Topic: [PROPOSAL] An Improvement to e621s wiki and user friendliness

Posted under General

UPC47446

Member
Tagging inaccuracies is something that has been around forever, on e621

Many assumptions have been formed as to why this is the case. Most would assume that those who tag wrongly, are either stupid or uninformed about what they are doing. But it would seem that most people forget that this site can be accessed across the globe and that there are many people from many different languages that upload and tag things. In this sense, it would seem as though things are tagged incorrectly because an individual's language does not translate a word or phrase in a manner that is consistent with how it is understood in English. Luckily e621 has a wiki that defines a large number of commonly used tags. But it would seem that a majority of people do not care or read the Wikipedia pages, and sometimes fail to understand the information provided. Whether this be by misinformation or the thumbnail not clearly showing the tag at hand. Therefore I find that some of the major tags and misused tags are a result of translation failings, the lackluster clarity and format in wiki pages, and what I believe to be an additional lack of user-friendliness.

Wiki Formating and the changes necessary

In these sections, the faults of language translation and the benefits of simplicity have been heavily considered

Clarity in the Wikis
Aesthetic simplification
Example images

Currently, thumbnails have no way to be made bigger, smaller, or specifically oriented on a page. This is almost self-defeating in functionality, as while they may link to the actual image, they are often used as a quick representation of what a tag should be related to. However, it is often that these images are blurry and impractical when trying to differentiate similar tags. For instance, if a user thumbnailed images tagged with medium_breast and big_breast, some people (including myself) can and will find it hard to point out all the differences. There are even some instances where the details of a thumbnail can no longer be identified, thereby diminishing the ability to be used practically. With a few examples being things such as necklace, anything within tag group:piercing, jewlery, smile, spots, and the coloration of the sclera. So while thumbnails may provide a universal explanation of what a tag is alluding to, the effectiveness of thumbnails are nullified when smaller more detail orientated things are involved. Simply the thumbnail issue can be seen in a manner that is most similar to how taggers view thumbnails, "There isn't enough visible details to tag everything fully and accurately".

Descriptions

While most descriptions do a decent job of explaining what a tag is, it is too often that this is achieved by over-explaining them. Creating big text walls that can and will turn heads away, even if the information is useful. Therefore, I feel it should be mandatory to keep descriptions down to 2 - 5 sentences. Not only that but boldening keywords should be prioritized to appease those who skim through the text, much in the way google does when searching for information. This isn't something that can be heavily monitored but it can be hinted at within the style and formatting section.

The Not to be confused section

The Not to be confused section is a vital part of mitigating confusion on the site, but with the current tagging format, it has made it difficult to accentuate what is and is not related. For instance, leggings is a highly misused tag that is applied to one image out of every 3 to 8 pages visited, with only leggings in the search bar. I feel that for those tags that are highly misused, it should be imperative that the Not be confused with the section be place on the top of its wiki page. This being done so long as a tag has more than 70% of its tags improperly applied. Because for a lot of taggers, it is annoying to see that people keep changing your fixes back to the incorrect tag.

Below are laid out exmaples of the desired changes

Format for tags with ≤ 30% innaccuracies:

  • Example Image
  • Description
    • External links
  • Not to be confused with section
  • Related tags
  • See also

Format for tags with ≥ 70% innaccuracies:

  • DO NOT CONFUSE WITH section
  • Description
    • External references [ For clarification ]
  • Example Images
    • External example image links
  • Related tags
  • See also
Related tags

Related tags are fine, though users should be able to also include tags that are aliased or implicated, as some people do not understand what those two words mean. I mention this as I was once informed that I was cluttering things up when in actuality I was trying to make it more clear for myself and others who I felt that shared this trouble. So this would not be a redundant proclamation to most wiki pages, as it makes it easier to identify what is related to a tag rather than leaving someone scratching their head about whatever the hell aliased or implicated means. As in some languages aliased and implication translate to being the same thing, despite not being as such.

External links

External links can be the key to solving a lot of misconceptions about tags, especially clothing. However, the current format forbids users for linking to images even if they are extremely helpful and provide a clearer visual representation in contrast to the very small and often blurry thumbnails. I know that while users can link to the images within other Wikipedia pages it is sometimes that they do not have an image that best describes what a tag means. Such as the case for most clothing tags.

Examples of usefulness:

  • The following hyperlinks will show the difference between silver and grey ... Though techinically speaking silver falls within the grey spectrum [ see here ]

I understand this is a rule because of site security and that they could be abused, but with it being so helpful. Especially since a large number of Wikipedia pages do not use images from other wikis, but rather they list source them at the bottom of the page.

