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[Proposal] Revise Additional Tag guidelines

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Topic Starter
Noffy
Nobody follows it and it's dumb and we shouldn't have stuff like that in RC cause it's the old-style "recommendation" guideline rather than a fairly strict rule.

Additional Tags: It is recommended to include tags such as the language(s), genre(s) of the track in the map, related artists, and whatever may aid a player to find the map. Terms already in the primary metadata (Artist, Title, Source) should not be included in tags.

this one

also saying stuff in the primary metadata shouldn't be in tags is a bad thing, because osu web supports specific term searching using quotation marks " ", so removing title or artist from full phrases in tags would make said full phrases less easy to search with to find the map.

edit:
so like, we can either remove the main guideline or rewrite it as a rule since there are good points to keep it. It being a guideline that's poorly followed like this is dumb


edit edit:

current proposal


rules wrote:

  1. If the song mapped is a licensed one in the featured artist library, `featured artist` must be added to tags.
  2. If the artist or title field were shortened to fit in field limits, the omitted information must be added to tags.
  3. Do not include tags which have no relation to the beatmap or its song. Tags relating to the beatmap's style, storyboard, video, or background content are considered related to the beatmap and would be allowed in tags.


guidelines wrote:

  1. Song genre and language should be added to the tags of a beatmap. This is to enable users to search using these terms in-game like they do on the website. For instrumental tracks, "instrumental" is considered the language tag. Exceptions would be when language and/or genre are not clear, or multiple apply. In case of the latter, one fitting tag for each may be applied.
  2. Additional Tags: It is recommended to include tags such related artists, alternate titles for the song, alternate spellings of an artist name, simplified contractions for words in metadata fields, and whatever may aid a player to find the map.
  3. If the source of the song is available in both unicode and romanised formats, the option not used in the source field should be added to tags.



Let's discuss this until Oct 27th
greenhue
I actually recommend making it stricter so players can find maps they enjoy easier but idk if that will do anything
Topic Starter
Noffy
I think the reason we put it as a guideline before is because of how difficult "related artists, and whatever may aid a player to find the map" would be to enforce

we could potentially make Languages and Genres a rule, though I don't think the rest of it belongs in RC as it's an unenforceable "good practice" idea.


the "terms already in the primary metadata..." part 100% needs to go since it's misleading and wrong
radar
I don't see a reason to remove this. Considering you cannot search by language and genre that are added on the site if its not included in the tags, its helpful to include and really not harming anything to have it there. (id like it to be more encouraged to include language/genre in the tags tbh)

Honestly, not sure how people would feel about this but id like to see a portion of this moved to a rule, as the current language and genre settings applied after the map is ranked are really redundant because it doesn't work through searching in the song selection



Ranking Criteria Guidelines wrote:

Additional Tags: It is recommended to include tags such as the language(s), genre(s) of the track in the map, related artists, and whatever may aid a player to find the map. Terms already in the primary metadata (Artist, Title, Source) should not be included in tags.


My Proposal (rules) wrote:

Additional Tags: Tags for the songs language(s) and genre(s) should be added to the maps tags to aid players in finding the map


something more wordy than this im bad at formal writing but i assume you can get the jist
MBomb
Agree with radar, this stuff is really helpful to find, and takes almost no effort to add. Making it a rule makes a lot more sense than removing the guideline altogether, and I feel the rest works fine as a guideline (Apart from the actual wrong part) since it's difficult to get in some cases, but I feel it's fitting for RC, even if it's something that should be done as good practice regardless.
Trynna
I'm ayyri fanclub member #1 i swear

No, i don't think adding that as a rule is a thing and rules are supposed to be objective and whatnot; in some occasions you will find that adding all the languages in a multi language song is pointless and spammy, or that a song fits a genre that someone else doesn't fully agree (or the other way around), etc etc. Keeping it as a guideline is more than enough and I honestly don't want to see disqualifications for such an arbitrary thing.

