Product Updates & Casual Natively Discussion

Natively
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And what trigger would you tag this as? It couldn’t be religious trauma since it isn’t religious. Or the second one? Because the second one seems like it would just be tagged as horror for genre and not as a trigger, especially since you just called it a horror story.

Yes, these can be considered common. I don’t believe finding a common list past death and sexual assault could be that much of an issue considering that we have psychology and other things that have given us a list. The fact that we’re even having the discussion means that we all know common triggers and why somebody would like to be forewarned. Even just googling a common list of triggers found in literary contexts could be a starting point. We all seem to know the main ones. Anything obscure after that, the person who has that trigger will know that it is obscure and that it may not be that avoidable. Frosted Flakes cereal is a trigger for me, but I’m not requesting that somebody make a trigger warning for “character eats cereal” because that’s not common. We’re talking about the ones that are commonly discussed and asked to be made known.

But, like I said previously, the idea of being able to filter out certain tags for genre would be helpful, as well as an option to toggle off/on trigger/content warnings. Cult isn’t a genre and I don’t believe monster is a genre, so I don’t see where those are going to come in for needing to be tagged as a trigger.

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you are right, it would be a spoiler. but personally, with this particular example, i would like to go into the book knowing this is something that would be in the book, and a major plot point at that.

there are times i can ready heavy stuff, and there are times i can’t. and it’s not even a trigger for me, it would just ruin the enjoyment of the book and make me feel awful for a while. so i can’t imagine how someone for whom it is a trigger would react when they came upon that in the book with no warning.

i think general ‘genre’ tags (and i mean genre not tropes) supplemented by ‘trigger’ tags would be helpful (even if they are treated as the same category). of course, some themes and triggers are to be expected in a particular genre, and so a trigger would be redundant. but for genres where it is not expected - that’s where triggers could be helpful.

and yeah, making the list too long would clog the website design and reduce visibility and readability, and possibly weigh the servers down, but surely it is not too much to ask for the basic, most common ones? perhaps the spoiler tags could be turned off by design, and turned on in the account settings for people who would prefer to have them visible/be able to exclude works with these trigger from the searches altogether.

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If I had to tag it, ‘Cult/high-control group’. Non-religious cults can still be highly traumatizing.

Sorry, I don’t see why it being horror means it couldn’t be a trigger? For example, in Mononoke we have monsters that arise from forced abortions and prostitution, incest and human sacrifice, domestic abuse and suicide, and murder. Those are all things people might want to avoid even if they’re into horror, and they’re also all spoilers for the source of the horror in each arc. It’s not like ‘here’s a murder mystery, btw it has murder’.

I would say cults are a common enough trigger to be on a content warning list. A lot of people have been in one. You said it’s not something that needs to be warned for. Which is it?

To be clear, I am not anti-content warning. I use them on occasion and I occasionally drop them into my reviews. I think adding them as tags would be great. But I’ve also seen enough arguments about them - both how specific they need to be and what counts as ‘common’ (paranoid delusions? racist stereotypes of black people in manga? depiction of menstruation?) - to think that it’s a complex ask that should be considered carefully.

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I’m simply pro being able to flag a content warning as a spoiler so people who are completely averse to spoilers can avoid them, people who would like to check and see if something like that would bother them can unblur them, and people who are 100% not interested in reading that content can simply filter it out.

IMO simplest implementation would be letting users self select tags that they would not like to see, and users inputting tags can select if that is a spoiler for that particular book or not. Therefore someone could self select out of historical settings simply because they don’t like them in the same manner someone could opt of of cannabilism because it’s a sensitive topic. On the page of the book someone could unblur a spoilered tag if they’re curious/otherwise want to know.

Hopefully that makes sense :sweat_smile:

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oh! now i get it. yeah, marking a possible warning as a spoiler - so a person can choose if they want to be forewarned or not - is a good idea. especially if it is in conjunction with being able to just filter out tags in search from the get go.

because then if a book with some blurred out tag/trigger gets through my customized search, i can choose to decide if i will take the risk and read the book unwarned because i want no spoilers and feel like my already excluded tags should be enough, or if i want to check the blurred out tag just in case it is something i did not think to exclude before yet i would not want to read at the moment.

