SCP Attributes as Genre/Theme Tags? [DISCUSSION]

Summary:

You thought you were free but I HAVE THOUGHTS ON TAGS (again)

[DISCUSSION] SCP Attributes as Genre/Theme Tags?

Jerden 28 Sep 2024 14:24

Mainsite Mirror

SCPs and GoI formats are now eligible for Genre tags, which made me think about whether any SCP Attribute tags would make more sense as Genre tags. The vast majority of SCP Attribute tags would not ( "animal", "uncontained", ect.), but I think some tags that are currently SCP Attribute tags would be equally useful on tales or GoI formats. I have specifically selected the following tags because I think they describe the themes of a work in an way that readers will be interested in.

I have been doing a lot of genre tagging recently (I have read and tagged hundreds of tales on the SCP Wiki) and as a side project I have been accumulating examples for all of these tags. However, even though I have 25+ examples for most of these, I'd rather not create more redundancy between Genre Tags and Attribute tags by proposing political-fiction as a new tag that's mostly redundant with the existing politician tag - repurposing existing tags is preferable. I have discussed this with the rest of the Tech team, but they recommended I get broader input first before we implement anything.

I think that the following SCP Attribute tags would be useful as genre tags that can also be applied to tales or to GoI formats:

• historical
• legality (rename to legal)
• politician (rename to political)
• superhero

There are also three that would work well as settings for any type of article:

• afterlife
• corporate
• school

I also think that the following SCP attribute tags could be applied to tales/GoI formats as "Themes" (a new section on tag manifest). These are closer to attribute tags than the current genre/setting tags, and whether or not they apply to a work is going to be pretty objective, but I think there would be interest in the following tags on tales as well as on SCPs:

• artificial-intelligence
• ghost
• reality-bending
• thaumaturgy

I should note the criteria for repurposing an existing attribute tag as a Theme is not whether or not it could be applied to a tale (any of them could), but whether it would be a useful way for people to find a specific type of fiction - it should either be genre-adjacent (you generally know what to expect from a ghost story), or be an in-universe term with a specific definition that plays an important role within the plot. This list could be expanded, but I've got a decent number of examples for these 4 on tales and GoI formats, so I think this is a reasonable place to start.

I also think that "-fiction" could be dropped from all genre tags other than "science-fiction", as it is no longer necessary to distinguish between genre and attribute tags, and "absurdism" would be neater (and easier to type out) than "absurdist-fiction".

This could extend to merging "military" with "military-fiction" and "religious" with "religious-fiction", since I think these tags are currently redundant for SCPs. However, changing the definition might result in some SCPs being tagged military or religious even if the actual anomaly doesn't have those attributes - I am unsure whether this would actually be a problem, but it may be best to hold off on merging these two for now, at least until more SCPs have had genre tags applied to them.

This would involved changes to the definitions to expand them from only applying to SCPs - I've put that in the collapsible below to save space, the changes are fairly minor.

Old vs New definitions in this collapsible

I'm going link to the Tag manifest here, as you may want to refer to it.

Old Tag	New Tag
historical — SCP affects or is prominent in historical events or has historical significance.	historical — Focuses on historical events, or on SCP objects with historical significance. (This does overlap with period-piece, but a story could be set in the past without featuring any major historical events, or could be set in an unspecified time period, presumably the present, but still discuss major historical events - I primarily want this for the many tales that describe the involvement of the anomalous in the in-universe history.)
legality — SCP is, effects, or relates to law, legal proceedings, or legal scripture.	legal — Focuses on law, legal proceedings, and legal documents, or on SCP objects that affect them. (There are not many legal dramas set in the SCP Universe, but there are some!)
military — SCP is military equipment, part or member of a military unit, or otherwise has military significance. military-fiction — Focuses on soldiers, field agents or mercenaries.	military — Focuses on soldiers, field agents or mercenaries. SCP objects with this tag may be military equipment or be part of a military unit.
politician — SCP is a politician or is related to a political office.	political — Focuses on politicians or the political process, either real or fictional. (There was some controversy when this tag was proposed, but I would appreciate a tag that also applies to paranormal political disputes, within or between GoI)
religious — SCP is associated with or otherwise has significance to one or more organized religions. religious-fiction — Focuses on religion, faith and belief. Includes depictions of real-world religions, as well as worship of anomalous entities.	religious — Focuses on religion, faith and belief, or on SCP objects with religious significance. Includes depictions of real-world religions, as well as worship of anomalous entities.
superhero — SCP is related to superhero fiction or intrinsically embodies the idea of a superhero or supervillain.	superhero — Focuses on superheroes and supervillains. These characters typically have secret identities, costumes and supernatural powers.
afterlife — SCP describes or is otherwise related to what happens to consciousness after death.	afterlife — Describes or is otherwise related to what happens to consciousness after death.
corporate — SCP affects the operations of a business or corporation.	corporate — Focuses on the operations of a business or corporation, or on SCP objects that affect them.
school — SCP is related to or affects schools, universities, or the education system.	school — Takes place within a school, college or university, or is about an SCP object that affects a place of learning or is related to the education system.
artificial-intelligence — SCP is an artificial intelligence, possesses an AI or affects other AIs.	artificial-intelligence — Focuses on artificial intelligences, or on SCP objects that have their own AI or affect other AIs. (This will primarily apply to AIAD, but will not be exclusive to that canon.)
ghost — SCP is or affects ghosts (spectral entities).	ghost — Focuses on ghosts or spectral entities, or on SCP objects that affect them.
reality-bending — SCP is capable of manipulating reality through anomalous means (aka 'ontokinetic', 'reality-bending' or 'reality warping') .	reality-bending — Features anomalous methods of altering reality, known as reality-bending, reality warping or ontokinesis.
thaumaturgy — SCP is, performs, or is otherwise related to thaumaturgy.	thaumaturgy — Features the system of magic known as thaumaturgy or applied thaumatology.

