In much the same way as you can tag your forum posts with content warnings, you can now do the same for Mycenian and geness profiles. These content tags are identical to the ones available on the forums, and your ability to view such content is controlled by which tags you’ve enabled in your Community Settings.

Now, when you go to edit a Mycenian’s profile, you will see an additional box below the bio field where you can select which tags to apply to the profile. Players who have enabled the appropriate tags in their Community Settings will see a simple banner indicating which content tags apply to the profile, while players who have elected not to enable those content tags will only see a message indicating as such and inviting the viewer to enable them if they wish to see the profile.

With this change, you can now include mature content in pet profiles and geness pages without needing to resort to spoilers, provided that you tag the content appropriately. This change will be reflected in Section 4.1 of the rules in the near future.

If you have any questions or comments about this update, please let us know!

This is a great update! And while this update doesn’t affect me personally (I don’t have many completed profiles), I worry about other’s coding. Some people have very detailed profiles and having that content warning may skew their profile designs and they’ll have to rework everything to make it fit properly. I spose what I’m wondering is if there’s any way you can put the content warning somewhere outside the user’s design area? Does that make sense?

I’m just thinking of a few of my very detail oriented friends that this update will drive crazy, I spose, haha.

If I mark Artemis’ profile as having strong language, this is what it looks like to players who have the language tag enabled.Myla

Uhm, do you mean to players who DON’T have the tag enabled? Myla

Tamako I was under the impression that this only shows up IF the player doesn’t have the tag enabled in settings! So, if someone can view the warning, they wouldn’t be able to see the rest of the profile. If someone did have the required tags enabled then the profile would appear as usual without the warning at the top? :o

Edit: ooohh okay, so I tried playing with this and I see what you mean now. There’s a small yellow blurb if you choose a tag and the blurb lists the tags you select. Hm, well, at this point my question is more can we maybe have a different color? Maybe something…easier to read and also less clashing with the general page colors? :x Or…maybe float this OVER the geness name/picture so the spacing isn’t affected on the profiles regardless?

Lala That is indeed what I meant; I fixed the wording. Thanks!

Tamako We’re interested in hearing from players who find that the content warning notice causes non-trivial issues with their profile layouts, so we’ll keep an eye out for posts like those from your friends. It’s also worth noting that we may still tweak the exact display and layout (as we continue to refine it, or in response to feedback), so please don’t spend a significant amount of time making layouts pixel perfect over the next few days. Edit: Players are also free to keep using spoilers concealing mature content instead of tagging profiles if they would prefer!

This is a convenient feature.

I’m interested to see how this development will affect Mycena Cave going forward! :)

Edit:

What’s the process involved in reporting profiles and what can users expect to happen in that case?Jacq

I’d like some clarity on this as well. There absolutely needs to be a process in which users can report profiles safely and without fear of repercussions.

I appreciate the feature! I have a few pets whose profiles contain questionable content I’m glad I can warn for properly now c:

But…my profiles are affected by the current layout :‘D

I use the little space next to the pet image for quick facts about the character and the banner pushes that bar down a not-insignificant amount |D

If I can I’d also like to suggest the ability to write our own more specific elaborations in like we can on forum threads?

Actually while I’m here it’d be kind of cool to see something like this for individual forum posts too but I guess this is covered well enough by spoilers |D

edit: Bouncing back in here to say I 100 percent support Jacq‘s suggestion of expanding the tags - the current tags, while they cover a lot, just aren’t nuanced enough for things that can upset or harm someone but aren’t violent or extreme. In the past I’ve sat and debated with myself over whether content in a thread was extreme enough to be tagged with one of the content filter tags and I’m positive this either has happened to others or will happen again in the future.

As someone waiting for this feature since 2015, I’m so grateful it’s finally here! I’ll be going through over the next weeks and updating my bios - it will be nice not to have to work with the quirks of spoiler tags (especially wrt table widths) when messing with profiles and genesses :D

What’s the process / timeline for profiles that need to be tagged but aren’t? Is it still ultimately up to the user whether they tag their content (much the way spoilers have worked until now), or is it something that can be done on the Staff’s end?

