taken out of context I must seem so strange

[lotesse]

long & interesting ffa thread on the AO3/OTW

Thing is, as a writer, I don't particularly care about having access to uncurated tags. Especially for things like pairing/character/genre, or even for tropes. I can see the benefit of having an uncurated "other stuff" field, but for everything else I would be perfectly happy to select from a dropdown menu or similar, as on ff.n. I try to tag my own work based on autofills, and try to remain within AO3 style, but it's not easy to do, and I don't know how successful I am even then at creating useful metadata for my fics.

As a reader, right now I feel like I would actively PREFER curated tags; I have fond memories of using the old Automated Archive search engine with various inclusions/exclusions, browsing long lists of generated story-links. And I just - I wonder how much this is a THING for people, or if others share my general attitude of not-caring.

Some polls:

Poll #11083

This poll is anonymous.
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 53

uncurated character/pairing/?genre tags are

View Answers

essential to my creative process
0 (0.0%)

very important to me
13 (24.5%)

not a thing for me one way or the other
15 (28.3%)

not my favorite, but I can deal with them
14 (26.4%)

the cause of the flames on the side of my face
11 (20.8%)

Poll #11084

This poll is anonymous.
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 48

I want access to SOME FORM of uncurated tagging

View Answers

yes
34 (70.8%)

no
14 (29.2%)

taking this to comments
0 (0.0%)

Comments

[lotesse]

Is it satisfying for you as a writer, as a reader, or both? Because I find it just fine as a writer but somewhat frustrating as a reader, and as a writer that worries me because I'm not sure I'm doing everything I ought to ensure that my writing is found/read.

[ilthit]

I write more than I read, but both, really. If I'm going looking for something specific, I might look for a combination of characters or a crossover, which will be covered by the tags you have to choose, or I could be looking for a flavour like WWI AU or fics about spanking, and the freeform tags give me that. With no freeform tags, you'd not be able to find specified weird little things like that, and with no necessary standard-form tags, you might not be able to find the characters and ratings you're looking for.

I have something of a regimen of things I tag for in the free field, but I've let it slide and just put in whatever seems pertinent and that I remember at the moment. I try to put "art" in all the art posts and word count in all the fics, at least. Of course I'm not being very kind to my readers in the first place, since I post multifannish challenge output in a single "story". It just seemed like too much work to make it a series, especially when it's art. Having a whole "work" for a single piece of art that is consumed at one glance, or a drabble, didn't really seem like a good idea either.

[jack_of_none]

as a writer that worries me because I'm not sure I'm doing everything I ought to ensure that my writing is found/read.

This is why it drives me nuts that they won't make their tagging structure more transparent. If writers could actually SEE how tags were being organized and if there were some kind of statement on What Tagging is Supposed To Do that everyone could access, that would be so helpful.

[qem_chibati]

As a reader I've liked it due to additional information it's given me.


I've also found interesting works that I enjoyed based on tags such as technopathy, time travel, my favourite work, community: blind_go, which are all free form tags that I doubt would exist if writers didn't have the ability to create and group their works together.

My recommendations are to try and make your character tags unambiguated - so that it's clear which Hikaru your talking about for example (otherwise it will be hard for people to find your work when their looking for that specific one, although I've also enjoyed looking through all the varied Hikaru's on the archive - the Hikaru tag is a meta tag that will pull from many of the specific Hikaru's), and have a look at the top 200 tags list on ao3, for see what some of the most common tags are that your work could add on to.