lotesse: (books_sapphic)
throbbing light machine ([personal profile] lotesse) wrote2012-07-09 03:27 pm
Entry tags:

taken out of context I must seem so strange

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:

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%)



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%)

torachan: (Default)

[personal profile] torachan 2012-07-11 03:43 am (UTC)(link)
Yeah, I really like that if I write something with a fandom, character, or pairing that is not yet on the archive, I don't have to ask someone to create it. I have stuff posted on FFN that because it's in a small fandom, it just has to go under "misc", which makes it pretty unfindable. And of course there are so many permutations of pairings (especially when you consider crossovers) that it's hard to have everything premade.