Tag System several issues

[tigercloud]

Hey,

I run several times into the point where people try removing tags from my submissions, which belongs to them. I think it's not bad per se that everyone can edit the tags, especially if there are people who don't tag their images at all or adding wrong tags.

But the problem I get is, that they usually try to removing tags that belongs to my submission and I have to re-add them later. For example on my last submission they tried to remove "Angel", "Angel Pred", "Giantess" (An ~8 other tags), I had this several times on multiple submissions. I just looked at pending tags and found an other submission from me: (This)

Spoiler: show

I would love if there is a way to disable tag edits, since I tag my items properly. I think I will stop using the tag system if its still open for all. (Eg not tag my submissions)

I saw people asking for this several times and as far I remember this is not possible yet, if its not possible yet it, I would love to suggest that you increase the votes on tag deletions, since there are many trolls (or people who just click "approve all")

The other problem is, here are so many redundant tags, that I don't know which tag is the "Main"-Tag, thats why I add many redundant tags to my submission. I would suggest if there is a fixed tag list where you can create new tags (based on votes or similar) instead of adding new tags by just typing in a new tag

I would love if you leave this topic open for some discussion with other people, but its your site =)

Thanks for reading^^

Tigercloud

Edit: I know you keep track of all Tag-Editions but a simple switch to turn it off would be great appricated, it would solve the problem for many people. Trolls can just create a new account but it doesnt matter if you can turn tag editions off on your submissions.

If you need coding assistance I would offer myself to help! I have great knowledge in Web-Dev (PHP, HTML, JavaScript, CSS). I think some problems should be fixed in time, also like the blacklist system in inbox items (Reported by me in 2013). Or the unaccessable Folder-Bug on certain chars. If you need help or more infos just PM me, I would love to help!

[KnightleyPaine]

I'd honestly prefer democratic tags over author only any time of the day, considering authors sometimes mislabel, or underlabel due to some tags just flying under their interest radar. As an example, a soft oral vore image 'should' have the tags 'Soft Vore' and 'Oral Vore', but not 'Vore' (which is not a tag we use) though someone without the habit might just think only Oral Vore needs to be mentioned, or instead opt for 'Vore Comic' when it's not a comic for whatever ungodly reason.

On the other hand, they also often overlabel/make up useless tags or ones that haven't really caught on, such as the name of their character, an emote or jokes.

Overlabling is what is going on in your case: You already have the 'Giantess' and 'Angel' tags, those two are correct and should be there. But you insist on the 'Angel Pred', 'Giantess Pred', 'Angel Prey' and 'Giantess Vore' tags - The tag culture we have has not in fact developed the habit of using tags that describe the exact race of pred and prey in combination with their pred/prey role as a single tag because that would be incredibly cumbersome to uphold, a good hint for that is that the tags 'Giantess pred' and 'Giantess predator' exist side by side, something that would never happen to a healthy and frequently used tag - those tags are mostly useless and only exists via flying under the radar, or a sufficient amount of authors not able to figure out which to use. So in the case of your screenshot I'm simply seeing a more experienced tagger correcting your mistakes and tidying things up, you should learn from them.

Every place tends to develop a tagging culture that may be redundant at one thing but simplifies another, it can't be helped, but the important thing is that an unspoken consensus eventually distributes itself among the people who frequent, and people are correct to adjust to this consensus, because we search using this consensus rather than by the separate opinion of individual authors and artists. As an example, there is actually content that has no vore, hence not every image or story features vore. But there's no 'Vore' tag, instead, we use a 'Non-Vore' tag, that's just how everyone has silently adjusted into for how it works. More importantly, it reflects how people search, as an author you know what you've made and likely have feelings about it, but the important thing to understand is that the system exists for people who search, and short of actual trolls is being adjusted by said people.

The main thing an Author gets to pick is what is 'actually' going on in a picture, for instance, if a female vores someone from their rear end and the angle leaves it ambiguous, the author gets to pick whether to Tag AV or Unbirth - they know what's going on, and other people do not get to change that. But 'Bent over unbirth' or 'Stacey' for instance, are tags that will be cleaned up.

