Feedback: Tag Discussion

[Ichihara Asako]

Originally Posted by Radiosity

For ease of use for the less knowledgeable about the japanese language, I'd personally suggest going with the english equivalent (Animal Ears or whatever) then setting up an alias that would point to this tag if someone searched for kemonomimi instead (I assume the software does have an alias system of some sort?).

If the system ends up closed, with a group of members to add tags, then there could simply be a tag FAQ that explains what each one is. If you're going to translate kemonomimi, then you may as well translate shounen, shoujo, seinen etc that have been tossed around a lot, too. I say all or nothing, not some of this and a bit of that.

[Ledgem]

Originally Posted by Solace

I see three threads on the first page in General discussion relationships. So perhaps something like "advice, relationships". We seem to have friendship, love, opposite sex, and dating threads come up pretty often there so it seems appropriate to lump them together under the relationship tag.

I tacked on "advice" to the Dating thread. My reasoning was that the thread titles are extremely vague, perhaps intentionally so, but the form of the conversation took a specific route. For dating, what are we discussing - the philosophy of dating, the act of dating, etc.? It could have gone either way (and still could, of course) but the majority of discussion there is people coming for advice. It's AnimeSuki's romance advice column

Similarly, I tacked on "debate" to the smoking thread. It started out as an advice thread (with the original poster asking whether he should or shouldn't smoke) but then it turned into page after page of arguing over the merits and demerits of smoking.

To me, the topic of the post should tell you what the subject is and ideally even what type of conversation it will be. People skimp on the topic all too often, though, so I see tags as a nice way of clarifying that the conversation within is. The shortcoming of that method of tagging is that it expects that the conversation won't drastically change. Of course, it also requires a few pages of conversation to determine what an appropriate tag would be - not that we need to be tag-crazy and have millions of tags the second a thread is created (as I believe NSW mentioned earlier).

[NoSanninWa]

Originally Posted by NeoSam

So what? so what if "he" posts in only the threads he cares about, is there any rule that says: "you should post in the threads you create". I haven't read this rule anywhere.

He wasn't criticising you for creating such threads. He was making a point that thread creators aren't necessarily the best judges of tags.

[Seditary]

It seems to me that there's so much disagreement over what tags should constitute of that anything that ends up getting decided will be viewed with disappointment from a large section of people.

So far from what I can tell we have:

1. Keep tags open to all, which is argued will lead to lots of abuse that we have already seen and using up even more of the mods time policing tags than real forum moderation.
2. Keep tags restricted, either to a special tag team group, or thread creator. Argued that this will lead to ineffective tags due to possible infamilarity with the thread content.
3. Remove tags.

Even if we keep tags in, lots of people have greatly differing opinions on what should be included in tags. I think we'd have to go some half and half solution, keep tags restricted to a group of people (actually I just thought of a good reason for a restricted social group) but make someplace for issues to be raised by users to address incorrect/mislabeled tags.

Plus I also think threads in current/recent series subforums shouldn't necessarily get tags (except maybe a main thread or two dealing with the entire series), they have their own forums already and tagging all those threads could make the system bloated and unwieldy.

[relentlessflame]

Originally Posted by NoSanninWa

My opinion is that tagging by author or studio is not a good thing. That's the sort of information that you should look up on ANN if you want to know it. I don't believe it should be a tag. Lots of threads are tagged by studio now, but I'm not going to start deleting those wholesale until we have discussed the prospect.

On the contrary, I think those things are very useful, because they help you find those threads much more quickly than any sort of search. Of course, I'm biased because I'm the one who added most of those tags. (You also made a point to delete la'cryma, but they are the original work creator of True Tears, so it falls under the spirit of tagging the author (despite a technicality there...)).

Anyway, to me, genre, creator, studio, publisher, and any distinguishing characteristics -- those are what I'd be looking for in tags for an anime show, because they're useful ways people might search. Title can also be a useful tag in cases where shows don't have a sub forum. "movie", "tv series", and "ova" are probably also useful tags. I also created "sequel", since it may be interesting to know that as well. Anyway, those would be the "top-level tags" and would only apply to the main threads for any given topic. Within a sub-forum, we could consider "lower-level tagging", that would be more specific to the content without using the more generic tags (so that it doesn't pollute the tag cloud).