I understand with a new feature you can’t expect everyone to adopt it right away, obviously, but at some point it should be okay to expect that pet profiles are tagged appropriately. This also applies to cases of inactive users that may still have triggering or tag-worthy content. What’s the process involved in reporting profiles and what can users expect to happen in that case?

Also, is this considered enough of an update that specific cases may be re-examined? I know I’m not allowed to quote echoes (and have no desire to go into details), but I was told in the past that specific depictions that didn’t meet a certain threshold of “obviousness” and were considered “artistic” weren’t required to be placed under spoiler tags (so long as the direct/“obvious” portions were tagged). At that time, I was also told those decisions were final at least until the profile or the rules were changed. Since this new content tagging applies to entire relationships/geness pages, might these considerations have changed? Or is it not even worth bothering about?

Thank you again though, sincerely. This is a really great feature and I’m glad it’s here.

edit: I’m seconding Purr‘s suggestion for adding custom descriptions. Even a slightly expanded list of Content filters would be awesome. (For example, Suicide, Abuse, Miscarriage, Death, and Drugs/Substance Use are quite common triggers, but not necessarily covered under the other tags

edit 2: Just to add another example to the “Does this sufficiently change what was allowed before” — previously it was OK to put some/all of a pet’s profile under a spoiler tag with a generic warning, like “mature content” or “some readers may find this disturbing/triggering” - Since the new content labels require something more specific, is it still sufficient to simply use the old “Here be dragons” system? (Personally, I would prefer if things were meant to be more specific, since I react differently to violent content vs sexual content vs abusive content etc, so more deliberate labels is better).

Since I made this an edit to the post yesterday: if the tags end up expanded, could we have them hovering above the geness image/name? So it wouldn’t mess with any coding because the profile would have the same spacing regardless!

I’m personally not in favor of drastically expanded site tags because I think that risks devolving into the ao3 issue of too many tags making individual ones less useful. I like the general site warning as more universal signaling, so people don’t have to even consider beyond that. Maybe people could code in a spoiler with more info on their tags if they feel like that’s appropriate?

Purr: Thank you for the screenshot and explanation about how your layout is being affected! We’ve had a couple of suggestions about where we could move the warning while affecting the layout less, and will be playing around with its position to find the best placement.

That’s also a good point about content tags; being able to elaborate with a more specific content note would be helpful, and we’re also open to considering an expansion of our existing tags. Our original goal when we created the tags was to provide a few broad categories to capture the key areas, and then allow a more detailed explanation via the player’s content note, so it makes sense that we carry that over to profiles too.

Jacq: Yes, this was definitely overdue and has been on our to-do for a long time! I hope it turns out to be less quirky to work with than the spoiler tagging system—as I mentioned to Purr above, we’ll hopefully find a way to make it less disruptive to the profile layout and more informative to players. Thank you for going into detail about how we could potentially alter our existing content tags: we’ll keep your suggestions for them in mind when we revisit the available options.

This feature does not change our current content rules (found in our rules and guidelines), so anything that falls within our content guidelines should be tagged or under a spoiler already. Players are not required to switch to the new tagging system as long as mature content is hidden with a spoiler tag that at least contains an [M] warning. If a player is unsure of whether their content should be tagged, we continue to encourage “over tagging”—that is, tagging just to be certain—or reaching out to a moderator to check! Similarly, if a player is concerned about the content of another player’s untagged pet profiles, they can report their concerns to a moderator by sending them an echo and they will take a look. The moderator team carefully considers all reports, and we are happy to revisit an old case if we’ve previously noted we may need to revisit it in the future.

I realize that determining the exact cut off for what is and isn’t mature content can be difficult, particularly given the sometimes subjective nature of writing. We have been planning to revisit our rules in order to enhance their clarity and provide more details/examples where necessary, and we hope that all of our rules will become clearer as a result! You also asked about the potential of us requiring a more specific warning than [M] for mature content under spoiler tags: it’s understandable that something more specific would be more helpful, so I’ve made a note to revisit this as well.

