The bulk update request #3310 has been rejected.

Reason: Additional info like voice actors & sound should go in the description field, not added as artist tags.

EDIT: The bulk update request #3310 (forum #345281) has been rejected by @Rainbow_Dash.

The bulk update request #3311 has been rejected.

Reason: List continue

EDIT: The bulk update request #3311 (forum #345284) has been rejected by @Rainbow_Dash.

The bulk update request #3312 has been rejected.

Reason: List continue

EDIT: The bulk update request #3312 (forum #345285) has been rejected by @Rainbow_Dash.

The bulk update request #3313 has been rejected.

create alias treymartins (0) -> invalid_tag (3)
create alias voicelikecandy (0) -> invalid_tag (3)
create alias volkor (0) -> invalid_tag (3)
create alias wubcakeva (0) -> invalid_tag (3)
create alias zerodiamonds (0) -> invalid_tag (3)
create alias ziggyzackaryzigzagoon (0) -> invalid_tag (3)

Reason: List continue

EDIT: The bulk update request #3313 (forum #345286) has been rejected by @Rainbow_Dash.

Here's a list to shorten detective work. Some accounts may show up as doesn't exist, or suspended.

While I'm in agreement that voice actors shouldn't be tagged, I'm wary about blanket aliasing them all away. Some of them can be artists/animators too. At least, we should make sure they haven't made art/animations, and don't seem likely to, before aliasing them. There was actually a sound editor artist tag I ran into a while back that was locked on a few posts, for some reason, but I can't remember the name.

watsit said:
Some of them can be artists/animators too.

This is why I didn't add the Dragon-V0942 and Oolay-tiger tags.

cane751 said:
The bulk update request #3310 has been rejected.

create alias alexia_vo (0) -> invalid_tag (3)
create alias ameafterdark (0) -> invalid_tag (3)
create alias audiodude_(artist) (0) -> invalid_tag (3)
create alias bakusatsuho (0) -> invalid_tag (3)
create alias baritone_vocant (0) -> invalid_tag (3)
create alias blisseclair (0) -> invalid_tag (3)
create alias bordeaux_black (0) -> invalid_tag (3)
create alias bordeauxblackva (23) -> invalid_tag (3)
create alias bordeuxblack (0) -> invalid_tag (3)
create alias britishkassva (0) -> invalid_tag (3)
create alias chloeangelva (2) -> invalid_tag (3)
create alias cinderdryadva (0) -> invalid_tag (3)
create alias codefreq (0) -> invalid_tag (3)
create alias cottontailva (0) -> invalid_tag (3)
create alias cougar_macdowall_va (0) -> invalid_tag (3)
create alias dawhalehole (0) -> invalid_tag (3)
create alias delalicious (0) -> invalid_tag (3)
create alias delaliciousva (0) -> invalid_tag (3)
create alias deltava_ad (0) -> invalid_tag (3)
create alias empressblueva (0) -> invalid_tag (3)
create alias endymionva (0) -> invalid_tag (3)
create alias erinmccoffee (0) -> invalid_tag (3)
create alias evilaudio (0) -> invalid_tag (3)
create alias fatboiipanda (0) -> invalid_tag (3)
create alias flamelickva (0) -> invalid_tag (3)

Reason: Additional info like voice actors & sound should go in the description field, not added as artist tags.

Can I ask why? I mean we're just as much artists as everyone else and help contribute to a majority of what you all enjoy. Some of us (myself included) play the role of both voice actor and sound designer and deserve to be properly tagged and credited for our contribution to a massive element of animation. You're telling me that people shouldn't be allowed to filter my tag to listen to my unique style of voice over or sound design? I'm a professional, I work with professionals, I've helped make some really high quality content from some of the furry communities favorite animators, so I believe that an artist tag should be the least I'm allowed to have on this site.

If the staff here disagree then I see it's only fair for me to include in my TOS that any of my work not be uploaded here seeing as I'm not treated with the same respect as the visual artist and recommend my many friends that are voice actors and sound designers to do the same. Any VISUAL work uploaded is obviously on the artist to decide, but if it's using my own voice, foley, and various other sound effects then I wouldn't want it uploaded to a site that actively erases my name from it.

watsit said:
While I'm in agreement that voice actors shouldn't be tagged, I'm wary about blanket aliasing them all away. Some of them can be artists/animators too. At least, we should make sure they haven't made art/animations, and don't seem likely to, before aliasing them. There was actually a sound editor artist tag I ran into a while back that was locked on a few posts, for some reason, but I can't remember the name.

I don't agree with any of it, period. It's so bad that only drawers can have an artist tag per policy.

I'm of the opinion that restricting the artist tag category to only visual artists isn't a good way to go, nor is it a good look for the site.

cane751 said:
This is why I didn't add the Dragon-V0942 and Oolay-tiger tags.

And if anyone else on the list decides to pursue art...? It'll be a headache beyond belief if we have to play whack-a-mole each and every time.

watsit said:
Some of them can be artists/animators too.

This is one of the primary reasons why asset creators shouldn't be tagged as artists.
Had post featuring models from extremely popular animator and comments had people going "wow, didn't know these artists did collab!" when they clearly didn't.

Artist tag should be for the artist of the work in question only. Not for 3D models, not for voices or sounds, not for editors, etc.

Even on twitter, artists simply put credits in the videos themselves or description "3D model by X, sounds by Y", this isn't that differend in here.

Technically speaking sound edit uploads aren't even according to current guidelines to begin with and should all be deleted by default.

E: Especially with sounds and music, do we start tagging Zonkpunch as artist for every single post using their sounds? Or if someone decides to use Crab rave as background, now Noisestorm is also artist? I still remember how Jasonafex was tagged as artist on comics they only wrote even when they didn't do any art but people just kept adding the tag because of reasons.

Regardless of what's done, there still needs to be the line which counts and doesn't as artist for tagging purposes and current line is visual artist of that individual post. Also it's still tags and data on database, so one tag needs to still be for singular thing, watermelon artist should not be the same tag as watermelon object. 3D model creator who also does their own renders should not be tagged with every single post that has their model in use, it makes the tag unuseable to actually finding the artists own renders reliabely.

mairo said:
Technically speaking sound edit uploads aren't even according to current guidelines to begin with and should all be deleted by default.

Let's not.

mairo said:
Artist tag should be for the artist of the work in question only. Not for 3D models, not for voices or sounds, not for editors, etc.

Besides the question of "why not", make the others a meta tag or copyright tag or species tag or whatever, I don't see the harm in having some tag at all for them regardless of where they're categorized. People will always be confused no matter how you lay it out, I'd rather prioritize accessibility for finding these.

mairo said:
Or if someone decides to use Crab rave as background, now Noisestorm is also artist?

Musicians/bands/songs are generally listed as copyright tags from my experience.

I've come around to agree with the aliases. There are over 80 tags here of exclusive voice actors/audio people that people keep "helpfully" trying to add to posts, and it's getting pretty annoying to keep seeing them pop up and need clearing out. If these people haven't already been doing furry visual art, the likelihood that they'll start doing it is pretty low. Considering we've been aliasing away commissioners, character owners, writers, etc, despite the same possibility that they may one day start making art, it hasn't been a problem. And even if someone happens to start making furry visual art, it won't be an issue to undo the alias then, or perhaps make a separate tag which is clear about it being for their visual work only.

strikerman said:
Besides the question of "why not", make the others a meta tag or copyright tag or species tag or whatever

"Why not" is because this is a site for "art or animations that are relevant to "furries", i.e. contain anthropomorphic characters or animals". It isn't a site for voice acting or writing, although an image is free to contain such.

Those aren't appropriate ways to tag people who didn't make the images because they're not species, they don't necessarily hold a copyright (and we don't otherwise tag individuals who are copyright holders, e.g. character owners, writers), and meta tags are tags about the image itself, not who was involved in making the non-visual contents of an image.

And in any case, they shouldn't be normal tags like oolay-tiger or dragon-v0942 that offers no indication about whether it's referring to their artwork or voice work or writing work or whatever else, leaving people to think those should be tagged on images they didn't create.

watsit said:
"Why not" is because this is a site for "art or animations that are relevant to "furries", i.e. contain anthropomorphic characters or animals". It isn't a site for voice acting or writing, although an image is free to contain such.

Exactly, sooooo why not tag it? Something being optional doesn't mean it shouldn't be tagged.

strikerman said:
Let's not.

Well I am already consistantly deleting about half of these kind of uploads for sound editors completely ruining the visuals, then posting it exclusively on twitter where the video gets even more mutilated, meaning the visual quality is so bad it no longer fullfills the edit guidelines which require the edit to be at the very least on same level as the source material.
Rest half are essentially 1:1 identical in content, but because it's still edit, we can't delete the original, so they are in this weird guideline limbo where they should be deleted as irrelevant edit but aren't, then originals should be deleted as inferior but shouldn't be deleted over edit.

I am constantly getting "are you fucking deaf, the post had sounds!" so that's why I'm bringing this up, as this isn't just about the tags, the whole website runs on tag what you SEE so this would require other changes to guidelines as well and if sound becomes acceptable merit in tagging and other stuff. Also enforcement of other similar tags as it has been and should still be that posts with audio should only be tagged sound and nothing else from the audio.
I have also brought up text adventure games on many occasions as those also violate tagging and approval guidelines in every possible ways, but at the very least flash uploads have been disabled so those do not happen again and videos with only text are deleted as irrelevant as well.

strikerman said:
Exactly, sooooo why not tag it?

