Quote from residentgrigo
I get your concern but there are so many directly related categories that research itself has become very problematic. The same goes for applying tags as i am doing that to my reading list/classics now (while reporting a lot of nonsense). If a "professional" as me is having a hard time now how are others supposed to figure it out without putting serious time in? There are barely used tags like Zoologist that are good as this is a real theme and different form Zoo. Same goes of Warrior and War.
This i would never report!
This i would never report!
First I'd like to say that I'm sure we all, myself included, really appreciate your effort and even your professional input here. The tagging and searching issues faced here are certainly questions that need some time spent to analyse and properly layout.
I see that you seem to agree that some tags can hold importance even if they aren't very used, like those on your example.
Quote from residentgrigo
A too specific tag like Animal/Gorilla Female Lead on the other hand can barely be applied to 5 series that are NOT duplicates is trash especially if a good umbrella tag exist already.
As I covered in my earlier post, while Gorilla Female lead (hehe that's truly quite funny actually) is too specific, I feel that Animal Female lead is striking and general enough to be a legit tag. I tried to think of a series that applied, and at first Tezuka Osamu's works came to mind. He's an author that has written various similar stories with animal leads, while also keeping in mind that many of his works (if not the majority) are either untranslated or non cataloged. I think Doubutsu No Kuni would also arguably qualify for an Animal Female lead.
You thought the tag felt very weird to you. I didn't think so, because I remember either reading or watching series with a similar perspective before. I think stories with animal perspectives or main leads, whether male or female were possibly popular at some point in the past (Tezuka's works). I guess what we have here is a difference of perceived opinion. I think it's also important to not judge solely on our own values and preferences, specially when dealing with things we aren't quite sure. For instance, I don't like the Yaoi or Shonen Ai genre. Definitely not my cup, but I'm sure other people appreciate it quite a bit. I wouldn't try to meddle with anything Yaoi or Shonen Ai related unless I informed myself and was relatively conscious of what I would be tinkering with.
Given that both tags were deleted and not merged into different tags, there wasn't an "umbrella" tag, let alone a good one. Now I know there certainly are people who would be interested in that kind of information. Where is that information now? It might not concern you or many other people, but for others it might. That should be kept in mind I think.
I realize that we also can't let this logic be induced to its extreme, or else we would have a scenario where every user comes up with its own personally meaningful tag that holds meaning only to himself alone in a certain story, in an array of single uses for each of these tags. We should be able to define together which tags are legitimate enough to be relevant and sufficiently meaningful, even with only few hits.
Quote from residentgrigo
You can filter search results very well here so let´s keep doing that and not abuse the database. How specific do need to go to find something of interest?
I think the search engine here is generally good enough for some decent results, but quite limited. For instance, I only recently found that you can negate tags from the result by placing a minus ('-') before the intended tag. I couldn't find this information anywhere before coming up with a certain topic in this subforum, and think this should be more formally stated in the search page in the form of subtext or a link to a page explaining how to use these preceding tokens. And while it may work well right now, the way things are heading, I'm afraid search results will quickly lose a lot of relevance and become increasingly blander if we just try to absorb tags into more general ones, mother tags or tags with varied degrees of similarity.
I don't think it's a bad thing to have a good ammount of precisely descriptive tags, or if doing so would constitute a database abuse. Unless the staff is experiencing space problems, which I assume not being the case, there is no such abuse. Actually, I think I could even argue otherwise, depending on the database structure having tags with far too many hits could be a source of underperformance (which is a different and incremental issue to the issue of transparency and relevance of results which I was mainly concerned) in the long go.
'How specific one need to go to find something of interest?' I think that's good question and something debatable. Personally, I'm all for being detailed as far as it could go before it turns into something too personal. I'm not sure if others would agree, but that is based on the principle that the more details we have, the more searching possibilities we'd have as well, and therefore a bigger chance of finding anything from whatever subject of interest.
Quote from residentgrigo
We have a very active search board that will help find you extremely specific manga so let´s keep the database as clean as possible.
I know, and have been posting there quite a bit lately trying to help people find things of their own interest and with personal recs, though I'm realizing on a slightly related note, that that particular subforum has a massive problem, one that is actually similar to the issue I'm alluding with the tags and searching in general if caution isn't taken.