If someone were to try to remove the 'Giantess' tag (Not the 'Giantess Vore' one, that one is expected) as you've mentioned though, that would be a troll or inexperienced person, but as long as the community consensus is involved, their trolling should also be undone, but if they truly remove deserving tags then that is an issue.

[tigercloud]

(...) considering authors sometimes mislabel, or underlabel due to some tags just flying under their interest radar.

That's a fair point! I saw sometimes artist using tags, which are not even on the image or Artists which don't add a single Tag.

What i've done wrong is may because its not clear which tag is the "Main-Tag", so I usually use all similar tags. This annoys me to since the list gets pretty long and I lose the overview... I also saw 2 tags like this:

Code: Select all

-> internal view
-> internal   view

This Problem could be avoided programaticly beforehand, by striping all spaces between words to just 1 space, since there is absolutly no need for multiple spaces. I think there where more tags with multiple spaces but these I never use.
Edit: Even the forum removes multiple spaces between words, so I put it in the "Code-BB-Code"

To avoid this redundant tagging would help a fixed list. An other problem was I also got removed "Giantess" or just "Angel" sometimes, I think I also saw one time a deletion of all tags, luckyly I could downvote them.... Next time I would like to Screenshot this as well. But its a bit annoying on both sides. Whats about giving users "Mod-Power" a value that increases over time, it would make it harder to abuse these tagging system. I get your point with the duplicate tags but I hope you also understand my problems here

May someone knows a better system for this?

At least I learned a bit more how I can tag my submissions better in the future, sad that here is no "Thank" button, so thank you =)

[Kenka]

It is possible to do this. If it seems like a doable operation having to do with accounts and ability to edit anything, it most likely is possible with server-side PHP. To be honest. I don't see this site getting any better. You aren't the only person to wish the site had more granularity. If I had to guess: Either the developers don't have the time/money/any of the other rescources, or they've given up. I'd have to say though, what you're talking about sounds like at least 3 pages of code spaced across other code that is already in place and taking the website down temporarily to implement and perhaps even test the update. They could try updating multiple things at once, but there's a bigger chance of everything going wrong since even a ";" that is out of place in pages of code can wreck the entire operation, and if they don't have the ability or money to test updates on the site with another server. We're looking at Aryion being down for several hours at least for each of these, and it's not like they're making a large amount of money doing this.

I've often wished for a more up-to-date, and easy to understand search system, but we have what we have. Vore is somewhat of an obscure interest and there isn't enough motivation or popularity for it to have these sorts of resources in the community.

Hope this helps a bit to explain. Maybe I'm wrong and things will get better in the future.

[KnightleyPaine]

In theory we could have used underscore like the -boorus, but again, that's not how things developed here, not all things in a culture are logical or immediately intuitive to everyone to the same extent, and that is exactly why singular users (that includes authors by themselves) can rarely be trusted to know exactly how to tag reliably all the time. Things already work the way they do, and if an overhaul were to take place, I'd be all for the -booru system of just a huge tag wall - but that's also a strain on the tagging community itself who would need to adjust all over the place.

The best help I can give you as a content creator though, is that there's a Tag Cloud and a Tagging Guide.

In the tagging guide for instance, you can see that the species itself is the intended tag rather than 'species+pred/prey', following it should get you through the basics and hint at the spirit of the system. In the Tag Cloud, you can generally see a guaranteed list of tags used, so short of being confident in understanding when to add what tag, a safe bet is to include every tag from there that applies.

[tigercloud]

It is possible to do this. If it seems like a doable operation having to do with accounts and ability to edit anything, it most likely is possible with server-side PHP. To be honest. I don't see this site getting any better. You aren't the only person to wish the site had more granularity. If I had to guess: Either the developers don't have the time/money/any of the other rescources, or they've given up. I'd have to say though, what you're talking about sounds like at least 3 pages of code spaced across other code that is already in place and taking the website down temporarily to implement and perhaps even test the update. They could try updating multiple things at once, but there's a bigger chance of everything going wrong since even a ";" that is out of place in pages of code can wreck the entire operation, and if they don't have the ability or money to test updates on the site with another server. We're looking at Aryion being down for several hours at least for each of these, and it's not like they're making a large amount of money doing this.

I've often wished for a more up-to-date, and easy to understand search system, but we have what we have. Vore is somewhat of an obscure interest and there isn't enough motivation or popularity for it to have these sorts of resources in the community.

