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%)

ruric: (Default)

[personal profile] ruric 2012-07-12 10:47 pm (UTC)(link)
As a writer I like having the option of not being constrained by drop down cannonical tags mostly because I've written quite a few rarepair crossovers and to would be a pain to have to keep requesting tags to be added.

As a reader I tend to navigate A03 by (a) fandom and (b) pairing tags and - so far - that works pretty well for me - though I do see the advatage of trope tags too.

Though TBH if someone is putting epic numbers of tumblr style tags plus tagging with things like "All the feels" and "I don't know why I did it" ad making their tagging fields longer than the story it's a good indicator I won't like the work *G*

As it is the current style of tagging works for me as both reader and writer though I imagine it generates a hellacious amount of work for the poor tag wranglers.