Because that's not the site focus, as I said. This is a site for "art or animations", so we tag who created the artwork or animation, not everyone that may be credited as being involved in the piece (after all, a character owner or commissioner can just as easily claim to have put work into a piece by designing the character or scenario for an artist to draw out or animate, and it's pretty clear we're not going to have tags for those in the near future). If there was a e6writing.net or e6audio.net, things may be different there, I'm sure, but as this site is focused on visual art, that's what gets tagged.

Every reason I've seen for this site not having VA's be tagged can be boiled down to needlessly complicating something so simple. Is the site gonna crash cause a VA just put their name in the tag section? Is it really gonna be THAT confusing for someone to mix up a VA and an artist tag? Like think outside of what you think is confusing and see what a majority of people want. You have a tag for sound warning that's so incredibly vague, it has thousands of posts linked to it. I'd rather just have the actual people who did the sound design and/or VA be in that spot than whatever "sound-warning" is

watsit said:
Because that's not the site focus, as I said. This is a site for "art or animations", so we tag who created the artwork or animation, not everyone that may be credited as being involved in the piece (after all, a character owner or commissioner can just as easily claim to have put work into a piece by designing the character or scenario for an artist to draw out or animate, and it's pretty clear we're not going to have tags for those in the near future). If there was a e6writing.net or e6audio.net, things may be different there, I'm sure, but as this site is focused on visual art, that's what gets tagged.

We keep bouncing back and forth on this same point: why does it matter that the focus of the site is visual art? We still have tags for stories being in the description or the source even if those aren't the focus, we still have tags for whether or not a post has sound or what kind of sound it is even if those aren't the focus, I genuinely do not see why it would be such a catastrophic, devastating, insurmountable task to just tag people.

mairo said:
Well I am already consistantly deleting about half of these kind of uploads for sound editors completely ruining the visuals, then posting it exclusively on twitter where the video gets even more mutilated, meaning the visual quality is so bad it no longer fullfills the edit guidelines which require the edit to be at the very least on same level as the source material.
Rest half are essentially 1:1 identical in content, but because it's still edit, we can't delete the original, so they are in this weird guideline limbo where they should be deleted as irrelevant edit but aren't, then originals should be deleted as inferior but shouldn't be deleted over edit.

I am constantly getting "are you fucking deaf, the post had sounds!" so that's why I'm bringing this up, as this isn't just about the tags, the whole website runs on tag what you SEE so this would require other changes to guidelines as well and if sound becomes acceptable merit in tagging and other stuff. Also enforcement of other similar tags as it has been and should still be that posts with audio should only be tagged sound and nothing else from the audio.
I have also brought up text adventure games on many occasions as those also violate tagging and approval guidelines in every possible ways, but at the very least flash uploads have been disabled so those do not happen again and videos with only text are deleted as irrelevant as well.

You're talking as if the sound is isolated. The sound becomes a part of a the piece as a whole. Clearly its not about what you're only seeing with more and more of these animations having sound design with them. There's clearly work put into sound edits and in the original posts that have sound.

lewddevbitches said:
Every reason I've seen for this site not having VA's be tagged can be boiled down to needlessly complicating something so simple. Is the site gonna crash cause a VA just put their name in the tag section? Is it really gonna be THAT confusing for someone to mix up a VA and an artist tag? Like think outside of what you think is confusing and see what a majority of people want. You have a tag for sound warning that's so incredibly vague, it has thousands of posts linked to it. I'd rather just have the actual people who did the sound design and/or VA be in that spot than whatever "sound-warning" is

Well, the most simple fix would be to have seperate tags when author was doing assets rather than visual arts e.g. _(modeler), _(editor), _(voice), which would avoid tag conflicts which has already been happening with visual artists who additionally do voices, edits and writing. This is also my personal biggest issue with these things as a tag should be for single thing in database, it's there for that primarily and not for credit even if it also serves that purpose. Also with this there would still be bound to be conflicts when uploader uploads without suffix.
But so far the answer from head admin has been that artist tags are for visual art only and everyone else should be in the description so even for this change, admins would have to agree and update sites guidelines and documentation to reflect this.

lewddevbitches said:
You're talking as if the sound is isolated. The sound becomes a part of a the piece as a whole. Clearly its not about what you're only seeing with more and more of these animations having sound design with them. There's clearly work put into sound edits and in the original posts that have sound.

If it is third party edit, then sound is isolated factor that is irrelevant.
For approval purposes as well, sound is generally ignored factor. Even if it has the worst audio ever, that will not get post deleted for quality standards, but worst animation ever will get deleted for quality standards.

Wasn't preservation of good furry content the reason for the creation of the site originally?

Is insisting that VAs should not be tagged in order to comform to current guidelines worth the possible future loss of good voice acted content?

Wouldn't it be better to just, I dont know, append (VA)_* before the name of the VA, just as a temporary measure instead of just nuking all tags? Doesnt even need a category change.

Like, i get it, ideally credits should be in the video or description, but "should" isn't "is".
I have no evidence to back up, but I believe the main selling point of this site's existence is the great tagging system.

With that in mind, when someone is uploading something, their first psycological response is to tag what is relevant, in this context, the VA.

(A feature suggestion would be to make it so tagging VAs automatically adds the credit to the description while removing the tag. Kinda like a tag->description alias.)

mairo said:
This is one of the primary reasons why asset creators shouldn't be tagged as artists.
Had post featuring models from extremely popular animator and comments had people going "wow, didn't know these artists did collab!" when they clearly didn't.

Artist tag should be for the artist of the work in question only. Not for 3D models, not for voices or sounds, not for editors, etc.

Even on twitter, artists simply put credits in the videos themselves or description "3D model by X, sounds by Y", this isn't that differend in here.

Technically speaking sound edit uploads aren't even according to current guidelines to begin with and should all be deleted by default.

E: Especially with sounds and music, do we start tagging Zonkpunch as artist for every single post using their sounds? Or if someone decides to use Crab rave as background, now Noisestorm is also artist? I still remember how Jasonafex was tagged as artist on comics they only wrote even when they didn't do any art but people just kept adding the tag because of reasons.

Regardless of what's done, there still needs to be the line which counts and doesn't as artist for tagging purposes and current line is visual artist of that individual post. Also it's still tags and data on database, so one tag needs to still be for singular thing, watermelon artist should not be the same tag as watermelon object. 3D model creator who also does their own renders should not be tagged with every single post that has their model in use, it makes the tag unuseable to actually finding the artists own renders reliabely.

You just gave me one of the most disgustingly oblivious takes I've read in a while so I'm going to be completely and openly honest with you.

Voice actors. Sound designers. 3d modelers. Editors. WE ARE ARTISTS. We make ART. I don't know how anyone with even half a brain can possibly believe that it's not. We're all the artist of the work because we're all working together IN COLLABORATION to deliver all of what you so love to consume. We get paid by the artist to come onto their project and help them bring it to life in a way that sounds good and looks good. For 3d modelers, artist use THEIR ASSETS that THEY CREATED to make the animation/still they just uploaded here! The art you see would not be the same art if it does not have that, because art is a combination of ALL OF THE ELEMENTS IT'S MADE OF. So why, pray tell, is that such a hard concept to understand for you?

You say that, "Artists simply put credits in the videos themselves or description," but you fail to mention that there is no tagging system at all on twitter like there is here. Tags are your navigation here, they are how most people find what they want and filter what they don't. That is the only option they have to credit us. And I absolutely love that you mentioned video tagging, because for all that it's worth it just proves how little you actually know about our community despite sitting at your desk on e621 all day. Video tagging does nothing. How often do you read all the names during the credits in a movie theater? Not too often I'd imagine. So how often do you think people are seeing us and searching us out? Hmm... Doesn't seem like it'd be that often. Tags help credit us so that people can easily find us and follow what we do, they're extremely important. That's why I and many others require the artist/animator to tag us in the post so that people know how we helped on the project. THAT'S WHY I and many others are so appalled by how such a simple thing can be so poorly handled.

Good. That's great. Then get rid of any and all sound edits and videos with any audio. Actually? Since you're so high-and-mighty, how about you BAN YOURSELF by deleting your account since you yourself don't even follow the current guidelines despite knowing them all by heart! I see all those posts you're ripping from artists and animators to upload for browny points here, and lots of them have sound, so therefore you are directly contradicting yourself and making yourself look like the world's biggest hypocrite. But you won't, and neither will any of your friends, because you know how much you like them and you know that if this site didn't have them a huge chunk of people would stop coming here. So you still want them! You just don't want to credit the artists that work on them. Nice. You're a real hero mr. janitor.

You're right! Not everyone needs to be tagged because not everyone cares to be tagged. But the people who do? The people who are the ones that can ACTUALLY benefit from it? When we come to this site and ask to be tagged as artists alongside other artists who worked on it, we expect to be treated with enough respect to have that. AT LEAST that. People don't read descriptions, they read tags. So when we're not there, we don't exist.

Here's a solution for that really funny thing you just said. You ready? It's a doozey. Next to the name... add what they do. It's not hard! I know you can do it because you do it for every other god forsaken thing here. You can add parentheses around any tag you want: sonic_the_hedgehog_(series), sonic_the_hedgehog_(idw), sonic_the_hedgehog_(comics), sonic_the_hedgehog_(archie), penis_(erect), like jesus you can EASILY do that. You can—and literally just did—go and completely null a tag like VoidSlutVA across any and all works it's tagged in. Thanks for that btw! You could also create a subsection for credits in the tagging area. No? Well I'm giving you options here that easily address the issue, yet you seem to be more than happy just sitting there explaining why we don't deserve the right to have our work be credited instead of bringing this issue to light.