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Well, no, that’s exactly what I had in mind. Context matter for those ratings. For instance, about the use of “strong language”:

Known as the “automatic language rule”, the rule has been applied differently depending on the subject matter of the film.

I was talking about having different levels for trigger warnings, by the way (the example was graphic, moderate, and minor). I feel like the same depiction could be either graphic or minor depending on context.

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I’m not saying that it isn’t a trigger. What I’m saying is that horror is a genre, so that could be a genre that a user is able to filter out, so that they don’t have to even get things with that genre tagged. But since you’re mentioning other things in it that are clearly triggers, then, yes, those would need to be tagged in case somebody is fine with horror in general, but not those specific aspects. I’m not saying that cults don’t need to be tagged, it’s just that you listed some examples without saying what trigger they’d be tagged for and I wanted clarification before I proceeded.

When we’re discussing death and SA as common triggers, we didn’t get complex and specific with them, right? We didn’t say specifically “death of a loved one” “childhood SA” because that umbrella term was enough, yes? To your question about racist stereotypes–you used the word that would describe the trigger in the first part of that phrase: racism.

This isn’t directed at you, but in general now:
I would like to point out that the majority of the people against the trigger/content warnings because they are viewing them as spoilers must also be people who have no triggers. Those who have triggers do not view trigger warnings as spoilers, because encountering their trigger could actually “spoil” their day. Trigger warnings do not go into detail about how the trigger appears because that defeats the purpose.

If you want to say that you don’t want to know that death appears in a fluff because it ruins the surprise for you, imagine how it would feel for somebody who is reading fluff because they cannot handle death to be blindsided by death suddenly appearing when it could’ve easily have been made known for them to avoid it. There are so many simple solutions, but since so many people seem to view spoilers and trigger warnings as synonymous, it’s drawing away from the actual discussion of how to implement the warnings. So, TL;DR: trigger warnings and spoilers are not the same, so please stop treating them as such and perhaps suggest helpful ways to implement a system that can properly warn users. This is an accessibility issue. There has been no pushback in regards to making sure that any color gradient system is red-green colorblind friendly because it’s an accessibility issue. PTSD and other like conditions are also

Even just a little dropdown section in the about section that is labeled as “content/trigger warning” that would allow a user to decide if they want to click on it is enough for now. Because if someone has a trigger and they come across a work that has that on there, they would know that they could check it out because someone thought it was worth mentioning.

It seems to be that some people want to go with the “all or none” aspect because they find the warnings useless or a hassle, despite them having been created for a reason.

This is my main concern. We had somebody submit a book for the bookclub before (who refused to submit a description) and upon digging for a description, I found out that the book is heavy on suicide. That’s definitely gonna be a deciding factor for some people.

I think that might work, as well.

I think this is also a very good point! Because sometimes something triggering may be mentioned in passing and someone might be fine with that, but other times, an author might go into heavy detail and continually do so. What you’re saying is very helpful! I’m more concerned about people who keep viewing triggers as spoilers because they are not the same.

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Please don’t say things like this. I have a trigger. I still think warnings can be spoilers. I have friends with much worse triggers than me who are not super into content warnings for various personal reasons.

And I don’t think anyone in this thread has said that they think warnings should not be implemented at all, just giving suggestions on how to balance having warnings against the fact that many people - including people who want to avoid certain content - like to avoid spoilers.

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Like @Mizuki, I also have a trigger. I also don’t like spoilers.
As someone else noted in the thread, if there’s a content warning marked as spoiler, do I take the risk of going in blind or do I read a spoiler? That’s why I liked the solution that only shows warnings that you set for yourself. Then no spoilers, since the appearance means that I wouldn’t read that book anyway.

By the way, many good solutions have been proposed already in this thread, I don’t know why the conversation is still going :sweat_smile:

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This is why I said it’s not directed at you (nor your friends). I started that off in bold so that it wouldn’t be ignored. If you’re not in the majority, then this isn’t directed towards you. If it doesn’t apply, let it fly. It’s just like if I say “I hate when people don’t pick up after their dogs.”–if you pick up after your dog, it’s not in reference to you. I have triggers as well, and sometimes when I’m feeling daring, I may not read the tags. But that doesn’t mean that I’m not thinking about the people who do need them and when I might need them. For every person with triggers that aren’t into content or trigger warnings, there’s probably another person that is. The people that don’t need them don’t speak for those that do.

