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Feedback ยท Tags for profiles (needs discussion)

Traits are good. They suck at some things though, including things we're trying to use them for. Tags, like the ones on safebooru.org, sankaku channel, and gelbooru, have a lot of strengths that cover traits' weaknesses. If we use both where appropriate, our profiles can be a lot more expressive in a searchable manner.

Tags require little to no categorisation, work with multiselect, and high volumes. Also, we can express searchable details without needing a trait and to come up with other options for one. We shouldn't completely remove categorisation though, the tags should be bunched under our current trait groups (body, sex, personality, etc) before the traits.

We will still add tags through feedback like any other profile option.

Tags will have no completion gauge, because it makes no sense for them.

What could immediately benefit from this change?

TLDR: These traits all suck as traits and their contents should become tags: nipple appearance, genitalia amount, facial hair, supernatural nature, species, body type, absolutely everything in body modifications, genital size, genital type, breast size. If you want to know why, CTRL+F the name of that trait. Every 'none' and 'other' and 'N/A' option goes away, just pick no tag in these cases.

  • Some tags are dead weight because they're meaningless to too many people.
    • Nipple appearance: usually seen as pointless. Remove it, instead pick one of these if they're important: puffy-nipples inverted-nipples conical-nipples
    • Genitalia amount: most people just have 1, doesn't describe what you have multiple of. Instead: multiple-penises multiple-vaginas
    • Facial hair: only male human-types have it, and only some at that. Instead: beard moustache stubble
  • Some tags are a mess but can be solved together with tags:
    • Supernatural nature pulls double duty, simultaneously describing whether we're angels and whether we have angelic powers, and similar stuff. Also, no multiselect is really bad for this. Instead: angelic-powers demonic-powers. These get mixed in with species: demon angel super-human deity shape-shifter. Extraterrestrial & technological disappear because there's an alien trait and specific traits for what makes you technological.
    • Species and Body type are a mess. Chimeras/hybrids can't say what they're chimeras/hybrids of. Pokemon can't say the species they look like. Naga and kemonomimi are body types but look like species. If you're a demon, robot, angel, or golem, that's not searchable except by coincidence of two other traits because the system wasn't categorised the right way for you. Instead, let's just make all the Species into tags, remove Skin Type and Body Type and turn the dregs into tags: kemonomimi taur humanoid naga robot golem elemental ethereal ghost furry chitinous scaled and plant. New species: angel demon super-human deity shape-shifter
  • The Body modifications group has a lot of issues.
    • Amputation doesn't have meaningful options and needs multiselect. Instead: gender-nullified amputated-limbs quadruplegic.
    • Implants has it worse. Way too vague. Instead: robot-limbs cybernetic-parts breast-enhancements and whatever else.
    • Piercings, same again. Instead: labia-piercing, penis-piercing nipple-piercing navel-piercing facial-piercing body-piercing, maybe specifics like tongue-piercing or lip-piercing. Multiple vs single piercings shares a tag.
    • Branding should just be on/off. Instead, one tag: branding-mark.
    • Scars works reasonably well, but let's just have lightly-scarred heavily-scarred facial-scar
    • Tattoos, same again. lightly-tattooed heavily-tattooed. We could be more specific (e.g. back-tattoo), let's find out what people want.
  • Genital type: needs multiselect (knotted flared dicks?), sucks for people who have multiple genitals, sucks for vaginas. Instead: human-penis flared-penis spined-penis knotted-penis alien-penis, and totally new, prehensile-penis. Whatever vagina options people ask for.
  • Genital size is only meaningful for males. Instead: average-sized-penis large-penis small-penis large-mons large-clit small-clit.
  • Breast size is weird for men. flat-breasts small-breasts average-breasts large-breasts huge-breasts (maybe no-breasts?)

What could things look like in the end?

Groupings, traits, and their tags as sub-bullets. The tags are loosely organised here for your convenience. Tags will appear before traits.

