[Manga] Add a content warning for Slavery

[DoubleSnake]

We have content ratings for suggestive, erotica, and pornographic and we have content warnings for gore and sexual violence. I believe it necessary to have a content warning for slavery as well due to the obvious extreme nature of the act. There are obviously age ratings for many things such as shonen and adult themed manga, on television there are warnings for smoking, self-harm, ect. And while there are many mange with on the nose titles such as "My Slave is Way Too Cheerful" there are many isekai titles where a viewer is basically playing russian roulette on whether or not slavery is involved. I personally have read many where there was no mention of slavery in the mangadex, myanimelist, or mangaupdates description. "Tate no Yuusha no Nariagari" has absolutly no mention of slavery in the mangadex or mangaupdates description (Though it does on myanimelist) but I do not blame anyone that made the descriptions for this lack of oversight. It just shouldn't have to come to checking other websites before reading a manga just to avoid something that could easily be tagged. I am not saying this needs to be a tag like villaness or slice of life, but I do think it necessary to have this option in place to easily avoid disturbing those that either at best, find it distasteful or at worst, those that have real world experience suffering that can be triggered.

 

[Luoir]

I believe the OP is bringing up a valid point and argument, shitting on him is unnecessary and simply rude. Though I have to be on the side that said this is unnecessary and Slavery should expected be in with the sensitive contents type of tags

 

[Devourer]

I believe the OP is bringing up a valid point and argument, shitting on him is unnecessary and simply rude. Though I have to be on the side that said this is unnecessary and Slavery should expected be in with the sensitive contents type of tags

yea I agree OP made a good point i kinda expect this reaction from this community people really malding over a suggested rating

 

[Outflanks10]

I think many more tags could and should be added for ease of navigation, slavery should perhaps be one of them. Although I don’t think it should be a content warning. And I can’t understand why anyone would have a problem with more tags being added, if you do not wish to use them to search or exclude a manga then you don’t have to.

 

[cksn]

please add a content warning for any and all authoritarian/hierarchical relationships including parentage, political rule, and marriage... they're extremely upsetting and I just have no way of knowing when they'll show up in any manga. it's sickening how frequent they are and you just know these authors get off on it and don't think it's wrong

 

[feha]

I think many more tags could and should be added for ease of navigation, slavery should perhaps be one of them. Although I don’t think it should be a content warning. And I can’t understand why anyone would have a problem with more tags being added, if you do not wish to use them to search or exclude a manga then you don’t have to.

The only issue is that the uploaders will have to add too many tags, and need to know what all means. But that is easily fixed by making it possible for any user to add tags in gui, which could even be a separate "user-added tag" section to keep it sanitized from the more moderated section.

 

[BraveDude8]

Personal opinion; slavery doesn't meet the criteria required for a content warning.

The BBFC (who I'm most familiar with) have a large selection of criteria for rating works, and these don't include slavery. Conveniently they've got a case study for 12 Years a Slave, and my feeling lines up pretty nicely with this; the act of slavery itself is not worth a content warning, the violence and sexual actions assaulted with it are, and we already have tags to cover those.

As a content tag, instead of a content warning, there aren't anywhere near enough titles with it as a significant theme to justify adding it. You'd also get people tagging S/M relationships with "slavery" which would muddy the waters, and as we're trying to keep our tags limited but meaningful this doesn't meet our criteria there either. If you want a larger number of hyper-specific tags, go to MangaUpdates; they do this very well.

 

[Outflanks10]

The only issue is that the uploaders will have to add too many tags, and need to know what all means. But that is easily fixed by making it possible for any user to add tags in gui, which could even be a separate "user-added tag" section to keep it sanitized from the more moderated section.

I don’t think they will as when new manga are uploaded, they always get seen on the home page. You could also check the recently uploaded section. As well as this a user guide could be added to explain the tags.
Plus after the first issue of the manga is uploaded you could just copy and past the tag settings quite easily, more over most tags are rather self-explanatory.
The old down aside is that old manga might full in the rankings if their tags aren’t updated. Although that seems like a small issue, when it comes to better navigation.

 

[theo1996]

We have content ratings for suggestive, erotica, and pornographic and we have content warnings for gore and sexual violence. I believe it necessary to have a content warning for slavery as well due to the obvious extreme nature of the act. There are obviously age ratings for many things such as shonen and adult themed manga, on television there are warnings for smoking, self-harm, ect. And while there are many mange with on the nose titles such as "My Slave is Way Too Cheerful" there are many isekai titles where a viewer is basically playing russian roulette on whether or not slavery is involved. I personally have read many where there was no mention of slavery in the mangadex, myanimelist, or mangaupdates description. "Tate no Yuusha no Nariagari" has absolutly no mention of slavery in the mangadex or mangaupdates description (Though it does on myanimelist) but I do not blame anyone that made the descriptions for this lack of oversight. It just shouldn't have to come to checking other websites before reading a manga just to avoid something that could easily be tagged. I am not saying this needs to be a tag like villaness or slice of life, but I do think it necessary to have this option in place to easily avoid disturbing those that either at best, find it distasteful or at worst, those that have real world experience suffering that can be triggered.

Pretty dumb tbh there is nothing visually bad about slavery in comparison to nudty and organ blood and feces flying in the air.
Is that a s-lave c-c-c-c-ollar AND wrist -sh-shackles?!! AAAAAIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

 

[Hibikin]

What the- we still talking this? A thought it's already done years ago

 

[Primalmoon]

Personal opinion; slavery doesn't meet the criteria required for a content warning.

The BBFC (who I'm most familiar with) have a large selection of criteria for rating works, and these don't include slavery. Conveniently they've got a case study for 12 Years a Slave, and my feeling lines up pretty nicely with this; the act of slavery itself is not worth a content warning, the violence and sexual actions assaulted with it are, and we already have tags to cover those.

As a content tag, instead of a content warning, there aren't anywhere near enough titles with it as a significant theme to justify adding it. You'd also get people tagging S/M relationships with "slavery" which would muddy the waters, and as we're trying to keep our tags limited but meaningful this doesn't meet our criteria there either. If you want a larger number of hyper-specific tags, go to MangaUpdates; they do this very well.

I think the BBFC's rating system isn't quite relevant here. That rating system is about building a single rating summarizing all of the content warnings and themes, where they have to decide how each type of content contributes to that one number, and deciding based on that if you should consume that media (or if your parents should let you consume that media).

But MangaDex isn't building a single number, it just has a tag system. Tags leave the reader in charge of deciding how the different types of content affect them, so leaving out a meaningful tag is detrimental to that process.

You'd also get people tagging S/M relationships with "slavery" which would muddy the waters

I don't see the problem with this. Those seem similar enough to me already, and slavery in isekai already seems borderline S/M since so many of the characters "volunteer" to be slaves that it lets people argue about it being consensual. By adding the tag you've still given people information that allows them to make a decision in advance, or at least warned them enough for them to check for the forums first.

 

[TestAddress]

Tags are generally fine as they are. Let's not turn the site into like Dynasty or MU by adding those specific spoilerish tags. I fucking hope not.

Spoiler tags like "end game boss"?