frozentreasure

Ro[x/y]

@frozentreasure

Problem Solver

I used to do Let's Plays. Then the world started ending and I got tired. I like to write queer fiction.

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frozentreasure
@frozentreasure
aidan
@aidan
inkycap
@inkycap

Tagging and CW etiquette for NSFW content

Edit: updated to include the recent addition of tag filtering/muffling! ‡

I'm a veteran adult artist, and I'm also a writer who takes sex-positivity kinda seriously in regards to how I make and share my content. I'm seeing a lot of inconsistent tagging and CW practices on NSFW content on Cohost so far, so I wanted to write this little guide on how to use tags and content warnings, ideally so that your content:

  1. gets seen by the people who want to see it, and

  2. doesn't get seen by the people who don't.

The end result of this is more eyes on your work, not less, because proper tags and CWs actually result in more people finding and accessing your work.

Note: this post is written primarily from the perspective of drawing erotic or pornographic images, but you can adapt these points for writing, photography, or for other types of drawn images as well.

aidan
@aidan

tagging and CWing is not an exact science, but this is a very nice writeup/discussion about good/better/best practices!

also, stay tuned for some pretty dang big tag-related features/improvements, coming very soon! no SPECIFIC timeline to announce at the moment but tag blacklisting is actively being worked on as i speak.

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in reply to @inkycap's post:

jkap
@jkap

i think this is a good post and a good introduction into a mode of tagging that people may not be familiar with! i especially appreciate you calling out the "NSFW" content warning, because i keep seeing it and it keeps making me kind of insane, but not enough to just systemwide block NSFW as a permitted content warning.

ALSO: since you mentioned tag filtering, i wanted to mention that it's in progress! the work is being done by jess, who's still only part-time, so it might still be a little bit but it's not just on our radar, it's happening as we speak! or at least it was a few hours ago, it's 9pm now. you get the idea.

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venndiagram
@venndiagram

I just realized that I rechosted this with a tag saying "this is really well-said" but you can't see that, haha. This is really well-said! I also appreciated your other post about commenting, which is part of why I figured I should come and post this.

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aliothfox
@aliothfox

This is a great post, thank you for this! It's something I have been noticing too. I'm still fairly new to Cohost, and I've so far been using tags very liberally, but content warnings somewhat sparingly.

One feature I wish this site had is the ability to whitelist specific CWs right from a post (like a right-click > "whitelist this CW" option on the post itself) rather than having to manually go into settings and enter each one - that gets cumbersome pretty quickly.

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gibbles
@gibbles

i imagine the overly verbose (in this context) CWs may have come from tumblr where people blacklist tags, but the warning shows all of the tags from the post, so "blood cw" and "my character getting stabbed" would be useful in that you would know what context the cw is in...whereas cohost (as you pointed out) is a lot more functional and CWs should be more functional lol. still, it's a hard habit to break and i imagine if/when i start posting art i'm going to spend perhaps too long staring at the CW box thinking about what i should or shouldn't put there.

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inkycap
@inkycap

Yeah, it's tough to try and figure out which CWs are necessary, and, more importantly, which CWs the community at large has adapted as the "default" or "primary CW" for certain topics. Hopefully having an open dialogue about it will encourage some community-crowdsourced guidelines.

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autumndidact
@autumndidact

I worry a bit about tagging because I don't want to show up in too many searches, with my anxiety I prefer to have a smaller reach, but I do want to use tags to inform people of content that's not strong enough to suggest a cw is warranted but might just not be something they're in the mood for. 🤷‍♀️

I definitely do not want to be annoying by putting it all in the cws. Especially because I don't think I'm going to post much that deserves a cw.

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inkycap
@inkycap

Yeah, that'll be a tough balance. Maybe you can start using tags that are unique to only your own work, and once they enable tag blacklisting, you can just invite your followers to put those tags on their blocklist if desired.

Another option is just to use CSS and HTML to put your content under a "read more" with a custom warning. That's a little more technical, but gives you a lot of flexibility for controlling how people interact with your content!

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autumndidact
@autumndidact

Oh, I am very not technical.

Maybe I should just bite the bullet and tag stuff clearly. It's better for everyone else, and if I feel overwhelmed I can step back for a bit. Maybe gradually get used to attention if it happens. I have more of a support network now than the times I went viral before, and I think it's likely to be wholly positive attention here.

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arty
@arty

For reference, if you put a --- alone on a line in your post (without the ` quotes), with an empty line before it (i think? it's that or after. you can also do both to be safe), it will put the "read more" there, no HTML/CSS required.