If anything, rewrite it but keep it where it is. We will keep encouraging mappers to add those when it's worth it doing so, and if you see people not doing it, take an action yourself and suggest that.
Serizawa Haruki
I don't think it's necessary to make the genre and language thing a rule because in many cases it's unhelpful, like adding "japanese" to the tags. The vast majority of ranked songs are japanese so it's really useless and won't actually help you find a specific song.
As for genres, it's not always possible to define one because some songs are a mixture of different genres or don't fit into any category. Also the genres on the website are often labeled incorrectly or don't make sense. I mean, why is "anime" and "video game" a genre? And what even is "novelty"?

However, I agree with Noffy about removing the part that says "Terms already in the primary metadata (Artist, Title, Source) should not be included in tags." because it's not really beneficial to have this in the guideline.

Instead of "whatever might aid a player to find the map" we could use a more specific description. For example, adding the album name might be useful. The thing about related artists can stay as well
radar

Serizawa Haruki wrote:

The vast majority of ranked songs are japanese so it's really useless and won't actually help you find a specific song.


Its not supposed to help you find a specific song, its supposed to be encouraged so that people who only want to play english songs that day (for example), can search "english" and have them come up

Serizawa Haruki wrote:

As for genres, it's not always possible to define one because some songs are a mixture of different genres or don't fit into any category.


Then you can include multiple that are fitting (which isnt done in the current system, another reason to have this be encouraged). Also, i challenge you to find one song that doesnt fit into a single genre, there will always be something it fits into.

Perhaps a rule is too much as trynna said, but maybe just a heavily encouraged guideline thats rewritten to fit current standards. There really isnt a reason to not include genre and language tags other than laziness
Serizawa Haruki

radar wrote:

Its not supposed to help you find a specific song, its supposed to be encouraged so that people who only want to play english songs that day (for example), can search "english" and have them come up


Yeah, I guess. It's still enough as a guideline though in my opinion (as you also stated below)

radar wrote:

Then you can include multiple that are fitting (which isnt done in the current system, another reason to have this be encouraged). Also, i challenge you to find one song that doesnt fit into a single genre, there will always be something it fits into.


Not really, there are lots of experimental songs, mostly electronic ones, that don't fit into any genre because they're something completely new and different from established genres. There are mappers known for mapping really weird songs, so these exist in the ranked section as well.

radar wrote:

Perhaps a rule is too much as trynna said, but maybe just a heavily encouraged guideline thats rewritten to fit current standards. There really isnt a reason to not include genre and language tags other than laziness


Yeah, encouraging guidelines is absolutely fine but making this an unrankable issue doessn't seem reasonable so keeping it as a guideline is better
radar

Serizawa Haruki wrote:

Not really, there are lots of experimental songs, mostly electronic ones, that don't fit into any genre because they're something completely new and different from established genres. There are mappers known for mapping really weird songs, so these exist in the ranked section as well.




This is a pretty weird electronic and experimental song, both of which are in tags as well as the genre field (along with others)



Another experimental song which is also electronic and uses that in tags.

Tl;dr electronic and experimental is a genre so that isn't an excuse for not adding them, but other than that I agree with you. A rewritten guideline for this would be best
Bibbity Bill
my opinion on this matter, is that removing it entirely is pointless as it does help at times where language/genre on the site being slow to get added and also it being useful to be able to have genres being searchable in-game. what i do think should be added to this is some more common stuff people do add onto tags like album names or different names for tv shows/games, like for example a romanised name or translated name instead of just having the japanese in the source field. (even though from the current gudeline says adding sources to the tags seems to be discouraged even though people do it all the time for better searchability?)

about the whole 'making it a rule thing' that seems really forced as guidelines do a good enough job already and if it's not enforced well enough that's just a matter of people not enforcing guidelines as they should be doing. and then the off chance that it's like some genre that's hard to identify/specific sub genre seems like a really big rabbit hole to try to enforce.
Nao Tomori
would make language, genre, and any common artist aliases / stylizations a rule, then the rest should be suggestions for what else to put
pishifat
it'd be good to list out everything people commonly put in tags, then decide whether or not to enforce them as rules or recommend them

here's what comes to mind:
- Guest mappers, storyboarders, skinners and hitsounders (covered in a rule already)
- song languages
- song genres
- alternate artist/title/source stylizations or previous names
- unicode or romanised source (depends on which is used in actual field)
- album name
- simplified contractions (eg "cant" in https://osu.ppy.sh/beatmapsets/170148#osu/412057)

also are there any things to explicitly exclude? (and should there be a clause somewhere on the rc saying to not include irrelevant tags?)
Topic Starter
Noffy
so reviewing the thread here's a draft of possible changes that would hopefully address the general consensus of "don't remove but improve"

rules wrote:

