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One of the known evils of encyclopaedia is genres and themes that try to describe/spoil all plot points, piling up dozens of entries in those fields.

Fantastic Children (TV)

Is there an automated way to run a SQL script on a database to search for entries with genres/themes overuse, and then, possibly, drop the excessive (least used) tags?

Or this abundance of tags is seen as normal?

I participate in audits regularly and I have seen a lot of theme abuse, but that is one reasons why we have audits.
Personally, I prefer to stay with the audit system rather than have themes removed simply because somebody thinks that there are too many of them.

I have not seen Fantastic Children so I do not know if there is any abuse there. That show definitely has many more themes than any others that I have noticed, but they all look like they could be valid. There are none of the obvious nonsensical or derogatory themes that I sometimes see in audits.
If you think that any of those themes are not valid then you should submit an error report so that they can be audited.
If they are valid then I think that they should be allowed to remain, no matter how many there are.

Touma wrote:

If they are valid then I think that they should be allowed to remain, no matter how many there are.

I'm not so sure if I can agree with this. After all, themes should not be "keywords of spoilers" i.e. tell everyone about everything the series contains.

If the encyclopedia has a policy against spoilers in themes I could definitely support that, but I think that it would have to be determined by an error report and an audit. Or an editor who recognizes a spoiler could remove it.

My point was that themes should not be removed simply because there are too many of them.
And if you do want to set a limit for the number of themes you would still need an audit to decide which to remove.

I am not aware of way to question the number of themes in a certain anime other than posting on this forum -- according to automated advice users get, this is the only way.

By the way, my offer to automate stripping off excessive number of themes, of course, is not ideal, so I am not pushing it.

However, this example might be the case of themes overboard, so this probably has to be looked at by editors (those who have watched the show, probably?).

p.s.: I am watching fourth episode now, and however much I usually bash shows, this one might be good, actually. (Not perfect, obviously, but still.) Reviews gave it "A" for the story; I am not so sure, but everyone who wants to watch anime that is not stupid most of the time, might want to see it.

MaxSouth, when you get to the end, be doubly sure to watch the short OVA epilogue. Regardless of what you end up thinking about the series as a whole, it is, to my mind, one of the single best (if not the single best) anime epilogues ever made.

I have some questions about themes, and possibly abuse, so I decided to ask them here rather than starting a new thread.

I was wondering when, or why, themes are audited.
Are all themes audited when they are submitted? Or are they audited only if there is an error report?

I had been assuming that there was an audit only if somebody challenged the theme. But I am having trouble understanding why anybody would challenge "elves" for Those Who Hunt Elves or "vampires" for Rosario + Vampire and Dance in the Vampire Bund. Those came up in recent audits.

I suspect that, just as there are those who like to be disruptive by submitting ridiculous, absurd themes, there are also people who find it amusing to submit false error reports.

Does the encyclopedia software record who submits themes and error reports?

My understanding is that all genres and themes are initially set to come up in audits, and once they get enough supports/opposes, they stop coming up in audits. I'm not exactly sure what happens if someone reports a genre/theme as incorrect after it has already gotten enough votes to stop being audited. I'm guessing that either starts the audit process all over again or just counts as an additional vote against (meaning it is only up for audit if that vote is enough that there is no longer a consensus).

Back in 2012, Dan made a change to the audit system that resulted in tons of additional audits coming up for me, including lots where the genre/theme was obviously correct (see this thread). Before that change I often found the system would have no audits available or just a couple from all the anime I've seen, but since that change I have never been able to get through all the audits it has available for me. My thought is that either the system isn't closing out audits correctly, or so few people are voting that even obvious genres/themes don't get enough votes to be closed out. According to this other thread, it should only take 5 people supporting a genre/theme for it to be closed out (provided no more than 2 people oppose), but maybe so few people audit the genres/themes that even getting to 5 votes is hard. It does seem to give me fewer obvious ones since Dan changed it from a 12 vote majority, so I think probably the issue is that just not many people do audits (i.e., it was almost impossible to get a 12 vote majority before, but now that you only need 5 votes to close an audit if all 5 agree, it is easier but still not that easy for it to come to a decision).