I find it so funny that you're this elitist about art that's uploaded here. You... being someone who's not an artist, knows nothing about different forms of art, and doesn't have a clue about what we do. You don't like to call what we do art but... you still think you have any say in the matter? You're a janitor on e621 and you got that status by reuploading 148 PAGES worth of art from people who do. And you know what? Those people you reupload from would agree with me. They're my friends; I work with them, I talk to them, we play games together. They actually have respect for what I do, unlike you and some of your elitist buddies. They'd agree it's art. They'd have no issue with me being tagged alongside them! Yet for some reason you do. Hm.

I'd take a moment to re-evaluate on that.

voidslutva said:
Can I ask why? I mean we're just as much artists as everyone else and help contribute to a majority of what you all enjoy. Some of us (myself included) play the role of both voice actor and sound designer and deserve to be properly tagged and credited for our contribution to a massive element of animation. You're telling me that people shouldn't be allowed to filter my tag to listen to my unique style of voice over or sound design? I'm a professional, I work with professionals, I've helped make some really high quality content from some of the furry communities favorite animators, so I believe that an artist tag should be the least I'm allowed to have on this site.

Sculptors, writers, musicians, and costume designers are also artists, but they are not given artist tags here for the simple reason that they aren't the sorts of artists e621 is designed to showcase the art of. As sound is considered incidental and sometimes irrelevant to whether a post gets accepted here, sound-based artists are also not the sorts of artists e621 is meant to archive the art of. E621 is an archive of visual drawn and rendered art, after all.

Currently, the best place to credit VAs and other artists not involved with a post's visuals is in the description of the post. Perhaps it's not ideal as, although you can search descriptions, most users don't know that. But if we are to tag VAs, the question is where should we stick them?

At first glance, the Artist category might seem best, but it's not. The Artist category is meant for tagging the visual artists the site focuses on. Throwing audio artists in there would swamp a post's artist tags and obscure the tag of the visual artist(s) the post is trying to showcase. Of the other existing categories, Meta and Lore might work, as the former uses a mix of TWYS and TWYK and the latter is all TWYK. However, they're still imperfect fits. It may be that another tag category is desirable. The Admins have been kicking around ideas for a while, even as they deal with a number of other necessary tasks, but I don't know if they have yet settled on any one strategy.

However, even if they have settled on a solution, it still takes time and programming to make sure the site and servers aren't negatively impacted. On top of that, Kiranoot has, unfortunately, stepped down as head programmer, meaning Earlopain has more work heaped on his desk. Competent though he may be, he can only proceed at a certain pace.

lewddevbitches said:
Every reason I've seen for this site not having VA's be tagged can be boiled down to needlessly complicating something so simple. Is the site gonna crash cause a VA just put their name in the tag section? Is it really gonna be THAT confusing for someone to mix up a VA and an artist tag? Like think outside of what you think is confusing and see what a majority of people want. You have a tag for sound warning that's so incredibly vague, it has thousands of posts linked to it. I'd rather just have the actual people who did the sound design and/or VA be in that spot than whatever "sound-warning" is

Sound warning isn't all that vague. It's there to warn viewers who might not want to suddenly and unexpectedly blast the grunts and moans of a porn video at 2 in the morning while the rest of their family sleeps. It's a "listener beware" tag, so to speak.

clawstripe said:
Sound warning isn't all that vague. It's there to warn viewers who might not want to suddenly and unexpectedly blast the grunts and moans of a porn video at 2 in the morning while the rest of their family sleeps. It's a "listener beware" tag, so to speak.

I've seen someone argue that all posts with sound should have the sound_warning tag, so there's at least a bit of ambiguity with the tag.

strikerman said:
We keep bouncing back and forth on this same point: why does it matter that the focus of the site is visual art?

Because if we don't focus, there's no bound to who can be credited. If we can tag everything that went into a piece of art, the tags would become unwieldy and useless. Not just the visual artist, but also modelers, texturers, animators, voice actors, writers, commissioners, character owners, editors, study material used by these people, the software used, the hardware used, who created the software, who created the hardware, etc. Why allow some and not others? (I mean, Gabe Newell helped write the Source engine, which is what Source FilmMaker is based on, so why shouldn't he be credited on SFM posts since his work went into making it?)

If we don't focus, the tags would become a mess and create even more confusion than there already is. As it is, if someone does visual art and has art here, they have an artist tag. If such an artist happens to instead be a commissioner or voice actor or whatever on a particular piece, people sometimes think they should still be tagged, so they get tagged as an artist on images or animations they didn't create, which has to be cleaned up. If we legitimize tagging VAs, writers, commissioners, etc, then they should be tagged, resulting in them being tagged more, and more people will use the wrong tags (e.g. a writer tag instead of a character owner tag), significantly increasing the amount of cleaning work.

strikerman said:
We still have tags for stories being in the description or the source even if those aren't the focus

We tag the existence of things yes, because they're part of the image from the source. But we don't tag its length, whether it (the story, not the image) contains dialog, gay sex, or the number of characters in it, etc.

watsit said:
Because if we don't focus, there's no bound to who can be credited. If we can tag everything that went into a piece of art, the tags would become unwieldy and useless. Not just the visual artist, but also modelers, texturers, animators, voice actors, writers, commissioners, character owners, editors, study material used by these people, the software used, the hardware used, who created the software, who created the hardware, etc. Why allow some and not others? (I mean, Gabe Newell helped write the Source engine, which is what Source FilmMaker is based on, so why shouldn't he be credited on SFM posts since his work went into making it?)

If we don't focus, the tags would become a mess and create even more confusion than there already is. As it is, if someone does visual art and has art here, they have an artist tag. If such an artist happens to instead be a commissioner or voice actor or whatever on a particular piece, people sometimes think they should still be tagged, so they get tagged as an artist on images or animations they didn't create, which has to be cleaned up. If we legitimize tagging VAs, writers, commissioners, etc, then they should be tagged, resulting in them being tagged more, and more people will use the wrong tags (e.g. a writer tag instead of a character owner tag), significantly increasing the amount of cleaning work.

We tag the existence of things yes, because they're part of the image from the source. But we don't tag its length, whether it (the story, not the image) contains dialog, gay sex, or the number of characters in it, etc.

My dude, literally what commissioner is asking for a tag? And most sona characters already do get tags anyway.

This is such a flimsy excuse cause its just a bunch of what-ifs when clearly the focus with this discussion is voice actors and sound designers

watsit said:
Because if we don't focus, there's no bound to who can be credited. If we can tag everything that went into a piece of art, the tags would become unwieldy and useless. Not just the visual artist, but also modelers, texturers, animators, voice actors, writers, commissioners, character owners, editors, study material used by these people, the software used, the hardware used, who created the software, who created the hardware, etc. Why allow some and not others? (I mean, Gabe Newell helped write the Source engine, which is what Source FilmMaker is based on, so why shouldn't he be credited on SFM posts since his work went into making it?)

...Come on, even you have to realize that a slippery-slope argument is a stretch.

watsit said:

We tag the existence of things yes, because they're part of the image from the source. But we don't tag its length, whether it (the story, not the image) contains dialog, gay sex, or the number of characters in it, etc.

wait we dont tag the length of stories...?
short_story
medium_story
long_story

lewddevbitches said:
My dude, literally what commissioner is asking for a tag?

Here's a few easy-to-spot ones. There are plenty more that are just the person's name and aren't so easy to find, or who are also artists having their artist tag put on images they commissioned and not created themselves.

lewddevbitches said:
This is such a flimsy excuse cause its just a bunch of what-ifs when clearly the focus with this discussion is voice actors and sound designers

But the underlying issue encompasses more than just VAs and sound designers, and these are the same arguments other people will make. So if there's going to be any change, it's best addressed now.

strikerman said:
...Come on, even you have to realize that a slippery-slope argument is a stretch.

The point still stands. Why allow some and not others? Why cut some people out of "tagging credit" and not others? Where's the cutoff, and why put it there?

cutefox123 said:
wait we dont tag the length of stories...?
short_story
medium_story
long_story

I've never seen those tags before. And considering they don't have a wiki page or any kind of definition for what counts as short, medium, or long, they don't seem well handled.

voidslutva said:
You just gave me one of the most disgustingly oblivious takes I've read in a while so I'm going to be completely and openly honest with you.

Voice actors. Sound designers. 3d modelers. Editors. WE ARE ARTISTS. We make ART. I don't know how anyone with even half a brain can possibly believe that it's not. We're all the artist of the work because we're all working together IN COLLABORATION to deliver all of what you so love to consume. We get paid by the artist to come onto their project and help them bring it to life in a way that sounds good and looks good. For 3d modelers, artist use THEIR ASSETS that THEY CREATED to make the animation/still they just uploaded here! The art you see would not be the same art if it does not have that, because art is a combination of ALL OF THE ELEMENTS IT'S MADE OF. So why, pray tell, is that such a hard concept to understand for you?