Song genre and language must be added to the tags of a beatmap. This is to enable users to search using these terms in-game like they do on the website. For instrumental tracks, "instrumental" is considered the language tag.
If the song mapped is a licensed one in the featured artist library, `featured artist` must be added to tags.


guidelines wrote:

Additional Tags: It is recommended to include tags such related artists, alternate titles for the song, alternate spellings of an artist name, simplified contractions for words in metadata fields, and whatever may aid a player to find the map.
If the source of the song is available in both unicode and romanised formats, the option not used in the source field should be added to tags.
Do not include tags which have no relation to the beatmap or its song.
clayton
lgtm
Trynna
Rules;
"Song genre and language must be added to the tags of a beatmap."

Are we really going to add rules based on something subjective that will lead to a billion discussions over something so simple? I understand the need of actually having something in tags that is more than just your GDers, but forcing to have the genre will lead people to dq over things like wrong genre, genre missing in case it fits for multiple, etc.

Same thing about languages. As i mentioned before, multi language songs that can be a pain to add everything and maybe you have some small section that speaks x language but it is barely noticeable, or words that are similar to another language that you cannot really judge.

Just rewrite them as guidelines, we will enforce those just like the others, i don't think we should add rules to that. A rule makes something like that not debatable, actually forced and unrankeable which makes little to no sense to me.
Annabel
i think it's pretty harsh to say "your map is unrankable because you mapped an english song and didn't have english in tags."

making it a rule seems more forceful than necessary. guidelines are already enforceable but not always unrankable. this is where i feel that something additional like genre / language tags would fall under. i can understand it for gders, as that is directly connected to the people involved but i still think that songs with a bunch of different languages / genres (ie compilations) will get messy, and lead to needless dqs when it's not something actually harmful to the mapset.

it is more up to the mapper what tags they want and how simple they want their map to be found. some people put the minimum amount of tags necessary. (some even put none for instrumental tracks) personally having been told more than a few times to remove redundant tags just because they're "not really needed, they're all the same phrase" seems weird, going by the additional tags you mentioned in the first post. (ie "jpop j-pop" same phrase, different way of writing it.) this makes me believe that rewriting the additional tags part as a guideline would make things easier.

fwiw i really agree with the part about contractions as i regularly do it whenever it comes up in something i have mapped / nominated since people get lazy at times and it helps for ease of searching in general.
Chanyah
Usually I don't have much to say when it comes to these type of changes but for this I just found it really an unnecessary step into making people add these type of tags.

I feel like it is more than enough to simply have it as a guideline since it is already enforceable enough with such but more lenient and honestly I don't think I want to add subjectivity in the rules since I myself don't feel like these tags are as important as others when looking for such songs but that is more of my opinion

Otherwise I don't have much complaints but I really don't agree with this 1.
clayton
it is more up to the mapper what tags they want and how simple they want their map to be found


don't agree with that one. tags are for people who want to find stuff, and the map being ranked means it should be accessible & indexable for everyone. that seems to be the reason driving this change, see OP
Lafayla
Agree with eiri-, Trynna and Cheri ^

Rewriting them as guidelines should be fine but having them as rules is extremely unnecessary. Its not like it isn't followed currently, I can only see the outcome being a big headache

All maps are already accessible and indexable for everyone, search properly. It should really be up to the mapper how accessible their map is / how simple their tags are.
Annabel

clayton wrote:

don't agree with that one. tags are for people who want to find stuff, and the map being ranked means it should be accessible & indexable for everyone. that seems to be the reason driving this change, see OP


i say that from experience. you will see the people that care to add a billion tags to their map and you will see people that don't like having many tags, redundant, or overly general terms. ie rock =/= metal but metal is not a genre on osu, but people would be forced to put rock instead of what they prefer unless they do both. (maybe you don't think that's a problem but some people don't like clutter..)

