Racially Insensitive Material

I'm starting this thread in response to topic #16707. That thread ended up being a conversation specifically about the character Corona-chan. I believe that's a worthwhile topic, but should be kept separate from the broader issue of content which is either racially insensitive or could be seen as portraying a race of people as inherently superior or inherently inferior either to a specific other race of people or just in general.

The racism tag is currently defined as follows:

Post that contains insults to proper race and/or nation.

This tag has good utility as it currently is. The conditions in which the tag is warranted are clearly defined and do not rely on consistency of opinion on what is "tasteful".
However, I think it would also be beneficial to the site to have a tag or tags which are more general. Danbooru currently takes a very free-speech stance towards the content allowed on it, which I think is great. The point of tagging posts is to allow users to find content they're looking for and to be able to control what kinds of content they do or do not see. Giving people the ability to opt-out of seeing any posts that someone interpreted to contain harmful stereotyping or racial supremacy should improve the experiences some users have with the site while still preserving the freedom of posting any high-quality on-topic art one finds. Assigning tags that people can blacklist to these concepts will also cut down on the number of flags that posts which are controversial but clearly high-quality receive.

I'm aware that part of the concern over creating such tags would be that they'd give rise to excessive discussion of what does or does not merit the tag. One group of people will get offended over something and start applying a tag and another group of people will deem their objection too trivial to apply or simply as invalid. If any wiki entry that is created uses very deliberate wording and criteria which are as objective as possible, I believe much of this can be avoided. The tags can be fairly inclusive, because the vast majority of content on the site won't be effected either way and people who feel that the tags encompass more than they'd prefer them to are of course under no obligation to blacklist them.

With that said, I'll make a couple specific suggestions of tags that could be made. In my opinion racial_stereotyping and racial_superiority should be kept as separate concepts. However, some people might like the idea of a blanket tag like racial_content.
It might also be a good idea to keep tags for fictional racial content (as demonstrated in post #3440074) separate from real racial content.

What are your thoughts on the matter?

Do we really want to open that can of worms? Because once it's out you're never putting it back in. Just look at the shitshow in topic #15770 for what the future holds if this is done.

+1 for a fictional racism tag however.

Zurreak said:

I'm aware that part of the concern over creating such tags would be that they'd give rise to excessive discussion of what does or does not merit the tag. One group of people will get offended over something and start applying a tag and another group of people will deem their objection too trivial to apply or simply as invalid.

I agree with that. I think opinions diverge too wildly about what is or isn’t racism to be able to define tags precisely enough to avoid endless discussions. If we create tags for racially insensitive material, what about sexism, ableism, ageism, and any other -ism? If anything, we’d need a tag for politically incorrect material for users offended by such content, but I think Danbooru is just not the right place for easily offended people.

With the very thorough tagging we have for all kinds of stuff, I think it’s better to just blacklist whatever concrete tag one is offended by. If one finds Corona-chan offensive, just blacklist the tag.

Edit: What nonamethanks said. -_-,

This is a massive can of worms that is best left sealed. Opening it will only lead down a slippery slope.

To much discussion and maybe tagging wars, because of massive different opinions on an image. On the other hand, do we have a tag for racial_stereotyping? Because I think that this is in some way fine.

But I would say there could or should be a tag for fictional_racial content, like you mentioned. Or a pool whatsoever.

No.

kittey said:

I agree with that. I think opinions diverge too wildly about what is or isn’t racism to be able to define tags precisely enough to avoid endless discussions.

After reading the responses, I don’t think I clarified what I meant well enough. I’m not suggesting that we create general tags for any racist content. I agree that wouldn’t be able to be defined to prevent massive arguments. That’s why I stated that the tag racism (which already exists and is in use) is fine under its current definition. While it still wouldn’t eliminate the room for conversation entirely, making tags to deal with
more specific concepts (such as stereotypes or the explicit display of one race’s superiority over another) would drastically reduce the potential for tag abuse by forcing the tagger to be specific about why they object to it and drastically reduce the room for discussion by being more specific.

If we create tags for racially insensitive material, what about sexism, ableism, ageism, and any other -ism?

Sexism would probably contain way too many posts and would share the same problems that a racism tag would, but to a greater degree. People just have to live with that one. All of the others are absolutely nowhere near as common nor as problematic as sexism or racism. There’s not much of a need to tag them, and even if someone does suggest it there’s no reason we can’t just say “no” at that time.

I think Danbooru is just not the right place for easily offended people.

I completely agree with this. In my mind, if there’s any one reason that the suggestion I made here is, as NoNameThanks said, “a bad suggestion” it’s this. The suggested tags would provide a better user experience to certain extremely toxic individuals, increasing their presence on the site. It would also allow them to more effectively push their own political views onto others and allow them to feel like they’re “fighting against evil” by mis-tagging posts which contain benign references to or acknowledgements of culture or phenotypes.

I’m not sure that creating these additional tags is a good idea (especially in the exact way I’ve suggested), I’m just trying to start a conversation to see what the best way to implement such an idea might be. If we don’t think about how it might be done properly if it were to be done, we won’t really have enough information to say with (justified) confidence that it’s a bad idea.

nonamethanks said:

Just look at the shitshow in topic #15770 for what the future holds if this is done.

I read this just now. I understand what you mean, and of course I don’t want more users like that here. If those users are a problem to as big of a degree as you seem to be suggesting, should we consider the idea of changing otoko_no_ko back to trap? We’d match with gelbooru that way.

Zurreak said:

I read this just now. I understand what you mean, and of course I don’t want more users like that here. If those users are a problem to as big of a degree as you seem to be suggesting, should we consider the idea of changing otoko_no_ko back to trap? We’d match with gelbooru that way.

I disagree with that alias too but I don't think it's possible to change it back now. See topic #10521 for a discussion on the matter.

Zurreak said:

Sexism would probably contain way too many posts and would share the same problems that a racism tag would, but to a greater degree. People just have to live with that one. All of the others are absolutely nowhere near as common nor as problematic as sexism or racism. There’s not much of a need to tag them, and even if someone does suggest it there’s no reason we can’t just say “no” at that time.

Sexism is too common, so we’ll have to live with it, and ableism and ageism are too uncommon, so we can ignore it, but racism is apparently in the sweet spot between too common and too uncommon, so we should do something about it? Also, some discrimination is less problematic than other discrimination? Wow. That’s not how anti-discrimination works in my mind.

How about we end this discussion here and leave things as they are? That has worked well for the past several years. The few users who felt offended by something have all left quickly and everyone else can apparently deal with the content we have, by using either the blacklist or the “close tab” button.