This idea has the potential to draw some controversy, so let’s try to keep things civil in the comments. I personally don’t care what anybody gets up to in this fantasy world, but it’s no secret that the player base has a decent amount of age play.
People can be for or against it in a fantasy setting for any number of reasons, but new players often end up in Station Park and there’s a fair chance the first two to three people they click or interact with are going to have the age play tag present and that alone is enough to get some people to go ‘oh, nope, this isn’t for me’ and off they go. Not only will a player like that not come back, but I think they’ll discuss it and dissuade others from peeking in on the community.
I would be proposing a system that allows a user to only see tags that match tags already in their own profile. Other tags would register as [hidden] to alert the viewer that other tags are present. This would only leave customized tags as potential problems, but I rarely see custom tags for tags that already exist as a selection. This could be used for ALL tags or just specific tags that some might see as controversial, in which case the [hidden] tag shouldn’t be used as that would just alert players anyway.
This would encourage the use of proper tags and potentially reduce players ignoring one another in public settings because of the mere presence of a tag. For example: Player 1 ignores a wave from Player 2 because Player 2 has [nonconsensual] in their description in a public place they otherwise would’ve returned.
Often times, the person with the “problematic” tag doesn’t base their entire RP experience or personality around a single tag and are singled out of things just for the mere presence of it.
This is by no means an elegant solution to this, but I’ve found a lot of enjoyment here despite not falling into the ‘general vibe’ I got on entry. If I hadn’t pushed through that vibe, I never would’ve made friends and started lil stories here, and want to see this community grow beyond ‘Oh, Wolfery? That’s just age players and sex pests.’
This is more to open discussion on retention and such, so go EASY. >:P