Hope this helps a bit to explain. Maybe I'm wrong and things will get better in the future.

I offer my help as Web-Developer, I can't do more than offer my help (right now). I like this place but it would be awesome if we can fix all the bugs that I've found over the years on the page. Many of them can be done with a couple of lines

I know it's possible^^ You can create almost everything, but it can take a while, so I understand if the Administrators may don't have the time to code all that. If they want my help they can always ask me, I can send them examples or what ever they need from me

----

In theory we could have used underscore like the -boorus, but again, that's not how things developed here, not all things in a culture are logical or immediately intuitive to everyone to the same extent, and that is exactly why singular users (that includes authors by themselves) can rarely be trusted to know exactly how to tag reliably all the time. Things already work the way they do, and if an overhaul were to take place, I'd be all for the -booru system of just a huge tag wall - but that's also a strain on the tagging community itself who would need to adjust all over the place.

The best help I can give you as a content creator though, is that there's a Tag Cloud and a Tagging Guide.

In the tagging guide for instance, you can see that the species itself is the intended tag rather than 'species+pred/prey', following it should get you through the basics and hint at the spirit of the system. In the Tag Cloud, you can generally see a guaranteed list of tags used, so short of being confident in understanding when to add what tag, a safe bet is to include every tag from there that applies.

I see, thank you these are usefull links!

[Liz]

On of my pet hates with tagging is that if you have a picture of a predator with a full belly and no cutaway, people seem to want to tag it as the prey being a ? or unknown. Even though in the description it explains the act was between a female predator and a female prey so it makes it F/F image and people will turn around and try and change it to F/? ( any other combination works on other images that are F/M M/F M/M ect ect not just F/F exclusive )

Honestly democracy can be nice and all but at the same time the artist does a lot of work or the commissioner pays for said image they should be allowed to tag it as they wish and not have the 'Tag Police' come running in and change it to their liking with most times these tag changers don't do anything else for the artwork just alter the tags.

Have a system allowing posters to lock tags would be rather good in my opinion and if people abuse the system then report them to the mods /admin but it does get rather annoying to have tags constantly change but said backseat police....

[necryel]

But the problem I get is, that they usually try to removing tags that belongs to my submission and I have to re-add them later. For example on my last submission they tried to remove "Angel", "Angel Pred", "Giantess" (An ~8 other tags), I had this several times on multiple submissions. I just looked at pending tags and found an other submission from me: (This)

Spoiler: show

Untitled.png

Sometimes the differences in tagging occur because of a difference between what the artist intends and what the viewer interprets. Other times it's a case of misinformation. Based on your image above for instance, I would remove both "Angel" and "Angel Pred" simply because, to my knowledge, Nina has never cannonnically been described as an Angel. Her race has technically been listed as "Windian" so I would put that tag instead. Also, based on the scale of the furniture, I would remove "Giantess". and replace it with "Size Difference" and "Micro" and "Micro Prey". Because the larger Nina appear to be laying on the couch, she appears to be normal sized based on the scale of the reference provided (the couch) Therefore if she's normal sized for the couch, I'm not inclined to interpret her as being a giantess pred, but I am inclined to interpret the Prey Nina as being much smaller than normal for the scale of the setting and therefore a Micro prey.

You may have intended the larger Nina to be a giantess, but for the viewer, the scale of reference presented (again we're talking about the couch) makes it much easier to interpret the smaller Nina to be a Micro. Remember, the tag system is designed for purpose of the audience to find images based on their interests and thus is beholden to how the collective audience interprets an artists work. The artist has every right to list how they intend for their work to be seen but in the end images will get tagged according to the audience's collective interpretation if there is a difference between how we see it vs. how you meant it.

[tigercloud]

Sometimes the differences in tagging occur because of a difference between what the artist intends and what the viewer interprets. Other times it's a case of misinformation. Based on your image above for instance, I would remove both "Angel" and "Angel Pred" simply because, to my knowledge, Nina has never cannonnically been described as an Angel. Her race has technically been listed as "Windian" so I would put that tag instead.