Forum discussion links

Should be removed from the wiki page if a consensus is reached

See also

Should be left alone

Other suggestions
  • This may be my OCD but I think it would be nice if there was a line that split the tag from the information much in the way that other wiki's do. As currently, the wiki pages look unfinished and ill-formatted despite their only being a few small problems at hand.
  • Wikis that cover the size of a characters body part or parts should have images showing the difference, but with small thumbnails this is can be problematic for some things.
User Friendliness
Dtext

Help: DText

While explained well their have been numerous instances where people have edited wikis or left comments with incomplete or outright broken Dtext. The solution to this is complicated, because of language barriers and different forms of understanding info.

Note: If the changes to thumbnails are considered, please include a way to make them bigger or smaller.

Content Warnings

While sound warning is a meta tag, it is classified as an artist tag, which confuses people. But while it is understood that people's hearing is valuable, it would be better to throw this tag above the artist section with a new lime green category known as "content warnings" which could also serve to list epilepsy_warning as well.

This is more for an extra foot in the legal game if someone tries to use "I wasn't aware" as an excuse in the event that someone tries to sue the site for hearing problems or other damages related to seizures

Implications

Old version: The following tags implicate this tag: [ implicated tags here ]
New Version: The following tags implicate this tag: [ implicated tags here ]

As most people are not open to sitting down and reading rules, this is a small change that could help countless users who want to understand what aliased means in the current statement " The following tags implicate this tag "

"A single link can do wonders sometimes"

Aliases

Old version: The following tags are aliased to this tag: [ aliased tags here ]
New Version: The following tags are aliased to this tag: [ aliased tags here ]

As most people are not open to sitting down and reading rules, this is a small change that could help countless users who want to understand what aliased means in the current statement " The following tags are aliased to this tag "

"A single link can do wonders sometimes"

Updated

Genjar

Former Staff

- Thumbnails: As mentioned in howto:wiki_editing (edit: fixed link), thumbs should be picked so that what the tag usage is evident from the thumb, without clicking it. But some folks keep ignoring that. I don't think there's any point in adding thumbs that don't demonstrate the usage, it's better to leave them out than add something visually confusing. Though it's rare that there aren't any suitable posts available. For instance, I just added a couple of thumbs to that necklace wiki.

- Descriptions: The current standard is that descriptions should be kept concise. But keeping it to a hard-limit of 2-5 sentences is completely impossible for some tags, such as anthro or solo.

- External links: These should always show where they link. No blind-linking such as 'Click here for the visual', which could lead to some random site full of ads and spyware. If users are heading off-site, they must be made aware of that. The See also-section seems best for links: at the end of the page, just like Wikipedia. Though I wouldn't be opposed to creating a new External links category specifically for those.

- Forum discussion links: These were never good material for the wiki. Discussions tend to get outdated after a while, and if there's something important in the discussion then it should be copied to the article. Not linked. I'm in favor of disallowing forum links in the wiki altogether.

Updated

UPC47446

Member

genjar said:

- Descriptions: The current standard is that descriptions should be kept concise. But keeping it to a hard-limit of 2-5 sentences is completely impossible for some tags, such as anthro or solo.

I had not considered anthro or solo but for a majority of tags, that are less complicated, I do believe this limit would be perfectly fine. Because as I've mentioned creating big text walls that can and will turn heads away, even if the information is useful. With that said I can imagine that people will skip over the example images section of this forum because of how much is there. But I thank you for reading it. Though I am curious as to how you view the user-friendliness section.

Fluffball

Member
Descriptions

Keep in mind that if there is a simpler, and easier way to write something we would use it. It is nice to have as a guideline, but each tag is different. I have felt that additional clarity may help others understand the more complicated or confusing aspects of the tag's usage.

Any extraneous information that adds bulk could be included in a section box near the bottom of the wiki. Even that information I feel can be helpful for taggers by associating contextual information with tag. It allows someone to better recognize other concepts that may be happening in the scene.

There are tags where there could be five or more related, but fairly distinctive concepts it can apply to like most major fetish tags. BDSM is a rather nasty tag to define because its use cases overlap with scenarios like rape. Out of the four concepts it represents, only bondage is implied to it. The other situations are usage dependent whether they apply.

Not to be confused by

I feel indifferent about the Not to be confused by info. If users really cared about tagging something accurately they would want to read the wiki. It shouldn't matter where this line is unless the name of the tag is very obvious what they are about to mistag. If they read the wiki and still manage to mistag, I think there is something wrong with how the wiki is written.

External links

Yes, I want to be able to source from ideal ref material, especially for things related to species, and concepts that aren't furry-related.

@genjar There is already a trend of putting external links about See also. It really depends on the content whether it goes there or not. Visual references should be near the description field, not at the bottom of the wiki past all of the related tags. I tend to agree that showing the full link is a better practice.

The rest

I agree with content warnings being in a separate category rather than hijacking other categories.

As for alias and implications, there is a learn_more link at the end of each of those sentences. It can be hard to see since it is formatted the same as the tag links. So including it in the sentence itself might help with visibility.

Also both of those links link to a redirect page.

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