Community Tagging Overview

[armaina]

I still do think there needs to be an opt-out. It's like I said before and the thing that keeps getting missed
Not allowing CC to optout while also having no restrictions on who gets to add, seems to say that you don't trust a CC to tag their work appropriately. Give them that trust, it will work for the site's benefit.

Also a thought - for the people that use gibberish tags, why not also have just a search opt out as well, as this is likely why people are using gibbersh tags in the first place. That way they can use the tags for their watcher's to filter without having to worry about the tag being used to find the art. some people are quite comfortable /not/ being searchable and would often prefer it.

[weykent]

I honestly don’t know how to explain this to you if you don’t understand by now, despite so many people trying to make it crystal clear. I guess the most boiled down to the point I can get it is that art is a personal experience.
And quite a few artists see their art some something very personal, even if it's just a simple pin up. Having someone else barge in and actively redefining your art is super invasive at best. Even if the art was only searchable by said tag for a few hours, it can still feel very violating to some.

It's not redefining the art, though. Is that what you feel the issue is: tags are supposed to reflect the submitter's "focus" on a piece?

Sometimes a CC don't want their art tagged as, let's say, “Anus” simply because they felt like adding a * as a minor non focus point detail. And that is okay.

“Anus” isn’t a gender tag, so no help for CC to remove it there.

It's not a Synonym either, so no help for CC to remove it there.

It is an Accurate tag in this case, just highly unimportant. Yet a voting by the community would most likely deem it accurate and the tag would get locked onto CC’s art.
Tough luck I guess.

It’s not really a word CC dislike either, so it wasn’t added to a “Do not add to this submission, list. It’s just very redundant and an eyesore, and maybe they would rather not have people finding this submission through searches for “Anus” as well.

Tough luck tho, it is now force locked onto their submission by the community.
The only option now is to report the tag and waste staff's time with it.
However; staff would most likely not removed it for CC, since it's not offensive nor inaccurate, and they don’t appear to care to understand CC’s feelings on the matter either.

This seems to be more of the same thing. Are you suggesting that the reason someone wouldn't want an "anus" tag is because it's not the focus of the piece? It's not clear to me why a submitter would object to someone finding a submission based on an exposed anus.

I guess maybe it's partially another thing: maybe some submitters don't want genitalia tagged because they feel the focus of the piece isn't sexual. In that case, perhaps tags could be allowed/disallowed per rating. It would make sense to disallow e.g. "anus" in non-18+ submissions anyway. I've long thought about making ratings based on the presence or absence of certain tags.

Really, though, overall I'm unconvinced that someone could want to avoid community tagging for any reason other than "there are certain types of tags I don't want to appear on my submissions". Discussing what those types of tags are and the problem with their presence is going to be more fruitful than throwing up our figurative hands and saying "the mind of a submitter is an unfathomable enigma".

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Oh, also, another thing I was thinking about earlier today. Since weasyl allows for you/by you posting, theoretically speaking, who should have the final say in what tags a submission has: the artist, or the commissioner(s)? Any of these people can post it to their profile. The danger of saying "whoever submitted it has the final say on that submission" is that commissioners often link to the artist, and so theoretically a commissioner could add a tag that the artist finds distasteful (e.g. "vore" or "anus").

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Also a thought - for the people that use gibberish tags, why not also have just a search opt out as well, as this is likely why people are using gibbersh tags in the first place. That way they can use the tags for their watcher's to filter without having to worry about the tag being used to find the art. some people are quite comfortable /not/ being searchable and would often prefer it.

There's been a few posts about this before, but at that point, why is the submitter using weasyl at all? This is a community art site, not a private image archive.

[blufawx]

Oh, also, another thing I was thinking about earlier today. Since weasyl allows for you/by you posting, theoretically speaking, who should have the final say in what tags a submission has: the artist, or the commissioner(s)?

Yes.

You're talking about two separate pages, two separate people. The only way the two become the same is if a community user
sees the page of the commissioner with one set of tags and the artist with another then adds the commissioner's tags to the artist submission which is exactly the problem with community tagging--it gives too much power to the community and not enough to the person that did the art AND the person that commissioned it.

Which is why I've been saying that community tagging is a stupid waste of time for all involved.

[BlueJaySF]

Perhaps you could elaborate on what you think the problem is.

The problem is that what he's suggesting is barely comprehensible. It's like something taken from the middle of a conversation with no preamble for others to use as a frame of reference.

[weykent]

Yes.

You're talking about two separate pages, two separate people. The only way the two become the same is if a community user
sees the page of the commissioner with one set of tags and the artist with another then adds the commissioner's tags to the artist submission which is exactly the problem with community tagging--it gives too much power to the community and not enough to the person that did the art AND the person that commissioned it.

Which is why I've been saying that community tagging is a stupid waste of time for all involved.

Well,

The danger of saying "whoever submitted it has the final say on that submission" is that commissioners often link to the artist, and so theoretically a commissioner could add a tag that the artist finds distasteful (e.g. "vore" or "anus").