You say that, "Artists simply put credits in the videos themselves or description," but you fail to mention that there is no tagging system at all on twitter like there is here. Tags are your navigation here, they are how most people find what they want and filter what they don't. That is the only option they have to credit us. And I absolutely love that you mentioned video tagging, because for all that it's worth it just proves how little you actually know about our community despite sitting at your desk on e621 all day. Video tagging does nothing. How often do you read all the names during the credits in a movie theater? Not too often I'd imagine. So how often do you think people are seeing us and searching us out? Hmm... Doesn't seem like it'd be that often. Tags help credit us so that people can easily find us and follow what we do, they're extremely important. That's why I and many others require the artist/animator to tag us in the post so that people know how we helped on the project. THAT'S WHY I and many others are so appalled by how such a simple thing can be so poorly handled.

Good. That's great. Then get rid of any and all sound edits and videos with any audio. Actually? Since you're so high-and-mighty, how about you BAN YOURSELF by deleting your account since you yourself don't even follow the current guidelines despite knowing them all by heart! I see all those posts you're ripping from artists and animators to upload for browny points here, and lots of them have sound, so therefore you are directly contradicting yourself and making yourself look like the world's biggest hypocrite. But you won't, and neither will any of your friends, because you know how much you like them and you know that if this site didn't have them a huge chunk of people would stop coming here. So you still want them! You just don't want to credit the artists that work on them. Nice. You're a real hero mr. janitor.

You're right! Not everyone needs to be tagged because not everyone cares to be tagged. But the people who do? The people who are the ones that can ACTUALLY benefit from it? When we come to this site and ask to be tagged as artists alongside other artists who worked on it, we expect to be treated with enough respect to have that. AT LEAST that. People don't read descriptions, they read tags. So when we're not there, we don't exist.

Here's a solution for that really funny thing you just said. You ready? It's a doozey. Next to the name... add what they do. It's not hard! I know you can do it because you do it for every other god forsaken thing here. You can add parentheses around any tag you want: sonic_the_hedgehog_(series), sonic_the_hedgehog_(idw), sonic_the_hedgehog_(comics), sonic_the_hedgehog_(archie), penis_(erect), like jesus you can EASILY do that. You can—and literally just did—go and completely null a tag like VoidSlutVA across any and all works it's tagged in. Thanks for that btw! You could also create a subsection for credits in the tagging area. No? Well I'm giving you options here that easily address the issue, yet you seem to be more than happy just sitting there explaining why we don't deserve the right to have our work be credited instead of bringing this issue to light.

I find it so funny that you're this elitist about art that's uploaded here. You... being someone who's not an artist, knows nothing about different forms of art, and doesn't have a clue about what we do. You don't like to call what we do art but... you still think you have any say in the matter? You're a janitor on e621 and you got that status by reuploading 148 PAGES worth of art from people who do. And you know what? Those people you reupload from would agree with me. They're my friends; I work with them, I talk to them, we play games together. They actually have respect for what I do, unlike you and some of your elitist buddies. They'd agree it's art. They'd have no issue with me being tagged alongside them! Yet for some reason you do. Hm.

I'd take a moment to re-evaluate on that.

There's so much things to unpack here that I'm not certain that to what degree and how to do it all.

Sculptors are artists, yet, we delete photos of statues. Does that mean they aren't artists? No, of course they are.
I have been simply explaining the system and how it currently works, I have never said or at least intented to say that these kind of artists aren't artists.

Tags are meant to be for a singular thing only, tag solo is reserved for posts where there's only one thing that counts as a character and there's wiki outlining what counts as a character for this tagging purpose. Similarly, artist tags are reserved for posts where the artist was the visual artist of that specific post. This requires more work than just "tag everyone" because if I'm searching for artwork from artist, it should not return posts where artist did writing or where they helped in some aspects.

I have also been one that's actively asking for features to lessen importance of uploader of specific post as the person who uploads something here, shouldn't get almost any credit really or at least any more than other users helping with sourcing, tags, description, etc. so that's why uploader in post isn't visible directly but it's first person in tags/desc history instead. There has been cases in past where users get way too attached to the stuff they upload and the counter going up in their profile which has resulted in major problems. One thing I don't like is approver showing either, as approving post also shouldn't be any meaningful thing to have on post and should only been shown in event history, but our current contesting for post approval/deletion is still to message manually approver/deleter (which I disagree as that does create tiny echochambers, rather than someone higher up looking at the situation with second pair of eyes).
I mostly handle file related stuff so the main reason for lot of animation uploads on my account is stuff like fixing transcodes made by other users.

Also this is where you also need to remember there's two sides to this thing: my personal and how site operates and I have been stating both. Pay attention.
How site does stuff, I'm basically just doing what I have been told. At that point you are yelling angrily at customer service clerk, it does nothing outside of getting you angry because all they can really do is apologize and forward the issue. There's contact button at the bottom of every page if you want to speak with management directly, for my actions there's report button in everyones profile.
Personally, like I have said, do not care either way, but like with lore tags (which had been asked for years and we were able to get only after whole site code being redone), it's nice they are there and do not interfere with anything else. From site point, artist tags currently are only for visual artists, so taggin any other artist currently is not acceptable unless there's change to that.
Forum topics like this help to achieve that change, however there has yet to be a single admin talking in this thread.

The tag example you gave isn't exactly applicable, because even with those, these are essentially umbrella tag with specifications to them. Then the last one is combination that would cover 100% of posts with two seperate tags and would be invalidated as such.
Here we would be talking of specifically having two entirely seperate tags and disambiguations are always painful to handle, usually with aliases and implications applied. If you have any idea how tagging works here, then saying "it's just that simple" would undermine all the users helping with tagging projects.

I do also know a lot of artists and talk with many personally. Talking in voice chat while streaming art and video games also makes explaining stuff like this much easier and usually I'm able to get my points through easier as well, as I do not like writing as usually I come across really aggressive for some reason, not sure if it's bad english translation or the manner I present my points.

TL;DR: if we manage to make this happen without it being absolute nightmare either practical or technical standpoint and break the foundations, great, I'm in support.
However how things are currently handled, you cannot add artist tag if the artist did anything sound related, this is why this thread also exsists as many users and janitors are tired of manually enforcing this and getting shit on for no reason other than doing what they are told, invalidation would've made this automatic and I believe there are some editors and commissioners whose tags have been aliased to invalid because of this specific reason (because this is another hot topic, commissioners do not get tagged either).
I would almost be in contact with head admin who is primarily in charge of these things to begin with.

EDIT: Oh yeah, one aspect that is unfortunate is that searching for posts with specific aspect that's not tagged is not ideal. There's metatags for searching for specific sources and descriptions, but if posts lack those they cannot be searched. Sets are specifically for this purpose and work like hidden tags, however to edit set you have to be person who created it or has been invited to edit it. So from this standpoint this should definitely be resolved as many would most likely want to use this for searching and blacklisting similar to visual artist tags.

watsit said:
The point still stands. Why allow some and not others? Why cut some people out of "tagging credit" and not others? Where's the cutoff, and why put it there?

As much as I want to call your bluff, I'll go about this a different way: the whole site already has limits. We don't tag the exact shade of yellow that's on a character's fur, we just use yellow_fur. We don't tag the exact angle a character is facing, we use broad strokes (looking_away, looking_back, etc.). We don't tag the exact aspect ratio for every random two numbers, we use common and established values (1:1, 16:9, etc.). We already allow some and not others. Maybe in the future we'll extend what we allow to credit people further, maybe not (and I'm already pretty partial to tagging other contributors as well); for the time being, though, I'd say that voice actors play enough of a significant role that they ought to be tagged.

I am sick to fucking death of how this website seems to consistently have a vendetta against sound designers/voice actors/any kind of sound editors. I am sick of these creators being constantly undermined and devalued like their work is unimportant. I am sick of the snobbish, elitist, neckbeards who run this fucking website who have their heads so far down their own asses and refuse to listen to what other people say about how their garbage website is run

strikerman said:
Maybe in the future we'll extend what we allow to credit people further, maybe not (and I'm already pretty partial to tagging other contributors as well); for the time being, though, I'd say that voice actors play enough of a significant role that they ought to be tagged.

So you don't have any particular reason other than you feel they should be tagged, and don't have a reason others should remain untagged.

This is basically the problem I see here. This site is for visual art, so we tag the visual artists that make an image/animation. Other people are also involved in the image/animation even if they may not have directly created it, which are currently not (supposed to be) tagged. We both agree that it would be ridiculous to allow tagging anyone even remotely associated with an image, so if we start extending who gets tagged as being involved in images/animations, I think there should be a clear reason to have the cutoff point moved to wherever it's moved to, rather than basing it on some feeling of significance. Otherwise, I see no difference in a commissioner or character owner making these same arguments, that the work they put into making scenarios or designing characters for others to draw is significant enough work to have their own tag.

watsit said:
So you don't have any particular reason other than you feel they should be tagged

i literally said that they "play enough of a significant role"

edit: if your next point is about who gets to decide what role is significant, please don't

strikerman said:
i literally said that they "play enough of a significant role"

And I did say "rather than basing it on some feeling of significance". Is there some measure of what's "enough of a significant role" that you're basing this on, beyond it being how you feel? Since, again, plenty of people think commissioners, character owners, software used, etc, also have "enough of a significant role" in the art, too. It's an incredibly vague and subjective standard if that's all there is to your reason.

