Topic: [Feature] Voice Actor Tags

Posted under Site Bug Reports & Feature Requests

I don't even get the argument against them not getting to share the Artist section with the artist when the tag "sound_warning" does. If this is a visual site, why is "sound warning" given as much billing as the people who made the art? Is it perhaps because some people might look for voice-acted versions of an artist's art?

Secondly, like it or not, voice actors are collaborating artists, and the fact they are so frequently "mistagged" is a testament to the fact that people do come to this site searching for the vocal work that certain voice actors contribute to people's visuals. Telling people to simply put VA's names in the descriptions undermines people actively searching for them on this website.

Between FA's awful tagging system and how hard it is to find old posts on Twitter, letting VAs be tagged here is both good for the preservation and promotion of said actors.

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glitchtree said:
I don't even get the argument against them not getting to share the Artist section with the artist when the tag "sound_warning" does. If this is a visual site, why is "sound warning" given as much billing as the people who made the art?

Because, as it's name implies, it's a warning about sound, and it's an artist tag to put it at or near the top of the tag list, where people can more readily notice (rather than a general or meta tag where it would be down lower in the tag list and not as apparent). As it's wiki page says, it's for "posts containing obscenely loud sound at any point; the reason this is listed as an artist tag is so that the bright orange colour stands out in the tag list." This is so someone doesn't play an animation, only to find out the hard way that their speakers are turned up when they wake up the whole house when a loud noise plays. Or there's loud moans or squelchy noises, letting everyone around them know they're watching porn.

glitchtree said:
Telling people to simply put VA's names in the descriptions undermines people actively searching for them on this website.

You can search descriptions.

Firstly, not the proper format for submitting a feature request. Please refer to the template supplied in forum #200488.

Secondly, the sound_warning tag is placed on the Artist section not out of favouritism, but out of necessity since it appears on the top of the post.
The more accurate choice would be to put it in the Meta section, but that would bury it to the bottom of the page.
I would rather not have my ears blown off by ear-rape without any warning beforehand, just like how epileptics would not like to be subject to involuntary brain seizures with the help of the epilepsy_warning tag.

Thirdly, this issue has debated time and time again. You don't really need to bring the topic back up again since the admin team have already declared their position on the issue.
We do not tag voice actors because the tagging field is (mostly) reserved for visual information of a post, i.e., being able to Tag What You See.
The artist tags are for crediting those who have actively contributed to the creation of the visual elements of an artwork (this also includes 3D character models/rigging in specific scenarios).
Voice actors fall into the same category as commissioners, character owners, etc. in that they are tagging based on outside information and does not directly relate to the visual elements of a post.
There is also the potential of flooding the Artist section with unnecessary clutter and hiding the actual creator of the artwork; e.g., imagine a post with 1 artist and multiple different voice actors like in the Helluva_Boss series (e.g., post #2077223).

With that all said and done, I am not saying that we should not credit everybody that is involved in the artwork. That is why the description is useful in this case, whereby credits can be supplied without interfering with the tagging.
Additionally, you can search by keywords in the description (i.e., description:voice_actor) or use pools to gather all relevant posts that a voice actor has contributed to.

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thegreatwolfgang said:

Thirdly, this issue has debated time and time before. You don't really need to bring the topic back up again since the admin team have already declared their position on the issue.

Frankly I don't give a fuck what the admins think if the general userbase disagrees, which is why I wish this issue was something we could vote on because clearly a lot of people agree that this is shitty.

glitchtree said:
Frankly I don't give a fuck what the admins think

You should since they're the ones running this site, and they're running it the way they want. There are valid reasons not to, and some of the general userbase agrees with those reasons. Just because you may not agree with the reasons doesn't mean to keep harping on it and annoy users and the admins about it.

watsit said:
You should since they're the ones running this site, and they're running it the way they want. There are valid reasons not to, and some of the general userbase agrees with those reasons. Just because you may not agree with the reasons doesn't mean to keep harping on it and annoy users and the admins about it.

Until the day they ban discussion of this topic, it will continue being brought up by people. I don't care if it makes them mad that we think voice acting is art

deadoon said:
This issue will continue to appear again and again until the problem is fixed.

