(Partially) fixing the tag system

[NumberSix]

Is it/Could it become possible for the author to put tags in non-alphabetical order? I'd love to put a dozen tags on my story, so that it will be found when searching for sets of tags. However, the tag list is often shortened, showing just the first three or four, and the most important ones lie in the latter half of the alphabet.

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And this is why I am proposing tag groups.

More granularity and orderliness.

 

[MajorMagers]

"Youjo Senki" and "Saga of Tanya the Evil" should be synonym'd.
I beg you, please have the canon tag be "Youjo Senki" and not the localizer's crime against the author.

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I had never looked up the name and I now fully support the begging.
Please use the Japanese words and not the abortion that localization gave to the book.
"Little girls war record" would have been a more appropriate name according to some Googleing.


Tag groups like one for the fiction that the story is derived from that could always be seen as the first tag seems like a great idea.

 

[LurkingInTheDeceit]

BTW, is the process for merging tags reversible? Hypothetically, if one of these merges turns out to be bad, is it possible to undo it, or would the information about which thread was tagged with Tag A or Tag B be lost?

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Merging is not reversible, though it doesn't prevent those tags being recreated and re-added onto a thread. Synonymising is reversible.

When I came up with the initial list of mergers, I didn't know how the Synonym system worked, so I am going to have to look over the list again with that in mind. Some things, like alternate names for a property (like en vs jp), probably don't need to be standardised. When all you have is merge, it'd be better to have one tag, but if all those tags are linked, making some of them Synonyms seems good enough. On the other hand, things I was reluctant to merge, because they have subtle differences in meanings, might be worth making Synonyms.

I'll make a distinction between which is being proposed for certain tags when I consolidate the batch.

If splitting them automatically isn't something feasible, you could just make a header forum thread about the change, announcing that tags that include genres will just default to the genre/fandom instead, and you need to include the other manually. I.E you make a Pokemon - AU tag, it detects "AU" and it defaults to AU. Then you would need to add Pokemon by itself.

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Automatic splitting isn't available. I'm reluctant to force people into using more of their limited tag space to convey the same thing. It'd be more convenient for search, but authors only have 10 slots, so…

adding to this, is there a place on the site where you can look at all the tags sorted by popularity or something? seems the only way you can search using a tag right now is if you know a tag exists.

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Tag search (rightmost tab of the search page) will let you see the most popular tags down to some threshold, with size indicating popularity.

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As Kitty said. Some of the most popular tags will be merged, so more should pop up after, but there's only a limited selection.

EDIT: their should be a way you can browse all tags on the site, either as a list, or something else. more than anything else, that would make this a lot more navigable. from there, just make it so that the 'major' tags also include the minor tags.

like harry potter should include things tagged Harry Potter, but also harry potter au, marauders era, fantasic beasts era, but if someone clicks on the marauders era tag, it shouldn't load everything tagged Harry Potter. though, idk if nested tags are possible, are they?

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That would be useful, and the sorting you're talking about is like the parent/child tag system SB has. But we don't have that.

Hm. Is there any way to list every tag that exists within the forum's system and paste them all in a big list for us to comb through?

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That'd be 24k+ tags. Probably not.

Also, with the combining of synonymous tags, will tags added purely as jokes be wiped as they clutter things? Or would those remain untouched?

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Untouched.

Going by your separation of "harem" and "harem eventually" that suggests that "pokephilia?" may not go in.

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I'm gonna have to think a bit more about what would be worth making Synonyms, even if I don't want to merge. 'pokephilia?' seems like it might be one of those cases, and possibly 'harem eventually' as well.

I would have thought you would have relabelled the tags minor/major au to minor/major alternate universe instead of just minor/major au, if for nothing else but for consistency's sake since you relabelled the au tag to alternate universe.
Its likely really minor, all things considered, but I feel like tag predictability is somewhat important

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Will be changing it to AU, probably, to match the others, rather than the other way round. The idea being we want to balance conciseness with clarity, and this seems like a case where conciseness wins out.

Basically, I feel like if you're avoiding using shorthand for certain tags, which it looks like you are for the most part, you should try to apply that standard to all of them.

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I am mostly avoiding shorthand, but some cases seem to have more potential for confusion than others, making it more or less justified.

Is there any chance people that do have their sweaty hands on the backend will get to it in the foreseeable future?
That will allow resolving great many concerns and issues voiced in this thread.

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Possibly.

The hierarchy doesn't need to be formal or implemented in code, yet,

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I can informally organise tags into categories in the Suggested Tags threads.

Yeah, but that means tag creation and wrangling overhead, and you mods having to do more work in the future.
Something you guys wanna minimize.