And this isn't even touching on how we'd reliably keep tags separate for people that do multiple things. For instance, having a dragon-v0942 tag for artwork they created separate from some other tag for their VA work, as plenty of people won't realize there's separate tags and will just use one tag for everything they're involved in, making a mess for people that are trying to look at just their artwork or just their VA work.

watsit said:
And I did say "rather than basing it on some feeling of significance". Is there some measure of what's "enough of a significant role" that you're basing this on, beyond it being how you feel? Since, again, plenty of people think commissioners, character owners, software used, etc, also have "enough of a significant role" in the art, too. It's an incredibly vague and subjective standard if that's all there is to your reason.

I'm a janitor, at some point making subjective judgment calls is part of the job description. Not every single little thing will have a neat and tidy answer; pedantically picking apart at an argument doesn't do anything in your favor.

watsit said:
And this isn't even touching on how we'd reliably keep tags separate for people that do multiple things. For instance, having a dragon-v0942 tag for artwork they created separate from some other tag for their VA work, as plenty of people won't realize there's separate tags and will just use one tag for everything they're involved in, making a mess for people that are trying to look at just their artwork or just their VA work.

As mentioned above, we can have multiple tags.

sgtabbeyrubber said:
I am sick to fucking death of how this website seems to consistently have a vendetta against sound designers/voice actors/any kind of sound editors. I am sick of these creators being constantly undermined and devalued like their work is unimportant. I am sick of the snobbish, elitist, neckbeards who run this fucking website who have their heads so far down their own asses and refuse to listen to what other people say about how their garbage website is run

Extreme minority crying really really loudly, more like. You think the average user cares at all about voice actors being tagged? Hah

The focus of e621 is visual art. It makes perfect sense for there to be no VA tagged.

That said, as long as they aren't shitting up the artist section (thereby making it harder to find what I'm actually looking for), I don't really care if they're tagged in general or not.

From a tagging perspective I usually see it as helping users find content they want, so if they want to see all posts with a specific voice actor then they should be able to.

I'd agree with adding <name>_(va) tags, either to the artist category or meta category. I don't really see the point in not tagging them.

mairo said:
I do also know a lot of artists and talk with many personally. Talking in voice chat while streaming art and video games also makes explaining stuff like this much easier and usually I'm able to get my points through easier as well, as I do not like writing as usually I come across really aggressive for some reason, not sure if it's bad english translation or the manner I present my points.

Your english seems fine, I guess it's how you go straigth to the point I guess?
Sounding knowledgeable, as in, explaining in detail and being confident on what you say, can be interpreted as being 'pompous' or 'arrogant' for someone in a bad frustrated mood, I believe.

strikerman said:
I'm a janitor, at some point making subjective judgment calls is part of the job description. Not every single little thing will have a neat and tidy answer; pedantically picking apart at an argument doesn't do anything in your favor.

I'd still like there to be something, though. Rather than just "VAs should get tagged because I think they're significant, commissioners aren't significant enough" with no elaboration, while seemingly ignoring the potential issues people keep bringing up. I don't think this is pedantic to just want something as a guiding principle to where and how a line is drawn, so to speak.

strikerman said:
As mentioned above, we can have multiple tags.

And when people keep tagging oolay-tiger, dragon-v0942, etc on posts they voiced, with no indication they should instead be tagged oolay-tiger_(va), dragon-v0942_(va)? Or an animation someone animated and voiced just being tagged some_creator thinking that covers both, leaving some_creator_(va) off and no one knowing it should be added. This is a fair bit more subtle than some_creator vs some_creator_(character) where the distinction is more obvious, which is the only other typical way I've seen the same tag used for separate purposes (pokemon and digimon and the like being outliers, and not generally explicitly tagged to begin with). Given the number of disambiguation tags that still get used because people don't know how to suffix things, it doesn't seem as though people have a habit of using the correct version of a tag when they can just tag the base name regardless and call it a day.

watsit said:
And when people keep tagging oolay-tiger, dragon-v0942, etc on posts they voiced, with no indication they should instead be tagged oolay-tiger_(va), dragon-v0942_(va)? Or an animation someone animated and voiced just being tagged some_creator thinking that covers both, leaving some_creator_(va) off and no one knowing it should be added. This is a fair bit more subtle than some_creator vs some_creator_(character) where the distinction is more obvious, which is the only other typical way I've seen the same tag used for separate purposes (pokemon and digimon and the like being outliers, and not generally explicitly tagged to begin with). Given the number of disambiguation tags that still get used because people don't know how to suffix things, it doesn't seem as though people have a habit of using the correct version of a tag when they can just tag the base name regardless and call it a day.

Then we inform people, just as we do with every other mistag. People will get the message once they're told.

watsit said:
I'd still like there to be something, though. Rather than just "VAs should get tagged because I think they're significant, commissioners aren't significant enough" with no elaboration, while seemingly ignoring the potential issues people keep bringing up. I don't think this is pedantic to just want something as a guiding principle to where and how a line is drawn, so to speak.

I'm going to ask you seriously and genuinely, now that you brought it up: what are the actual issues with tagging them?

So, if we're going to treat VAs and sound designers as Artists here, then will/do they have the power to takedown posts that they voice-acted and/or worked sounds with?

strikerman said:
Then we inform people, just as we do with every other mistag. People will get the message once they're told.

I guess that's worked so f- oh wait. You can tell people to stop it all day, but they'll keep getting (mis)used, and they'll keep needing to be cleaned up. We shouldn't endeavor to create more easy-to-misuse tags and create more cleanup work if we can help it. And as this is a site focused on visual art, and audio is incidental to posts, I don't see tagging voice actors as that much of a necessity to be worth the added headache.

strikerman said:
I'm going to ask you seriously and genuinely, now that you brought it up: what are the actual issues with tagging them?

Increasing the number of ambiguous tags and creating more cleanup work. Third-party sound clips; should we be tagging tv or movie actors as a "voice actor" for an animation, because a voice clip of them from some show or movie was used? Some people say yes, some say no. We don't tag a show's animators as a post's artists simply because a screen grab video clip from the show was incorporated into a larger piece, so it would seem odd for a post's audio to get such special privilege that visuals don't. Music and singing; should we tag singers, whether they're part of a band or not? And should they also be grouped under "voice actor", or another separate group? Shouldn't we then be expected to tag individual musicians (if we tag individual VAs that are part of a talent group, surely we should tag individual musicians that are part of a band)? And if we're going to start tagging non-visual artists, how do we decide where the line should be drawn? How do we stop a post's tag list from becoming a post's production credits list, beyond setting an arbitrary cutoff without a reason? And another issue brought up below:

monsterbomb10010 said:
So, if we're going to treat VAs and sound designers as Artists here, then will/do they have the power to takedown posts that they voice-acted and/or worked sounds with?

I'd be surprised if they don't already have that power, in the general sense. Writers, character owners, and commissioners can takedown posts with their characters or had commissioned, despite not being tagged. However, in cases where the artist uploaded it themselves, that dynamic does change as only the artist can then take it down (without extenuating circumstances). So elevating VAs and sound designers to "Artists" in that sense would give them extra power over posts they were involved in, compared to writers, character owners, and commissioners. Which I'm sure would be seen as quite unfair treatment and increase the call to have even more people tagged as an Artist.

watsit said:
I guess that's worked so f- oh wait. You can tell people to stop it all day, but they'll keep getting (mis)used, and they'll keep needing to be cleaned up. We shouldn't endeavor to create more easy-to-misuse tags and create more cleanup work if we can help it. And as this is a site focused on visual art, and audio is incidental to posts, I don't see tagging voice actors as that much of a necessity to be worth the added headache.

Increasing the number of ambiguous tags and creating more cleanup work. Third-party sound clips; should we be tagging tv or movie actors as a "voice actor" for an animation, because a voice clip of them from some show or movie was used? Some people say yes, some say no. We don't tag a show's animators as a post's artists simply because a screen grab video clip from the show was incorporated into a larger piece, so it would seem odd for a post's audio to get such special privilege that visuals don't. Music and singing; should we tag singers, whether they're part of a band or not? And should they also be grouped under "voice actor", or another separate group? Shouldn't we then be expected to tag individual musicians (if we tag individual VAs that are part of a talent group, surely we should tag individual musicians that are part of a band)? And if we're going to start tagging non-visual artists, how do we decide where the line should be drawn? How do we stop a post's tag list from becoming a post's production credits list, beyond setting an arbitrary cutoff without a reason? And another issue brought up below:

I'd be surprised if they don't already have that power, in the general sense. Writers, character owners, and commissioners can takedown posts with their characters or had commissioned, despite not being tagged. However, in cases where the artist uploaded it themselves, that dynamic does change as only the artist can then take it down (without extenuating circumstances). So elevating VAs and sound designers to "Artists" in that sense would give them extra power over posts they were involved in, compared to writers, character owners, and commissioners. Which I'm sure would be seen as quite unfair treatment and increase the call to have even more people tagged as an Artist.

The whatabout-isms have seriously gotta stop if this conversation is going to go anywhere.

There was an animator who uploaded a piece a while back and without knowing about this crazy restriction, they put the name of the VA who was in the animation. At no point did they put down the music composer of the background music or the site the sounds came from as one the tags. It was literally just the voice actor. Because they must've thought, "Well this person has been a voice in other animations of mine before, so here's a way for more people to see what other animations he's voiced in."