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ratslut
@ratslut

I would recommend - at least with how fhe search function works right now- if you only want to tag something so it is there as a warning and NOT for visibility, tag it as "x cw" (eg "spiders cw") or some variation.

My understanding is that tag searching only searches for exact terms, so people just searching "spiders" won't find posts tagged "spiders cw", but you can still have the tag on your post for followers to see.

It's possible that I'm wrong about how tag searching works, but I don't think so. However I do suspect it'll be changing in the future, so, who knows.

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ratslut
@ratslut

Or even something like "spiders //" in the tags, if you don't want to attatch the weight of the phrase "content warning". This was something I saw a lot on tumblr before they changed the search and blacklist functions. Anything, as long as it's not an exact term.

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ratslut
@ratslut

Yes, it will still be searchable via that tag. But it wouldn't be in the main "spiders" tag which i imagine is where most people would go when actually wanting content. It's not a perfect fix by any means, but it would keep your content out of that main tag.

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mikhailchip
@mikhailchip

Great write up!

Inconsistent CWs are annoying even on the side of people who want to see the content. I swear I had to add so many variations of vore or fat to my "Never warn me" CW list, it's silly. I want to see art on my timeline, not a slew of prompts for CWs haha

Examples I saw right before reading this chost:

micro vore
soft vore
nonfatal vore
non-fatal vore
belly kink
willing vore
VORE
GOOD HEAVENS VORE
and cock
and robots i guess.

People should try to keep stuff simple and generic, it's so annoying to go back to settings every time someone makes up another variation of what could be a common CW tag

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ladylibido
@ladylibido

Thank you for this, I hope more people follow this as this is the same methodology I use with my tagging/CW. (there is a staggering amount of people that never add a 'vaginal' tag to anything happening to/with a vagina. Please tag it, I want to find it ;_;)

I find that expanded explanations in CW can help if you ALSO include the more common versions first. For example, I use a 'feral' content warning for anyone that just wants to blanket block feral regardless of the stipulation while also including 'sentient alien quadruped' to describe the KIND of feral that is behind the tag for those that like feral but only specific kinds of feral. So having a combination of common tags and descriptions I think is a good thing, provided the simple/common tags are accounted for, first.

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inkycap
@inkycap

Emotional context and intensity seem like factors that will be wildly different depending on who is looking at them, as they're highly relative and not very objective descriptors, so I feel like describing those aspects isn't as helpful as it's supposed to be. I feel like even those descriptors can be reduced to a few simpler keywords to allow people to filter them without leaving anyone unprepared for when they click through the warning.

But like I said, you just gotta find the balance that works with your audience. If the long and verbose CW works for both you and your audience, and you don't have any desire to make it able to be blocked via blocklist, then that's the system that's best for you.

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ahoyitsjoy
@ahoyitsjoy

Thanks for writing this up! I am generally more on the "I want to avoid seeing certain things" side and I am definitely begging people to use concise and general CW tags so the feature where I can never see that stuff actually works lol. Please. I do not want to have to enter 6 different variations of tags for one fetish because people wanted to be cute and funny about it. You can always get more specific and shitposty in the regular tags!

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ecter
@ecter

To add on topic of CW section, from personal experience as a viewer, not a creator:

Sensitivity: I have aversion to animal x human visuals and trying to look at pornographic depictions of characters from Pokemon series is an awful experience, when posts lack tags. Yeah, just because the author is used to seeing furry dicks doesn't mean it shouldn't be tagged. Your summary "it falls outside the realm of common sexual experiences in a way that people might be sensitive towards" is pretty good to quote and repeat. I think it covers everything i'd want to be tagged so people would be able to filter it out / decide whether they want to unhide the content behind +18 warning.

Intensity: I recently found out that extreme closeups and closeups make me feel highly uneasy. Mildly terrified at times (especially when it's animated). The worst are gifs shared online with people putting their face too close to a camera (some ranting guy gif on discord was the worst of them). But even a banner with people looking at the viewer from up close (it was on a certain job board site i checked daily, trying to avoid home page with said banner), or on Zoom/Teams/Bluejeans/whetever-videoconference-tool calls with a wall of faces staring at me are anxiety inducing.

It's weird, i did not do any research to check if it has a name (it's probably greek), but yeah, extremities other than sex, blood and violence can ruin someone's web browsing experience in surprising ways.

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ocpdzim
@ocpdzim

I actually really appreciate when people include “NSFW” as a content warning rather than just clicking mature content, because unfortunately on Cohost the mature content label also applies to every single post from blogs that have been designated mature, even posts that may have nothing to do with mature content. It’s helpful to know if what you’re about to click on is a SFW post from a blog that happens to often post porn or if the post is actually NSFW itself.

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in reply to @aidan's post: