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Region Tagging Standardization & Consistency

📋 Summary

Establish clear standards and system improvements for region tagging to ensure consistent usage and predictable media downloads.


❗ Problem

Region tagging is currently inconsistent and often misused:

  • Media is incorrectly tagged as “World” instead of a specific region

  • Duplicate images are uploaded for identical assets across regions

  • Contributors apply personal preferences rather than consistent rules

  • Users receive unpredictable downloads when using region priorities

  • Ongoing moderation conflicts around what constitutes the “correct” region

This creates confusion and reduces the reliability of the database.


💡 Proposal

Improve region tagging through a combination of standards and system support:

  • Define clear guidelines for region usage:

    • When to use specific regions vs “World”

    • How to handle identical assets across regions

  • Introduce validation or prompts during submission:

    • Flag potential duplicate region uploads

    • Suggest merging into a single “World” entry where appropriate

  • Provide clearer visibility of region usage during moderation

  • Ensure consistent handling of region priorities in media downloads


🧩 Use Cases

  • Identical logos for NA and EU are tagged once as “World”

  • Region specific box art is clearly differentiated and tagged correctly

  • Contributors follow consistent rules instead of personal preference

  • Users can reliably control downloads based on region priorities


📦 Benefits

  • Improves consistency across the database

  • Reduces duplicate or redundant media

  • Minimizes moderation conflicts

  • Creates predictable and reliable media downloads


⚠️ Considerations

  • Needs clear and agreed upon definitions

  • Must balance flexibility with standardization

  • Should integrate with future tagging system


✅ Outcome

Standardized region tagging improves consistency and predictability, making the database more reliable for both contributors and users.

Status: Open To Community2 comments

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Comments2

  • 3333333333333333

    •

    May 6

    ‘When to use specific regions vs “World”’

    Do you know how many times a game is marked as ‘World’ incorrectly? A lot and it causes the games to not scrape metadata. Unless the game was released as world it should be marked as world. However, I don’t remember how this would apply to romhacks. 😵‍💫

    • Darklesh

      •

      Aug 3

      Again, this is because there are many stubborn users who only want US art, so to make it easier for them to download all their art at once, they label both fan media with a US visual style and real media from Europe and/or the US as "world." It's pure and simple selfishness, and it stems from the lack of separate fan categories for clear logos, 3D boxes, and screenshots (necessary for screenshots of fan translations).