Should the no_sound tag be removed from a post that is a .gif file, since you can't add sound in a .gif file?

Dragon648 said:
Should the no_sound tag be removed from a post that is a .gif file, since you can't add sound in a .gif file?

Not sure what the official consensus will be, but personally I'd leave it on there.

Because gif is aliased -> to animated which includes several different file formats. And if people are searching for "animated + no_sound" then removing that tag would break their search. So even though gifs can't have sound added to them, for searching purposes it's more useful to leave the tag on so that they'll still get them using the same search.

Eh, imo a 'sound' tag would be much more sensible than the no_sound tag currently is -- it's not like the majority of content even can have sound. If we seriously tagged no_sound, 99% of content should have it, which is just silly.

savageorange said:
Eh, imo a 'sound' tag would be much more sensible than the no_sound tag currently is -- it's not like the majority of content even can have sound. If we seriously tagged no_sound, 99% of content should have it, which is just silly.

Well, I thought the redundancy of having no_sound when we already have sound was as a courtesy for those occasions when people have to be extra careful to not have something suddenly play out-loud over their speakers. So the no_sound tag was an extra-safe zone that was guaranteed not to play any sounds if someone had that concern during one of their browsing sessions. Especially since tagging isn't 100% (yet, if ever) and only some of the posts which will play sound are actually tagged with the sound tag right now. So simply "-sound" would still be a gamble, and there's still a good chance clicking something will surprise you with sound. Sometimes it can be a big concern to people, so I thought that's why we had it.

Obviously there's no point tagging it on still images. I assumed it was only for animated or flash tagged content, where there was a chance of sound, and never still/unmoving content. But that was just my own logic, since the wiki doesn't say either way. I might have imagined it. Actually, the wiki for no_sound does say, "This should only apply to Flash based posts or animation mediums that can produce sound." So worries about it getting tagged to every jpg on the site aren't an issue.

ETA: just to give context to why relying on just sound or -sound might not be functional enough yet:

• animated - 10475 posts
• flash - 4719 posts

vs
sound - 1351 posts
no_sound - 973 posts

So if it is really important to be able to specify whether something has sound or not, the majority of files that might have sound in them are untagged with either tag.

And if no_sound is something we don't need then, from a tagging project standpoint, sorting through the rest of the not-tagged-either-way flashes and such would be easier when you can eliminate the existing 973 posts tagged no_sound from the pile via a "-no_sound" search. So it might be more convenient to do that tagging project first and then alias it away afterwards.

In short: Whether we keep no_sound is one question. When is the best time to alias it away is another question.

furrypickle said:
a courtesy for those occasions when people have to be extra careful to not have something suddenly play out-loud over their speakers.

There's an easy answer to this.
Volume: 0.

imo no_sound is a bad tag

furrypickle said:
In short: Whether we keep no_sound is one question.

I think we should nuke it. It's redundant to have both sound and no_sound tags, and we don't usually tag things that are missing.

And keeping both creates extra work for taggers, without any significant gain.

Not to mention that no_music is already invalidated.

When is the best time to alias it away is another question.

As long as we have both tags, some users will think that they're supposed to be tagging the 'lack of sound' instead of sound. So I think we should nuke it right away.