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βœ…πŸ©ΈπŸŒΆοΈβš οΈ [TEST PHASE] Content Warning Prefixes

Kettle

Lost Thing
Staff member
Following a previous poll and discussion, this is a call for test subjects!

According to recommendations by the community, and following a few calls for something less flashy and invasive, the following prefixes have been added to in-character threads:

βœ… = no significant warnings
🩸 = significant descriptive violence/gore
πŸ”ž = significant descriptive sexual content
⚠️ = significant descriptive psychological trauma

Anyone who'd like to participate in the experiment, please edit the prefixes of an existing in-character threads that you created and add an appropriate prefix, or include it with a new thread. Some guidance as discussed in the previous thread:
  • If your thread contains only minor or very few instances of any of the above, use β—‹ and add an appropriate tag instead. For example, fantasy-typical violence or a few spoilered sexual descriptions.
  • If your thread contains multiple of these, use the one that's most significant and add the others in the tags.
As a further experiment, try filtering an in-character forum for one of the prefixes to see only threads with that prefix.

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Once you've messed around with it a bit, let us know what you think!
 
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Initial thoughts: The symbol for "no significant warnings" looks like the letter O. As in "O, Moonfiend!"

I am now irresistibly compelled to name one of my future no-warnings threads β—‹ "Brother Where Art Thou?"

That said, I like the "significant" part of the explanation. My PC often does violent things, but I usually don't go into graphic detail about them. I can definitely think of a thread or two of mine, though, that may need the "significant descriptive psychological trauma" label.
 
Sorry to nitpickβ€”it’s kinda sorta bothering me that the violence warning is a different size than the others. Does this also show up in a thread prefix as a slightly different size? If so, is there a way to fix that?
 
Thanks for the feedback!!! πŸ’š

How about these:

β—Ž = no significant warnings
β—• = significant descriptive violence/gore
β—“ = significant descriptive sexual content
β—‰ = significant descriptive psychological trauma

Or I could abandon the circles, it's changed to the above for now.

the violence warning is a different size than the others.
Thanks for pointing this out, it's the same on my screen so I have no idea if everything's weird on other people's screens! Below a screenshot:


But I changed it above, are those circles more or less the same?
 
omgggg πŸ˜†

Here are all the circles on my end. For me all of these are the same size:
β—΄β—·β—Άβ—΅β—”β—•β—β—‘β—’β—Žβ—‰β—‹β—“β—β—‹

These are tiny:
β—ŒβŒ€β—

These are all the same size and look cohesive:
βŠ•βŠ˜βŠ›βŠ–βŠ™βŠœβŠβŠšβŠ—

Squares?
β–’β–₯β–¨β–£β–¦β–©β–§β–€β—ͺβ– β– β—©β—«β—³β—°β—±β—²

How about:
⊚ = no significant warnings
βŠ— = significant descriptive violence/gore
⊝ = significant descriptive sexual content
βŠ› = significant descriptive psychological trauma
 
πŸ’šπŸ’š

How are the tests going? I'm seeing a buuuunch of icons in the newest posts feed! Any more thoughts? How should we move forward? Should we move forward?
 
Some feedback that I've been thinking about is the fact that the πŸ”ž in particular can make browsing some of these threads potentially more awkward than it was before. Since, you know, the tag is right up there in the window tab. So if you're at work or something, it can be rather weird.

Potential solutions:
1) Change the tag, but I can't think of anything that's nearly as clear as πŸ”ž when it comes to describing the content.

2) Think about less intrusive ways to replicate the thread prefix functionality. People manually include [tags] at the end of thread titles at times. Would this work for us? So for instance, a thread title would be something like "Always Something There To Remind Me [NSFW/Violent]". This could also help solve the problem of what we want to do for threads that have multiple types of content warnings. With thread prefixes, we'd need to create a new prefix for each possible combination.

3) Is it possible to have forum skins that don't use or have different thread prefixes? Is that something that can be done with Xenforo? That way, people can opt into forum themes that don't have the tags, or have ones that are less visually ostentatious or something.
 
Change the tag, but I can't think of anything that's nearly as clear as πŸ”ž when it comes to describing the content.

❀️‍πŸ”₯ or πŸ’˜ maybe?

Think about less intrusive ways to replicate the thread prefix functionality. People manually include [tags] at the end of thread titles at times. Would this work for us? So for instance, a thread title would be something like "Always Something There To Remind Me [NSFW/Violent]". This could also help solve the problem of what we want to do for threads that have multiple types of content warnings. With thread prefixes, we'd need to create a new prefix for each possible combination.

I have to say that would be awesome except I'm afraid that kind of expectation would end up falling away as people gradually stop putting forward the extra effort. At least the dropdown of prefixes is already there to choose from. The prefixes are also the only things that are directly filterable from a forum page: you can filter the forum to only see threads with that prefix, but you can't really do that with anything else in the title.

How often is one thread a combination though, in actual practice? So far, out of the majority of currently active threads testing the prefixes, maybe 1-2 have been psychological or violent. Personally I feel like it should be ok to prefix with the most significant warning then add the rest under the tags, or tackle the issue if and when a thread actually meets significant criteria for two warnings.

Is it possible to have forum skins that don't use or have different thread prefixes? Is that something that can be done with Xenforo? That way, people can opt into forum themes that don't have the tags, or have ones that are less visually ostentatious or something.

I don't think so, the prefixes are a part of the forum title, but maybe @Wight has an idea.

We could also just have words in the prefix instead of emoji: [NSFW] [Violence] [Trauma]. Emoji just take up less space and would be less intrusive. The visually ostentatious emoji are the ones that are most clearly defined at a glance, as previously pointed out by people who are not me, but we can just go back to the symbol-code-ascii with some kind of legend linked near the top. The top of each thread also explicitly details what the prefix means as soon as you click into it.

Edit: there IS a CSS option for each prefix. Maybe we could use our own custom images? If so does anyone have public domain suggestions?
 
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Blood and fire have similar silhouettes at a glance, and without color, neither really screams out what they are.

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The old internet fogey in me wants to suggest the lemon icon for sexual content, but I don't think that's very well known anymore. Maybe the heart? It's got a distinctive silhouette, plus it's solid - easy to tell apart at a glance. Or hot pepper, which gets across the hot/spicy idea, but with a more distinctive silhouette.

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I'm struggling to find good suggestions for violence - this icon set seems to have purged all the likely candidates. There's skull and crossbones, as you mentioned in Discord; a dragon's head, which is the closest I can find to claws or fangs; and a fist. None of which really gets the point across, sadly. I guess skull-and-crossbones probably has the most recognizable silhouette at a glance.

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After some further discussion in discord, and considering the above, more changes have been made! We're back to emoji, this time there's a different css controlling things. How's this working?

If anyone has a way to control the text of a tooltip completely from the css class and without access to the html, let me know.
 
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