AMV Content Rating System

[Phade]

Hey Everyone!

With the new site redesign, one portion of the AMV information that I've wanted to revamp was the AMV content rating system. Most of you are familiar with the MPAA movie rating system of G, PG, PG-13, and so on. I would like to have a similar rating system for AMVs that encompasses a broader range of ratings from TV, movies, games, and other geographic regions around the world. I want to translate those ratings into general abbreviations, ballpark criteria, and a numeric score so that filtering AMV results can be more reliable.

Here is a rough draft of what I had in mind. The system consists of a rating title, abbreviation, visual symbol, mindful age range, general criteria for that rating, a numeric value, and a color code. Members and the video creator will give the numeric value for the AMV, while averages and math will provide a final score.

What do you think of this system? Are the titles and criteria properly descriptive? Are the abbreviations and symbols easily recognizable? Let me know!!

[Otohiko]

Looks fair, maybe even a bit more elaborate than it should be but I don't see any harm in that - better to give some more options than not enough I suppose, especially if we're going on a sort of numerical scale.

Since most of this is going to be based off anime content, might be a good idea to give some examples of recent anime titles for each of the ratings.

[Kireblue]

I think that there are way too many classifications. Also, the MPAA system was designed for full-length motion pictures and doesn't translate as well to 3-minute videos. Instead of giving videos a rating, it would probably be better to provide them with tags that can overlap with various content and ratings. I think that the following rating tags should be enough

Kid Friendly
General Audience
Mature
Adult

And the additional content tags could include
Strong Flashes
Explicit Language
Extreme Violence
Self-harm and suicide
Nudity
etc

[SQ]

This is over-engineered and completely useless to me as a viewer.

Why are there so many ratings? Why are numbers involved at all?
Why is there a need to re-invent the wheel?

If you want to stick to a rating system, copy ESRB or PEGI (videogame ratings) which are well-defined and state why each game got the rating.
If you don't want to use a system with an established ratings board, you try AO3's content ratings & content warnings.

However, as a viewer, I think ratings like this are too general to be of service is most cases. A general "SFW" and "NSFW" is the only broad categorization I actually care about. Any more nuance that is actually helpful to me would be through the use of tags delineating what type of content is being shown. In this case, there's still no need to re-invent the wheel, because AO3's archive warnings are good enough.

As a person who submits a video, while I believe accessibility is good to have, you also need to keep in mind how much effort and friction it brings to the submission process. Mandating or forcing the use of our system is definitely a choice you can make, but understand that many people may choose to simply not submit a video instead of go through the effort of correctly marking the content. Or worse, they will incorrectly mark their content as safe because it's less effort than properly marking their content.

[SQ]

I think the "perfect" rating system, to me as a viewer, is a tag system that multiple people can edit. It is hyper-specific (contains blood, death, dismemberment, strong language, etc. type of tags) and I would ideally have a tag blacklist that hides (or at least warns) about videos that contain tags on my blacklist.

However, this has its own problems. It's extra friction in the submission process, it's mess on the video's info page if there's a ton of tags, if it's free-form tags then useless or malicious tags can be a problem, if people other than the creator can add tags (which would be my ideal use), creators may not like what is added, etc. etc.

Every system has its downfalls but some type of tag system for "warnings" is multitudes more useful to me as a view than a "content rating" is.

[Falconone]

I don't like this system its just too much, and as someone not from the US I have a different view on stuff. Also, there is the problem of definition: what is moderate violence or mild language?

Also, with so many different layers many would also be like "wtf should I pick" and be more likely to go the way of "that's too much" and leave.
In Germany, we have Ratings like 0, 6, 12, 16, and 18+. And there is also sometimes the problem where I say, "Why is X 16 and not 18+, but Y is 18+?".
It makes it very complicated, in my opinion.

A Tag system with like "blood", "sfw", "nsfw", "suicide", "flashes", and so on would be better, it can help for black listing or searching for new videos. Also, it is easier to use because, if I see blood splashing, I think I know that I should tag "blood" as an example.
And such a system is easier to expand if needed.

If someone is missing a tag, others could add it, if the creator wants to say "no, that's not true" he could open a ticket, and someone would need to check if it is correct or not. And if you log if people add tags, you can also find people who would abuse the system and can remove the rights to add tags.

That is my opinion on it. I am not that happy with the shown system in short.

[Phade]

Hey Everyone,

The system proposed here actually originated from right to left, starting with the number and then the rest of it followed after. I wanted to have a 1-100 value for a general content rating, where 1 is "absolutely wholesome" and 100 is "even Satan blushes and looks away". I then had to think of what a 25, 50, and 75 value would be so that we could provide some general guidance, otherwise people would just have a nebulous number rather than a described target to hit.

Whenever I create shows for cons, I have my own in-brain rating system that is Y, G, PG, PG13, R, and X. I know what they mean to me, but the reasoning and value isn't public. For me, Y through PG are general admission shows any time of day. I generally limit the PG13 vids to either one in a general show or a few in an evening show. R is 18+ viewing only and X isn't shown in public at all for my shows. (Again, this is just me.)

I then researched global variations of content rating systems from around the world, gathering ideas and points of view each of them had with age, material, and so on. That information went more into the criteria of the ratings I put together.

For my old in-brain rating, Y would be 1-10, G is 10-25, PG is 25-50, PG13 is 50-70, R is 70-85 and X is 85-100. However for the draft system shown here, I provided slightly more granularity and guidance for rating meanings.

The goal of this rating system is a low-friction value. When giving this rating either as the video creator or as feedback as a video viewer, the member would type (or use a slider) a number between 1-100. The rest of the text here is just guidance.

Instead of giving videos a rating, it would probably be better to provide them with tags that can overlap with various content and ratings.

