Content tag addition/discussion thread

[MadeOfMagicAndWires]

Spoiler

Here's to hoping things go better than last time.

The suggestion of chapter based warnings/tagging has already been rejected in the previous thread regarding this so that's why the discussion evolved into adding additional content tags, which are also more useful in tagging series in which these themes are more prevalent. Additionally there's been much discussion and material offered on the actual effectiveness of these classic content warnings.

On the discussion of when and how to apply these tags I am firmly on the side of just adding these tags to be used and let community consensus decide on how it wants to use them, rather than setting specific guidelines.

In looking at how content tags are applied now, I am aware that this will probably mean that series who have possibly disturbing content in only a few chapters will not be labelled as such, but that is something users will simply have to keep in mind. Additionally that is also not set in stone, the great part about community consensus is that this means use is constantly up to debate and it's been the case before that if enough users wish to see tags used a certain way it will eventually be changed. At the risk of starting edit wars I will advice users that if they want to see community change they should speak up and act.

Spoiler

In the case of I Am a Child of this House though, I happen to know that abuse is also a large theme in the beginning of the series so to say it's a one chapter issue is not entirely correct. So I would not find it weird to see that series tagged with an Abuse tag, should it be added. Additionally I do remember there being a textual content warning within the chapter itself, effectiveness of it notwithstanding.

On the content tags suggested that I've not responded to already:

[ul]
[li]Interpersonal abuse/violence is a nice term, but I think the "(physical/psychological) abuse" are more descriptive and better known by most people.[/li]
[li]Bullying would fall under any abuse tag and so isn't necessary.[/li]
[li]Animal abuse I don't know prevalent this is in titles and how much demand there is from the userbase[/li]
[li]Mature audiences in general could just fall under Seinen, and more explicit (hueh) tags, like the ones that already exist and are proposed here, describing how they are unsuited for younger audiences, are a lot more useful than age-based rating guides.[/li]
[li]Nudity and partial nudity are already well covered with Smut and Ecchi[/li]
[li]Sexualised loli/shota are, I think, not necessary. With the current tags, and the descriptions of the works, there's enough context already there to make a conclusion about any titles and whether such content will appear[/li]
[/ul]

 

[Teasday]

@Jumballi We have no interest in implementing any kind of chapter-based system. The work involved in both developing and maintaining it is one thing, as you mentioned, but they wouldn't help with searching either.

 

[DANDAN_THE_DANDAN]

Not sure about bullying cause, as pointed out before, it's not super prevalent in mangas and most of the time is just a cheap plot point.

Domestic abuse is also pretty iffy considering that psych and phys abuse cover that.

Imma still continue to push for self harm to be a tag tho cause punching people to death and punching yourself to death are two different things.

 

[Vofuro]

@DANDAN_THE_DANDAN

Self harm can be pretty spoilery though, which is my main problem with it. And mental illnesses should, now that I think about it, not be put in the same category as gore and sexual violence. It could be added as a theme tag, not a content tag, however.
And in combination with the psychological tag might be enough of a flag on its own?

I'm actually having a hard time remembering a manga where self harm was really the focus - self-destructive behaviour is way more common that that in the stuff I read, and it's usually more of a phase in manga for the protagonists to go through.

Also agree about the bullying tag: Unsure, especially because it would be tagged nearly everywhere, and only 10% would deserve that tag truly. So you can only search for it, but not really exclude it. So. No. Not as it is.

 

[MadeOfMagicAndWires]

Because I've barely seen the loli or shota tags used outside of the context of children being sexualized (or in any context), I decided to a search which shows that the amount of series using the loli/shota tag without ecchi or smut is 121. There's certainly some content in that remaining list that would does have children in sexualized or romantic context, but I feel like the list is small enough that anyone who wants to avoid such content can just choose to blacklist the loli/shota tags to be on the safe side.

It's not like the tags get used for any series with children in them, and if really feel like they'd be missing out and less than 120 false positives is easily manageable.

