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

[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.