I've encountered a lot of posts -- and I mean a lot -- where certain tags are added purely based on content in the description of the image, not due to anything in the image itself. I'm sure many taggers have similar experiences. This is against TWYS policy, but it shows that a lot of users believe the information from descriptions is important. It's also worth noting that a lot of these mistags are for popular tropes that are common in stories but hard to show purely visually, such as enemies_to_lovers, forbidden_relationship, and virginity. On the flipside, there is also the issue that descriptions can contain triggering content that users may want to blacklist -- and it's entirely possible for Safe-rated images to be accompanied by pornographic stories, which is, I think, a problem.

Currently, the only tags that can relate to the description are lore and meta tags, but those are very limited. I wonder if it would be a good idea to have a separate tag section just for tagging descriptions?

Other than lore and meta tags, no I don't think there needs to be description tags. Mostly because the descriptions are editable by anyone.

Perhaps though, there should be some rules about descriptions- like long descriptions and explicit descriptions on safe images must be under a cut with appropriate content warnings.

That is definitely not going to happen since it violates TWYS in principle.

Even if we moved it into a completely separated section of tags, it will require a major overhaul of the current system (to prevent it clashing with the existing blacklisting system) just so that one can tag about the description.
Not to mention that tagging stories will run into the same problems as on topic #57825, but without the quality control part.

I have raised the issue about NSFW descriptions being on SFW posts before, but from what I can tell so far, there is no specific rules against it.

regsmutt said:
Other than lore and meta tags, no I don't think there needs to be description tags. Mostly because the descriptions are editable by anyone.

But aren't tags also editable by anyone? (until they're locked)

nin10dope said:
But aren't tags also editable by anyone? (until they're locked)

The image isn't editable by anyone, that's the difference

Text content could be edited by anyone, an image itself cannot (not directly within the site anyways)

donovan_dmc said:
The image isn't editable by anyone, that's the difference

Text content could be edited by anyone, an image itself cannot (not directly within the site anyways)

although, editing to remove valid content description would be vandalism.

dba_afish said:
although, editing to remove valid content description would be vandalism.

There's a lot of room for interpretation and grey area there. Personally I feel like only descriptions from the artist (be it copied from offsite or written for e6) are truly valid. Most other stuff- including stories not connected to the image by the artist- is fair game to edit or delete it. Which means that any description tags may no longer apply.

regsmutt said:
There's a lot of room for interpretation and grey area there. Personally I feel like only descriptions from the artist (be it copied from offsite or written for e6) are truly valid. Most other stuff- including stories not connected to the image by the artist- is fair game to edit or delete it. Which means that any description tags may no longer apply.

To be fair it wouldn't be hard to see if someone deleted or vandalized a story_in_desciption post with the usernames attached to everything
But yeah, it would be easier to go unnoticed for it

nin10dope said:
To be fair it wouldn't be hard to see if someone deleted or vandalized a story_in_desciption post with the usernames attached to everything
But yeah, it would be easier to go unnoticed for it

It'd be easy to see, my point was just "what's a valid description anyway?" Largely stuff that's real context- artist/commissioner descriptions, if it was published anywhere, etc. Someone writing a story inspired by the image doesn't add context and might add misleading impressions of intent or characters, so removing or editing it wouldn't be vandalism.

regsmutt said:
It'd be easy to see, my point was just "what's a valid description anyway?" Largely stuff that's real context- artist/commissioner descriptions, if it was published anywhere, etc. Someone writing a story inspired by the image doesn't add context and might add misleading impressions of intent or characters, so removing or editing it wouldn't be vandalism.

If it was located at the source, or added directly by the artist or character owner.
Everything else would be invalid.

nin10dope said:
If it was located at the source, or added directly by the artist or character owner.
Everything else would be invalid.

Yeah that's what I said.

regsmutt said:
Yeah that's what I said.

I'm saying that in this hypothetical situation, removing/editing/overwriting it would indeed be vandalism