(Partially) fixing the tag system

[.We]

Thank you for taking time to go after the low-hanging fruit.

Tags describing authorial intent without committing to anything, but currently useless for search.

#tag?, #tag??, maybe #tag, #tag (maybe), expect #tag, probably #tag

Tags warning about spoilers
Spoilers, #Fandom Spoilers, manga spoilers, basically anything with "spoiler" expect "No Spoilers" and such used by authors who haven't finished the source material.

"no pedo" AU
aged up characters, all characters 18+, legal shota, legal loli, everybody is aged up a little bit, aged-up characters

To be, or to not be #tag
#tag (technically), technically #tag, #tag technically

Various tags used to mark thread as collection of snippets
contains any of "ideas" "snippets" "plot bunnies" "commissions"

Tags related to update rate
updates infrequently
sporadic updates
occasional updates
updates irregular
infrequent updates
very infrequent updates
weekly updates
undetermined updates
unreliable updates

I'd actually fold all of these into Story Status
Incomplete (Updates every $Insert-DAYOFWEEK-Here)
Incomplete (Updates twice a week)
Incomplete (Updates weekly)
Incomplete (Updates monthly)
Incomplete (Updates annually)
Incomplete (Best effort updates)

With best effort being the default, and acting as polite catch all for everything from "IDK LOL" to "it's done when it's done".

 

[Horrorshowjack]

Thanks for all the work. I'd like to suggest:

Parahumans Online, ParahumansOnline, Para Humans Online, and PHO to just PHO.

There's at least two stories that aren't Worm connected at all, but have more PHO style interludes than canon Worm. In addition to Worm stories and quests told almost entirely in the format.

A lot of these contain additional information which you'd be erasing by forcing them to be the same tag. Like, mother/daughter is obviously conveying different information to people than just 'incest' (you'd tag with both)
Plus heaps of these are just straight up completely different. People searching for CNC are not looking for noncon. People searching for mother/daughter are not looking for brother/sister.

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I agree about not merging the relationship based tags into incest. Even within the incest context father/daughter, twincest, mother/son, mother/daughter, and father/son, may have individual responses ranging from "that's so hot" to "you go to hell and you die" depending on the fetishes of the reader. Not a useful merge imo. Then the use of some of them outside of the incest context?

Also, Mother/Daughter is more often used for "the mc has sex with both mother and daughter together" aka oyakodon, rather than "mother and daughter do an incest." It's a completely different fetish.

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That is another big argument against merging them all into an incest tag.

don't forget 'gacha', some folks leave off the chaos bit
I would personally like to request merging celestial forge, celestial grimoire, celestial dojo, celestial catalog, celestial chaos, and all other such derivatives so I can filter them all out at once

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The problem with that is that a lot of people only want to filter one of them out or in. I don't read celestial forge stuff, but like Celestial Grimoire and some of the more niche catalogs quite a bit.

Celestial Gacha, in particular, seems to have a dedicated fanbase that I'm not sure go for the other ones much.

Well, maybe. But is there a need for disambiguation at all if we all know what the word Worm mean in this context? It is not some obscure thing here.
Fun fact, there's only five fics and one snippet thread with Ward tag. Huh.

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Ward is unpopular to the point it nearly killed interest in his non-parahuman stuff also.

 

[da3monh0st3d]

aged up characters, all characters 18+, legal shota, legal loli, everybody is aged up a little bit, aged-up characters

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These are not equivalent specifically because legal loli/shota is about preserving the preferable aesthetics while getting rid of the other issues.

Ward is unpopular to the point it nearly killed interest in his non-parahuman stuff also.

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A bit unfortunate, Pact has some really neat potential for fics.

 

[(REDACTED)]

"company fucks everyone" and its associates (inspired, passingly related, etc.) are not Waifu Catalog, despite its proponents' insistence that they're the only Waifu Catalog, and should not be merged into it

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Have to concur here though I would point out that authors like @Cherico explicitly don't.

 

[.We]

These are not equivalent specifically because legal loli/shota is about preserving the preferable aesthetics while getting rid of the other issues.

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"legal loli" higher-order tag composed of "loli" and "aged-up character" and thus a valid synonym.


One issue currently is lack of tagging which lets unwanted threads to sneak past filters.

Personally I'd mandate a simple questionnaire every author must fill before they can post a new story. Just basic shit that'll ensure they get covered by the most common filters.

Fandom

• Original Content [ ]
• List Top 10/whatever popular fandoms on QQ [ ]
• None of the above [ ]

Does your story contain any of the following?

• M/F Sex [ ]
• M/M Sex [ ]
• F/F Sex [ ]
• Gore [ ]
• (some very popular or divisive fetishes)

Did AI Write this?

YES [ ] | No [ ]​

Is this based on a CYOA or Challenge Prompt?

• NO
• Celestial
• Gacha
• Chaos
• Catalog
• Jumpchain
• Economy
• Esscence
• YES but None of the Above

Is this a translation?

• NO
• Yes but it's my work or I have permission
• Yes, but I stole it (GTFO)

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Only basic info the author has to know about their story if they wrote it, completable without any knowledge of QQ's tag system. Other tags will remain optional.