Also on content tags that could also be used in a "positive" way maybe "Uncensored" is an idea? This would primarily relevant to Hentai tags though, so I don't know what your policy on that is, considering the main focus of the site seems to be regular manga. I don't feel like we'd want to clutter things a ton of hentai specific tags here, but "Uncensored" would still have some relevant to non-Hentai titles, and might be to some interest of gore fans as well.

I chose for "Uncensored" over "Censored" here because:
a) This would require the tag to be used less often
b) I feel there's a nuance between diagatic obscuring, like say "steam", versus non-diagetic obscuring, such as black bars.
c) I couldn't think of any way to discuss this difference without using the relatively unknown "diagetic".

 

[josephgomes619]

I am completely against chapter based tags, huge waste of time and resource

 

[MadeOfMagicAndWires]

@josephgomes619 as said multiple times, that suggestion has already been rejected. This is for general tags only.

My entry for a definition of the TBD (interpersonal) Abuse tag:

Works which depict, or explore the effects of, sustained and targeted violent or otherwise cruel mistreatment of individuals which could cause physical or psychological trauma and in which there is a clear imbalance of power featuring the more powerful party as the aggressor.

While we recognize that there are more than just these forms of abuse, this definition will restrict itself to either physical or psychological abuse for the purposes of this platform.
Do not use this tag for other forms of abuse. For sexual abuse, use the Sexual Violece tag instead.

I'm explicitly conservative in this description because I figure people generally don't really think people are too bothered with say verbal or power abuse when they'd think about in- or excluding this tag. Perhaps we should also add some more concrete examples of what not to use the tag for but I figure we start with the base definition first.

Similarly I specifically relegate Sexual abuse to the sexual violence tag because I think that's where people would look for it, probably similarly with "Child Abuse". There are, I think, enough people who wish to filter out only abuse of a sexual nature alone and this saves titles always being tagged with both tags at the same time.
Seeing as the Sexual Violence tag needs a description as well I figured we could include any of those in its definition.

Discuss.

 

[Teasday]

Added a line to the OP to explicitly mention we're not doing any chapter-specific tags, so unless you have VERY good reasons to bring the subject up again, please don't.

 

[Teasday]

_{@Vofuro posted:}

I'm actually having a hard time remembering a manga where self harm was really the focus - self-destructive behaviour is way more common that that in the stuff I read, and it's usually more of a phase in manga for the protagonists to go through.

Also agree about the bullying tag: Unsure, especially because it would be tagged nearly everywhere, and only 10% would deserve that tag truly. So you can only search for it, but not really exclude it. So. No. Not as it is.

I would probably classify self-destructive behaviour in general as Self Harm, at least for the purposes of that tag. I think I mentioned in the previous thread that I would considering self harm to cover quite a wide range of behaviour which would lower the potential spoileriness but also, I suppose, dilute the tag and make it harder to judge if it's "worth" avoiding. Compare it to something like Suicidality, though.

You make a decent point about excluding Bullying. There's probably several titles that people would want to add it to when the more apt term would probably be Teasing, like for Takagi-san and Nagatoro-san as the obvious examples. I'm wondering if it should/could be implemented as a Theme instead and specifically define it as ranging from lighthearted teasing to serious bullying. The seriousness of the bullying might be pretty easily inferred from the genres (e.g. Drama/Tragedy vs Comedy/Romance).

_{@MadeOfMagicAndWires posted:}

Because I've barely seen the loli or shota tags used outside of the context of children being sexualized (or in any context), I decided to a search which shows that the amount of series using the loli/shota tag without ecchi or smut is 121. There's certainly some content in that remaining list that would does have children in sexualized or romantic context, but I feel like the list is small enough that anyone who wants to avoid such content can just choose to blacklist the loli/shota tags to be on the safe side.

Not to mention, after skimming through that quickly, there were cases of just blatant mistagging or forgetting to add at least Ecchi. One of them had a de-aged genderswapped loli about to masturbate, for example.

For the Abuse suggestion (and even for separated Physical/Psychological ones), I would probably include in the description some kind of an example list. "Forms of abuse include (but are not limited to) domestic violence, torture, gaslighting" and so on. I don't know if we'd have to additionally qualify it with something, if we want to clearly separate it from otherwise violent battle manga stuff.

