I’m not even sure we differ that much I do think niche tags have their place and Anilist proves that there are systems that an enormous variety of tags works well in, but as we are right now I don’t think Natively is that kind of place. But since we already have a massive tag list we’re working with, the ideal solution would be to cultivate a community in which those tags will work well (i.e. more user engagement & better coverage in tagged works).
But in the meantime, I don’t think niche tags are serving users at their potential and they could be more of a detriment than a benefit, for the reasons I gave with the hypothetical “fencing” example. I agree that the problem I stated could happen anyway and is easily solved by users reporting inappropriately-applied tags, but that would depend on having an engaged userbase that can be relied on to correct problems; as long as Natively has so few users tagging and so few works tagged, depending on user maintenance to ensure tagging accuracy isn’t going to be very effective.
I wasn’t trying to impose that the long list of tags NEEDS to be reduced or overlapping tags NEED to be merged, or even that they SHOULD, I was just trying to point out that at present, having so many similar tags to choose from is unwieldy and not serving the purpose well, and to open the discussion about allaying that. For me personally, I’m dissuaded from tagging things mostly because of the overwhelming amount of choice, and I would be more likely to tag things and to tag them more accurately if I had fewer, less specific options to choose from. Thus I consider having an overly-long list of tags to be a barrier to my engagement, but that can be true at the same time that I believe that, aspirationally, a diverse selection of niche tags would be valuable.
Which is why I think clusters of similar tags are such a good idea. Having, say, “Police” and “Police Procedural” and “Detective” and “Crime” and “Law” all presented at the same time so the user is aware they all exist and can compare their descriptions would remove a lot of the ugh-factor from searching an overwhelmingly-long alphabetical list of terms, and it could help avoid potential problems caused by people picking an inaccurate-but-sounds-close-enough tag (both in terms of tagging and searching by tag).
The current site design does make it super easy to forget that tags are even a thing – they’re right at the bottom of item pages below the miles of activity log info, they aren’t surfaced in search results, and there’s no prompting to maybe tag a work when you finish it. Plus the UI for adding tags is something I think you’d need to be pretty dedicated to the cause of tagging to use more than once or twice.
I’ve mentioned that before. @brandon had mentioned concern over spoilers iirc - tho that’s never really made sense to me, since on desktop, they’re in plain sight, on the left anyway; not to mention tags have the spoiler status capability to deal with that.
I’d personally love to see them above the activity log (which I rarely care about) at least.
It tells you some things about each book, but tags aren’t one of them – if I want to know that Yotsuba is slice of life comedy I have to click through to its item page (where again tags are pretty well hidden).
There does seem to be some kind of popup thingy in search results which has the tags and summary in it, but I cannot figure out how to sensibly get it to come up on mobile. If you long press on a book cover it comes up together with the browser menu and then stays after you dismiss the menu, but that surely cannot be the intended way for it to display.
Could we get a ‘No fanservice’ tag or ‘Limited fanservice’ something that has something like ‘no suggestive themes’ which represents more clean manga without fanservice? Not exactly ‘family friendly’, but something that is free of those elements.
You can always just add it on whatever you want to tag. It will prompt you to create a new tag, which the admins then have to approve (I added a Kyudo tag the other day, for example)
Anyway would be great to see any/all of those as tags tbh (no fanservice, limited fanservice, no suggestive themes). If I had to limit to only one, I’d suggest “Limited fanservice - contains little or no fanservice or other suggestive themes”… But I don’t think that’s ideal, bc the name sounds like it still has some in the content
I might wanna add something like an “Egregious Fanservice” tag, for stuff that like thrives on fan service?
Tho “fanservice” might need to be a bit more clearly defined in the definition, since it’s technically broader than just “that” type of fanservice
That’s called “Ecchi” and we already have a tag for that.
I feel like that’s the main problem. What counts as fanservice for me might not be fanservice for you, and vice versa. I’m getting annoyed by weird camera angles and certain “lucky” events in otherwise clean manga, but other stuff doesn’t even register for me, like e.g. here Naphthalene finding (light) fan service in something that I thought was free of it. Although I guess people can just downvote the tag if they disagree.
edit: Thinking more about it, “level of fanservice” sounds more like a scale people vote on than a series of tags… but I guess tags would be better than nothing.
Hmm I am not the best in this subject area - so I didn’t want to just go about adding things because I was not sure what was appropriate. Ecchi as a tag is rather obvious, but for things that are tame - how should it be handled is my problem.
One Piece has some fanservice and nudity (particularly Franky’s backside in Water 7 arc) but applying it to the whole series is it appropriate or not? One Piece does minimal fanservice, but it is there and that’s why Netflix and other streaming services are going to highlight it as ‘nudity’ when rating the entirety.