As a final justification for this repurposing, I think in future tags that would previously have been proposed as an SCP attribute will instead be proposed as a Genre tag - I have applied for bureaucracy and metafiction genre tags using a mixture of SCPs and tales, so while Genre tags are currently primarily used on tales, I expect that to change over time.

Discussion is welcome on the following:

1. Is it fine to repurpose SCP attribute tags as Genre tags if the Tech team thinks there is utility in it?
2. Do you agree with me that these specific examples are useful? Feel free to agree on some and disagree on others, this is a discussion and not a vote.
3. Are there additional attribute tags that you think could be applied to tales? I had a few ideas, but these are the ones I'm most confident in.

I should make it clear that I would be happy to apply these changes myself! I am conscious that having more tags does increase the work of the tagging team, so I am deliberately trying to avoid unnecessary redundancy through this proposal.

This discussion will be open for at least 1 week, after that any input will be considered by the Tech team.

Last edited on 29 Sep 2024 06:08 by Jerden Show more

Re: SCP Attributes as Genre/Theme Tags? [DISCUSSION]

psychicprogrammer 28 Sep 2024 14:31

For most of this, against reality-bending and thaumaturgy as genre tags.

Re: SCP Attributes as Genre/Theme Tags? [DISCUSSION]

Mooagain 28 Sep 2024 14:38

Seconding this

Re: SCP Attributes as Genre/Theme Tags? [DISCUSSION]

Jerden 28 Sep 2024 16:44

If we're not going for "themes" I can make a reasonable case for ghost being a genre, and artificial-intelligence stories simply being a subset of science-fiction focused on computers and robots, but thaumaturgy and reality-bender are basically just applying an attribute tag to tales, so I get where you're coming from.

My best argument is that people who are interested in reality-bending and thaumaturgy won't care whether it's in an SCP, a tale or a GoI format. While you can search the text of articles for those terms but there are a bunch of synonyms, and mention of the term is not always going to be notable enough to tag for.

I guess this could lead to us having other tags like anart, memetic and cognitohazard on tales, which would create additional complexity - I just wanted to mention it as an option to consider the merit of.

Last edited on 28 Sep 2024 16:52 by Jerden Show more

Re: SCP Attributes as Genre/Theme Tags? [DISCUSSION]

JackalRelated 28 Sep 2024 14:31

How does this affect pages that are already tagged "_genreless"?

Re: SCP Attributes as Genre/Theme Tags? [DISCUSSION]

Jerden 28 Sep 2024 14:43

It will replace the _genreless tag, I actually have a few articles in mind that I tagged genreless because only political/legal felt like an accurate description.
EDIT: Only applies if it was tagged _genreless to indicate no current tag fitted, if it was tagged by the author to indicate that they didn't want it tagged then it should remain genreless - my list is mostly untagged stuff I've tagged so it should be fine.

I guess introducing new genre tags will always have this problem, it's worth checking the page history of _genreless pages to see who tagged it and when, but currently there's only 33 of them so it's not hard to check.

