The wiki page for depression is currently vague and offers little distinction from sad. I propose it be reworked to refer specifically to depression as a mental illness; I believe this is ideal because it provides a clear dividing line between depression and sad.

Here is a proposed draft for the wiki description:

Depression is a mental illness associated with symptoms of prolonged sadness, an inability to feel positive emotions, and general lack of feeling. Victims of depression often feel a desire to self-harm and even to commit suicide. For more information, see articles on WebMD and Wikipedia.

Depression is not to be confused with the simple emotion of sadness; it is characterized by a prolonged feeling of sadness that overwhelms all other aspects of life.

"Depression" is somewhat ambiguous. Medically, it is something along those lines, but colloquially, it can also mean just a bout of sadness. Additionally, going by TWYS, the medical definition would be very hard to depict. True depression is not something you can see, outside of some symptoms appearing on occasion. The concept of someone who's constantly sad, overly emotional or emotionless, etc, is not how it works. Someone can be depressed in the medical sense of the word, but appear and act completely normal to other people. In a still image or animation clip, there's no way to tell whether the displayed symptoms are indicative of prolonged underlying issues, or a bout of sadness from any number of causes that aren't depression.

It may be better to alias depression to sad, without a way to visually distinguish them.

watsit said:
"Depression" is somewhat ambiguous. Medically, it is something along those lines, but colloquially, it can also mean just a bout of sadness. Additionally, going by TWYS, the medical definition would be very hard to depict. True depression is not something you can see, outside of some symptoms appearing on occasion. The concept of someone who's constantly sad, overly emotional or emotionless, etc, is not how it works. Someone can be depressed in the medical sense of the word, but appear and act completely normal to other people. In a still image or animation clip, there's no way to tell whether the displayed symptoms are indicative of prolonged underlying issues, or a bout of sadness from any number of causes that aren't depression.

I think there are a few cases where dialogue and framing provide enough evidence to tag for it -- post #2092089 for example -- but that may be too subjective. I'm not opposed to aliasing it if that has more support.

beholding said:
I think there are a few cases where dialogue and framing provide enough evidence to tag for it -- post #2092089 for example -- but that may be too subjective.

Dialog is considered external information, that and framing are also subject to interpretation, and doesn't really account for the medical vs colloquial distinction.

I've requested an alias for this at topic #55920, but the community response is an overwhelming rejection. So, what should we do instead?