[blufawx]

Well,

Sorry, it didn't include that part of your quote in a quote.

and that would be a problem for the artist and the commissioner to hash out. Still has nothing to do with the community beyond two people.

So that's still a point in my favor.


What I've noticed is that any time someone shows why community tagging is bad, or doesn't work you automatically come with a pseudopoint to supposedly counter it. It makes me question whether staff really care or if this thread was set up to placate patronize. an "everything is okay! see? we care!" but then nothing gets done anyway.

[ganache]

Really, though, overall I'm unconvinced that someone could want to avoid community tagging for any reason other than "there are certain types of tags I don't want to appear on my submissions". Discussing what those types of tags are and the problem with their presence is going to be more fruitful than throwing up our figurative hands and saying "the mind of a submitter is an unfathomable enigma".

- - - Updated - - -

Oh, also, another thing I was thinking about earlier today. Since weasyl allows for you/by you posting, theoretically speaking, who should have the final say in what tags a submission has: the artist, or the commissioner(s)? Any of these people can post it to their profile. The danger of saying "whoever submitted it has the final say on that submission" is that commissioners often link to the artist, and so theoretically a commissioner could add a tag that the artist finds distasteful (e.g. "vore" or "anus").

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Who has final say on commission's use and display (and categorization in this case, I guess) is a different box of worms, since it depends on the artist's TOS when the commission was taken. Tagging isn't a common thing outlined in people's terms by a longshot, but if I had to say "control" leaned one way or the other, it's the artist's.

I can see reason for both parties at least discussing tags if the piece is to be collected. Or reposted and tagged as the commissioner wants, if that's allowed alternately.

I don't disagree that digging into this further clarifies some things, but the proposals I've seen (and bring up next) seem so much simpler to implement without having to go 20 questions on everyone that I don't get why it's happening, frankly.

For what it's worth, pre-approval of tags so much as existing (maybe with the default behavior being to let them come in freely and behave as they already do) + search exclusion possibilities have been my favorite solutions presented and I just hope they're possible. /throws up hands

[armaina]

There's been a few posts about this before, but at that point, why is the submitter using weasyl at all? This is a community art site, not a private image archive.

seriously? Maybe because they want to interact with a select few members on the site and not the entire site. (never mind that it's not removing oneself from search means that no one will ever find them. Fave surfing anyone?) We already have a friends feature or is that something you don't think should exist either?

Really, though, overall I'm unconvinced that someone could want to avoid community tagging for any reason other than "there are certain types of tags I don't want to appear on my submissions".

And I'm convinced that the only reason you're slamming opt-out tagging is because you, personally, do not like it and are otherwise insulted by the notion.

You really shouldn't be asking the community what it would like if all you're going to do is respond in a manner that condescends based on what you think the site should be. If you want community feedback, at least acknowledge why someone would want the features they're asking rather than implying they're useless.

[weykent]

<snip>

Oops I'd typed up a long reply but you deleted the bits I was replying to.

Part of the reason I want to understand about the specific cases people care to avoid is because to me, ideally, submitter tags and community tags would be completely separate logical groups, and that the submitter can't add/remove community tags, and the community can't add/remove submitter tags. It might take a while before there's enough buy-in to really support it, but understanding the actual objections to this helps refine the ideal implementation.

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seriously? Maybe because they want to interact with a select few members on the site and not the entire site. (never mind that it's not removing oneself from search means that no one will ever find them. Fave surfing anyone?) We already have a friends feature or is that something you don't think should exist either?

There's been some discussion (though just on IRC, I think?) about having private groups for posting these things. I certainly don't think that limiting exposure is inherently a problem, but you seemed to be referring to people who were posting only for themselves.

And I'm convinced that the only reason you're slamming opt-out tagging is because you, personally, do not like it and are otherwise insulted by the notion.

You really shouldn't be asking the community what it would like if all you're going to do is respond in a manner that condescends based on what you think the site should be. If you want community feedback, at least acknowledge why someone would want the features they're asking rather than implying they're useless.

I'm not sure what I've posted that you feel is condescending. Clearly some people feel very strongly about this issue, but I've been trying to get people to actually explain what it is they actually care about. It seems almost like the XY problem:

You want to do X, but don't know how. You think you can solve it using Y, but don't know how to do that, either. You ask about Y, which is a strange thing to want to do. Just ask about X.

In this particular case, it seems to me that the X is the something that submitters want to get or not get out of tagging, but community tagging gets conflated in with that, and then we only end up talking about community tagging instead.

[DrunkCat]

It seems almost like the XY problem

If folks are confusing tagging with being something integral or part of the submission itself (i.e. like a title) then it is an XY problem.

If you're a rock group it does no one an iota of good to be filed under "Jazz" or "Pop". The label "rock" has nothing to do nor affects at any level the sound of the music. It could be labeled "Rap" and it'd still sound the same (but will certainly confuse a lot of people).