I just want to say that a big part of the reason I’m in favor of adding more tags is because of the same sentiment Jacq mentioned - I have a much harder time with certain types of content i.e. blood and violence but almost no sensitivity to things like suggestive themes. While more broad warnings are useful when someone wants to warn for something but isn’t entirely sure what category it fits in, or doesn’t want to give away the specific nature of what they’re warning for i.e. a major plot twist in their story where a main character dies, as a person who frequently reads other users’ pet profiles and stories as well as writes them I would seriously appreciate the option to be more specific. I like reading the amazingly creative stuff MC players come up with, and it sucks having to make the choice between keeping yourself safe and reading something potentially great when you don’t have all the information ahead of time.

edit: Thank you Myla for the response! I’m glad this is something with the potential to change 8D

edit again: AND WHILE I’M HERE I’d also love to see something similar for genesses :0

edit a third time: THIS IS ALREADY A THING thank you!!!

Can we maybe have a community tag dory then? Because I still don’t think the ao3 model is practical (where people can create custom tags at will and sometimes the tags just turn into personal commentary).

Also…unless I’m seriously missing something, the profile system is basically the same as the geness one right? So anything done to one is going to happen for the other? <w<?

OH neat thanks for that tip Lala! I didn’t notice it was a thing.

Edit: sorry about this, bit please ignore what was here befor. l’d like to think about it a bit longer and see what others have to say before I respond again.

I would definitely prefer if the content warnings were the same as the forum ones, with black non-italic text on white background. ^^; The yellow italics is kind of hard to read. It’s also a bit easy to miss on fancier profiles. Maybe putting it on top of the pet page right under the breadcrumbs link instead of in the profile space would make it easier to see? o:

I’m with Ashlar on this one, the yellow fancy tag is harder for me to see/read than the bog standard spoiler tag.  Not a clue why, but maybe because my brain has been trained for 6 years to look for the spoiler tags on here??

Also, is there some sort of instructions on how we can do the tags?  I have one Ineki, Sallie, who’s early stories were about child abuse/neglect.  While her profile overall doesn’t have links or blatant descriptions, her appearance could potentially bother someone if they weren’t prepared to read about it.  I’d like to know how to do the tags, although for now, I could probably just put the warning with her appearance spoiler tag. 

My only other pet profile, I’ve completely redone to avoid triggering anyone.  It was a real life issue that I was distraught over when the pet was created, but I’ve decided to redo the pet completely instead.

Many wonderful discussions on here.  Jacq’s responses are particularly thoughtful.

Hi again everyone!

I owe you an apology, I thought I had made another response to this thread weeks ago… but then it turns out that I hadn’t. In any case, there are a few things I want to acknowledge and comment on:

• There’s some really great criticism of our current tags in this thread. Thank you!
• We are still working on adjusting the tag notifications in profiles. There’s a lot we can do better to avoid breaking profile layouts. This work has taken a bit of a back-seat with regard to other more urgent work we’re doing (event stuff, some unfortunately urgent behind-the-scenes stuff, etc.) which is why it currently looks like the issue has stalled with no acknowledgement or progress. So to be clear: we recognize it’s a problem, and we haven’t forgotten.
• We are working on a solution for handling old content from inactive users which may not follow current standards or rules. There is something of a balancing act to be made here, in part because we avoid editing content on other people’s behalf when at all possible, and in part because the quantity of content by inactive users grows over time. The work on this front is very exploratory, and as such is prioritized behind the more urgent tasks described above.
• We will be adding new tags and making small adjustments to existing ones in the near future to help cover some gaps that we’re clearly missing. For existing tag adjustments, we will take care not to change things in a way that would make existing tags incorrect. In selecting the tags, we’ll be using best practices and the research that we’ve done (and are continuing to do) on the topic.
• It is an explicit non-goal to make you browse through a laundry list of possible tags every time you write or update content. As such, our tagging system will span a small number of broad categories (7, maybe 8 tops) that you can be reasonably expected to keep in your mind at once. We understand that there are trade-offs, and that different sites prioritize different goals with their tagging systems. We will make it possible to add content warnings similar to what we do in forum threads if you wish to be more specific.

Thanks again for all of the discussion in this thread, and for highlighting a number of ways that the current system falls short and how it can be improved. It has been extremely helpful.