 

[Vofuro]

Spoiler

Added a line to the OP to explicitly mention we're not doing any chapter-specific tags, so unless you have VERY good reasons to bring the subject up again, please don't.

thank god for that

@MadeOfMagicAndWires
Well, anything that's truly sexualised with them as children should get a tag, either ecchi or smut. Anything that's truly innocent or which chooses the they-get-together-once-the-kid-is-grown-up route is usually easy to tell and usually not sexualised.

So seems like sexualised loli/shota is off the list. (I will propose in the description thread that in their description a note will be added that the combination with echhi/smut may be about the children being sexualised, just to clarify that for people who were confused like me)

New tag: "Uncensored"
I don't like it, because it seems like something that can be quite mistagged. I mean, I read it and thought it could be that a manga has been censored - like the nipples not being shown, stuff like that. But, the thing is, occassionally scanlation teams "un-censor" them, and totally redraw nipples and the like. And isn't it quite common for yaoi/yuri to redraw that?


Ohhh I like the Interpersonal Abuse tag description. It is a bit wordy though. When I looked at the genre descriptions, they tended to use simplier wording.

How about:

Interpersonal abuse features long-term violent, mental or otherwise cruel mistreatment of the victims which may cause them physical or psychological trauma.
There's a clear imbalance of power between the more powerful party as the aggressor and their victim.

Forms of abuse include (but are not limited to) domestic violence, torture and gaslighting.

While we recognize that there are more than just these forms of abuse, this definition is restricted to either physical or psychological abuse for the purposes of this platform.
Do not use this tag for other forms of abuse. For sexual abuse, use the Sexual Violence tag instead. (For child abuse, see the child abuse tag)

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

@Teasday
So - yes to Self Harm tag?
If it's over a whole series, one might avoid short self-destructive behavior phases like in Tokyo Ghoul.

Bullying: Aren't there lots of manhwa with the Drama tag and lots of bullying as cheap plot device? I can totally see serious bullying with tragedy tag though.

 

[LoneWizzy]

I think there should be a "nudity" or "censored/uncensored" tag... Ecchi and Smut tags alone are nowhere near enough to give you an idea about how dangerous a series' content is... Some series Have ecchi tag for showing 1 panty shot in 30 chapters, some other series also have just ecchi tag and it has 10 pages of full on nudity every chapter... So i think if we are going to keep having ecchi content in this site we should:

High Priority: Have "nudity" tag for explicit ecchi series, series that actually show nipples or censored blank boobs/asses
Low Priority: Have "censored nudity" tag for manga that shows breasts/ass but applies black bars, etc to censor it and "uncensored nudity" tag for shows that shows straight up nipples
Alternative Idea: Adding "levels" to tags to show how relevant they are to the series, like what VNDB does but this requires a complete system overhaul so realistically not possible

Since we lack these spesific tags i have been using mangaupdates to check how hardcore ecchi manga are and then read them here based on that. "Fairy Tail" and "Saotome Shimai wa Manga no Tame nara!?" or "Kishuku Gakkou no Juliet" and "Kunoichi no Ichi!" having same "ecchi" tag doesn't seem right to me...

 

[BestBoy]

Still not really a fan of combining the abuse tags. People can be fine with one type of abuse over the other, and combining them doesn't help people differentiate between the two.

 

[Teasday]

_{@Vofuro posted:}

So - yes to Self Harm tag?

Still as tentative as the other proposed tags. I'm imagining the definition is something like (brb checking wikipedia for self-destrutive behaviour) behaviour that is intentionally harmful towards one's self, especially when used as an unhealthy coping mechanism in response to trauma, stress etc. Examples would include pervasive self-destructive, self-defeating or self-sabotaging behavior, self-injury and suicidality. Admittedly Self-Destructive Behaviour would be a more appropriate name for the tag but that's long and boring.