No one is saying for the VA tags to be for audio only posts or whatever. Its for those whose audio was literally a part of the animation. If someone really likes how a VAs' moaned sound or how there dialogue was and they're curious about what other animations they've been in, they should be able to just click that name in the tags to see all the animations that person has been a part of. Much easier that way. You get a direct way of seeing all the animations you like, with that person's voice being a part of it. Its clearly not just about visuals anymore. And this discussion is going to keep coming up cause this is such a "wait, they don't have that already?" issue.

watsit said:
I guess that's worked so f- oh wait. You can tell people to stop it all day, but they'll keep getting (mis)used, and they'll keep needing to be cleaned up. We shouldn't endeavor to create more easy-to-misuse tags and create more cleanup work if we can help it. And as this is a site focused on visual art, and audio is incidental to posts, I don't see tagging voice actors as that much of a necessity to be worth the added headache.

Well, just like I assume we do currently, if we spot people frequently mistagging something, we first contact them via dmail telling them to pay attention to that, and if they keep mistagging frequently, report for bad tagging.

I get the whole "if we allow VAs to be tagged we must allow every other contributor to be tagged too", but honestly I think this isn't a proper argument for the current discussion.
We should analyze and decide what is and isn't allowed on a case by case basis, in this case, what should happen with VAs and only VAs. If other issues arise in the future, we shall deal with those.

I may be wrong tho

Watsit, do you believe that a system needs to be 100% perfect, lacking in even insignificant, potentially hypothetical issues, before it can be implemented? Because otherwise, it gives the impression that you're arguing for the sake of arguing.

watsit said:
I'd still like there to be something, though. Rather than just "VAs should get tagged because I think they're significant, commissioners aren't significant enough" with no elaboration, while seemingly ignoring the potential issues people keep bringing up. I don't think this is pedantic to just want something as a guiding principle to where and how a line is drawn, so to speak.

Actually, I agree with you there. Having a clear guideline that cuts to the heart of the matter would be much more useful to the discussion as it continues than this back and forth of "significance" and "well some say." Perhaps some are expecting to get the idea approved first and the details hashed out later? Or maybe they lack the confidence to draw a line in the sand for fear of being accused of it being "too arbitrary." Or perhaps they just struggle to find the right words, as I often do.

While it's been a long time since I've been active around here, I do still lurk, and it's clear to me that this conversation will have difficulty moving forward without something more concrete to anchor to. And I do think it is worth moving forward. So sure, I'll do the legwork. Every time it's come up it's given me some thoughts, anyway, and they're burning a hole in my pocket.

I do think I've parsed out what advocates in these threads tend to think is "significant enough" to be tagged. Cutting away the emotional arguments and the slippery slopes, it's pretty clear to my reading that there is a specific class of contributor where an artist tag for them appears to be both in demand and useful for tagging: those who directly did work that is present in the final piece of art. The trick then becomes how to define those artists in a way that is useful for searching while culling the chaff.

To that end, I put this forward as a starting point:

So there it is. Is it arbitrary? Sure is! But many of the tagging rules here are arbitrary for the sake of being useful (or even just usable), and it's worked out. More importantly, does it clearly express what folks here are advocating for? I'm fairly confident it cuts close. Close enough, at least, to get the discussion moving in a more useful direction.

Alternative proposal: remove the sound channel from every video uploaded to the site. Bam, no more problem. What kind of freak watches porn with the sound turned on, anyway?

As a VA myself, I find it honestly pretty disheartening to not be able to be found on the website under tags and not feel as important as the animators, modelers, and artists who create content here. Just because my work is audio and not visual shouldn't mean that the effort put into recording and editing the sound for animations shouldn't be taken into account. If you really enjoy a voice actor's work, you can't find them on e6. I know plenty of other VAs that I want to look up from time to time, both for reference material and for general enjoyment, but I can't do so. This means I have to bookmark each and every individual animation into a bookmarks folder rather than just be able to search their username tag and find the material like I would every other artist out there.

To be frank, it feels as if you're telling voice actors and sound artists alike that their content just isn't as important and they're not good enough to have their own tags. Descriptions are optional, and as such they won't always have credits linking to profiles.
There should either be an audio category for the voice actors and sound artists or they should be listed under the artists tag.

lunarlegacy said:
As a VA myself, I find it honestly pretty disheartening to not be able to be found on the website under tags and not feel as important as the animators, modelers, and artists who create content here. Just because my work is audio and not visual shouldn't mean that the effort put into recording and editing the sound for animations shouldn't be taken into account. If you really enjoy a voice actor's work, you can't find them on e6. I know plenty of other VAs that I want to look up from time to time, both for reference material and for general enjoyment, but I can't do so. This means I have to bookmark each and every individual animation into a bookmarks folder rather than just be able to search their username tag and find the material like I would every other artist out there.

To be frank, it feels as if you're telling voice actors and sound artists alike that their content just isn't as important and they're not good enough to have their own tags. Descriptions are optional, and as such they won't always have credits linking to profiles.
There should either be an audio category for the voice actors and sound artists or they should be listed under the artists tag.

If it persists, I find this ridiculous as well, the solution I recommend is to work with the animators to go CDNP and have the version authorised for upload to E6 have a huge, ugly watermark plastered in the centre of the screen with

AUDIO BY <VA/Foley>
E621 Watermarked Version

overlayed over the entire thing. Or just have "audio version linked in description" if you don't want to go the full middle finger route.

Do VAs deserve to be tagged? Probably. Personally I don't really care about it one way or another for a variety of reasons buuuuuuut:

votp said:
If it persists, I find this ridiculous as well, the solution I recommend is to work with the animators to go CDNP and have the version authorised for upload to E6 have a huge, ugly watermark plastered in the centre of the screen with

AUDIO BY <VA/Foley>
E621 Watermarked Version

overlayed over the entire thing. Or just have "audio version linked in description" if you don't want to go the full middle finger route.

This is a terrible idea and probably a good way to remind people to blacklist distracting_watermark (thanks for reminding me this is a thing) or to just straight up blacklist artists who do it. Also, afaik, depending on how you implement the watermark it could be considered advertising and get deleted. Your 'middle finger' might actually count for that.

I think VotP was being sarcastic.

desertaisha said:
I think VotP was being sarcastic.

I'm being dead serious; if we go down this route and we arbitrarily select what kind of art is considered art to the degree of refusing to credit certain artists because we've decided sound design and voice acting isn't artistic enough, then an equally draconian and absurd response seems only fair. After all,

mairo said:
This is one of the primary reasons why asset creators shouldn't be tagged as artists.
Had post featuring models from extremely popular animator and comments had people going "wow, didn't know these artists did collab!" when they clearly didn't.

Artist tag should be for the artist of the work in question only. Not for 3D models, not for voices or sounds, not for editors, etc.

Even on twitter, artists simply put credits in the videos themselves or description "3D model by X, sounds by Y", this isn't that differend in here.

if we only allow credit in the description, which is easily-missed or in the case of every single explicit post removed when it is inevitably scraped by bots anyway, then the solution is to put it in the video itself in a way that cannot be missed or clipped.

The only "fair play" here seems to be to make an E6 version of a post with all works set at CDNP with one of the following features;

No Audio - Watermarked with "E6 version: Audio version linked in description"
Watermarked E6 version with VA/Foley credit

Or simply fully register work fully as DNP, or only allow the no-audio version.
As prior mentioned E6 could automatically strip all audio from uploads as a "middle-ground" to ensure the site is not actively hosting work that has had credit deliberately removed by this particular enforcement, or the "artist" category needs to be split with the current field being renamed to "Visual Artist" and a new category or categories created of "Audio Art/Acting" or similar. This would also be a logical way to credit the briefly-mentioned issue of asset creators under an "Assets" category.

There are many, many ways this situation can be handled, it is clear the current methodology is going to be a highway to content creators having their content removed and possibly set to DNP under the current "solution". Something needs to be thought of, or we can simply watch a downward spiral of spite being paid for spite, actual or percieved.

Ah, I misinterpreted your tone. I agree with your general opinion, that voice actors should be given credit outside of the optional, often excluded description box, though I feel like any of those options you listed are likely not going to happen realistically.

Like I said before in this thread, I agree - don't think this is a good look on the site's part.

desertaisha said:
Ah, I misinterpreted your tone. I agree with your general opinion, that voice actors should be given credit outside of the optional, often excluded description box, though I feel like any of those options you listed are likely not going to happen realistically.

Like I said before in this thread, I agree - don't think this is a good look on the site's part.

It may come down to the same situation as the Transgender character tagging issue where, until enough artists say "no, I'm done, DNP because of this", it won't be resolved.

strikerman said:
Watsit, do you believe that a system needs to be 100% perfect, lacking in even insignificant, potentially hypothetical issues, before it can be implemented? Because otherwise, it gives the impression that you're arguing for the sake of arguing.

No, and I never suggested so. Bringing up issues and not getting answers for how to realistically deal with it, isn't needing it to be "100% perfect". It's about having a practical way forward that won't end in a slippery slope (turning the tags list into a Production Credits list) and/or cause more headaches without actually solving the complaint (more cleanup work, and other people still complaining that they aren't tagged despite being artists too, repeating the same arguments and going through this same swing and dance all over again).

votp said:
I'm being dead serious; if we go down this route and we arbitrarily select what kind of art is considered art to the degree of refusing to credit certain artists because we've decided sound design and voice acting isn't artistic enough, then an equally draconian and absurd response seems only fair.