The issue is, unless people phrase their topics with something as suggestive as possible, doing searches on that board will be as unhelpful as it seems to be. And why? Because all the content one would wish to find, is masked under the dozens of topics titled with: "I'm looking for...", "A manga with.." or "A story with..." and so on and so forth. That forum, unless some serious guidelines aren't in place, is quickly becoming or has already become totally non-reusable, which is a sad deal.
Think of it as a metaphor of what could happen with the use of tags and searching the way things are going: soon enough a good deal of the relevant information you're looking for in the results could be hidden inside of all those pages of series results, because from their own specific tags, they were absorbed and replaced by more generic and popular ones. While both of these situations aren't exactly the same (the first one looks at first glance quite more serious than the second one), in both cases some form of effect is preventing the interested parties of finding their best possible results in/or due to a possible mass of increasingly generic if not completely unrelated search terms.
In the end, does such a practice really makes a database clean? It's important to remember that we aren't archiving for the sake of it as far as I can tell. Series, tags and all sorts of objects of interest are archived and registered for the bigger purpose of people to retrieve that information at some point. I think we need to be wary of practices that can muddle or obstruct that purpose, while being aware of the balance between conscious redundancy elimination and healthy descriptive/detailing expansion.
Quote from residentgrigo
Come up with tag that people don´t want to read about for example instead as a form of warning. My 2 months old animal cruelty is spreading like wildfire. Even to porn!
That's an interesting way of tagging and could also serve the purpose of helpful warning, though I imagine some people actually intentionally look for sensitive topics, either for shock value or to see these themes hopefully being overcomed, subverted or triumphed upon in some form or fashion.
Quote from residentgrigo
I came up with i tagging Berserk one last time which had no sacrifice before me aka THE main them. The reason i mentioned rape is be because we have too many versions of sex anything. Child Rape is 100% good is it is a distinguishing theme but if you type in rape and then sexual in another tab then you will faced with duplicates of themes. Or all the fetishes. Same goes for sister or any version of a relative. What do i do then with our sex tags?
It's hard to say which is Berserk's main or biggest theme, but I agree that sacrifice is a big one in potentially several different ways.
As for the possible duplicates of 'Rape' and 'Sex' tag variations, if they really do present a redundancy with no elements distinguishing them apart, then I guess I have no reservation for dealing with the tags however it feels best. While I possibly gave the impression of being picky in my earlier post, I actually happened to agree with many of the changes being proposed. As I said two paragraphs above, there needs to be some balance between conscious redundancy elimination and healthy desciptive/detailing expansion (and/or maintenance).
Quote from residentgrigo
Do i go with some specific "big" ones so that the manga may not be found by people who do not think like me or do i use all the dozens and will then make the page look so creepy that none want to read it anymore even if the manga itself is not?
Look at Kamui Gaiden which has about 50 tags and 98% from me. That thing is NC-17 and i had the category page open while i read it and i then came back a day later after finishing to reflect and clean out what i found found inferior to other duplicates. This is how Attempted Rape stayed bit Sexual Assault went. Sexual Abuse though needs to stay as very specific torture scenes are that. I have explanations for pretty much each tag here and can now remove none without killing a mayor theme.
Look at Kamui Gaiden which has about 50 tags and 98% from me. That thing is NC-17 and i had the category page open while i read it and i then came back a day later after finishing to reflect and clean out what i found found inferior to other duplicates. This is how Attempted Rape stayed bit Sexual Assault went. Sexual Abuse though needs to stay as very specific torture scenes are that. I have explanations for pretty much each tag here and can now remove none without killing a mayor theme.
I think we should use the best descriptive tags that we feel that apply to said series. I personally don't mind the number of tags a series may possess, a bigger number may potentially increase its chance of showing up on detailed search results. And it's also in part up to the community to up-vote the most relevant tags, while downvoting and eventually deleting those most people feel that do not apply.
You seem to have done a good job with this series, so props to you.