Yeah, as independent animations become more common and more complex, this is only going to become a bigger issue. We need a better solution for handling voice actors and musicians. It doesn't necessarily have to be giving them artist tags, but only putting them in the description or in general tags isn't great.

glitchtree said:
I don't care if it makes them mad that we think voice acting is art

No one is saying it's not art, but this is a site focused on visual art. Any audio a post has is incidental as far as the site is concerned, not the focus or intent.

Feeling mixed on this. On one hand, I like the idea of voice actor tags. I think it would be cool to search for posts that includes a voice actor I'd search for, especially of those within the community. However, that would bring up logistical issues with how the tags work on this site. For example, plenty of animators (myself included) have used sound bites, memes, or voice clips from other shows in their animations. If folks were to use a sound clip of Goku shouting in their animation, tagging Sean Schemmel seems unnecessary, especially since the tags are mostly based on what we see, with some exceptions (i.e. lore tags, meta tags, etc). We gotta draw the line somewhere.

watsit said:
No one is saying it's not art, but this is a site focused on visual art. Any audio a post has is incidental as far as the site is concerned, not the focus or intent.

Regardless of whether or not you think it's incidental (I disagree but that's personal), it's still there. Unless you'd like to forego any tags related to sound altogether?

strikerman said:
Unless you'd like to forego any tags related to sound altogether?

Tags that indicate sound exists is fine, just as tags that indicate a story exists is fine. But we don't tag writers either, since stories are incidental to the images.

watsit said:
Tags that indicate sound exists is fine, just as tags that indicate a story exists is fine. But we don't tag writers either, since stories are incidental to the images.

Really bold of you to think I wouldn't mind tagging writers either (assuming you're talking about text in the post itself and not the description)

I love how the only actual problem here is the different location of where the Voice actor appears. Who cares if they're in the description rather than the Artist section, you can still search and find them fine. I'd rather the Artist tags not be cluttered woth 3 or even 4 different names, it makes it hard to find the actual "Artist" of the piece, the one who drew it and didn't moan a few times into a mic.

pyke said:
Who cares if they're in the description rather than the Artist section, you can still search and find them fine.

Wouldn't work if the description has any kind of unique formatting (e.g. the username is linked), or if the voice artist just so happens to have a generic name.

pyke said:
I love how the only actual problem here is the different location of where the Voice actor appears. Who cares if they're in the description rather than the Artist section, you can still search and find them fine. I'd rather the Artist tags not be cluttered woth 3 or even 4 different names, it makes it hard to find the actual "Artist" of the piece, the one who drew it and didn't moan a few times into a mic.

The problem is that descriptions are not made for searching, and if they are not filled properly, they rarely get corrected. It didn't take me long to find several uncredited videos on the first page of a search. If an voice actor has multiple names, it's impossible to give them aliases. Only advanced users are able to search them, when it is reasonable to expect that new users may want to search a voice actor's name.

You do have a point though. Artists and animators should still get priority over voice actors. I would suggest creating a new tag category for additional credits and placing it below general tags, but from my understanding that would be difficult to implement on the back end. Still, formatting all non-artist credits as name_(role) should make it easy to tell who is responsible for the art.

Also, just moans absolutely shouldn't count. Unless they're the best goddamn moans in the world, they rarely contribute more than a stock sound effect would. Voice tags should be reserved for actual speaking imo, but there is room for discussion.

strikerman said:
Really bold of you to think I wouldn't mind tagging writers either (assuming you're talking about text in the post itself and not the description)

I was talking about how the site functions, as you insinuated we shouldn't have any audio-related tags if we don't tag VAs due to the site being for visual arts. There's no reason to forego all sound-related tags just because VAs aren't tagged, just as there's no reason to forego all story- or text-related tags just because writers aren't tagged.

oozeenthusiast said:
The problem is that descriptions are not made for searching, and if they are not filled properly, they rarely get corrected.

Just like VAs will be missing from posts if they're not tagged properly, and they'll rarely get corrected. Or if someone neglects to tag if someone collaborated on the art, and the style isn't readily apparent.

oozeenthusiast said:
Also, just moans absolutely shouldn't count. Unless they're the best goddamn moans in the world, they rarely contribute more than a stock sound effect would.

And you'll get in the weeds of what exactly does count, whether those are "the best goddamn moans" or not because people get off to them.

watsit said:
And you'll get in the weeds of what exactly does count, whether those are "the best goddamn moans" or not because people get off to them.

My point was that moans being noteworthy or identifiable is rare so not tagging them across the board may be good.

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