Since its inception, e621 has been for visual art. If you want to call anything arbitrary, it's that. The e6 admins arbitrarily decided this is a site for visual furry art, and not voice work, music, or writing. A post may contain those things, but the majority don't, and if a post is going to be accepted or rejected, it will be on the grounds of its visual qualities. The rules for who and what to tag are then based on the site being for visual artwork, they aren't themselves set arbitrarily. What would be arbitrary is extending the current rules to tag VAs and sound designers as additional artists, but not writers, character designers, scenario creators, or anyone else involved in the piece's production, despite them being artists in their own right too.

blodsho said:
Those to be tagged are artists* who have both a) actively and b) knowingly contributed to the material present in the post. If either or both tests fail, they should not be tagged as artists.
_{*: That is, those who have performed creative work to bring something to realization beyond mere conception. Commissioners and character owners with ideas are not artists.}

A) What is active contribution?

Active contribution means that the artist in question created something for a particular, specific work - they were involved in the actual creative process.

If an animator contacts a voice actor to voice a character for an animation they're working on and they reach an agreement and collab together, then they will have both actively participated in the creation of that animation.

If, however, the animator chops up some ripped voice lines from a video game, or Dragonball Z, or they're slotting in sound effects from Zonkpunch's zip file of mayonnaise fisting noises from a while back, while the animator will still have actively participated, any of those others would not have, and they would not be tagged. For these inactive contributors, continuing the practice of credit through descriptions, as necessary, should be adequate. That is, in my experience, often the expected level of accreditation (if any at all) had the animation been posted elsewhere, like FurAffinity.

So basically first-party contributors, who do direct work on a piece (and not the ideas, concepts, or general designs behind it). This is a good start, though some may not be happy that it would exclude the likes of Petruz (who created models and released them for free for anyone to use as they wish, but isn't then involved in most of the images with their models that people keep tagging their copyright on). I'm not sure where this would put writers, though; writing dialog would seem to fall under active contribution since the words they put together are directly in the image, while story writing (detailing what the characters ultimately do) seems more like ideas or concepts. That may need additional clarification, but it seems like a good starting point.

watsit said:
So basically first-party contributors, who do direct work on a piece (and not the ideas, concepts, or general designs behind it).

Right. :)

watsit said:
This is a good start, though some may not be happy that it would exclude the likes of Petruz (who created models and released them for free for anyone to use as they wish, but isn't then involved in most of the images with their models that people keep tagging their copyright on).

That is true, some will definitely be disappointed there. Ultimately I considered that the first-party creators for a work would be the most relevant, and thus the most useful for tagging and searching. Another point, talking about 3d models specifically, is that many characters, even popular ones, don't have a wide variety of good models available for open use. I kept remembering a certain point in time some years back where there was just this one Renamon (or maybe it was Taomon?) model that seemed like everyone and their dog was using. Had the creator of that model been tagged on every post containing it, their tag would have been very nearly synonymous with "3d_animation renamon". Now, of course the pool of Renamon models has diversified a bit, but the same problem can crop up for new characters rather easily (especially for new pokemon releases).

Not that I want to diminish the work that these asset creators put in, of course. Personally I wouldn't be opposed to those whose work is recognizable in the community to have a copyright tag. Seems like a good fit for "third parties whose work is present in part of this work" and seeing as copyright tags can cover entire franchises, holidays, and the like I reckon that casting such a wide net isn't wholly unacceptable. That's probably a discussion for another thread if we were to go that route, though.

watsit said:
I'm not sure where this would put writers, though; writing dialog would seem to fall under active contribution since the words they put together are directly in the image, while story writing (detailing what the characters ultimately do) seems more like ideas or concepts. That may need additional clarification, but it seems like a good starting point.

Now that's a good point. Writers had crossed my mind for things like dialogue in a comic or the script being voiced in an animation counting for sure, but I didn't think of scenario writers, or even storyboard artists in some cases. As a game master for tabletop RPG's (effectively a scenario writer, of a sort), there's a part of me that wants to make a case for things like narrative themes and character arcs "being present" in art outside of the literal text within and how that does take genuine artistry to do well... The other part of me wants to point out that trying to find such deep concepts in a typical post here (at least, within works where that writing wouldn't also already be part of the dialogue/script - there are some very well-written comics here, after all) may be wishful thinking at best.

To think of it another way, what would a post that has a writer who only contributed non-dialogue, scenario writing realistically look like? It would have to be big. Something where the animator or comic illustrator couldn't have just come up with it on their own or worked off of their commissioner's idea (because that artist is still gonna be tagged for their illustration/animation anyway). A relatively long, complex, multi-scene story... that also has no written or scripted dialogue. I wouldn't say it's impossible, but I'm not sure it's realistic.

_{Apologies if I rambled a bit there, that last bit I sort of worked out in my head as I was typing it out. It's also a bit late and I'm probably off to bed as soon as I hit send on this.}

strikerman said:
Watsit, do you believe that a system needs to be 100% perfect, lacking in even insignificant, potentially hypothetical issues, before it can be implemented? Because otherwise, it gives the impression that you're arguing for the sake of arguing.

As mentioned in this thread already, tags like dragon-v0942 become a scrambled mess.
And then there's stuff like this for example. 11 extra artist tags on one post.

cane751 said:
As mentioned in this thread already, tags like dragon-v0942 become a scrambled mess.
And then there's stuff like this for example. 11 extra artist tags on one post.

Okay I see 11 people who's voices were in the piece that you took credit tags from.

Any other use would just think, "ah those are the tags for people who are in this video. Let me see what other animations they've been in

cane751 said:
As mentioned in this thread already, tags like dragon-v0942 become a scrambled mess.
And then there's stuff like this for example. 11 extra artist tags on one post.

Simple solution - make tag menus compressed by default and you have to click to unfold them. It looks cleaner, you can organize things easier. Make a seperate category for audio related tags.
That's all that needs to be done. We just want representation.

lunarlegacy said:
Simple solution - make tag menus compressed by default and you have to click to unfold them. It looks cleaner, you can organize things easier. Make a seperate category for audio related tags.
That's all that needs to be done. We just want representation.

And makes it so people don't have to leave the site, just to find other animations the VA has been a part of

I'll say what I have said in other threads of this nature. Audio work is an artform. Just as visual works are.

That said making tags for individuals that do that kind of work invalid is no better than saying they their work has no bearing on the finished works, and that they are irrelevant. Almost every time this gets brought up it is always a few vocal higher privs against a majority of users, and the people who make the content themselves.

If it is such a big deal, just shove it in the meta category as that is supplementary information about the works themselves, like Voice-acting and VABY_(Artist name here).

It doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to be good enough for now until it can be segued into a long term solution later.

lunarlegacy said:
Simple solution - make tag menus compressed by default and you have to click to unfold them. It looks cleaner, you can organize things easier.
That's all that needs to be done. We just want representation.

This idea gets a thumbs down from me. It makes browsing tags of an image more inconvenient.

deadoon said:
I'll say what I have said in other threads of this nature. Audio work is an artform. Just as visual works are.

No one has ever said otherwise.

deadoon said:
That said making tags for individuals that do that kind of work invalid is no better than saying they their work has no bearing on the finished works, and that they are irrelevant.

No one has ever claimed that voice actors are irrelevant as individuals. Mischaracterizing the people you're debating isn't going to win them over to your side. And yes, as far as a given post being relevant for this site goes, the audio track has no bearing on whether it's accepted or rejected here (you can have the best audio ever, but if the visuals are a mess, it's going to be deleted, and similarly, you can have the worst audio ever^[1], but if the visuals are good enough, it would be kept). Voice work isn't the focus of the site, so the voice work (not the voice actor) isn't relevant to whether a post is kept or deleted. As Mairo said before, third-party edits adding audio to a silent animation should technically be considered duplicates of the original and deleted as such.

^[1] Within reason. If a post has an audio track that can literally damage speakers or someone's hearing, I'm sure something would be done about it as it would be considered a malicious file.

deadoon said:
Almost every time this gets brought up it is always a few vocal higher privs against a majority of users, and the people who make the content themselves.

Privileged users have no additional power over these things. We don't run the site, and have to follow the rules as anyone else. In any case, the admins aren't completely against it. As bitWolfy said not too long ago:

bitWolfy said:
My solution to the problem would be to introduce a new tag category specifically for contributors that wouldn't be classified as artists.
But that's a more complicated task on a technical level. It's not as simple as just clicking a button or adding a few lines of code.

So if there is to be a way to tag additional (non-visual artist) credits for a piece, it would likely be as a separate tag category, like a Contributor tag section. It won't be an easy thing to add, but it could happen at some point. The Meta category isn't an appropriate substitute since that's for meta information about the post (when the image was made, its aspect ratio, whether it's animated, if it's a sketch or lineart, etc), so adding non-meta credits there would make that section a mess. And we'd still need official rules for what can be tagged for contributor credits in either case, and that will likely take time for the admins to hammer out as well.

watsit said:
No one has ever said otherwise.

No one has ever claimed that voice actors are irrelevant as individuals. Mischaracterizing the people you're debating isn't going to win them over to your side. And yes, as far as a given post being relevant for this site goes, the audio track has no bearing on whether it's accepted or rejected here (you can have the best audio ever, but if the visuals are a mess, it's going to be deleted, and similarly, you can have the worst audio ever^[1], but if the visuals are good enough, it would be kept). Voice work isn't the focus of the site, so the voice work (not the voice actor) isn't relevant to whether a post is kept or deleted. As Mairo said before, third-party edits adding audio to a silent animation should technically be considered duplicates of the original and deleted as such.