About the original topic of this thread, I think that many of the themes on Fantastic Children are redundant or not valid themes. Keep in mind that the instructions say that themes should be something you would watch the anime just because it contains that thing (i.e., they are there to help people decide which anime to watch, not just to categorize the anime by every aspect of the show). Also, the themes are supposed to be something visual, and not emotions or abstract concepts. For the specific themes, "alien technology" seems redundant with "aliens", "perpetual rebirth" and "reincarnation/soul transfer" are much too specific and should just be replaced with "reincarnation", I don't think "memory degradation" is actually something someone would watch the show to see it, and "tragic past" doesn't seem like a visual theme to me at all. So I definitely think the themes should be trimmed down.

Thank you for the reply, Calathan.
I do now have a better understanding of what is generally happening with the audits.

I am still very curious about why I had to recently audit "elves" for Those Who Hunt Elves and "vampires" for Rosario + Vampire and Dance in the Vampire Bund.
But, at this point, it is just curiosity.

On the topic of redundant themes, there is no simple way to resolve that is there?
I know that we get either-or choices for genres that are deemed to be mutually exclusive, such as action and adventure, but there is no way to do that for themes is there?

EDIT: A somewhat related question:
I just went to the audit page and at the top of the list of assignments I saw "You volunteered to validate:". I do not remember seeing that before. It was just "You gave up on:" and "Recently completed assignments:".
Is "You volunteered to validate:" something new, or is my memory even worse that I thought?
And what is the difference between "You volunteered to validate:" and "You gave up on:"?

Touma, "You volunteered to validate" shows up when you navigate away from the page without giving any response at all. I'm pretty sure it has been showing up for a long time, or at least I remember seeing it before. It is different from "You gave up on" since you get "You gave up on" when you select "I don't know", but you get "You volunteered to validate" when you don't make any selection at all.

^
That makes sense. Thank you.

There was a time yesterday when I got an error message from the server when I clicked the "Go" button for an audit. That is probably why I got "You volunteered to validate" today.

Key wrote:

MaxSouth, when you get to the end, be doubly sure to watch the short OVA epilogue. Regardless of what you end up thinking about the series as a whole, it is, to my mind, one of the single best (if not the single best) anime epilogues ever made.

Thanks for the prompt about the epilogue.

I have a giant list of issues with the show (I will publish it sometime later in the corresponding thread to the usual great displeasure of the audience), but the storytelling is so outstanding that this anime has become one of the best my experiences in anime, ever.

This is almost my dream anime, because it is not episodic, it has breathtaking story (however flawed) with deep emotional impact, which is not ruined by issues with the story as they are not to degree that would make things fake. Besides, the great storytelling does not give you much time to muse about what is happening, most issues with the story only come as after-though. None of issues are as blunt as some other anime (like Angel Beats, which has higher rating but vastly weaker), at no time I was "facepalming". I am starving for such anime.

This project has average overall rating "Very good", and it does not help to find this anime at all. I wish I could be able to find this anime much sooner, as well as fine other anime with such profound continues story.

I wish there was a way to rate storytelling separately. For example, considering story's flaws, I agree with your estimation that the story part could be a "B+" (or even "B"), but storytelling, what is not the same thing, is an "A" (or even "A+") -- but there is no way to vote on that in the current database entry.

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dormcat wrote:

Touma wrote:

If they are valid then I think that they should be allowed to remain, no matter how many there are.

I'm not so sure if I can agree with this. After all, themes should not be "keywords of spoilers" i.e. tell everyone about everything the series contains.

Could you please check this?

{Combined serial posts. ~nobahn}

I watched it when it originally aired in Japan... hehe

alien technology, aliens, alternate dimension, alternate history, detective, human experimentation, memory degradation, perpetual rebirth, reincarnation/soul transfer, secret organization, spirits, tragic past

Most of these should not be in here, because none of them can be deduced from the show's synopsis. And I would say that about half of these are major spoilers.

Alternate dimension/history shouldn't even be here at all, IIRC.

secret organization and tragic past, maybe.

I think omitting themes just because they cannot be deduced at a glance is a bad idea. If you are someone looking for shows with a certain theme, would you want a show to be excluded from your search because that theme wasn't evident in the first episode? Look at Madoka for example - if you restrict it to themes that apply to the first episode and the basic spoiler free happy clappy synopsis, then the meat of the series isn't covered at all.

Also, omitting accurate themes for any reason will severely reduce the usefulness of being able to search for shows by themes.

Spoilers are a potential problem.
Somebody will have to decide which is more important, or which is the lesser evil: avoiding spoilers or providing information about the shows.
I would rather have more information and the ability to search by themes, but I am not bothered by spoilers as much as some people are.

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