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Tag creation is likely to stay completely unrestricted, which does mean a baseline level of constant wrangling work in the future, but that's an acceptable consequence in order to allow the former. We don't want to make search harder for specific cases through this effort, and, if we're really feeling lazy about it in the future, we can just not do the related work, as has largely been the case with the tag system so far.

Breaking up those standards would only make things worse, hence, I strongly recommend against changing the setting tags.

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When I was collecting the tags into groups, I did have 'the final result should look like something you'd see in the wild' in mind when writing the Canonised tag, so I mostly agree.

The third bunch should still be si/oc insert, right? The insert may or may not be an oc, but its definitely a self insert. OCs dont always have meta knowledge like an SI would so we'd need a tag to search for self inserts specifically

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Some self-inserts don't have meta knowledge, while some original characters do, so that isn't really a distinction. We do have a tag specifically for self-inserts.

Can we consolidate the various "author craves reviews", "motivated by discussion" and "Comments appreciated".

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That's more 'setting expectations for the thread' than for search, so probably not.

 

[Asmodeus]

You could merge persona, persona 1, persona 2. persona 3, persona 4, persona 5, persona royal etc under one tag

How about increasing excluded tag limit? That way you can keep your fantastically useless tagging system as is. Now search glitches out if there is over 120 tags excluded. You can add more excluded tags directly in url but it is cumbersome. Vigorous use of ignore thread is similarly annoying. It has taken lot of annoyance to filter NSFW Creative Writing to 30 pages.

 

[saganatsu]

"sub protag" and "submissive protagonist" should be merged.
"dom mc", "dominant mc" and "dominant protagonist" should be merged. maybe include "dominant protagonist but not afraid to switch".
"dom" as a tag shows up on the suggested list in the search page, but when actually searched for throws an error message.

 

[Facepalmist]

"dom" as a tag shows up on the suggested list in the search page, but when actually searched for throws an error message.

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*checks* That's because <dom> is not actually a tag.

When you're searching tags on the tag-search field, what you've typed will always be on the autosuggest dropdown - either at the top (if you've matched a tag perfectly), or at the bottom (if you haven't). Select a 'tag' with no results, get that error message.

 

[saganatsu]

When you're searching tags on the tag-search field, what you've typed will always be on the autosuggest dropdown - either at the top (if you've matched a tag perfectly), or at the bottom (if you haven't). Select a 'tag' with no results, get that error message.

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well, two suggests unrelated to actually creating synonyms:

1. the above shouldn't be possible: don't have the exact text show up in the drop down if it's not a valid tag. it just confuses people, and I can't think of a benefit.
2. if qq does go and merges tags (and not just create synonyms), would there be a warning or anything if people then try to recreate the merged tags? if not, I think just doing synonyms instead of merging (outside of typos) would be a longer term solution.

 

[Cube-Chan]

So, these would then just become one tag?

• familar of zero
• familiar of zero
• zero no tsukaima
• foz
• znt

That would definitely help search efforts.
Now is just the question if the new tags should have both the English and Japanese names, like AO3 does, or if either is chosen as default, or if it is decided on a case by case basis.

 

[Skyguy345]

I personally find the following tags to be extremely helpful to describe fictions, and would like to nominate them for canonization:
Plot before "Plot"
and
"Plot" before Plot

 

[Grand Munchkin]

if you can suggest tags

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There's one that could use some care since it makes searching for associated threads a fragmented affair. I've seen all of the following:

Reversed sexual morality
Reverse sexual morality
Reversed sexual morals
Reversed sexual morality kinda?@
rsm
Reverse moral sexuality
Reverse gender roles
Reverse gender role equestria-lite
Reversed gender morality
Sorta reversed gender morality

I propose calling it all Reversed Sexual Dynamics for accuracy; it flips the way men and women interact, not just in sex and romance but in society as a whole. With that said, RSM is the most popular term and probably what people would expect to see if this were all fused into one tag.

 

[The Unicorn]

Not gone through the thread precisely enough to see if this was recommended.

Merger of stuff like Science, Mad Science, Science Fiction and other Science Adjacent stuff into a merged Science category?

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Not just no but HELL NO.
Science is non-fiction (or RL scams relating to it).
Science fiction is a type of fiction (and trying to define that more exactly will start arguments.
Mad science is stuff like Girl!Genius

Trying to merge them together is about like deciding to merge the tags Star Wars, Star Trek, and Star fox because they all have "star" in the name.

 

[LurkingInTheDeceit]

Btw, I wasn't sure how much the current tag limit was, and (for some reason) thought it was 10, but the actual answer is 30:

I've increased the maximum number of content tags from 20 to 30.
If that's not enough we can maybe go a bit more, but I'd prefer not going full Ao3 numbers of tags.

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