Thats okay for this image, I not know much about Breath of Fire, soI put that tag wrong. Uhm but the problem is, they also remove this tag on other images from me, like on my OC which is clearly an Angel. I would accept that change if they at least added this other tag (as you told me "Windian", just that this tag does not exist yet, so it would not make sense to add it either, since nobody knows this tag including me).

Also, based on the scale of the furniture, I would remove "Giantess". and replace it with "Size Difference" and "Micro" and "Micro Prey". Because the larger Nina appear to be laying on the couch, she appears to be normal sized based on the scale of the reference provided (the couch) Therefore if she's normal sized for the couch, I'm not inclined to interpret her as being a giantess pred, but I am inclined to interpret the Prey Nina as being much smaller than normal for the scale of the setting and therefore a Micro prey. (...)

Yeah as I told you before, if they would just help to organize the tags it would be okay, but I usually just get tag deletions. Which makes sense on false and redundant tags (which I know know more about). But I dont like these random removes if they are not valid like on other images. I would love if the tag system had a bit more control or users that take care of it. At this state its just a free for all

I think I remember there was an artist here that stopped posting here on ekas because of all these tag deletions on his stuff. Yeah here: (LINK) I think he overdone it a bit, but I fell less motivated to use this system where everybody can change stuff with just 3 votes, usually easy to get since most of them click on "Approve All". I mean it takes time to tag all your stuff and then somebody gives you a slap in the face, thats why some people dont tag at all

I mean the system is not bad per se but it needs a bit more control from the content creator side. As Liz told. I would love to hear ideas for this what can be done to change this system for better on both sides?

If I browse the Technical-Stuff Forums I see some topics about this. Mostly from Content-Creators:
viewtopic.php?f=21&t=51907
viewtopic.php?f=21&t=50842
viewtopic.php?f=21&t=48063

[Modern45]

there was an artist here that stopped posting here on ekas because of all these tag deletions on his stuff

IIRC it was because his tag "Dragon" kept removed, and he insisted his character to be dragon (without obvious reasons). To be honest, I'm not on his side.

[tigercloud]

Ah I see, like if if I say my OC-Angel is a Succubus (if it obvious an Angel). Yeah then the whine is a bit unnecessary

[maleperduis]

On the other hand, they also often overlabel/make up useless tags or ones that haven't really caught on, such as the name of their character, an emote or jokes.

Overlabling is what is going on in your case: You already have the 'Giantess' and 'Angel' tags, those two are correct and should be there. But you insist on the 'Angel Pred', 'Giantess Pred', 'Angel Prey' and 'Giantess Vore' tags - The tag culture we have has not in fact developed the habit of using tags that describe the exact race of pred and prey in combination with their pred/prey role as a single tag because that would be incredibly cumbersome to uphold, a good hint for that is that the tags 'Giantess pred' and 'Giantess predator' exist side by side, something that would never happen to a healthy and frequently used tag - those tags are mostly useless and only exists via flying under the radar, or a sufficient amount of authors not able to figure out which to use. So in the case of your screenshot I'm simply seeing a more experienced tagger correcting your mistakes and tidying things up, you should learn from them.

I'd completely disagree with this. If you search "[species] pred" and "[species] prey", you'll find plenty of usages for many common species. And why not, it's something that a lot of people want to search on, myself included. I have no idea what makes you think that you have some sort of authority on what makes a good tag- maybe you don't care about species roles very much but plenty of people clearly do. I also don't see why having "extra" tags on an image is a bad thing. If you look at sites like e621 that rely much more on tag-based searching, you'll see images tend to have tons of tags on them, really whatever fits. Because as long as a tag isn't actually wrong, even if it's highly situational it can only ever improve searchability. I don't know what you mean about it being "cumbersome to uphold". Who's having to uphold anything? The only maintainence headache here is people removing perfectly good tags so that other people have to come and put them back.


Answering the OP's points:

- I don't like the idea of the uploader being able to disable tag edits. What might work better is giving them a "veto"- i.e. a tag they add can't be removed (or perhaps has a much higher vote threshold?), and similarly one they remove can't be readded.

- StackExchange has the concept of tag aliases to deal with differently-worded ways of stating the same thing. It'd be a bit of extra work but we could do that here too. Let people propose that tag X is an alias of tag Y, then allow people to up- and down- vote creating (or breaking) tag aliases. Tag migrations (propose that all instances of tag X are replaced with Y) could also work, but they're a bit more problematic- firstly they're not permanent (people can start adding X again), and secondly if they're wrong, it's more of a pain in the ass to revert them.