i do not really understand what your response stands to prove, as it does not strengthen the argument of making it a rule. it just furthers the fact that it needs to be changed, which is what my post agreed with.
Topic Starter
Noffy

Trynna wrote:

Are we really going to add rules based on something subjective that will lead to a billion discussions over something so simple? I understand the need of actually having something in tags that is more than just your GDers, but forcing to have the genre will lead people to dq over things like wrong genre, genre missing in case it fits for multiple, etc.

Same thing about languages. As i mentioned before, multi language songs that can be a pain to add everything and maybe you have some small section that speaks x language but it is barely noticeable, or words that are similar to another language that you cannot really judge.

Considering guidelines are only supposed to be broken under exceptional circumstances, I don't see how this would be different from if the current guideline was actually enforced.


eiri- wrote:

i think it's pretty harsh to say "your map is unrankable because you mapped an english song and didn't have english in tags."

This should already be the case because it would be breaking the guideline. We don't consider breaking other guidelines ok unless they have a good reason.


This rounds back to the original issue I posted: If you want to say it's up to the mapper whether or not to tag language and genre, then why would we have it in guidelines or rules at all. If we are to write it as a guideline, some exceptions need to be clearly listed to avoid people just ignoring it because "it's just a guideline" which is the wrong mindset to approach guidelines with.


With that in mind

edited ver (also added this to full draft in op) wrote:

Song genre and language should be added to the tags of a beatmap. This is to enable users to search using these terms in-game like they do on the website. For instrumental tracks, "instrumental" is considered the language tag. Exceptions would be when language and/or genre are not clear, or multiple apply. In case of the latter, one fitting tag for each may be applied.
Trynna
If you think it wouldn't be much different, then let's enforce our current one. A rule is what it says, and making a map unrankeable with no exceptions or discussion from the people involved just because one thinks breaknightcore-pop is the correct genre or because they couldn't distinguish if a word was spanish or portuguese in a song is just extreme, as i said, i totally disagree with this approach.
clayton
reply to eiri-

my disagreement with you is in whether or not the mapper should be able to restrict people's ability to search easily. I think that should not be allowed

for example... I want to find the ranked english rock songs in my osu! library. why should each individual mapper get to decide whether or not I can do that? they're going out of their way to publish content to the ranked section, this seems silly to let them dodge a basic categorization system for it

& some more opinions:
  1. "a billion" tags is fine if they're relevant to the song/map
  2. redundancy in meaning does not matter for text-based tags. e.g. "jpop j-pop" is fine because it helps people find what they're looking for
  3. the only display of tags to be "cluttered" is the one on-site that gets truncated at a certain length anyway (so it's debatable how useful that is...)
  4. it's important to keep in mind that all of these issues are because we're using raw text for tags instead of a data structure that could properly handle it, like boorus or something. for the time being I think the (very minimal!) effort of adding some extra tags is well worth it to solve some search/indexing problems
  5. "mapper's preference" for tags (and all song metadata, really) shouldn't be a thing. the mapper just happens to be the person who sets these right now because they're part of the .osu and BSS was built this way
Serizawa Haruki
I disagree with enforcing it as a rule too, simply because it's too difficult to objectively define genres.

Noffy's proposal wrote:

Exceptions would be when language and/or genre are not clear, or multiple apply. In case of the latter, one fitting tag for each may be applied."

This only explains what happens in case of the latter, but not in case of the language/genre being unclear. Is it okay not to add any genre in that case? How do you even define the genre of the song in the first place? It's very likely that mappers would disagree with BNs on what the correct genre is which just creates unnecessary discussions. Also, how specific does the genre need to be? Some genres have dozens of subgenres, for example electronic music includes house, dubstep, trap, drum & bass etc. and the same applies to rock/metal.
Another problem is that multiple name variations for the same genre exist (jpop, j-pop, j pop etc.). If one person decided to use the first variation and a different person decided to use the second variation, it would already cause inconsistent search results.

