Suggestions

I was thinking about the Plague controversies last night and I had a major brainwave! Alright, so all skins are PG-13. This means mild blood and cuts are *supposed to be* allowed. I mean, c'mon, the Percy Jackson books have tons of violence in them and we've all read them by now. However, some people and kids are sensitive to blood and they don't deserve to have to look at things that make them uncomfortable, even with appropriate preparation and coping strategies. The site has been known to side with the latter people. That's valid, but Plague flight is also valid. It's a bit of a dilemma.

So, what if the site implemented what I'm calling a "gore filter." Skins with blood/bleeding have a "tag" on them. Players who opt not to see blood can click on a toggle in account settings, and after that tagged skins are rendered invisible to their account. Not sure what to do about dragons with those skins- perhaps the skin layer would be rendered invisible.

This would allow us to have more survivalist/bloody/body horror skins in RoR and otherwise, along with the potential implementation of a search filter for skins.

This was a drowsy late night thought, so please chuck other ideas and suggestions at me to improve it!

EDIT: Some common issues to lend thought to include: Broadness of tags (Gore vs. cuts, for example, or teal vs. blue), who moderates tags, who decides on tags. There are others but I'm too lazy to list them.

(I edit frequently for grammar)

I think it would go nicely with, say, giving skin creators the ability to tag their skins with some keywords so that users can search more easily for certain TYPES of UMA in the auction house and database.

But the problem is then that, y'know. You're still relying on player judgment and bothering to tag their own skins.

Which, I mean, is fine. AO3 works on more or less the same method. It's not foolproof, but it would be fine.

But TPTB would also have to be ok with the fact that not all gore would wind up tagged. Which also seems fine, so long as it's all at a PG-13 level.

When you haven't actually read Percy Jackson ... :(

I'd love a skin/accent tagging system mostly for search purposes (so if I want an accent for Skydancers with flowers I can search "flower") and if such was implemented I would consider adding this feature. There's a few problems that come with it though:

1. Skins/Accents for inactive/locked accounts, and active artists not tagging their skins/accents.
2. How many tags can be applied to an accent (if there's a rainbow accent you can reliably tag all of the main colors red/orange/etc. as well as rainbow but would that be useful?).
3. The hypothetical "catch all" scenarios: let's say a user blocks the tag "extra limbs" and an Emperor skin they love has that tag applied. The skin is now blocked.

For the tagging system in my mind, if the skin support team is up for going through each one and applying major tags to it, I would very much support and appreciate the gesture. To keep clutter down I'd say that skins can have a maximum of three tags.

For this suggestion in particular, I understand the sentiment, though it definitely deserves to be extended to every single tag (not just blood), and I imagine that a gene/eye type system would have to come along with it (because some of those do make some users uncomfortable).

I support a tagging system, but not one left purely up to the skin artists (mainly because of places like Ao3 :P because it is nearly impossible to 'exclude' tags I don't want to see because of how many ways people phrase things and not everyone tags etc..)

instead, all tags need to be created by the staff, so we don't have to search for 'flowers', 'tulips' 'roses' 'daffodils' and any misspellings and/or variations there can be on flowers and types of flowers and spring like themes that might have flowers in them.

Players may 'suggest' tags from the tags selection, but staff have ulimate say over what tags are added to the skin.

The only issue is that this would be a LOT of work on the staff to go through and tag every skin (but I consider it worth it) and there would be a lot of people who wouldn't want their skins tagged with certain tags for whatever reasons, or they would want custom tags just for their own skins or feel that the current tags just aren't 'good enough'.


One way to help with the backlog issue is to create a thread where the staff give a list of tags and allow people to suggest tags for various skins. Again staff would have final say over the tag selection, but this could help reduce the number of skins staff have to go through and decide what tags are appropriate for that skin.

Another way to help is to allow players to 'suggest' tags for skins (especially at first). Again, staff would be able to say whether or not that tag has enough skins that it is worth it to add and tag them.

As for the issues with players wanting special tags or not liking the tags that are applied, I am not sure that anything can be done to help with that.

But no support for a tagging system where each player tags their own skins. I love reading online fiction and I love it when an author 'warns' me about stuff to avoid or stuff I want to seek out, but places like Ao3 make that nearly impossible, due to allow users to create their own tags, so in order to remove one thing from my search results I have to exclude 30 different tags. (or if I want something I have to figure out how someone might have tagged that story)

I also know, again using Ao3 and stories as an example, that some people don't want to give any warnings for the stories, and I am sure that there are artists that wouldn't want any sort of tags on their skins.


As for the 'catch all' scenario, sadly there isn't anything to be done about that, except basically 'user beware'. IE, if a user blocks 'extra limbs' they have to realize that sometimes things they might like gets blocked.

Just as with a 'gore' tag. I can handle 'minor' gore, but major I can't. But, what constitute major or minor gore? For me, I can handle cuts and scrapes, and even bleeding wounds. But I dislike bone or organs or things like that (I hated biology...) or even 'skinless' types of skins. But others might have different definitions of those two aspects, so either the 'gore' filter would have to be varied (ie 'cuts' 'wounds' 'skinless' 'internal organs' and so on) or people would have to decide whether or not they want to block ALL gore.

