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So we got for ID requests and for, according to its description, anything about music. Supposedly ID requests too, but this is not exactly how tags work, right? What about instead of combining these tags in questions where someone asks to identify music, we use ?

The tag is primarily used to identify anime or manga. Should music be included?

What are the pros and cons of both options? Which should we use when?

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  • idk how many questions have the ID tag that aren't the ID requests we know and love now, but the questions with music tag this way will have two distinct types of questions − ID and non-ID. I don't think this is a good thing because using one tag for two different enough things is confusing.
    – Hakase
    Aug 30, 2015 at 1:19

4 Answers 4

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Let's analyze the pro and con of using vs. , in term of categorizing questions.

We have 3 categories of questions related to music:

  1. Identification request for a series, with a piece of music as clue (answer contains both the series name and the track title)
  2. Soundtrack identification where the series is known (answer contains the track title)
  3. Other non-identification questions related to music

We observe that category 2 and 3 specify complementing sets of questions for a particular series: music identification questions and other music-related questions.

We would like to analyze the categorizing effect of tagging based on the following scenarios:

  1. Search for category 1
  2. Search for category 2
  3. Search for category 3
  4. Search for category 1 and 2 (all music identification questions)
  5. Search for category 2, for a particular series (all soundtrack identification questions of a series)
  6. Search for category 3, for a particular series/topic (all non-identification music questions of a series/topic)
  7. Search for category 2 and 3, for a particular series (all music-related questions of a series)

Scheme 1a: With the previous scheme of tagging (before senshin's meta thread):

Tagging scheme:

Search queries for each scenario:

  • Scenario 1 and 2 can't be searched, since category 1 and 2 are both tagged , and differentiated with the existence of series tag, which can't be excluded in the search.
  • Scenario 3 can be found with [music] -[identification-request].
  • Scenario 4 can be found with [music][identification-request].
  • Scenario 5 can be found with [<series tag>][music][identification-request].
  • Scenario 6 can be found with [<series tag>][music] -[identification-request]
  • Scenario 7 can be found with [<series tag>][music]

Scheme 2a: With the current scheme of tagging (after senshin's meta thread):

Tagging scheme:

(Same as above, except that category 2 is tagged as only)

Search queries for each scenario:

  • Scenario 1 can be found with [music][identification-request]
  • Scenario 2 and 3 can't be searched, since category 2 and 3 are not distinguishable, as we only have , plus series tag or other tags.
  • Scenario 4, 5, 6 are not searchable, since we can't tell apart questions in category 2 and 3.
  • Scenario 6 is only searchable for non-series-tag (like ), with the observation that questions don't use those tags.
  • Scenario 7 can be found with [<series tag>][music]

Scheme 1b: Replace with for category 1 and 2, following the previous scheme of tagging soundtrack identification questions with )

Tagging scheme:

Search queries for each scenario:

  • Scenario 1 and 2 can't be searched, since category 1 and 2 are both tagged , and differentiated with the existence of series tag, which can't be excluded in the search.
  • Scenario 3 can be found with [music].
  • Scenario 4 can be found with [tag:music-identification].
  • Scenario 5 can be found with [<series tag>][music-identification].
  • Scenario 6 can be found with [<series tag>][music]
  • Scenario 7 can't be searched, since search syntax does not support A and (B or C).

The search syntax is simplified for some queries, compared to the queries in scheme 1a. However, scenario 7 is no longer searchable.

Scheme 2b: Replace with for category 1, following the current scheme of tagging category 2 without )

This scheme doesn't make sense, since the purpose of is to put questions in category 1 and 2 in the same basket. The search queries are more or less the same as scheme 2a. No problem is solved by doing this.

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  • Thank you for this detailed post; it really helps clarify what's going on. I guess my major assertion is that our number one goal should be to distinguish category 1 from the other two categories, which is the reason for my proposal. I also don't think that scenarios 4, 5, and 6 are very common use cases, since scen 4 (cat 1+2) combines two very different types of questions that I don't think people usually want to combine; and all the people who know cat 2 (scen 5) for a series also know cat 3 (scen 6), and vice versa, meaning that cat 2+3 (scen 7) should work fine for them.
    – senshin
    Aug 31, 2015 at 15:35
  • @senshin: There exist questions which ask to identify the series and the track with only the audio as clue. That's why I put up cat 4 in the list, but I guess such questions are off-topic as per the guideline? Cat 5 and 6 are rarely use, I agree, since the number of questions per series is small, but I think people might be interested in cat 3.
    – nhahtdh
    Sep 1, 2015 at 6:06
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The tag is primarily used to identify anime or manga. Should music be included?

You are framing the question wrong. There are two questions to be asked here.

The tag is primarily used to identify anime or manga. Should it also be used for questions where OP has found a piece of music, devoid of context?

And the answer to this question is yes, of course. "I heard this song and I don't know what it's from" has all the hallmarks of a conventional identification request.

The tag is primarily used to identify anime or manga. Should it also be used for questions where OP wants to know the name of a song that was used in a particular episode of some anime?

And the answer to this question is no, of course not, why would you even think that is reasonable?. "What's this song in episode 3 of anime X?" is no more an than "Why did A do B in episode 3 of anime X?" or "Who drew scene Q in episode 3 of anime X?". Those who believe otherwise clearly fail to understand how tags ought to work.