Quote from residentgrigo
I find my results very descriptive and you will find that series without a problem but many tags have unneeded variations of their own in the database too and i will get to them some say. Let´s say that we keep them all. What next? Will i then go back and give out the other 50 ones to be thorough and then end up with Eden no Ori? It has 180+ tags while HxH is locked down with only about 30 with important information like Adapted to Movie, Adapted to OVA / OAV, (Hunter × Hunter - Jump Super Anime Tour 98 exists), Violence, Torture ,Chimera or Insect/s and Friendship missing? A version of this site should exist in 20 years too and new reader will have no idea what that series is about going in with the tags now as it is the darkest/most graphic SJ manga by far with no warning form us first or what is important after volume 15 or so.
In such cases, with several tags that hold close (though not quite the same) meaning, I think we should pick the ones we feel that best apply still (the most descriptive). If other people add similar tags, I guess it would be up to community voting to see which one features more visibly.
Sometimes trying to eliminate those by merging or deleting seemingly unneeded tags may contribute to the loss of precious descriptive information.
Because the one that may look redundant to you when considering a particular series, may fit the best when considering a different series. Like I was saying in my post earlier, I missed the "Skilled" or "Dextereous" main lead that used to be on the tag dictionary. Even if a tag looks weaker against similar ones in dozens of series that you know that apply, it may still be best to leave it alone, because for another dozen, that particular tag that looked weaker might describe them the best.
The best way of defining that of course, is to post it here (much like you've been doing) and leaving it for discussion and getting some feedback. Hopefully the best decision is taken after careful consideration.
Quote from residentgrigo
What does Eden no Ori look about now on the other hand? This is a real question as i have read vol.1-5 and the last 100 or so pages and i do not know anymore after looking at that mess. Less the 10 tag for one series are very bad as i have given out 20 page (hentai) shorts about that amount but more then 100 (180+ there) is nearly as terrible. The manga will be found without a doubt but will it be understood after looking at it´s page?
Do we need Web Site/s while Internet and so on exist (new ones) if THIS very website can´t have Super Robot and Yakuza which are very japanes themes but fall into Piloted Robots and Mafia? I was allowed Real Robot though as that one now can differentiate itself form the other robots. I also always spread my many creations to other series before and especially after i notice that may darling snuck through.
Do we need Web Site/s while Internet and so on exist (new ones) if THIS very website can´t have Super Robot and Yakuza which are very japanes themes but fall into Piloted Robots and Mafia? I was allowed Real Robot though as that one now can differentiate itself form the other robots. I also always spread my many creations to other series before and especially after i notice that may darling snuck through.
I'm not sure what's the issue with Eden no Ori, either the tagging wasn't done properly or it really is or has everything listed there. It seems to me that the most prominent tags are summarizing the series quite well though. Not every user may look at tags beyond the most visible ones too.
I also think there's been or seems to be some inconsistency with the naming of tags, which is being addressed though I'm not sure I like the way it's heading too. I think a Yakuza tag is an absolutely must, regardless of Mafia for the reasons you stated, of it being a very prominent and popular japanese theme, and at the same time being a very particular one, as it references a Mafia found only in Japan. Father-child tags don't have to be mutually exclusive, sometimes they may even coexist.
You really know when a tag is very needed, when it continually pops up even after being removed. Happened with Arabian and I just checked and there it is, Yakuza is there with 3 uses or so, while Mafia boosts 460 uses, most of which probably derives from series relating to Yakuza.
Quote from residentgrigo
Forgot: Gokukoku no Brynhildr is also another bad category page in the making. They gave a Sci-fi manga the tag: Sci-fi Elements. Sorry but why does this even exist and what is is Subtile Sci-Fi? I just saw Tactician Protagonist on that page too. We have better ones if you ask me with Clever Protagonist but it´s gender versions starts with "smart".
I agree that Sci-fi Elements is a bad tag to add to Gokukoku no Brynhildr. Feels unnecessary, but I wouldn't a priori try to delete or merge it with something else, as it might just fit best with some other series.
'Tactician Protagonist vs Clever Protagonist': again, I feel they describe reasonably different things, and could be used to best describe different series with protagonists that may pass a bigger aura or impression of being tacticians or just simply clever. Keep it both and try to use the one you feel that best describes the series you're tagging. Or maybe even both apply, and the community can help emphasize which quality may resonate better.