounen/shoujo and seinen/josei?

 

[BestBoy]

I think Profanity is too subjective, but if we do go with it somehow I'd argue it be changed to address racial slurs instead.

I don't really like the idea of putting psych and phys abuse under a single tag. There are plenty of manga where one is present without the other.

One definition for physical abuse I found mentioned using physical violence as a way to maintain power and control over someone else. How true have y'all found that to be in manga where physical abuse was present?

 

[Teasday]

@Vofuro If it's just a case of mistagging, it should be reported.

 

[BestBoy]

@Teasday

Is this really a problem?

I imagine it could be if not now then later. Like, an ecchi manga about a single parent or something. Which sounds interesting now that I say it. Balancing work, dating, and being a parent. The loli tag is just way too confusing and feels really weird to see it used for manga with regular children in it.

 

[Vofuro]

@BestBoy @Teasday
Couldn't find it, so it was either fixed or I just missed the ecchi tag. (Found some interesting cute manga though. I count that as a win)

But to me, the ecchi tag can apply to any female actually. So loli + ecchi aren't automatically sexualised loli to me, which was why I was so confused actually. I learned the mature genres with MangaUpdates, and there it was ecchi only for (at least semi) legal women and loli/shota for minors.
If it's just me, I can totally adapt - but if others, too, have that problem, we might want to consider something, because as BestBoy says, that combination can count for cute kiddies with sexualised and usually big-breasted single mommys, too.

 

[Teasday]

_{@Vofuro posted:}

But to me, the ecchi tag can apply to any female actually. So loli + ecchi aren't automatically sexualised loli to me, which was why I was so confused actually.

Sure, but I meant it more like loli pantyshots implies loli + ecchi, not that loli + ecchi necessarily implies loli pantyshots. You could run into "false positives" I guess, but it doesn't seem like enough of a pressing concern to me for now. Proper H tags might fix the issue anyway, dunno. Anyway, back to Content.

 

[Jumballi]

This may have a lot more work for the developers, but rather than having trigger warning tags, there’s just a blanket trigger warning sign for individual chapters that is then followed by a sentence of the content found in the chapter. Tagging an entire series for a single chapter feels excessive, and they may just get used to describe extremophile hentai. In < https://mangadex.org/title/32944/i-am-a-child-of-this-house > everything up until the latest chapter is perfectly wholesome, the latest chapter contains child torture. The group put care in putting a trigger warning at the beginning of the chapter, so as to clearly differentiate the chapter from the content the rest of the series is known for.

So to give a bit more clarification onto the ideal system, the uploader, a mod, or contributor can add a trigger warning, where then they have to manually enter what they believe is the correct content within the chapter. If the content is child abuse, they enter child is physically assaulted or something similar. This could also be used for other warnings like a gap in the chapters as well. Since it’s not a tag, this would prevent some deviant from making a search system based off of what many would describe as gruesome content. Secondly there could be a drop down menu where each chapter and its trigger definition is located at the manga series’ information page.

This is clearly an exuberant amount of work for the developers vs just creating tags, but it tackles this complex problem with a more robust solution that leaves less room for questioning.

 

[Vofuro]

@Jumballi
It doesn't quite sidestep the need for some additional tags, though. Like psychological/interpersonal/physical abuse, which tends to be over the whole series.
But I see that it's not only that vampire shoujo-ai isekai ("The Reincarnated Vampire Wants an Afternoon Nap") that's got such an issue with one chapter being a deviant, but other series, too. Is there even an an easy (and if possible, spoiler-optional) way to implement a notice?

Anywaaay, back to the content. Here's a list of the current proposed tags.

Yes:
- Substance Abuse
- Child Abuse

Still in discussion in wording and such:
- Physical Abuse
- Psychological Abuse
Alternative is interpersonal abuse, someone suggested fusion into "Abuse" (makes it too general IMO)

Suggested, not enough comments about it:
- Animal Abuse
- Bullying
- Adult, Mature
- Nudity, Violence (highly likely to go, as that should be covered with other tags)

No:
- Profanity
- Family Friendly
- NSFW

Maybe:
Mental Illness and/or Self Harm
Sexualised loli/shota (hard maybe, only if more people have an issue with this and don't like the ecchi + loli/shota combi)

(I like lists. I hate the feeling of missing tags somewhere, so if no-one takes offense, I want to leave such a summed-up list every two pages or so, depending on the content that passed in-between)