I’m talking to people who’s issue with trigger warnings is that they view them as spoilers when they aren’t. That was in response to the people are fearful that trigger warnings are going to be the same as spoilers because, so far, a ton of people’s conversation involving trigger warnings has led back to spoilers and they aren’t the same thing.

There are many people who say things like “life doesn’t use trigger warnings, you can’t control other people’s actions.” That’s a nice sentiment, but in controlled environments (such as a website that indexes books), they can be applied. Even my public library has tags after you search a book in their online catalog. They may not be evident to those who aren’t looking for them, but they’re there. And that’s possible because the website is a controlled environment and it’s aware that people are trying to search for and avoid certain things. Any website that uses a Boolean search or an “include” “exclude” option knows that.

I just respond to whoever is responding to me in regards to this. It seems like every time I thought what I said was fine, somebody wanted to bring up concerns about spoilers again. So then I continue to re-lay the groundwork in case somebody comes in and wants to contribute without reading the entirety of the conversation. I also think that there have been some good solutions proposed (and I’m not talking about mine.)

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Oh, I see! Yes, some people (myself included) do think that something can be both a trigger and a spoiler, so I can see how that might create an infinite loop. :sweat_smile: All good, then.

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It seems like in trying to be considerate of people’s triggers you’re being inconsiderate to people who dislike spoilers. No one here has said “spoilers are bad so don’t have any trigger warnings / trigger filters”. What is a trigger to one person may not be a trigger to another person. What is regarded as a spoiler to one person may not be a spoiler to another person. As @Naphthalene has mentioned, ideas have already been proposed that would (in my opinion) address both situations, so perhaps we should leave it at that and move on from this topic until @brandon decides to actually implement something for this.

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Yes, as I said before, this conversation is a little premature for how into the weeds we’re getting haha.

I’ll just say that I think we can make a simple system that works for everyone. My plan is to treat all tags as content tags. Content tags can be marked as spoilers. Content tags can also be set to auto-filtered at a user account level.

No need to determine whether a content tag is a trigger or not. We can leave that up to the user to decide. :slight_smile:

But yes, let’s table this discussion for now. If you have more concerns that you’d like to express now, send me a DM.

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@brandon I have an unrelated question. How soon after grading something does a book’s level get updated? まちカドまぞく (37) finally dropped low enough to compare it to うらら迷路帖 (32), so I graded them as similar difficulty. I’m curious if the levels still being the same as before after about an hour means there was no change, or if it still might update later.

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They’re evaluated on the hour, so it’s already been evaluated.

One grading doesn’t push anything a lot, especially if it’s a simple tie. I can see that it pushed it around ~1/5th of a level downwards (and ~1/5th upwards for うらら迷路帖).

Out of curiosity, do you think まちカドまぞく is too high? I have been messaged about that one from another user too.

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Yeah, I said as much multiple times on the WaniKani forum. I believe it was at 38 or 39 at one point. I said this a few months ago back on the WaniKani forums:

Now that I’ve gone back and forth between [まちカドまぞく and うらら迷路帖] more, I would say that the average sections of まちカドまぞく are slightly harder than the average sections of うらら迷路帖, but not overly so. But the 占い parts of うらら迷路帖 are significantly harder than even the parts of まちカドまぞく that use archaic language. So overall it’s probably fair to say they are similar in difficulty, with まちカドまぞく being slightly harder if I had to choose.

So I think it would be reasonable for まちカドまぞく to be 1-3 levels higher than うらら迷路帖, but 5-7 levels above is way too much. Additionally, while まちカドまぞく is certainly harder than several novels / light novels I have read, it being level 37 implies that it’s harder than 薬屋のひとりごと and 魔法少女育成計画, which is pretty absurd to me.

