With the "recent" rewrite of the metadata ranking criteria, new guidelines, allowances, and rules were introduced, many allowing for more stylization and others being more direct compared to what they were before. One of these new additions was the allowance (or specification) that markers, such as `(TV Size)`, `(Cut Ver.)`, and `(Game Ver.)` may use alternate casing as long as it fits the song. This may also apply to `feat.` markers, as those are standardized by osu! ranking criteria as well. This would not apply to names, as those are expressed by the artists and should not be changed.

For example, this would allow for someone to write `SONG TITLE (TV Size)` as `SONG TITLE (TV SIZE)`, which allows for more stylization by the mapper while also staying objective and true to the artist's intention with the song title.

This has been observed a couple of times, namely with this map using a lowercase `(tv size)` marker and this map using an uppercase `(GAME VER.)` marker.

My proposal would be to allow more freedom in this while still keeping titles objective.

This would mean that someone could map `CHOIR JAIL (TV Size)`, which has normal capitalization within the marker, and make the title `CHOIR JAIL (TV SIZE)`, which fully uppercases the marker. This does not affect searchability as none of the characters are actually changing. osu! search isn't case sensitive, like a .

This would serve the following use:

* Someone wants to rank a song but the previous ranked map of the song uses/doesn't use a stylized marker, and the mapper wants to do the inverse of that (either make it stylized or make it normal.)

This would NOT apply when:

* A song already has a marker that is spelled the same way as an osu! marker and uses a specific casing. For example, a song called `GENERIC SONG TITLE (Nightcore Mix)` could not be changed from that, as the artist has already intended for the marker to be capitalized a certain way and it is already spelled as osu! dictates. A song called `GENERIC SONG TITLE (Video Game Mix)` would still be written as `GENERIC SONG TITLE (Game Ver.)` as the entire marker must be standardised and isn't already spelled as osu! dictates.

In summary, this proposal is to allow mappers to use alternate casing for markers when applicable and ignore ranked consistency. The use for this would be when a mapper does not like the casing of the previously ranked map and wants to have more/less expression within it.

Have to reread this multiple times, but is there any true addition to the RC here?

Personally believe this defeats the purpose of trying to standardize markers if we then just make it a "free for all" on who gets to choose how something gets capitalized, no? If anything, I personally believe the allowance was already quite a deviation from the goal of standardizing markers to begin with.

Guess I'm more conservative on this matter, and by no means I'm not trying to be part of the Fun Police. It is true that currently whoever gets to choose a fancy, stylized marker will bone any map thereafter as it'd be stuck with the same styling, were we to follow ranked consistency to a tee. And I do not think the solution to it is simply speedrunning to see who can rank their set best.

If people really are fond of alternative casing used for markers, I do see no point in holding these styles hostage to the first map to be ranked, and so explicitly allowing them to break consistency seems reasonable.

But, personally, I do think the whole idea is antithetical to having a set standard of markers to easily identify song versions throughout the platform.

@mcendu the difference would be that exclusively marker capitalization would not be subject to ranked consistency while still following the `Alternative casing for markers may be used if the rest of the song title is stylised to fit the formatting` guideline.

@randome Alternative capitalization of the markers I don't think will confuse players when seeing song versions, and maybe even help them identify certain maps that they like if two maps have differing capitalization.

Correct me if I'm wrong (as far as I know, this was never publically stated so anyone not in a group that would need to know would know the written purpose of anything unless it's ed down) but isn't the purpose of markers so that we have a unified spelling of certain phrases? For example, players trying to if a song is ~Game Edit Version~, (Game Edit), or something similar? Alternative capitalization I don't think would violate this and I think saying it's unethical might be a little bit of an overstatement.

I don't think a single player would get genuinely confused over alternative casing of a marker, especially when updated standardization measures have already caused ranked consistency to be broken to larger extents on certain maps, such as updated marker use being used for (Movie Ver.) causing this map and this map to have differing titles?

This would also bring a maximum of 3 stylings for markers with a set only being able to utilize a maximum of 2 (title case, lowercase, uppercase) with none of them actually being spelled differently.

What you just described is the markers' goal, yes. Standardizing the way they are written. This, originally, also included capitalization, so that also has to be taken into . Hence wanting to emphasize my perspective is, by definition, way more conservative.

We cannot make assumptions of what players will (or will not) find confusing. All I can say is that it's way easier to recognize a marker if both its characters and capitalization used stays the same. Our brain recognizes patterns, and changing the pattern makes recognition harder afterall.

Also side point that I won't really push on but, no one said this was "unethical" (?). Not really sure how that was the conclusion drawn. I simply said that allowing to bend rules meant to standardize markers is antithetical to the purpose of said standardizing rules.

I misread "thetical" as "ethical", I'm not wearing my glasses, my bad.

But saying we can't make assumptions of what players will or will not find confusing can't really be used as an argument here in my opinion since in order to make any argument on this, you would have to determine if players would find it confusing or not.

As an analogy, if I write randomelol and RandomeLoL, you know I'm referring to the same person and that there is nothing confusing about that despite the capitalization being different. This logic can apply to song markers (especially since they're at the end of titles so players will already know what song they're looking at and listening to)

While it's true that it's easier to recognize something if it's written with the same capitalization, I think it would be beneficial to take into how much easier it is. I wouldn't say it's much easier as I don't think this is difficult, but I do agree that being used to something is easier than something slightly different.

As you said, this originally included capitalization but as years have ed and this allowance was permitted, standards have changed so site-wide capitalization consistency of markers doesn't seem to be a huge deal anymore from my eyes.

Imo, no need to change.
Though I'm not sure if I understood the proposal correctly.

Imo the whole ranked consistency thing was already flexible so idk if it's actually required to change the rules to explicitly allow this

I don't think this really affects anything in of search, and consistency is a strong guideline. If there is a strong reason to break it people can already do so, so this doesn't seem like something that particularly needs a change?

marking as won't do for now as the whole thread kinda seems like people say current RC is clear enough on it

Reviving due to current discussion in qualified
beatmapsets/2278574/discussion/-/generalAll#/4905742

Moved to the main subforum while the issue is discussed. Brought up internally to increase visibility.

I think I made my opinion pretty clear in this beatmap discussion thread but I'll post a summary here too:

I agree that this would be a necessary addition to rc to avoid unnecessary confusion, exactly like what happened in the discussion linked above.

In my opinion, old sets that couldn't utilize this allowance shouldn't be a burden to new ranked sets due to ranked consistency trumping this allowance. I think this allowance was introduced to work around cases like this, where the rc casing rules ruin the intended stylization of the song title. I could also add that alternate casing doesn't affect searchability at all, it's only a harmless visual tweak for people who care about aesthetics. Therefore, I don't see why we should let old sets held back by old poor rc rules also affect new sets when the allowance was made specifically to combat this problem.

I think the necessary addition to rc would be something like what Randome said in the mentioned thread:
"Perhaps the solution is simply clarifying that the different capitalization allowance is simply able to skip consistency."

Agree with the above, I think a note on the allowance saying it's exempt from ranked consistency will suffice.

i still think that's something that you can absolutely do using current rules and justifications why am i catching strays on that mapping thread for having an opinion

I originally just wanted to delete ranked consistency because i think it needlessly complicates everything, but apparently that take has too many dissidents

How are you catching strays? Anyway, absolute clarity is better than ambiguity so it'd be best to add this given there are disagreements on the interpretation of the RC.