(Prior art: We shouldn't use [identification-request] on questions that aren't really identification requests)

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I think there needs to be some clarification here on what current questions are and their scope.

Let's look at the wiki:

For questions which ask about the identification of an anime/manga/character using a description; specific elements (like a character or song); or screenshots

This is currently how they are supposed to be used.

It also doesn't make much sense to keep the existing tag if we would want to split them up - as it will be confusing to users. If there is a consensus to get and et cetera, we should also get , , ...

I don't think this is the actual solution to our problem. From the original meta question:

I see why people are tagging these questions with identification-request - the asker wants something "identified", right? But this is a dangerous line of thinking. Should we tag Is Nadia voluntarily inspired by Castle in the Sky? with identification-request because the asker wants to "identify" the connection between Nadia and Castle in the Sky? What about The Kamisama Hajimemashita anime covers the manga up to what chapter? - doesn't the asker want to "identify" the chapter at which the anime ends? No, of course we shouldn't.

This problem still remains if we change this but it shifts from one tag to multiple - should we create a tag? a tag, does chapter ids fit in manga ids? ....

Instead I propose that there should be some clarification for when the tag should be used. Whether that turns out to be for questions where the series is unknown,specific media elements, or some other decision.

For my actual opinion on splitting the tag up - I'm indifferent, but I don't want to do it for the wrong reasons

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    > Instead I propose that there should be some clarification for when the id-request tag should be used. − Well, this is what this meta post is about :p
    – Hakase
    Aug 29, 2015 at 13:29
  • @Hakase :P it started off as a comment, but it got massive - I just wanted to point out that this should be a pre-requisite task
    – Toshinou Kyouko
    Aug 29, 2015 at 17:27
  • Can we stop claiming that the current tag wiki for [identification-request] carries any weight? The wiki was edited a few times within the first few months of the site's existence and barely touched since. Back then, since identification requests weren't taking over the site, these changes were made without extensive prior discussion - which is fine, but we should not take the tag wiki to reflect anything but the preferences of the few editors involved.
    – senshin
    Aug 29, 2015 at 17:50
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    @senshin the tag wiki is what users see when they are looking if their question suits a tag - so it does carry weight. Just because it hasn't been edited much doesn't mean it's not relevant. This is only a small thing in my question anyway and doesn't affect the fact the clarification is needed.
    – Toshinou Kyouko
    Aug 29, 2015 at 17:57
  • so are you both saying we should first clarify what exactly the ID tag is about and then if we can use it for music identification?
    – Hakase
    Aug 30, 2015 at 0:59
  • @Hakase exactly
    – Toshinou Kyouko
    Aug 30, 2015 at 9:56
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I agree with Toshinou-san that we need clarification about edge cases—not just for music, but also for questions that ask, for example, to explain a reference, like Who are these characters referenced in Chapter 4 of Spotted Flower? (which is tagged ) and Who are all the girls fawning over Araragi? (which is just tagged ).

However, I don't think making another tag for music identification is a very good solution. As touched on a bit in the post senshin linked to, helping people find questions they can answer is a major purpose of tags. If you want to identify a song from Naruto, the person who knows is probably a Naruto expert. If you want to identify a song from Mamotte Shugogetten, the person who knows is probably an expert on Mamotte Shugogetten (if such a thing even exists). There probably isn't anyone on the site who's a "soundtrack expert" that can identify songs from both Naruto and Mamotte Shugogetten, but has no interest in other types of question on Naruto or Mamotte Shugogetten. (I can see such a person existing on Movies and TV—a music superfan who loves identifying songs that appear in movies and TV shows—but things are different in anime.)

Given that, I don't really see a clear purpose for a tag. I suppose it could help people who love Mamotte Shugogetten, but aren't familiar with the OST, to avoid music identification questions. But the titles are usually something like "What song plays at time 7:23 in Episode 19 of Mamotte Shugogetten?". And the tag should be a good enough signal for that sort of thing on its own; my Gedankenexperimental expert can just look for questions tagged and not tagged .

Tagging music identifications as has some of the same problems as the tag. We don't really have "identification experts"; id requests require either a good memory and a broad knowledge of anime, or the dumb luck to have seen and remembered whatever the OP is looking for and the reading skills to pick it out of their description. This is different from the knowledge needed to identify a song from a known series. My preferred solution would be just tagging music identifications as .

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  • I'm not sure whether the Spotted Flower question is a good example here, since no one bother (or has the time) to comb over all the questions and check whether the tags are appropriate. (My opinion is that the id-req tag should stay on Spotted Flower and even the Monogatari question since the series is not know, but others may think otherwise)
    – nhahtdh
    Aug 30, 2015 at 19:52
  • @nhahtdh I just brought those two questions up because the difference in how they use the id request tag confuses me, and I think we need clarification. I put the id request tag on a similar question that I asked (What is the cover of Reset! Chapter 2 a reference to?), but I don't know if I was right to use it like that. You make a good point that in these cases, the series being referenced was not known, so answering the question requires similar skills to the traditional type of id request.
    – Torisuda
    Aug 30, 2015 at 20:03

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