 

[Jumballi]

Going with @ZipFile ‘s suggestion that there should be a mature/nsfw tag. The vast majority of manga that touch the subjects looking to get tagged in this thread are adult oriented. Now you’d be correct in assuming that the demographic tags cover this, but sadly not all manga have their demo tagged. Also there are lots of manga out there that have a young demo, that still contain sensitive material, i.e. https://mangadex.org/title/32944/i-am-a-child-of-this-house .

With the growing number of manga that contain content outside of their published demo, especially sometimes containing sensitive content, A mature/nsfw tag is definitely a must.

Edit: I see that some people can confuse nsfw with ‘high degree of sexual content’, but the phrase dwindles down to ‘not safe for work’. With a lump sum of ecchi and smut that hardly actually count as not safe for work, since their content boils down to panty shots, the accidental breast rub, and low effort drawing of sex, the outright denial that nsfw could assist in covering sensitive content that may have an weird definition or not even having a tag at that point in time.

 

[DANDAN_THE_DANDAN]

Spoiler

@Teasday "One of them had a de-aged genderswapped loli about to masturbate, for example."

C...can I have the sauce plz, kind, fellow man of culture?

Ngl I like "suicidality" better than "self-harm" but probably too specific and spoilery. Once again, I don't think "mental illness" is a proper tag because it encompasses all sorts of mental disorder and not just self-destructive ones. Self-harm specifically aims to warn readers of self-destruction and not a character being bugged with their ADHD or something.

Another point: do we include self harm as a plot device with stories such as Attack on Titan (bite finger) or Reincarnation no Kaben (slash throat with a cool-looking knife), or even Persona 3 (shoot self with a not-a-gun) where characters do an act associated with hurting themselves to activate special powers?

Anyways, here's the definition I propose. To borrow from Teasday's stolen wiki quote,

Self-harm is associated with characters who demonstrate behaviours that damage one's body as an unhealthy coping mechanism in response to trauma, stress or depression.

And then add this if we don't want to include biting finger.

Take note that self destruction without the intent of coping (i.e. activate special powers, mind-controlled without consent to do so, etc) does not count.

Personally I'd like for self harm as a plot point to not be included in the tag cause then My Hero Academia would be tagged as self harm everytime Deku breaks a bone to push himself further with his powers.

 

[MadeOfMagicAndWires]

Not to mention, after skimming through that quickly, there were cases of just blatant mistagging or forgetting to add at least Ecchi.

This is definitely the case. Basically, the rule of thumb seems to be anything with the loli tag seems to have pretty much have a sexual or romantic context in some way, regardless of Ecchi or Smut tag.
You might get a few false positives if you choose to block this tag, but to be perfectly honest, not much of worth will be lost.

---

On adding a small list of concrete examples of what type of behaviour to tag or not to tag will definitely be helpful for a lot of these tags but I figure that is relatively easy as opposed to creating an actual description so I left it out for now.

---

@Vofuro's definition is probably indeed a bit more immediately understandable, but I would change some of the structure of the first sentence as "mental behaviour" is not particularly clear:

I'd then go for something like this:

Interpersonal abuse features long-term violent or otherwise cruel physical or emotional/psychological mistreatment of the victims which may cause them physical or psychological trauma.
There's a clear imbalance of power between the more powerful party as the aggressor and their victim.

Forms of abuse include (but are not limited to) domestic violence, torture and gaslighting.

Also possibly mention a list of clear misuse of the tag separately, but that depends on how much we're worrying about misuse.

And while I don't have any issue with separating the tags, I do find it somewhat unnecessary in practice. I don't know many series in which the two don't come together, and I'd rather a tag like this is more broad than too limited. Sexual Violence similarly merges separate types of behaviour but that doesn't seem to have caused many issues so far.

I do find separating Sexual Abuse significantly more useful though as, because of its sexual nature, people more often only object to this type of content specifically than they would between Physical and Psychological Abuse. But again I do find separating Physical and Psychological Abuse to still be a valid option as well.

---

On the Uncensored(or alternatively "Explicit)" tag, what would constitute the tag would be up to your description but personally I'd go with:

Anything depicting (sexual) full frontal nudity or destruction of the body in clear view.
Not to be used for series that do not have any of these elements, or series that include uncensored vulgar hand gestures or language.