If you do level of fan service as a scale that’s still pretty vague and kind of difficult to account for unless the series is complete. From what I’ve encountered, the level of fanservice is pretty much forecasted in many modern openings of anime and manga tends to be hit or miss. Depending on publisher certain things are allowed, but I don’t know them enough and they might change over time.
A tag saying ‘Sexual themes’ - might be a good start.
That’s fair. I’ll probably add a No Fanservice tag sometime soon, bc I can genuinely see myself both wanting to tag, and utilize, such a tag
Unless it’s limited to just that arc/season, I’d apply the nudity tag to the whole series, and put it to minor element
Tags can be adjusted, added, or removed if something changes substantially. So I don’t think that’s a huge worry. However you’re right that level of fanservice is vague and quite subjective
Hmm very possibly. I’m too tired to reason through it further rn tho
I’m not sure they’re necessarily the same thing though, as Ecchi is a genre tag on here, not a content tag. As an example, 五等分の花嫁 S1 | L23 has a ton of fanservice, but it is not a show I would label as ecchi. Similarly I’m not sure if it makes sense to tag say https://learnnatively.com/season/bf34a47114/ as ecchi (it might), but I would absolutely apply a tag for egregious/lots of fanservice to it. https://learnnatively.com/tv/721cecd8d9/ otoh has a ton of fanservice, and I absolutely would label it as ecchi.
Judging by your first example, I think we might have slightly different definitions of “Egregious Fanservice” and “stuff that like thrives on fan service”. I was extremely annoyed by that (un)“lucky” moment at the end of the first volume of the 五等分の花嫁 manga (it felt like it was completely fanservice free until then!), but pretty much everything afterwards was barely a blip on my fanservice radar. And all the better for it. (Thinking about it, maybe fanservice only really registers for me when it’s out of place or intrudes into the story…)
Danmachi I don’t remember enough to comment.
Fate/kaleid liner is exactly what I was talking about.
The OED thinks “gratuitous nudity or sexual imagery which is not essential to the narrative but is included for the titillation of the reader or viewer” is the original meaning and “(hence more generally) elements in a story, game, etc., such as knowing references, allusions, or cameos, that are included chiefly for the recognition and entertainment of devoted fans” is a later development…
Meanwhile I came to the term “fan service” first from the Japanese music scene where it meant band mates kissing on stage and then I wonder why I am how I am
I did try to allude to that - poorly - in one of my earlier comments.
I feel like that supports @seanblue 's point - the definition came to include those things, yet usage has seemingly narrowed more recently. I assume bc ecchi-adjacent stuff is controversial/disruptive, in a way that other types are generally not
Admittedly 五等分の花嫁 was maybe not the best example to make that point. ダンまち is very saturated with it tho. I got kind of stuck on examples, cuz I tend to drop or not pick up stuff that’s overloaded with it. Anyway “lots of fanservice” is probably better than “egregious”, since the latter sounds like a severity level judgement, rather than an indication of frequency - which is more what I had in mind. 天元突破グレンラガン S1 | L30 would be another example, if you’ve seen that. Like it’s genre isn’t ecchi per se, but it has a ton of ecchi fanservice (and some is pretty extreme)
Maybe “ecchi fanservice” is better tag name (with a mention of fanservice in the description, so that it shows up regardless of which word you type)
The anime and manga are different in regard to employment of ecchi-ish fanservice iirc. Which is to say the anime (which I think I linked to) has more of it.
That’s when it registers most for me/when I find it upsetting personally.
Same. That one moment I mentioned earlier is the reason I gave the first volume of 五等分の花嫁 only 4 instead of its deserved 5 stars.
At least it’s not the most upsetting moment of that kind I ever had, because that would be the entirety of Tamaki in Fire Force. They got a cool fire catgirl, and that’s what they do with her?
Hmm, while it’s a bit ridiculous, it’s also put to good use for character development (in the next volume), so I wasn’t that bothered by it personally. But that’s totally understandable re: the rating.
Idk that second series, but I’m slightly afraid to ask
I feel like that series had plenty of real problems for all the characters to solve. There was no need to add more via an incredibly cliché fanservice moment. It was disruptive and unnecessary; exactly the kind of fanservice I hate. At least it only happened that one single time, and it’s still one of my favourite series either way.
I do think niche tags have their place and Anilist proves that there are systems that an enormous variety of tags works well in, but as we are right now I don’t think Natively is that kind of place. But since we already have a massive tag list we’re working with, the ideal solution would be to cultivate a community in which those tags will work well (i.e. more user engagement & better coverage in tagged works).