[xwrath]

I kinda like how e-hentai system works, new tag creation is done by creating a thread suggesting and discussing it, with a fixed tag list, which usually have a proper definition, and alias associated with them, also users have "mod power", which is responsible for the impact the user gives when up or downvoting a tag and increases with accuracy, also tagging is done visually, so a tag represents what is in the pic...
Should be a pain to implement it here at this point, aliasing the huge amount here should already be a load of work

[necryel]

It only requires 3 votes for a tag change to go through? Really? That's all? That seems hardly representative of a "greater view." If nothing else I would think the minimum requirement for any Approval, disapproval, or changing or any tag should have a minimum threshold of 50 votes and that such change requests be only valid for 72 hours. I figure if a tag change doesn't garner enough interest in 3 days, then there isn't enough interest worth making any changes. That would be my suggestion. Increase the threshold to a minimum 50 votes and impose a 3 day time limit for all tag change proposals.

[tigercloud]

(...)
I'd completely disagree with this. If you search "[species] pred" and "[species] prey", you'll find plenty of usages for many common species. And why not, it's something that a lot of people want to search on, myself included. I have no idea what makes you think that you have some sort of authority on what makes a good tag- maybe you don't care about species roles very much but plenty of people clearly do. I also don't see why having "extra" tags on an image is a bad thing. If you look at sites like e621 that rely much more on tag-based searching, you'll see images tend to have tons of tags on them, really whatever fits. Because as long as a tag isn't actually wrong, even if it's highly situational it can only ever improve searchability. I don't know what you mean about it being "cumbersome to uphold". Who's having to uphold anything? The only maintainence headache here is people removing perfectly good tags so that other people have to come and put them back.

Yeah I don't ever would remove "Angel Pred" for example, since I use this tag by myself to find new art. If I just search for "Angel" I also get its prey and Non-Vore Art, which I'm not looking for. So I think this is a good tag.

You have a good point it increases the searchability, so why are they removing these Tags, I mean they don't hurt them?

I think there are other Problems with really similar Tags, which can be found here: https://aryion.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=2660721#p2660721 - A fixed list and creating Tags with Votes would be may help, as you mentioned like the Stack-Exchange System, where Users also get Mod-Power, which results in more Permissions for been good users.

- I don't like the idea of the uploader being able to disable tag edits. What might work better is giving them a "veto"- i.e. a tag they add can't be removed (or perhaps has a much higher vote threshold?), and similarly one they remove can't be readded.

At least a Notification for the Tags that have been removed where I can readd/remove it by clicking "undo" as Content-Creator would be also awesome. I've been sick to have a dozen of text files here where I local save my Tag-Lists^^' Or at least that I can review the changes and approving them myself, there are many ways how it can be better than the current system. (Even without completly disabling the Tag-Edits)

Or a reworked Vote-System but that's been much more work programmaticly than just "simple" Notifications with may an Undo-Button.

It only requires 3 votes for a tag change to go through? Really? That's all? That seems hardly representative of a "greater view." If nothing else I would think the minimum requirement for any Approval, disapproval, or changing or any tag should have a minimum threshold of 50 votes and that such change requests be only valid for 72 hours. I figure if a tag change doesn't garner enough interest in 3 days, then there isn't enough interest worth making any changes. That would be my suggestion. Increase the threshold to a minimum 50 votes and impose a 3 day time limit for all tag change proposals.

It require 3 Votes if nobody choose the deny button, if they do, I think the difference from deny and approve the change is 3 until it get accepted/denied. If you are the owner of the item your vote automaticly decide if the change get approved or not (if you get the chance to vote on it). As far I saw it

It would not bad if users get more power for good helping like on StackExchange, where you get more mod power over time. The System is self watching itself and removes trolls automaticly and gives more Power to user which know what they do

[Eka]

Thank you for the discussion. I will look into this and takes these suggestion into consideration when we have time to revise our tagging system.

Meanwhile, feel free to send common redundant tags or incorrect spelling/tagging to me, I can merge or alias them.