I personally love sites that allow tags and have the ability to filter out content because it not only allows players to feel 'safer' browsing content on that site, but it also helps them find content they actually like.

If we had a tagging system like I am imagining, I might even get more into UMAs because then I would be able to find the types I wanted much more easily than I can now (without having to go through all the skins and then find dozens that were limited runs/retired/just not on the market).

@Jemadar

I completely agree with your idea that the site, not players should create tags! That was one of the premises of my idea, I just forgot to scribble it down in the top post.

I support tagging and filtering skins. It could go beyond gore. Maybe certain phobias like spiders. Maybe religion too--then People of Faith could have some representation and those who don't want to see it, won't.

I'm on another site (4dopt) that is basically made of user-made adoptable species. When you submit a species, you are required to have three tags for it, and the system also gives automatic tags for your user ID and the species' name.

It's absolutely true that the default gore filter there blocks some species that I'm ok with, but given it also automagically blocks the stuff I am uncomfy with, it's kind of a net gain.

Something that they don't have that might be good to have here is a manual override- a way to say "I trust this artist not to squick me, even if this subject normally does", or "this specific skin is actually ok, even though by all rights it should bother me". ...actually, should go suggest that there too...

It is more effort needed by the staff, especially given the like... 20k skins onsite. Maybe when the skin/accent submission area gets its revamp, this could be done retroactively at that point? Or old skins could require a tag implement/update on reprint. Ideally on the backend this would just be a few tickyboxes so minimal work. This is something where like... you can trust the artist to make an attempt, but as others have said, it does need to be vetted for consistency and accuracy.

[quote name="Jemadar" date="2021-03-18 08:34:11" ] I support a tagging system, but not one left purely up to the skin artists (mainly because of places like Ao3 :P because it is nearly impossible to 'exclude' tags I don't want to see because of how many ways people phrase things and not everyone tags etc..)[/quote] To me, the best option would be for there to be a list of predetermined tagging vocabulary, and you can select, say, 5 or so when you submit a skin (I guess that might add a bit of extra work in that the approval process should probably include at least a cursory glance to make sure the tags were more or less correct. That blood and gore wasn't tagged as rainbows and pastels or whatever). So artists would tag their own work, if they chose to do so, but wouldn't be able to just go ham. I'm thinking of this more or less like a cataloger. When we're putting subject headings on a book record, there's a very specific set of vocabulary (LoC subject headings, in my case) that we use, to make sure like stays with like, when there's too much variation in how something could be described. But I'm also thinking a bit of the UMA pinglist, where the pinglists are created for [i]specific[/i] vocabulary relevant to usual UMAs. So there's pastels and vaporwave and flowers and jewelry and rainbow, etc. It would be a good jumping off point at least. (Also, I think color names would kind of be superfluous, since you can already search by specific color. Tho I guess you could throw in, like, ten basic color names to encompass the spectrum)

[quote name="Trix" date="2021-03-18 10:37:56" ] [quote name="Jemadar" date="2021-03-18 08:34:11" ] I support a tagging system, but not one left purely up to the skin artists (mainly because of places like Ao3 :P because it is nearly impossible to 'exclude' tags I don't want to see because of how many ways people phrase things and not everyone tags etc..)[/quote] To me, the best option would be for there to be a list of predetermined tagging vocabulary, and you can select, say, 5 or so when you submit a skin (I guess that might add a bit of extra work in that the approval process should probably include at least a cursory glance to make sure the tags were more or less correct. That blood and gore wasn't tagged as rainbows and pastels or whatever). So artists would tag their own work, if they chose to do so, but wouldn't be able to just go ham. I'm thinking of this more or less like a cataloger. When we're putting subject headings on a book record, there's a very specific set of vocabulary (LoC subject headings, in my case) that we use, to make sure like stays with like, when there's too much variation in how something could be described. But I'm also thinking a bit of the UMA pinglist, where the pinglists are created for [i]specific[/i] vocabulary relevant to usual UMAs. So there's pastels and vaporwave and flowers and jewelry and rainbow, etc. It would be a good jumping off point at least. (Also, I think color names would kind of be superfluous, since you can already search by specific color. Tho I guess you could throw in, like, ten basic color names to encompass the spectrum) [/quote] That is sort of how I figured it would work for new accents. That the staff would create a set of tags, and artists could then choose tags, but ultimately, if the staff decided (or whoever is chosen) that the tags weren't right or didn't include the right tags, then they could be changed by the staff. I do also agree that color names might not be needed but perhaps instead something like monochromatic XXX so that if players want a primarily blue skin, they can find it, while a skin that is like a flower garden but uses blue as some flowers wouldn't be tagged as that (nor probably as rainbow). One other issue with allowing users to tag their own work (especially without limits) is that some players would use ALL the tags, or as many as they feel they can get away with, so they are 'seen' by more people.