Of course, those are all just my own ideas of what would be useful, and most of what you see in a lot of threads just represent my own experimenting yesterday afternoon. If the consensus is that some or all of those things are bad, I'd consider it, but I'd like to know the rationale. I'm only thinking of how I would use the tags, because that's obviously what I know. I can probably be convinced of anything, though, if I am presented with the use case.

I would also say that I don't think it's so bad that a thread have many tags, so long as those tags are useful, descriptive, and relevant. If a show has 25 good tags, great! So long as it they're distinct and descript enough that they don't pollute the results.

[NoSanninWa]

Okay then, I'll consider myself corrected. I'm more of a minimalist with regards to these things, but then tagging does not necessarily work best in a minimalist fashion — it's designed for growth and interconnectedness of information.

[relentlessflame]

Originally Posted by NoSanninWa

I'm more of a minimalist with regards to these things, but then tagging does not necessarily work best in a minimalist fashion — it's designed for growth and interconnectedness of information.

Well, like I said, I'm not expert on this stuff either. I'm guess a curious technologist, I guess. I have some ideas of how it could be used, but I don't know of any hard data that suggest how it will be used in a forum setting. I'm reading over the other comments here that describe how it's used (for both good and evil) in other places, and how it could be used here. In the end, though, I think it will have to go through some sort of natural sifting process until it arrives at its happy medium that works for us (since it's clear we have a unique indentity that doesn't quite conform to the average -- hence all the disdain for the bookmarks bar! ). I guess we won't know for sure what it'll look like until we get there.

[KholdStare]

So far I'm with tagging studio, author, etc... because I think those are the basic tags that people will search for. Many times I really liked two anime from one studio, and I will try to find more anime to watch from that studio. Of course, Wikipedia will suffice, but the tags here lead you straight to the threads which might give more or less useful information depending on the inquirer.

[Aoie_Emesai]

Originally Posted by NoSanninWa

Okay then, I'll consider myself corrected. I'm more of a minimalist with regards to these things, but then tagging does not necessarily work best in a minimalist fashion — it's designed for growth and interconnectedness of information.

...interconnectedness... is that a word , Nosaninwa? ^^

Well... that aside. If you visit any danbooru, tags at the beginning are worthless, but as new tags are implimented they actually become useful till really useless one comes out like with minimal uses, adjectives like red.

[KholdStare]

Originally Posted by Aoie_Emesai

...interconnectedness... is that a word , Nosaninwa? ^^

Well... that aside. If you visit any danbooru, tags at the beginning are worthless, but as new tags are implimented they actually become useful till really useless one comes out like with minimal uses, adjectives like red.

What do you mean? I often search for all pictures of a character like "takamachi_nanoha" so I'm glad those overly generalized tags are there.

[relentlessflame]

You know, in terms of searching, here's a thought. What about a tag that indicates the season in which the anime started airing? Like, say "spring 2008". If you did that, then you could pull back, with one click, all of the the shows that started airing in that timeframe. For people wondering "what new shows should I check out?", this might be a pretty neat feature.

Another thing I sort of wish you could have would be "mutli-tag search". I see that I'm not that only one thinking about this, so hopefully Jelsoft will add it to a future release. Otherwise, I might just have to find a way...

[KholdStare]

Originally Posted by relentlessflame

You know, in terms of searching, here's a thought. What about a tag that indicates the season in which the anime started airing? Like, say "spring 2008". If you did that, then you could pull back, with one click, all of the the shows that started airing in that timeframe. For people wondering "what new shows should I check out?", this might be a pretty neat feature.

Another thing I sort of wish you could have would be "mutli-tag search". I see that I'm not that only one thinking about this, so hopefully Jelsoft will add it to a future release. Otherwise, I might just have to find a way...

I must say, a very good idea. I'm one of the people that's support "the more tags the better, as long as they're not stupid."