Other than the active work towards removing the searchability of voice actors, causing confusion and reducing visibility of their works, yeah no one has said they aren't artists or that they aren't irrelevant to site.

And speaking of mischaracterization:

watsit said:
The Meta category isn't an appropriate substitute since that's for meta information about the post (when the image was made, its aspect ratio, whether it's animated, if it's a sketch or lineart, etc), so adding non-meta credits there would make that section a mess. And we'd still need official rules for what can be tagged for contributor credits in either case, and that will likely take time for the admins to hammer out as well.

I already countered that argument and gave my justification,

It doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to be good enough for now until it can be segued into a long term solution later.

Tag contributors now, alias to new tags in the contributor category later. Heck, I even gave a half-assed suggestion on how to temporarily group them so that process is easier later.

Rather than this mess which is akin to throwing the baby out with the bathwater and all the work that goes into removing the tags, which just will create more work through tagging projects down the road. Stuff like this thread and the incidents and confusion beforehand are simply short sighted and wasteful in my opinion. Working hard to create more work later.

My most obvious question is why not use the tools in place flexibly until the proper tools are in place to do it properly? Create a temporary framework(like tag prefixes) that works with the current limitations that can be segued into proper categories through aliases when those categories exist down the line. Heck, the sound_warning tag exists as an artist tag and can be used as a precedent for this. It's even stated to not be an artist, but is there to give proper notice at the top of the tag list.

Honestly, the fact this this suggestion exists and hasn't been rejected yet is kind of where some of my sense of the situation comes from.

Edit: Perhaps this is just me, but I've begun to see tags as "These are things that people might want to search for or potentially block." so when people act in a way that removes said tags, I see it as them saying that that thing is irrelevant and nobody would block or search for that thing.

deadoon said:
And speaking of mischaracterization:
I already countered that argument and gave my justification,
Tag contributors now, alias to new tags in the contributor category later.

That's not a counter-argument, and you're actually agreeing. As you say. "it just has to be good enough". We have to have good enough guidelines for who to tag and how first, which will take time to hammer out because once it's declared, it will be hard to change in any significant way without a big messy cleanup. We can't just jump into it headlong and tag random people we feel should be tagged without said guidelines, we need to know what sort of contributions are relevant for tagging, how to tag the different types of contributions (e.g. separating someone's visual work from their voice work, musical work, writing work, etc), etc. If we start randomly tagging people before having good enough official rules, we'll have a big mess on our hands if or when we eventually get said rules (not to mention all the fighting that would occur from different people having different ideas in mind for how it should work, without anything official).

watsit said:
That's not a counter-argument, and you're actually agreeing. As you say. "it just has to be good enough". We have to have good enough guidelines for who to tag and how first, which will take time to hammer out because once it's declared, it will be hard to change in any significant way without a big messy cleanup. We can't just jump into it headlong and tag random people we feel should be tagged without said guidelines, we need to know what sort of contributions are relevant for tagging, how to tag the different types of contributions (e.g. separating someone's visual work from their voice work, musical work, writing work, etc), etc. If we start randomly tagging people before having good enough official rules, we'll have a big mess on our hands if or when we eventually get said rules (not to mention all the fighting that would occur from different people having different ideas in mind for how it should work, without anything official).

Read what I said, please. Reading half of what I say and then going on a tangent benefits nobody. Please point to where I said tag random people. I said in my original post using a format to the tags to allow them to be easily aliased later. I said use tools in place and within already existing components to create a path forward rather than making things less searchable and working now to create more work later like this thread does.

Seriously, read the whole thing I have said the answers already existed before you even replied both times. Create a temporary solution that is designed to reduce workload later.

deadoon said:
If it is such a big deal, just shove it in the meta category as that is supplementary information about the works themselves, like Voice-acting and VABY_(Artist name here).

It doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to be good enough for now until it can be segued into a long term solution later.

Edit: I am literally suggesting creating a a temporary framework to get people searchable NOW, and have it able to be transferred to a proper system in place later. You are suggesting making people unsearchable through making their tags invalid(based on your vote on this thread), which when a proper system down the line for this is implemented, means unaliasing them from invalid, retagging them later, and tagging everyone who has had their credit removed again. Sounds like a lot of work for no benefit now, nor later.

So I think the real question to ask at this point, is when any of this will happen? This is not the first time this topic has been bought up and not the first time solutions have been bought up by folks, only to get handwaved away.

What people are suggesting is simple. Allow VA's/Sound Artists to put their name in under the artist tag for now. The topic at hand is only for that. We're not talking about anything else but that. Currently being able to find a VA associated with their favorite animations on this site, is something a lot of people want. Simply clicking the name of the VA in the tag and seeing other animations they've featured in. As stated before, animators have put down the names of the actors in their pieces thinking its the norm and it only became a problem for a mod. Literally no one else batting an eye about it. It won't break the site. It won't be confusing. Its what's expected.

Until its just allowed for VA's to have their name be under the artist tag until a "proper" system is implemented, this topic is gonna keep coming up when it shouldn't have had to. You guys can say that you still consider VA's artists but when you take the tag away after its put there and no one has complained about it, the actions speak a different story. Its rude, petty, and indicative that ya'll seem to find the most obscure excuses to not change/fix things sometimes

lewddevbitches said:
So I think the real question to ask at this point, is when any of this will happen? This is not the first time this topic has been bought up and not the first time solutions have been bought up by folks, only to get handwaved away.

What people are suggesting is simple. Allow VA's/Sound Artists to put their name in under the artist tag for now. The topic at hand is only for that. We're not talking about anything else but that. Currently being able to find a VA associated with their favorite animations on this site, is something a lot of people want. Simply clicking the name of the VA in the tag and seeing other animations they've featured in. As stated before, animators have put down the names of the actors in their pieces thinking its the norm and it only became a problem for a mod. Literally no one else batting an eye about it. It won't break the site. It won't be confusing. Its what's expected.

Until its just allowed for VA's to have their name be under the artist tag until a "proper" system is implemented, this topic is gonna keep coming up when it shouldn't have had to. You guys can say that you still consider VA's artists but when you take the tag away after its put there and no one has complained it, the actions speak a different story. Its rude, petty, and indicative that ya'll seem to find the most obscure excuses to not change/fix things sometimes

Agreed completely. We just want representation and ease-of-access for our efforts and work. That's all.

lewddevbitches said:
(...) This is not the first time this topic has been bought up and not the first time solutions have been bought up by folks, (...)

(...) What people are suggesting is simple. Allow VA's/Sound Artists to put their name in under the artist tag for now. The topic at hand is only for that. We're not talking about anything else but that. (...)

(...) Literally no one else batting an eye about it. It won't break the site. It won't be confusing. Its what's expected. (...)

(...) You guys can say that you still consider VA's artists but when you take the tag away after its put there and no one has complained it, the actions speak a different story. Its rude, petty, and indicative that ya'll seem to find the most obscure excuses to not change/fix things sometimes

My thoughts exactly, save for the last bit.

There is logic in the reasoning about not tagging them as artists, gotta follow the rules/guidelines while they're not updated to handle this specific issue.

m3g4p0n1 said:
My thoughts exactly, save for the last bit.

There is logic in the reasoning about not tagging them as artists, gotta follow the rules/guidelines while they're not updated to handle this specific issue.

I think that's what bugs me though, is the rules have remained the same for something that has a pretty easy fix and most people agree needs addressing. The conversation about this started with ZiggZachary, months ago regarding tagging for sound artists. Then it came up again with Darkwitt, and now again.

Just going to give heads up because apparently admins haven't bothered to chip in here yet, partially because apparently this has been gone through already several times now. I do still think we might need some pinned topic about this or similar to have written down data from actual admins about this situation, but here's for time being.

After asking about this, current way of handling things is still that artists category is reserved for visual artists of that particular post, only. Nobody else should be tagged in there which includes asset creators, editors, VAs, sound creators, etc. etc.
If someone is tagging stuff like VAs as artists, remove tags and report post for tagging abuse for admins if it continues.
Additionally sounds, similar to text, should not effect the way the post is tagged and technically counts as external information.

Current plan is to have new category for additional category for additionally credited people and then some sort of cutoff who would count into that category, but introducing categories still has technical problems and takes some time to figure everything out.

mairo said:
Just going to give heads up because apparently admins haven't bothered to chip in here yet, partially because apparently this has been gone through already several times now. I do still think we might need some pinned topic about this or similar to have written down data from actual admins about this situation, but here's for time being.

It's often the case where admins will talk about things but only post when ready to act, even just a "we read this and are talking about it" would be nice, just to keep people informed. I've seen a few comments on various threads where people presume admins aren't working on topics and get frustrated, when they are and are just quiet.

mairo said:
[..]
Additionally sounds, similar to text, should not effect the way the post is tagged and technically counts as external information.

Current plan is to have new category for additional category for additionally credited people and then some sort of cutoff who would count into that category, but introducing categories still has technical problems and takes some time to figure everything out.

Given it's technically outside information surely having x_(va) as a meta tag would be a good temporary solution? Then move it to the new category once it's created.

I feel waiting till there's a new category before adding the tags will have this on hold for quite some time, and as you say it's been brought up a few times in the past. As for a cut-off I'd say leave it as VAs for now, given that's the more pressing one, if that goes well then see about adding extra tags.

And thank you for the update.