Last edited on 28 Sep 2024 17:10 by Jerden Show more

Re: SCP Attributes as Genre/Theme Tags? [DISCUSSION]

leo60228 28 Sep 2024 15:54

I support all of these changes.

Would the proposed new definition for school exclude SCPs that affect individual schools without taking place there or affecting the educational system as a whole? I'm not sure whether this would actually come up, so I suppose it doesn't really matter.

Re: SCP Attributes as Genre/Theme Tags? [DISCUSSION]

Jerden 28 Sep 2024 16:34

I don't intend to change the definition, merely expand them, so I'll rephrase the new definition of school one to make it clear that it still applies to everything the old tag covered.

Re: SCP Attributes as Genre/Theme Tags? [DISCUSSION]

EstrellaYoshte 29 Sep 2024 09:24

As previously stated, I have mixed feelings on this, because it touches on the unification of SCP tagging and tale/other tagging, but the methodology is rather haphazard.

The borderline factor is that you're trying to reclass attribute tag as theme tags, but in doing so, some of the attribute aspects are tossed out entirely, due to the fundamental difference in how attribute tag applies and theme/genre tag applies — For example, under this new system, SCP with religious tag, which can have elements of religion, but not be entirely religious fiction, loses this distinction entirely.

Furthermore, while you acknowledge this by adding how it is when applied to SCP in the description, you've created an awkward middle ground of technically-optional-genre-tag-that-is-also-regular-attribute, that will only become an increasingly weird stopgap if we are to unify SCP and tale tagging in the future, with all the extraneous description and all; not to mention how TOML parsing might be awkward if you plan to class it as both attribute and genre tags.

---

Ultimately, I think you just want to apply attribute tags to tales and others, which is fine, and reducing redundancies where necessary, which is also fine, but this is hardly elegant, and we will have to do this song and dance again every time we want to change what tags are applicable.

That said, if we must, we can broaden the definition of location tags and put `afterlife, school, corporate` and other location-esque tags there; as those are already top-level agnostic and can be more seamlessly retrofitted.

The larger issue is that tale can touch on just as much topics as SCP, thus whether some attribute tags can apply is another discussion entirely.

Re: SCP Attributes as Genre/Theme Tags? [DISCUSSION]

Jerden 29 Sep 2024 12:17

If it seems haphazard that's because I have multiple ideas here, with varying levels of confidence in them!

I don't have broader plans to merge Genre tags with SCP Attributes, most SCP Attributes have no value applied to tales (I would argue minimal utility even on SCPs but that's another conversation), but I have a small number of exceptions listed here. I think a case-by-case basis makes the most sense, my position is that these tags already function as genre tags and we just need to formally acknowledge that. The intention would be they are only listed on the Genre and Themes list of the tag manifest.

I was concerned about backwards compatibility when merging definitions, particularly with military and religious, so I'd be inclined to leave those as-is for now. I will say I'm more confident on merging religious than military - I can think of SCPs where I'd apply military-fiction but not military, I can't really think of religious SCPs that wouldn't also count as religious fiction.
I am unsure on historical but I can point to many tales that are about history (distinct from just being set in the past, most of them are set in an unspecified time period, which matches with the tag's use on SCP formats), I would like a tag for that without needlessly creating a new one.

I'm more confident in redefining afterlife, ghost, legality, politician and superhero, as these a much newer tags with relatively few uses on SCPs - I think if I were to phrase them all as "focuses on" it would be clear enough what it means as a genre, without having to specify how that genre applies to SCPs.

Corporate and School just seem like useful genre tags to me, I think a "focuses on" phrasing would cover both current use and SCPs and my proposed use on tales/SCPs without getting bogged down on whether or not it takes place there, even though I would consider them to be settings.

The main reason I wouldn't go for merging any other Location tags with Settings is that they are either redundant in a complex way (otherworldly corresponds to either extradimensional or extraterrestrial) or they are just not interesting properties when applied to a tale (forest, city ect) - the three I picked were the obvious exceptions.

Last edited on 30 Sep 2024 12:46 by Jerden Show more

Re: SCP Attributes as Genre/Theme Tags? [DISCUSSION]

FlyPurgatorio 30 Sep 2024 19:26

I feel the term "genre" is getting more and more muddled. "Genre" is not the same as "a story that contains X", that's attribution. If you want to add specific attribution tags to tales, I'd highly recommend to not add them as "genre" options, but as themes/attributions/another term.

Example:

it should either be genre-adjacent (you generally know what to expect from a ghost story), or be an in-universe term with a specific definition that plays an important role within the plot.