[NoSanninWa]

Originally Posted by relentlessflame

You know, in terms of searching, here's a thought. What about a tag that indicates the season in which the anime started airing? Like, say "spring 2008". If you did that, then you could pull back, with one click, all of the the shows that started airing in that timeframe. For people wondering "what new shows should I check out?", this might be a pretty neat feature.

That's either brilliant or insane and I certainly won't dare to get in the way of anyone interested in implementing it.

Originally Posted by Aoie_Emesai

...interconnectedness... is that a word , Nosaninwa? ^^

Yes, it is. It is a fun word to use in a context like this one.

[Solace]

That's an great idea relentlessflame. Here's another thought - could that be grouped with genre? For instance, someone could find out all of the romance series that aired in 2008. That might help them filter out undesired genres.

[KholdStare]

Originally Posted by Solace

That's an great idea relentlessflame. Here's another thought - could that be grouped with genre? For instance, someone could find out all of the romance series that aired in 2008. That might help them filter out undesired genres.

I think you can do this by searching for multiple tags, no? For example, one would search for spring 2007 comedy romance. This means that we should really have a "tag team" to really decide about the appropriate genres for some anime in question though.

[felix]

Tagging by studio is great idea, sure I can go to some info site and find out, but I'm not intrested in reading from that other site I'm intresting in reading more diverse opinions here. And yes, going back and forth searching there, searching here is troublesome; with tags making it simple and fun.

Some tags as seasson (spring 2009 etc) should be mandatory for series threads.
Finding the threads for series which air this season is so annoying. I dont want the feature to be removed, even if it's limited to a Tag Team I want it as a search option.

Also I don't think many people fully understand how it works.
Tags in the Tag Cloud appear based on popularity, and are pretty clean at the moment.

• Genre: romance, school life
• Studio: kyoto animation (alias key)
• Forum guilds: lists, children, game patch, mmorpg, images, contest, humor

Tags I don't understand: âge, circus, mf bunko j, zexcs

Well I dont really care if I dont understand them, of course there will be these things here and there I dont get but someone else does. Tags are meant to be like little treasure piles; what I consider trash may be someone else's tresure and vice versa.

[Solace]

Originally Posted by KholdStare

I think you can do this by searching for multiple tags, no? For example, one would search for spring 2007 comedy romance. This means that we should really have a "tag team" to really decide about the appropriate genres for some anime in question though.

I must honestly admit that I was not aware that function was added with the update. I haven't had the need to directly search for anything in a while. Well, scratch my idea then since it's redundant.

I suppose the genre list can be built off the categories we use on the main site though, to help match up. That way someone could find a series there and then participate here just by searching tags instead of digging around for the proper forum/thread.

[felix]

Originally Posted by KholdStare

I think you can do this by searching for multiple tags, no? For example, one would search for spring 2007 comedy romance.

How exactly do you do that?... I can't seem to search/list multiple tags.

edit

NVM, found it. It's in Advance Search, right under search by user name.

edit 2

Oh wait, no that only works for 1 tag. Hm.

[Solace]

Originally Posted by Cats

Tags I don't understand: âge, circus, mf bunko j, zexcs

Well I dont really care if I dont understand them, of course there will be these things here and there I dont get but someone else does. Tags are meant to be like little treasure piles; what I consider trash may be someone else's tresure and vice versa.

Looks like studio tags from what I can tell based on quick perusing of the lists.

Edit: Hmm I can't get multiple tag search working. Tells me the tag is invalid. If I use one tag like "romance" results come up, but "romance, comedy" refuses to work.

[KholdStare]

Originally Posted by Cats

How exactly do you do that?... I can't seem to search/list multiple tags.

edit

NVM, found it. It's in Advance Search, right under search by user name.

edit 2

Oh wait, no that only works for 1 tag. Hm.

Actually wait, I'm going to admit that I assumed too much. I can't seem to search for multiple tags, and I can only search for one tag at a time. I'm not sure if this is possible, but I would definitely support searching for more than one tag.