  • Gender: Mental gender, apparent gender, genitalia. (That's with the feedback here.)
  • Species: Gone. Feet Type moves to Body.
  • Body: Age, Body Build, Body Height, Feet Type, Hair Color, Hair Length.
    • Former species, adaptions of skin types, and body types. ursine rodent bird demihuman snake lizard equine canine feline human primate cervine dragon mustelid pig alien bovid hyena rabbit otter bat frog salamander fish cephalopod goblinoid shark raptor flora insect mongoose dolphin chimera pokemon robot golem elemental ethereal ghost furry chitinous scaled plant taur anthro naga kemonomimi deity shape-shifter demon angel humanoid super-human monster vampire
    • Former body modifications: gender-nullified amputated-limbs quadruplegic penis-piercing nipple-piercing navel-piercing facial-piercing body-piercing (maybe tongue-piercing lip-piercing) branding-mark lightly-scarred heavily-scarred facial-scar lightly-tattooed heavily-tattooed robot-limbs cybernetic-parts breast-enhancements
    • facial-hair multiple-arms (new) multiple-heads (new)
  • Sex: Nipple size, Orgasm size, Pubic hair, Mating cycle.
    • flat-breasts small-breasts average-breasts large-breasts huge-breasts average-sized-penis large-penis small-penis large-mons large-clit small-clit human-penis flared-penis spined-penis knotted-penis alien-penis prehensile-penis (new) multiple-penises (new) multiple-vaginas (new) multiple-breasts (new) puffy-nipples inverted-nipples conical-nipples
  • Personality: Alignment, Charisma, D/s role, Empathy, Hygiene, Intelligence, Loyalty, Relationship, Self-esteem, Sexual experience, Top/bottom role. (Unchanged. Though there's feedback to delete Loyalty.)
    • Describing personality in traits was a mess. Maybe in tags will be easier.
  • Setting: Character language, Employment, Fame, Setting, Originality, Wealth. (There's feedback to delete character language.)
    • angelic-powers demonic-powers are all that's left of supernatural nature.
  • Meta: atmosphere, game system, post length, post perspective, verb tense. (There's feedback to delete atmosphere. We should tag-ify game system. I'd tag-ify atmosphere but it's never made sense to me.)
  • Body modification: Gone. Moved to Body.

Some of the things in Body or Sex look like they belong in the other; let's rejig those sometime.

meta info

endorsement points: 0

created: 26 December 15 at 01:39 PM (build: 10/1/2015 4:20 PM beta)

Candice Green

Okay, immediate problem that I can see is that on sites that you mentioned, tags are added by a multitude of users. Which is how they're more or less accurate and the picture gets more or less all the tags it needs. Here, you have only one person. I can safely say that if we have a large bank of tags, lion share of those tags just won't be used, or will be used by 1 profile that first came up with them. Making them essentially useless. See how you remove one trait, that you can expect to be filled out on most profiles? Well, you turn it into a dozen or more tags. Way less readable, way harder to know of their existence, way less used.

I think it's a step in the right direction, but categorization is not necessarily a thing to get rid of. I'd rather see trait system expanded more, using the ideas you presented here, then create a whole ANOTHER system, in addition to interests and traits, all three of them kinda the same but kinda different.

Samus

Okay, immediate problem that I can see is that on sites that you mentioned, tags are added by a multitude of users. Which is how they're more or less accurate and the picture gets more or less all the tags it needs. Here, you have only one person. I can safely say that if we have a large bank of tags, lion share of those tags just won't be used, or will be used by 1 profile that first came up with them. Making them essentially useless.

Never meant to suggest we do that too. I'll specify: we add them through feedback like normal, until we might be prepared for that scenario.

See how you remove one trait, that you can expect to be filled out on most profiles? Well, you turn it into a dozen or more tags. Way less readable, way harder to know of their existence, way less used.

Every trait I have analysed, as far as one person's profile is concerned, becomes: tags they don't use because they're not relevant (less to read), or tags that more meaningfully describe what's going on (e.g. anything in body modifications, and a demon goes from 3+ traits to 1 tag). Several traits got turned into less tags than they have options. Overall there's a smaller number of bits. I imagine that's more readable.

