Does anybody feel that Genre is more important than tags?

Poster	Message
Gunza Blazin Rank : 10	Posted : 2 months, 1 week ago at May 13 7:45 - I dunno really, was just wondering. I'm a bit of a categor-whore and I feel that Genre is a little bit more important than the other tags that are usually slapped up. At the moment, you can see how many people agree which genres fit the titles by tags but you can't see the ranks amongst genres. Like I can't see which is Listal's most popular/most watched Action Film. Making a seperate line above tags and below your rating should be where the main genre allocations for that title could go. Then you can click on them and see where that film ranks amongst others of its type. This could happen across all mediums. For example, Film: Action, Adventure, Comedy, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, War, Thriller, Romance, Drama, Short, Biopic, Animation, Documentary, Western, Indie, Mystery, Sport etc. Same with TV but you could also add for that: Gameshow, Reality TV, Chat Show, Soap Opera etc. Games: FPS, TPS, Arcade, Puzzle, Strategy, RPG, MMORPG, Expansion, Racing, Sports, Adventure etc. Anyone else have two cents on this?
Phil Rank : 21	Posted : 2 months, 1 week ago at May 13 14:00 - http://www.listal.com/search/movies/1/?tag=action Top movies tagged with Action, in order. Simply go to the type of thing you want to view the list for, click "top tags" on the left menu, then select the tag you want. If it's not in the top 200, then you may need to modify a search at the moment, but if that's the case it's probably not a significant tag anyway.
Gunza Blazin Rank : 10	Posted : 2 months, 1 week ago at May 13 14:05 - I was thinking something more official though. I've seen some awful genre tags on some films.
Tom Moderator Admin Rank : 94	Posted : 2 months, 1 week ago at May 13 14:14 - The list is ordered by number of times a tag has been used for that film, I think this is a pretty good indication of popularity although it is biased towards the type of films people who like to tag things watch. I have thought about using genres somehow but how are you suggesting assigning official genres? The problem with genres is that they are debatable thats why the tag system lets the users of the site decide which genre the film is.
Prelude VIP Moderator Rank : 2	Posted : 2 months, 1 week ago at May 13 14:20 - I think a few extra fields in all database entries would be nice, namely: Genre: Setting: and also something very important we're missing for games, is: Developed by: The manufacturer info is useless half time and wrong other half of time. We need a proper Developer info for games. Its as important as author of books.
Gunza Blazin Rank : 10	Posted : 2 months, 1 week ago at May 13 14:27 - The easiest way to do it is by ripping IMDb off. They got some pretty official tags on their film pages. Most films are quite obvious where they fall under anyway. We got some sharp people here though who can assigned such categories. Maybe it could be a new Mod ability or assign an invigilator. We need to define each genre aswell. Some people confuse action and adventure, some people confuse science fiction and fantasy. So by having the official ones, we are actually looking at a film which is an Action Sci-fi or a Fantasy Adventure!
jgnikkila Rank : 42	Posted : 2 months, 1 week ago at May 13 17:43 - Well if you just want to stick with "official" genres, you could have two systems, one for personal tags that wouldn't show on item pages (or I guess they could show alongside, for added colour) and one for the genres. All users could set a genre, or vote on a genre, which would be chosen from the official list. This way users would still decide which genre the film is, and the most popular genres would appear in order. - This is how it works for RYM now, btw, completely ripping them off. Would a system like this be popular here, though? Tagging genres to movies, would enough many people find it interesting? Tags kinda work automatically when people sort their collections, and you can be more creative with them. I guess you could freestyle and come up with something which would combine official genres with more colourful descriptors, which you could choose freely. Dunno. I'd love it though, I'd be tagging genres like a mother! It'd be nice to have some cult genre tags too, film noir, martial arts, giallo, spaghetti western, bollywood musical... and then official top lists eventually. Add a field for origin country for films, and we'd get an official "Listal's Top 100 Hong Kong Films", "Best French Thrillers" etc. Yeah...