If you want to stick to a rating system, copy ESRB or PEGI (videogame ratings) which are well-defined and state why each game got the rating.

Funny you should mention it, this will be my next post covering specific aspects of an AMV for things like language, nudity, violence, etc. where a score is given for each aspect. If any aspect scores above a certain threshold, the overall 1-100 content rating cannot be below a certain number.

However since there are multiple aspects each with their own score, the level of friction goes up when giving the feedback rating. The general 1-100 rating allows people to give a quick “this video is a 37” and “this video is a 73” and move on. The more granular aspect ratings will be required by the video creator, while general members can give that level of feedback if they so choose.

I’m currently researching ESRB, PEGI, and other systems to follow as an established example.

I think the "perfect" rating system, to me as a viewer, is a tag system that multiple people can edit.

Funny you should mention it, this will be the third type of AMV rating: Specific Warnings. These will be text-based warnings that the video creator and member can add. As the number of specific warnings grows, common warings can be displayed at the top of the submission form as well as type-ahead suggestions of existing warnings will show up. Over time, this will turn itself into a standardized list of specific options for specific warnings. (See “Video Feedback Schema” for some more details)

To summarize, I thinking of three levels of rating systems (in addition to general free-text tags):

1. General Content Rating: 1-100 number (easy to enter)
2. General Aspects: Ratings for AMV aspects like language, nudity, violence, etc. (more effort)
3. Specific Warnings: Very specific items that may need viewer attention (higher effort)

These will be displayed on the video info view and also filterable in the AMV search.

How does this sound?

Phade.

[Phade]

In Germany, we have Ratings like 0, 6, 12, 16, and 18+.

Oooooh, we could have guidance translation levels for existing system-specific ratings, like for the German system, 1-16 = 0, 17-30 = 6, 30-50 = 12, 50-75 = 16, and 75-100 = 18+. (numbers here are just examples)

The reason for the range for each rating is to give members a hint of the severity of the rating. "This AMV is a solid middle German 12" could be a 40 on our scale. A score of 73 could be translated to the user as, "This AMV is probably a German 16, but it's really close to being an 18+"

We could then have a viewer option to show the translated score to their preferred rating system.

Phade.

[CrackTheSky]

I think a rating system like this is interesting in theory but will be difficult to implement in practice. Like Falconone pointed out, different people from different geographies and backgrounds will have wildly different views on how to rate things. Arguably, the math proposed would average this out into a number that is somewhat meaningful but...I just don't know how universally applicable something like that will be. You would need to give a lot of really concrete guidelines and specific examples of what kinds of things would place a video in a "higher" numerical category, and hope that your users abide by those defined standards when rating each video. Vague phrases like "stronger mild language" are basically meaningless to me, and I'm sure most other people who read it. I have no idea what to make of that.

I think a tag system in lieu of a numerical rating would solve a lot of this -- or a tag system in addition to a much more simplified content rating system like is proposed here. Have 4-5 content categories and then a robust tag system that allows users to specify what specific content is in a video -- violence, language, nudity, sexual content, etc. -- so that users can skim the tags and decide if that "R"-rated video is actually rated that way for things that they personally find distasteful. Consider adding a(n optional) weighting system to each tag as well to help identify how much of a factor each element is in a video. For a good example of how this might work, check out what AniDB does -- an example of their tag system can be seen here (scroll down a bit to see the tags).

As a separate note, but obviously related -- I really hope you and your team are considering a generalized tag system, beyond its potential implementation in terms of content, like we're discussing here. I'm thinking things like being able to tag a video by genre, emotion, specific effects used, editing techniques, or whatever. That might be a big ask but I think the more options you can give your users for categorizing and filtering videos, the better.

[SQ]

Hey Everyone,

The system proposed here actually originated from right to left, starting with the number and then the rest of it followed after. I wanted to have a 1-100 value for a general content rating, where 1 is "absolutely wholesome" and 100 is "even Satan blushes and looks away". I then had to think of what a 25, 50, and 75 value would be so that we could provide some general guidance, otherwise people would just have a nebulous number rather than a described target to hit.

Why are you so concentrated on numbers?
I think the number system as a whole is not worth the time.
But if you are convinced you need numbers, Maybe 1 - 5?

The types of content that people are sensitive to varies. "Sexual," "language," and "gore" (the base things that appear to be affected by your numbers) are all completely different buckets. If a video has a lot of nudity, some language, some gore, but no porn, how does any number actually help me?

If you are still going to display the other things (general subjects, specific warnings), then why bother with the numerical score?

For me, Y through PG are general admission shows any time of day. [...] Y would be 1-10, G is 10-25

So there's no functional difference between those ratings and they can be combined into one rating which wipes out literally a quarter of your numerical scale.

The goal of this rating system is a low-friction value. When giving this rating either as the video creator or as feedback as a video viewer, the member would type (or use a slider) a number between 1-100. The rest of the text here is just guidance.

In what world is this frictionless? You are asking people to assign a number in a frankly HUGE scale when we already (as a culture) don't numerically scale things honestly or genuinely. (Look back at your star scale and how you process those ratings for an in-house example.)

Not to mention, you're asking people to numerically score something that is not normally numerically scored in this manner. It is not immediately understandable what you're asking for and expecting everyone to read the guidance on it is a pipe dream. Even of the people who do go out of the way to read the guidance, there will be a lot of confusion, which will result in a scale that is unreliable and doesn't convey what you originally wanted it to.

It would be more intuitive if you changed the scale to be something like "How old do you think someone should be in order to watch your video?"
(And to be frank, I do not want that scale either.)

But, overall, I think a numerical score for this content is unnecessary as a whole. If it must exist, it should be a much smaller scale, e.g. 1 - 5.