Good thing bringing up discoverability, I hadn't mentioned that in feedback yet. Most of those systems rely on you seeing a tag on something that's like you, and choosing to pick it up too, but I don't think that's good enough for our site. We could present a cross-section of traits during profile creation though, and let people dive in deeper if they want to, and still find new things as they go.

I think it's a step in the right direction, but categorization is not necessarily a thing to get rid of. I'd rather see trait system expanded more, using the ideas you presented here, then create a whole ANOTHER system, in addition to interests and traits, all three of them kinda the same but kinda different.

The problem is, categorisation's creating a whole lot of pain points. Also, the fact we need a trait justified for everything limits what we can actually say that might be useful for searchability.

Multi-select could go a large way to dealing with some of our problems; Wrecked Avent was historically against that because of could-be-anything profiles ("I could be literally anything! I just want one profile instead of creating individual character profiles. Here, let me select all the traits' options, every single one.") but at this point I think withdrawing features over concerns about those profiles is just hurting legitimate use for absolutely everyone else. But, then the way to fix them would be lump things together that don't make sense separating out anymore, which is more or less exactly what happens here in most cases. (Or, like, you could lump everything describing breasts together.)

Samus

I've got a less extreme version of this I'll suggest tomorrow, actually (I need to sleep first). It's been sitting on my mind for a while but depends completely on multiselect.

Samus

Wrecked Avent Site Administrator

I don't necessarily feel that the right approach will be less structure in terms of how our profile information is categorized. This is in fact one of lit's stronger points, in that it makes it very easy to scan and dig into details for a particular profile. There's a kind of structure that is facile or just not present at all on sites that rely on tagging, such as the many booru sites.

I don't however think this is the final form of traits, though I'm not really sure where the future is with them. I think a more intelligent system that recognizes certain important traits and knows when to present more is desperately needed for at least new profile creation; we've overwhelming new users with the current barrage of traits. This is something along the lines of what Loki said as well.

I also just think of the mental model of a user, particularly a new one, attempting to use the site. Traits are for . . . ? Tags are for . . . ? Interests are for . . . ? With the current system, we can easily build up a mental model in that traits are for all descriptors of your profile. What is the distinction between tags and traits here? Tags are just traits for ones that suck to categorize? It sounds really fuzzy and hard to objectify correctly.

Wrecked Avent was historically against that because of could-be-anything profile

My objection to them is two fold; they have extremely poor structure and they encourage very fuzzy profiles. If a profile is tagged with both fish and human, is it a fish human hybrid or a profile that can play as either a fish or a human? Do we need a hybrid tag for that too? Then what if we have a cat, hybrid, human, and fish? Now how am I supposed to interpret that? A cat-human-fish hybrid or a cat-fish hybrid who also plays a human? This is a problem that is present with literally every single tag, and it only gets worse and worse as we get more tags. The concern in turn is not about people who would abuse the system, but people who would be using it regularly; the common user.

That being said, there are some traits that might be better off as being multi-select, such as body modifications. However, I do not feel this should be the default state for traits, nor should every trait be multi-select. Certainly not ones like species.

Desdemona Fireheart

Main problem is that tags are not weighted. If I would tag "supernatural nature", then I would tag "demonic", "shape-shifter", "magical", instead of choosing only "demonic". It's harder then to tell if the char is a goo girl, a demon or an evil conjurer. The more informations you have, the longer it takes to interpret them.

Sans

what more I could suggest is undead for zombies or ghosts, psionic-powers and magical-powers because not everything is just angelic or demonic when it comes to natures or powers. Tagging systems for Personality, Setting, and meta are ideal. Though, I suggest personality also have a fill out bar much like description in the bottom of the profile that allows for intricate simple personality traits; like for say, my character is more than just someone who can tell jokes, so he's also lazy, etc.

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