Do I need

[james_davis_nicoll]

A more nuanced selection of MPR-related tags?

Comments

[kate_nepveu]

"The person who wrote the thing I am linking to is showing their ass" and "the person who wrote the thing I am linking to is discussing something potentially triggering done by another person" are useful distinctions, yes.

I say leave mpr as referring to the first and adopt "content warning" for the second.

+1

[zeborah]

Yes, the mpr usage on the link to the article about MZB confused me for a bit there.

[seawasp]

Nothing wrong with having more detail in exactly what you're warning about, if you're willing to do it.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

No. Blanket condemnation is sufficient.

[arielstarshadow.livejournal.com]

Or maybe just an additional tag - MPR has always kinda referred to a particular class of topics. But maybe adding an "Oh holy shit" tag would be helpful for topics like the MZB debacle.

[dsrtao]

Yeah, the difference between "Author writes rape fantasy" and "Author is rapist" is significant and deserving of additional verbiage.

[arielstarshadow.livejournal.com]

Maybe the tag should be "Things you wish you didn't need to know" or some such

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

"SAN roll required"

[graydon saunders (from livejournal.com)]

John Barnes, in "One for the Morning Glory", had the royal library contain books titled "Highly Unpleasant Things It Is Sometimes Useful to Know", and "Things It Is Not Good to Know at All".

Something like that?

[mme-hardy.livejournal.com]

Excellent. For example, I once read some detailed instructions on how to get a particular method of suicide right, and I have always been sorry I knew that.

[neowolf2.livejournal.com]

Well, that can be useful for writing crime fiction, or sick jokes.

[lostwanderfound.livejournal.com]

I have a friend who taught someone the correct way to tie a noose...a week before they hanged themselves. Still bothers him.

[mme-hardy.livejournal.com]

Oh, *ouch*.

[arielstarshadow.livejournal.com]

Yeah. This could work

[juliansinger.livejournal.com]

It's always struck me as, "Your brain may freeze because of this, beware." So it works for me.

[tx-cronopio.livejournal.com]

I like the element of surprise, never knowing quite what horror awaits behind the cut.

[rpresser.livejournal.com]

I've always interpreted it as "You'll Regret Clicking Yet You Know You Really Want To". Says more about me than James, of course.

[tavella.livejournal.com]

I do tend to associate it with a link to someone themselves being awful, rather than recounting other people being awful.

[fiddlingfrog.livejournal.com]

That's how I've always interpreted it.

[burger-eater.livejournal.com]

Only if you want to link posts so they're sortable/searchable for people to look at later. As the new posts come up, the MPR warning and the description in the text is plenty good enough.

I'll confess that I've never clicked on the MPR tag, though.

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

Oh, I have, when I've wanted to check a post and couldn't remember where it fell, only that it was one of Those.

[burger-eater.livejournal.com]

If LJ had better search capability, you wouldn't have to scroll past all those entries.

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

This site is searchable via Google, so if I remember more exactly what I was looking for, that works pretty well. But sometimes all I'm going on is a feeling that there was an MPR sort of post that I wanted to look at again.

[monte davis (from livejournal.com)]

If you (1) remember it, and (2) want to look at it again, does that count as a double fail for the MPR tag, or a single win for James the Devious?

[mme-hardy.livejournal.com]

... I usually click on those first.

[burger-eater.livejournal.com]

Yeah, for me, the MPR tag functions like an R rating to a 13-year-old: it says "This is not good for you but you really want it.

[martianmooncrab.livejournal.com]

once one knows the M isnt for Muppet...

[were-gopher.livejournal.com]

Now there's an image I could do without...

[martianmooncrab.livejournal.com]

I get confused with people using letters to shorten topics or phrases, because they can mean so many other things..

[movingfinger.livejournal.com]

It's easy to remember what the MPR tag promises, so if you choose to introduce another, it has to be both explicit and for material that is clearly not MPR. "Things mankind wished it didn't know" kind of tag maybe. ("Childhood's End" ha ha.)

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

No.

[zxhrue.livejournal.com]

Nope. mpr is sufficient. ommv.

[zibblsnrt.livejournal.com]

If they were case-sensitive I'd suggest an all-caps one for emphasis..

[fengi.livejournal.com]

I'm with those who like the surprise plus I know there's going to be something awful.

I notice that 99% of the MPR tags involve people endorsing awful things or making some awful argument. So the part of me which loves accurate filing systems understands considering a different tag for articles which are about awful things but not endorsing them. I think "things you cannot unknow".

[badger.livejournal.com]

I don't think so.

[rosefox]

No, I think MPR and "read the tags" are sufficient.

[soon_lee]

MPR is a James Nicoll tradition!

It's sacrosanct!

Don't you dare mess with it!


(My Pavlovian response to a MPR tag is to click on the link anyway. But I can't ever say that I wasn't warned, so the MPR tag does exactly what it says on the label.)

[agent-mimi.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't personally change the MPR tag but you might want to add a second "trigger warning" tag, I suppose. Because no one knows if you're linking to "VD says something stupid about anthropology again" or "here's some talk about raping children, including the defense thereof."