I highly disagree with the bolded part. A ghost story can vary from Gothic Horror to campfire stories and creepypastas, and that's even excluding instances where a ghost appears in the story (such as a ghost-shaped superhero or a slice-of-life where someone's dating a ghost). In other words, suggesting that "ghost" is genre adjacent is the opposite of clarifying for genre searches. For that reason, I'd argue against point 1.: Tagging should not be able to just repurpose an attribution tag to a genre tag if they see fit, because attributes aren't genres.

AI falls in this same spot. Maybe I can see the use of it as an attribute in tales if someone is just really into AI or ghosts, but it's not a genre, style or setting and shouldn't be treated as such. Either add them as "content/theme" or as "other".

I do see some benefit to adding themes/attributes to tales in cases of "reality-bending" or "thaumaturgy", but I'm not entirely sure how this would play out for searchability. A story about a character who is a reality bender, or reality bender lore and lectures?

I don't have particularly strong feelings about merging of the genre and SCP attribution tags with the ones you proposed. Locations of school/afterlife/corporate seem useful. Superhero is enough of a genre that I can see benefit of adding it as such, especially with how rare this is.

Last edited on 30 Sep 2024 19:27 by FlyPurgatorio Show more

Re: SCP Attributes as Genre/Theme Tags? [DISCUSSION]

Jerden 01 Oct 2024 09:47

It is currently phrased as "genre and themes" on the tag manifest, so I was wanting to discuss the scope of that and see if there's interest in going more into themes.

I admit there's a lot of diversity in the tales I have for both Ghost or Artificial Intelligence, but that's true for any genre, and there definitely are shared themes in articles featuring ghosts (the past lingering) and artificial intelligence (the nature and future of consciousness). It depends on how granular we want to be.

Reality bending and thaumaturgy are basically just any major use I've identified while reading - some are worldbuilding, some are the use of it as a plot device, many are a bit of both, e.g. action plus exposition. I am confident there would be interest in both of them as tags on tales, but the use of in-universe terms may not be something we want to tag for.

Last edited on 01 Oct 2024 09:48 by Jerden Show more

Re: SCP Attributes as Genre/Theme Tags? [DISCUSSION]

FlyPurgatorio 01 Oct 2024 22:26

I think that's fair, but splitting them up under a new category might help then. There are a couple more who would fit with that better and I suspect it was put under the same list because of the number of tags we started out with. I can see use for them as themes but would suggest giving them (and other themes) a separate header then.

I can see use for the worldbuilding or inner logics of reality bending or thaumaturgy. However, I would add that a character being a reality bender would not be enough to get the tag on its own. A story featuring Clef shouldn't get the tag if the reality bending isn't really part of it.

Re: SCP Attributes as Genre/Theme Tags? [DISCUSSION]

Ethagon 04 Oct 2024 19:41

historical, legal, military and religous seem fine to me. They're basically used like genre tags on SCPs already.

I'm more unsure about political for similar reasons as stated by Lord. I might be more inclined to there just also being a tag for political fiction while keeping the politician tag, but that also feels like unnecessary tag bloat.

superhero is definitely a genre.

Afterlife, school and corporate make sense as setting tags. I wouldn't broaden location as a tag category for them, I think, given those are right now used in a similar way to the GOI tag category.

AI, ghost, reality-bending and thaumaturgy make sense to me as theme tags that would likely find usage. On that note, I think "extraterrestrial" makes just as much sense in this category.

I am personally still more inclined towards keeping the "fiction" part of the genre tags so any reader and staff member can tell at a glance what are attribute tags and what are genre tags.

Re: SCP Attributes as Genre/Theme Tags? [DISCUSSION]

Jerden 05 Oct 2024 09:25

I'm not really sure how important it is to distinguish between Genre and Attribute tags any more, especially if some of the attribute tags are made into Genre tags - the ones for themes I'm proposing are somewhere between the two categories.

I think extraterrestrial is currently a bit too broad to work as a theme tag - "SCP originates or is found in outer space and/or enables or exhibits extraterrestrial travel" - if AI and ghost work as themes, then I think the better approach would to be to create a new "alien" tag for stories focusing specifically on extraterrestrial life, which would include some extraterrestrial SCPs, but not all of them.

Re: SCP Attributes as Genre/Theme Tags? [DISCUSSION]

Ethagon 05 Oct 2024 11:33

yeah, it's ultimately a minor concern. I just think it might help to tell at a glance what tag cant be applied to a tale and what only to an SCP.

A new alien tag probably makes more sense.