So, I’ve noticed there’s no official way to mark covers as NSFW, I know there’s an unofficial way to tag but it doesn’t work the same.
In my opinion an official way to mark them would be very useful.
I’ve had to hold off on adding art to some because I know it’s displayed on the front page and people don’t need to see this stuff (Gore) by accident.
Perhaps a “Show recent cover art!” button with a little note to the effect that sensitive viewers may wish to not expand it would be more culturally neutral.
‘NSFW’, as often used online, strikes me as a very Protestant American categorization and not a great fit for a global encyclopedia. What’s ‘NSFW’ for a user in Dubai will be quite different from someone in New York, and different again from someone in Beijing.
I’m rather more offended by websites trying to judge that sort of thing on my behalf than I am by seeing tiny thumbnails of cover art, TBH…
I would much rather we show the artwork by default (because this is a huge draw to the homepage, probably the only dynamic/interesting thing on there to a non-editor, imo) and then click to show or enable certain image types. Either way, it’s being hidden and a click is required.
I wouldn’t use the words “NSFW” in the actual implementation, I would be more precise with what’s being shown/displayed, as RYM does. I made a quick mockup on the ticket.
Then if someone’s New York workplace enjoys pictures of naked decomposing bodies, the user can enable “gore” and “nudity” at their leisure.
You also get covers like Blind Faith and the original Scorpions “Virgin Killer” which are possibly illegal in many jurisdictions.
It would be nice to have configurable options to show/hide these sort of covers.
In the mockup we can see example content descriptions like “Nudity”, “Explicit sexual content”, “Blood, gore or violence”, and “Nazi and/or NSBM”.
Let me ask a provocative question: where do we draw the line?
What about (examples only!):
There are many kinds of content that some users may want to filter or receive a warning for. Is the intention to support only a fixed set of categories, or should the system be extensible so communities can define additional content labels as needed?
Can we set up personal preferences to include or exclude certain categories in our user profile?
I think:
@InvisibleMan78’s list shows the point that most of those are theoretical subjects that will rarely be found on covers. An editor who is posting artwork is unlikely to tag a shock cover of a obscure band they like as NSFW. Most shock covers have some logic within the concept of the band. And a fan is unlikely to tick NSFW. I can’t see how anyone can see that Nevermind cover as anything but a natural photograph.
So who will police it? If the aim is to keep artwork off the popular page then that means someone has a full time job as a lot of artwork gets uploaded. It is almost asking for an art moderator.
I get confused at how prudish some countries can be. Roger Waters Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking has a little black censor square added to the US covers. What would stop someone from ticking all the Taylor Swift covers as NSFW due to the amount of flesh on show?
This is artwork. Artwork should be free to express. Freedom to shock and make you respond. If artwork has a potential to offend then don’t look at the front page of the site. It is not just music artwork like this, but artwork in general. Freedom of expression is important. And with MB it is freedom to record facts as facts.
IMHO, sensitive content could be tagged, as we do for genre, with votes. And users should be able to show/hide content based on that.
@jesus2099
My point is not about individual categories; it’s about
Exactly, as you ask
If the tagging is based on votes, what happens if enough people vote against a tag? For example, if enough Nazis (just as an example) oppose labeling a cover as Nazi-related, wouldn’t that prevent it from being categorized? I’m not convinced a voting system is reliable in cases like this.
Personally, I think the only workable solution is a personal tagging system. I could assign a cover to whatever category I think fits, and then choose for myself whether I want covers from those categories to be shown or hidden on the homepage and on release pages.
Yes, but who decides if an image, a title is “offending”? Personally I don’t find nudity or drugs “offending”… who set the bar?
In my opinion, that’s something each person has to decide for themselves. What one person finds offensive, another might not. No one should force their personal opinions or values on everyone else. Respecting different perspectives is more important than trying to define a universal standard.
As it all comes down to personal preference, this feels, to me, more like the job of a userscript or extension than trying to create yet another Hays Code or other censorship mechanism.
NSFW was just a good shorthand to illustrate the idea, a lot of whet would be tagged was actually pretty standard at my last workplace, “sensitive content” or something along these lines would definitely be better. I understand this kind of thing can be very subjective and my personal main aim was simply to avoid exposing others to gore or more extreme content without their knowledge. I’m not personally bothered by nudity, but many are, and while I might get away with looking at Michaelangelo’s David in public, Lifelovers Pulver is gonna raise some eyebrows.
Whilst we can split hairs over the finer limits of this kind of thing, such as with Nevermind, there are some topics that are typically taboo cross at least the western world such as straight up gore and autopsy style photos, the kind of which I was reluctant to add to the DB, or Pornography.
I’d rather avoid adding NS stuff to this as if it’s filterable, that would just provide a handy place for people to discover Nazi content, and it’s not like we follow German law here. (a lot more than NS falls afoul of those laws)
I really don’t see that as complicated as it is made here. We can have one or several flags indicating content that is problematic in certain circumstances. Cover art flagged that way can be blurred or such by default and revealed on click. Users can choose to disable that in their preferences and have everything shown plainly.
Of course there are edge cases, but there is also plenty of imagery where I think most can agree and understand that it is problematic in certain circumstances, independent of whether you personally find this content disturbing or not.
That all has nothing to do with censoring.
If you look at it the other way around, I completely agree. 
Users who prefer to have sensitive cover art blurred by default can simply enable that option in their preferences.
There’s no need to make everyone opt out of the feature when only a small group of users actually wants it enabled by default.
I think it extends to more than cover art images, titles or even artist’s names can be offending for some. But we could apply the same logic to entities. Tags + filters.
You are right.
Random examples for artist names: Sex Pistols, Dead Kennedys, Butthole Surfers, Anal Cunt (there are more artists with the same name), Revolting Cocks, Suicidal Tendencies, Slayer (there are more artists with the same name), Cannibal Corpse, Infant Annihilator, Rotting Christ, The Brian Jonestown Massacre …
These are artist names that the average user will never see unless they go hunting for them. MusicBrainz is an encyclopaedia of music. Wikipedia does not blur out AC’s pages: Anal Cunt - Wikipedia . And using that site as an example, they also don’t blur out any artwork. ( Scorpions, Nirvana ). Instead they document the fuss that these images have caused over the years.