Pardon my ranting I just felt like voicing something that frustrates me a bit.

I've seen new topics about suggesting new genres but before that happens, may I point out that currently the genres descriptions and tagging is sort of a mess, which makes genres searching dysfunctional.

lets take a look:

Shoujo
A work intended and primarily written for females. Usually involves a lot of romance and strong character development.

That is partially incorrect. Shoujo deals with vast variety of subject and technically it's not genre but a demographic, Shoujo is manga targeted at a female audience roughly between the ages of 10 and 18.

Shounen
A work intended and primarily written for males. These works usually involve fighting and/or violence.

Again it's a demographic.Shounen is manga targeted at a male audience roughly between the ages of 10 and 18.

Seinen
From Google:
Seinen means "young Man." Manga and anime that specifically targets young adult males around the ages of 18 to 25 are seinen titles. The stories in seinen works appeal to university students and those in the working world. Typically the story lines deal with the issues of adulthood.

Let's forget about Google, shall we, especially that deal with the issues of adulthood line? Seinen is targeted at 18+ male audience and covers variety of subjects. Period.

Josei
Literally "Woman". Targets women 18-30. Female equivalent to seinen. Unlike shoujo the romance is more realistic and less idealized. The storytelling is more explicit and mature.

This one is probably the most correct, but i'd much prefer if the whole romance part was skipped along with the storytelling nuances and stick to the fact that it targets women age 18+.

You may say that these are not a big problems right? I don't think so. Especially in shoujo case many seems to think shoujo==romance and untag or mistag all the action and sci-fi shoujo as shounen or even worse seinen and sometimes skip the tag altogether in order to avoid the "it can't be shoujo" whining from those who somehow think it's shameful to read shoujo. This particular problem was what made me to look into the genres descriptions and I feel that the more definitive these descriptions are and the less ambiguus, the less mislabeling there will be.

Next:

Adult
Contains content that is suitable only for adults. Titles in this category may include prolonged scenes of intense violence and/or graphic sexual content and nudity.

Mature
Contains subject matter which may be too extreme for people under the age of 17. Titles in this category may contain intense violence, blood and gore, sexual content and/or strong language.

please, explain how these two are any different? You may say that mature is 17-20 and Adult as for 21+ but you already have age distinction in Shounen/Seinen and Shoujo/Josei, so what makes these titles questionable are "Sexually Explicit Situations" and "Violence/Gore". We had this conversation before and i'll repeat, I prefer having "Sexually Explicit Situations" and "Violence/Gore" to "Adult" and "Mature". Just go and do a search for Adult titles, many are also labeled Mature. Makes not sense. People completely misunderstand these tags. It makes even less sense to say that mature deals with more complicated issues or what not, since a) that's highly subjective b)you already have josei and seinen tags that should cover this subject more or less.

Horror
A painful emotion of fear, dread, and abhorrence; a shuddering with terror and detestation; the feeling inspired by something frightful and shocking.

What the.... 😕 you are describing the feeling here not the genre. Genre would be something like "Horror fiction is fiction intended to scare, unsettle, or horrify the audience." or something like that.

Shounen Ai
Often synonymous with yaoi, this can be thought of as somewhat less extreme. "Boy's Love", so to speak.

Can we have a more clear definition on this one? It's frustrating seeing titles labeled both shounen ai and yaoi (which is impossible unless the book is a collection of short stories) Shounen Ai deals with homosexual, but non-sexual relationships between men. (ie guys may hug, kiss and hold hands but do nothing more than that)

similarly:

Yaoi
This work usually involves intimate relationships between men.

Relationships is too vague.
Yaoi focuses on homosexual male relationships, that includes sexual situations, generally created by and for females.

In other words if two or more guys are having sex it's yaoi if things stop before or at kissing it's shounen ai.

Thank you for having the patience to go thought this long post, genres definitions is not an easy subject to deal with, but if left too vague it will (and already has) create problems especially with the huge amount of titles that this site has. Again, thanks for listening.