By the way, I’m less concerned by this specific case and more concerned about a flaw in the general level-placing algorithm or approach. Prior to me, only bison and Ditto rated まちカドまぞく. The problem is, all of bison’s ratings are basically “it’s easier than these level 38-42 novels”, and Ditto’s ratings are all basically “it’s harder than these 32-35 novels”. This makes me wonder if Ditto’s initial ratings (and maybe the “estimated level” on submission) pushed it up so high that bison could only compare with these higher level books, and since all of bison’s ratings were “expected” (lower level まちカドまぞく is “confirmed” to be lower than these high level books), those comparisons didn’t really adjust the level much or at all. Are you able to check what the original estimated level was and/or how the level changed over time from Ditto and bison’s comparisons? I suspect the initial estimate was way too high, making it difficult to get it to a more accurate level.

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I’ll try to look into it today and get back to you here. I remember looking briefly into this before and the rating was more difficult than it should’ve been when looking at the comparisons & the current ratings of the other novels Its compared against.

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I’m glad it wasn’t just me :sweat_smile: (I was the messager in question). I couldn’t even grade it after I finished because it was still at the 38-39 range

And yeah I agree this is a problem. In cases like this where it’s too high it can just prevent grading entirely, and it cases where it’s too low you’re going to drag other ratings down as you try to claw it up to the right level.

It would be nice if there were a way we could question initial grades (or maybe there is and I don’t know it). I mean, sure you could rate something submitted as a 30 (when it should have been >35) as “harder” than some 35 book, but that’s going to push the 35 book unfairly in the wrong direction

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@seanblue @Bijak

So I’ve looked into this again and I do agree that it’s not perfect, but this particular book had a confluence of issues, some of which are already resolved for future books.

Overview
Current Grade: 37.32.
Temporary Rating Estimator*: 35.92

As you can see, it is still a little high compared to the grades. You aren’t crazy :slight_smile:
However, I usually don’t flag unless its >2.5.

*estimator is an algorithm i’ve built which estimates levels from the current grades and levels for the book

Old temporary rating system set the level too high

This book was initially set too high, as the old temporary rating system simply used an Elo system with a large K value. That model didn’t work terribly well if you got gradings which were pretty far apart from one another.

  • Old Temporary system: 39.07
  • New temporary system (applied to first 7 gradings): 36.74.

As you can see, the new temporary does a much better job with this book. That’s because the new temporary system isn’t just elo… it’s a hand build estimator that looks at all the ratings, constructs reasonable upper & lower bounds for the rating and then takes the average of Elo runs over different orderings of the remaining conflicting gradings.

Basically, it handles this situation much better with divergent grades. Even if the bounds are not perfect, the average of the Elo runs over different orders makes a big difference.

Deleted temporary grades can cause issue

This book also had a deleted temporary grade, which has caused a few bugs. Since deleting grades refunds points… deleting a temporary grade can cause a massive change in the grading, which can’t possibly be overcome by your new non-temporary grade you add.

Haven’t fixed this yet, but I’ve analyzed all the books it may have impacted and rolled back that points refund if it happened. It impacted very few books. This was one of them which I rolled back (it was even higher before, which is when @Bijak contacted me).

Next Steps

I could push it down to the level that my Temporary Rating Estimator put it at (35.94). I’ll think on it, as I don’t love to take that action except in exceptional cases (only done it a few times before).

But I do hate to have a book’s level a little too high. I’m not particularly concerned though that there’s a major problem with the temporary system going forward.

Obviously, I could definitely improve it still, but I hope that eases the mind somewhat.

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I had a feeling it was you when I saw you had recently rated it. I had similar problems of being unable to rate it at all, and certainly not against any manga. I wonder if these higher level books need to reach out beyond 5 levels for comparisons. That would at least give an opportunity to pull down incorrectly high level books that are currently a bit stuck. There are a few level 30 books I would probably rate as similar, though in this case those should be higher in addition to まちカドまぞく being lower.

Thanks for the detailed explanation. One last question though. If I user submits a request for a new book and gives a really high estimate (far beyond what it truly should be) how does that impact things long term, both directly and indirectly? Does it literally get thrown out after there have been enough actual ratings or does it still directly influence the level forever? (I imagine even if it gets thrown out, it still has an indirect impact since it influences what comparisons are available.) And related to that, what was the submitted estimate for まちカドまぞく?

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