So I would count De-censored content to fall under this as well, though I acknowledge this would not be in the original content. I don't know the current policy on that but we could also look at the current Black-and-White/ (Fan)-Coloured model to solve this, which both have tags and a separate entry in Mangadex for people who want to follow a specific version.

---

Bullying would already fit great under an abuse tag, so I don't think a separate tag would be necessary there.

---

Self-Harm seems fine to me, I'm not particularly worried about the spoilers, as a tag alone doesn't go into the who or why. Definition includes the "pervasiveness" part of the behaviour as well, so that would rule out one-offs, which aren't exactly common in themes of self-harm either way.

Content-tag wise I don't feel a particular need to change it to "mental disorder" either; while mental disorders don't explicitly entail self-harming behaviour they are also already covered by the "Psychological" theme tag which, although overused, is pretty descriptive. (Probably doesn't need the line of "driven to the brink of sanity though; which is a bit sensationalist)

 

[Vofuro]

@DANDAN_THE_DANDAN
oh god yes. Poor Deku. Let's not confuse our shounen's heroic self-ignorance for self harm.
I actually really like your description and tag for Self Harm and would +1 it.

@LoneWizzy: "nudity", "censored nudity"
I think... that's a bit problematic to consistently implement. Especially because, like I mentioned above, people redraw originally censored nipples and thingies. Making it depend on the scanlators, which obviously is a no go.
Doesn't the demographic usually tell how bad it is, anyway? Seinen ecchi tends to be a lot more mature than shounen echhi, after all.

Spoiler

(Also, me avoiding 90% of alle Echhi: Hey, I know Fairy Tail of your example list!)

@BestBoy
I still fancy a "torture" tag for simply excessive physical abuse. I believe psychological abuse is covered with interpersonal abuse, even if it's a bit wordy.


@Jumballi
I ALWAYS forget what NSFW stands for. I'm for calling it "Mature" xD But I have to agree. With the webcomics and creativity unlimited by demographics, there are things that aren't covered right now.
But "Mature" is very non-descript and general. Maybe as a demographic? for mature audience?
Can't think of anything right now, but as it is I'm really not happy/sure about it.
----- Thread was updated, so here's the additional two cents
I really like "Explicit" as an alternative.

@MadeOfMagicAndWires
I really like "Explicit", but I think that description is a bit over-complex (I'm against double negatives, if one wants to keep it simple)
How about:

Explizit covers anything depicting (sexual) full frontal nudity or brutal violence in clear view.
Do not use these for series that include uncensored vulgar hand gestures or language. (is that right?)

(Destruction of the body is a bit wordy)

 

[Teasday]

@DANDAN_THE_DANDAN I wouldn't necessarily specify that Self Harm needs to include damaging one's body, I don't think there's a reason to exclude more psychological kind of self-destructive behaviour. It's probably not particularly common in comparison anyway, can't really think of an example character that would qualify as having it as a straight up pathology, but I think we should keep it open regardless. But yeah, Eren biting himself is not a trauma-related coping mechanism.

Mental disorders are so wide and varied that I don't see it being a particularly useful tag, at least not as a "warning" tag.

I still don't see what's the difference between these suggested NSFW/Explicit/Mature/whatever tags and the Ecchi and Smut tags that we already have. If you want a tag for brutal violence, I figured that's what Physical Abuse would be for.

 

[Vofuro]

@Teasday
(Not to mention that saying mental illnesses is a content warning like sexual violence or gore... that can be taken as offensive and is quite rude, just saying. Theme tag would be fine, but content warning not)

As far as I understood it, there's apparently quite some mangas that aren't tagged with a demographic, that's why people have problems understanding how brutal the featured ecchi/smut stuff is? I can't exclude demographics in the search, so cannot verify that.

 

[ZipFile]

Censorship has meaning that spans beyond black bars/mosaic/white rods. It would be way too misleading as a tag.
There is a series that got less or no black bars in tankoubon editions, or for patrons. Some western releases might contain redrawn scenes or missing pages also. Quite ambiguous already.