Phil Rank : 21	Posted : 2 months, 1 week ago at May 13 18:16 - Yeah, but to be fair, we've already got a massive thread somewhere started by Tom with extra attributes that are either vital or nice to have. This does the job for the time being until Tom's got to a stage where he's got time to add extra attributes for films/books/albums/games etc. If people really want to go down that route, I'll do a search for the thread and dig it up again rather than have this one go way off topic! :o) The thing with Genre, setting and the like is - as Tom points out above - they're not always obvious, particularly with all the cross-genres around. Sci-fi-romantic-action-comedy or some such nonsense is always possible. At the moment, tagging a movie with each genre allows you to search for each one individually, or a combination thereof, and it'll list the movies in order of the number of people that've tagged it as such (so a single "romantic" tag on Schindler's list won't get it listed above something like Bridget Jones for that tag!) It's basically what jgnikkila already suggests without the separation idea (which IMHO wouldn't work - you'd get too many people adding the wrong tags in the wrong list). Really, I don't see what's being proposed here that isn't already implemented at a more basic level other than - a) promoting the links for certain tag lists b) adding more database attributes (which has already been well discussed elsewhere) Of course, if Tom wants to implement it, that's his call... personally I'd rather the merge stuff that's been commented on in the last few days is done first, but it's his site!!
jgnikkila Rank : 42	Posted : 2 months, 1 week ago at May 13 19:03 - Nah, I was just daydreaming about silly nonsense. No cause for panic. Tags are not the same thing as genres though. They can be applied for all kinds of reasons, I use my tags to sort my collection only, and to keep it simple I can't use tags like biopic, epic, historical, fantasy (adventure will have to do...). For sorting purposes I mark action comedys with action only, comedy/dramas with drama or comedy only. And there's lots of duplications with different spellings etc.. Plus for films that not many people have tagged, the genre tags are muddled up with the misc.tags. AND there'd be no reason why you couldn't have "official" genres like romantic comedy and action comedy. Continuing with this to irk Phil basically :)
Phil Rank : 21	Posted : 2 months, 1 week ago at May 14 14:40 - Of course, it's the beauty of tags - you can add any info you want with them :o) I can honestly see the benefits in some kind of system for genre, particularly lists, just think there's other more pressing concerns personally. Feel free to debate away! :)
Tom Moderator Admin Rank : 94	Posted : 2 months, 1 week ago at May 14 15:06 - Imdb genres could be used but that still leaves the other categories, thats why I was still thinking of a way of using the existing tags to assign specific genres. Maybe the top 3 genre* tags which are tagged at least x times become official. *Tags which can be classified as genre tags beforehand. Its confusing which are genres and which are movie themes, is 'sports' a genre or just a theme or a movie setting?
Gunza Blazin Rank : 10	Posted : 2 months, 1 week ago at May 14 15:21 - Action, Adventure, Romance, Comedy, Drama, Horror, Science Fiction, Fantasy and Thriller are said to be the 'proper' genres of film. Whereas the likes of Sport, War and Western are more circumstantial. We could have Main Genre and Sub genre if you wanted to diversify the list any further. I know some people will be rooting for RomCom as a single genre. I still don't think this suggestion should be overlooked since there are more matters that Phil has a problem with. Lets see if anyone else wants to add their two cents.
Phil Rank : 21	Posted : 2 months, 1 week ago at May 14 15:39 - I think along with those you'd probably need "Documentary", which covers most other types in one foul swoop.
Gunza Blazin Rank : 10	Posted : 1 month, 4 weeks ago at May 22 7:20 - I like to think as tags as a more personal touch from members, a lot of people assign them so they can group together certain films. Genre should be more official. DC has the right idea by voting for them. There could be a hidden drop down bar (like with edit personal item) where you can tick which genre that particular film is. That way the members still decide on it. Then on the normal item page, the most vote for shows up first. I could pull up a list of classic genres for Films, TV and Games so they can be the main tick boxes first off and then as other Genre assignments become more popular they can be added. Its the only fair way to do it by popular opinion. However, I still think by being official we'll get much better ranks for which is the top rated 'Horror' and which is the highest scoring 'comedy'. Don't forget some people can't even spell so thats a wasted genre 'tag' already.