Noffy wrote:

This should already be the case because it would be breaking the guideline. We don't consider breaking other guidelines ok unless they have a good reason.

This is only true in theory, but in reality maps that break guidelines for no reason get ranked on a daily basis. I'm not saying that this makes it okay to break a guideline, but it's just not true that people consider breaking guidelines unrankable.
Topic Starter
Noffy
i'll say it more clearly since i didn't do so well enough before, leading to several people missing this:

the revision in https://osu.ppy.sh/community/forums/topics/975316?start=7259962 is written as a guideline with more clearly stated exceptions/handling of some edge cases. It's sorted as a guideline in the full draft in the OP.
Serizawa Haruki
Sorry I thought it was still meant to be a rule, my bad^^

The revisioned guideline seems good and the rule about FA songs and omitted parts of the title/artist makes sense too so I support it
pishifat
> Do not include tags which have no relation to the beatmap or its song.

why is this one a guideline? it's written as a rule too

the rest looks good
Topic Starter
Noffy
ur right will move that bit to rules

i'll pr this in 3 days if there's no more issues
clayton
lgtm, my other comments are more about the website than RC. :<
Topic Starter
Noffy
Nifty
I think this can be clarified a bit more, I've talked with many BNs and mappers about this change and almost every single one thought the "This is to enable users to search using these terms in-game like they do on the website." part meant that you should just put the genre of the song (things like dubstep, psytrance, actual genres, etc.) in the tags so people can search them. When informed that this actually meant to put the site-specific "genres" (that aren't actually very useful outside of electronic, anime, rock and pop. What the hell is the difference between novelty and other?) they immediately said I was just wrong (I'm not... right?) and that it meant to just put the actual genre of the music and not the arbitrary site-specific "genres."

This lack of immediate understanding of the guideline will lead to unnecessary arguments (as if there haven't been already) and general confusion among mappers, and evidently, BNs. I would propose that something is added to the guideline to make it more obvious that the genre tag is not the actual genre of the map, but instead the site-specific genre tags. I don't know how to word something like that, though, considering a lot of people don't even know that the beatmap search page has an extended genre and language and whatever else search function.

Apart from the clarification, something completely separate: Wouldn't it just be easier to make the in-game search similar to the on-site search? Something like genre=electronic lang=french? As far as I know, only standard has an issue with putting the genre and language on maps, but it honestly doesn't seem like a good excuse to put a whole ass change in the RC considering it takes like 30 seconds to determine a map's genre and language. Also, who is asking to be able to search in-game like they search on-site? Seems to me like we're trying to fix a problem that never existed.

Oh and one more thing, "Exceptions would be when language and/or genre are not clear" why does this exist for the genre when we literally have an "other" genre (and "novelty" but, again, what is the difference)? Should probably be rephrased to something like "The 'other' tag can be used for songs that do not fit in a site-specific genre. Exceptions would be when language is not clear." As far as I know, we use "other" for exactly this purpose already so the guideline should follow.
clayton
sure can reword a bit. this seemed clear to me but I wasn't aware that people aren't familiar with the site search function (?)

&unfortunately adding this in-game is more complicated than it should be because genres and languages aren't stored by the client at all, they're only a website feature for now. I wouldn't count on it being supported in stable

add:
I also used to be skeptical of making amendments to the metadata side of RC that seem useless, but my attitude now is basically "fuck it" cuz

1. it doesn't take mappers/modders very much effort to comply with
2. more info doesn't hurt I guess
3. (most importantly) it will be possible to retroactively clean up metadata of ranked maps, so I think these issues that are clearly dependent on the lack of client development should only be properly handled when that's easily possible(ie with lazer). as long as the mess we make is well-documented, it's easy to clean up later
Serizawa Haruki
I feel like adding "other" isn't useful because it's way too vague and it's very unlikely that someone will search that in-game. Adding the actual genre and language of the song is better than adding the ones available on the website because it's more accurate. For example, the website uses rock instead of metal which is misleading.
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