We are fully aware that Shounen, Shoujo, Seinen, Josei are demographics, thank you for pointing that out. I'm assuming that they put those with 'genres' because it wouldn't do no good to create another tab named 'demographics' describing only those four terms. For convenience's sake, it was put there. They can however put in the description that people shouldn't confuse it with a genre, and that it's actually a demographic. That being said...

Shoujo deals with vast variety of subjects.

True, but that doesn't mean that those subjects are evenly present in the demographic. You can be pretty sure that 70% of all Shoujo contains romance in some form, so I don't see anything wrong with saying that Shoujo usually does contain romance. 'Females' should be corrected to 'young females' though, I agree with you on that, and you could even add the ages (10-18) for the dense. Same with Shounen.

I agree with the Seinen/Josei part. And I honestly never saw the difference between 'Adult' and 'Mature'. I interpret 'Adult' as something more sexually, while 'Mature' has more violence or more mature themes. Other ambiguous terms are 'Drama' and 'Tragedy'. I mean, those two are really subjective genres, so what makes a manga drama, and what a tragedy? Hmm, I agree with the Horror description as well.

And the Shounen-ai/Yaoi should be adjusted as well. A bit too vague. You might adjust Shoujo-ai/Yuri too, since the descriptions are practically the same. The genre descriptions kinda bugged me for a while, but I didn't really say anything... 😐 I'm not really a complainer, but on further thought it could clarify genres to members who don't fully grasp the terminology.

The Harem genre could use more clarification as well. A Harem's traditional definition is that 3 or more people are in love with the same person, though that isn't the case in Shina Dark. Yet it is still labeled like that, because the protagonist is surrounded by beautiful women. ... So, which is it? o___o;

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We are fully aware that Shounen, Shoujo, Seinen, Josei are demographics, thank you for pointing that out.

You are welcome, I was only pointing it out because of the problem below.

True, but that doesn't mean that those subjects are evenly present in the demographic. You can be pretty sure that 70% of all Shoujo contains romance in some form, so I don't see anything wrong with saying that Shoujo usually does contain romance.

I see it as a root of a major problem, that result in mislabeling many shoujo titles as anything else but shoujo, because it seems that people consider if it's shoujo it will necessary have romance and if it doesn't have romance then it's not shoujo.

Pick up "Comic Blade Avarus" for example it's a shoujo magazine, now go see how many titles published in it are properly tagged as shoujo. And may I notice that just couple weeks ago some of the titles were corrected and yet reverted back. Even if you go through some more known magazine like Asuka, which is a shoujo, I'm sure that you are out to stumble on titles marked as shounen, or not labeled as anything because either a)person didn't know or b)person got tired with switching between shounen/shoujo tags constantly. Notice how all these mislabeled titles don't have "romance" but are "historical", "action" or something else. This is why I stretched the term demographics and this is why i find it unnecessary for the description of a demographic to have anything more than the gender and the age range of the targeted audience, anything else is irrelevant and seems to create problem.

Other ambiguous terms are 'Drama' and 'Tragedy'. I mean, those two are really subjective genres, so what makes a manga drama, and what a tragedy?

Thank you for bringing this issue as well, I've always thought that the tragedy tag was unnecessary. Even if you consider drama being mild form and have the potential of happy ending, it also not concrete enough and I've already seen instances where people didn't consider what was labeled tragedy as tragedy, since it's so subjective. Also speaking of drama, what up with all the titles that are labeled both drama and comedy? I never understood that. Granted there might be a titles that can have both but the current amount of titles are highly doubtful to me. I guess it bring up the issue how you label things. Grossly speaking, if a character cracks a joke in volume 1 chapter 2 and ends up slicing his wrists in the final volume I wouldn't say that it's both comedy and drama.

edit: it's not that i want to complain and whine pointlessly, but I honestly wish for things to run more smoothly and enjoyable for everyone and right now i really dread going through genre search, because i know i'll end up spending time weeding through all the mislabeling and possibly won't find what i'm looking for.