 

[grimr]

Isn't meaning of ecchi "fanservice WITHOUT porn" so explcitly not for this list?

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You're one of those people who think lewd stuff like handholding is okay?

 

[hrepdrep]

legal shota, legal loli

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Aren't these for "3000 year old loli vampire" type characters and not age-ups?

 

[.We]

Aren't these for "3000 year old loli vampire" type characters and not age-ups?

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in-universe they are. Because some jurisdictions protect even fictional minors, a single tag for "only adult characters" is useful.

 

[Phlogistician]

"legal loli" higher-order tag composed of "loli" and "aged-up character" and thus a valid synonym.

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But nothing about "legal loli/shota" requires an already existing character to age up. They could be a two-thousand-year-old vampire/dragon/etc lolibaba, they could be a case of "in their twenties but magic/whatever froze their aging so they never got hit by puberty", or even just young-looking because the author felt like it. "Aged-up character" is just flatly not applicable if no character is actually being aged up. And applying a character-type tag like "legal loli" as part of a broader "everyone is an adult here" tag doesn't work out when nothing about the legality of a particular loli or shota character has any relation to other cast members potentially not being adults themselves.

I can see the use of an "everyone is 18+/adult/whatever" tag in the vein of the "despite being set in a high school we assure you that all characters involved are 18+" type disclaimers but there is no reasonable way to link this to a "legal loli/shota" tag and no reason to do so.

 

[SnarkLord]

Personally I'd mandate a simple questionnaire every author must fill before they can post a new story. Just basic shit that'll ensure they get covered by the most common filters.

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Never going yo happen.
Ignoring the fact that tagging in general is completely optional and this would be forcing the writers hands there's the fact that
it'd likely turn off a lot of authors because
A)in general don't want to give out any sort of data
B)dislike doing questionnaire
C)doing so would imply a limit to what they could post in athread ("oh i only selected a and b when making this, so i cant have c, that needs to be a diffetent thread
D)expecting that the authors have any plan whatsoever beyond a vague idea for a story they decided to publish first
E)People not wanting to add/talk about stuff that could spoil later parts of their story
F)absolutely impractical for snippet threads where authors post whatever there muse throes at them

 

[Savinkov]

Cherico has added a new tag: Exaulted.

 

[The Unicorn]

I like znt best, easy to search.

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Sure, but only if you know what it means and aren't say a fan of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terror_in_Resonance who heard about 'Familiar of Zero' but not the Japanese name

{heroic mc - heroic protagonist - hero - hero mc} heroic protagonist

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I'd suggest every tag that includes "protagonist" to use MC instead. While in general I gree bout avoiding acronyms in tags, I think this is one no one will mistake and all else being equal shorter tags are better.

{noncon - non-con - non-consent - nonconsent - nonconsentual - non-consensual - nonconsensual} non-consensual

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Why not have the tag be "non-con"? Again shorter is better as long as it doesn't cause confusion.

{non-consent but loving it - it ain't rape if they have heart eyes - it's not rape if her eyes turn into hearts - it's not rape if she likes it - dubcon to con - eventual consent? - dubious consent to cock drunk - noncon to con - starts out noncon}

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Not sure about this. Assuming authors use these tags the same way I'm interpreting them (feel free to laugh),
{it ain't rape if they have heart eyes - it's not rape if her eyes turn into hearts - it's not rape if she likes it} these are basically rape+mind control/mind break/brainwashing.
{dubcon to con - eventual consent? - dubious consent to cock drunk - noncon to con - starts out noncon} These start with dubcon then actual consent.

{crossover - also a crossover lmao - crossover and au - crossover but not obvious - crossover massively au - crossovers eventually - eventual crossover - more crossover to follow - more crossovers possible - okay fine crossovers - slowly growing crossover - unexpected crossovers - we had to crossover at some point}

{crossover elements - crossover characters - crossover waifus - lots of minor crossovers - silly crossover elements - possible crossover}

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These groups seem like they should be in the merge, not synonym category.

 

[.We]

A)in general don't want to give out any sort of data

B)dislike doing questionnaire

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You can't post stories to other sites without giving it a category and a rating (even on QQ authors must pick between Safe and NSFW). Liking about it is irrelevant.

This is about balancing rights of authors and rights of readers on the platform. Demanding 10 seconds of one author's time vs 0.5s from thousands of users is very fair.

Entire point of tagging things is to help users who want to discover content. Skipping tagging so your thread always bypasses filters is just another form of spamming.

C)doing so would imply a limit to what they could post in athread ("oh i only selected a and b when making this, so i cant have c, that needs to be a diffetent thread

D)expecting that the authors have any plan whatsoever beyond a vague idea for a story they decided to publish first

E)People not wanting to add/talk about stuff that could spoil later parts of their story

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These limits exist only in your head. Posters can always edit their threads.

F)absolutely impractical for snippet threads where authors post whatever there muse throes at them

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Currently filtering is per thread not per threadmark, so if one snippet would taint entire collection with content warnings, authors just have to live with it, post it as a one shot, or make a second snippet thread for extra spicy stuff.

 

[SnarkLord]

You can't post stories to other sites without giving it a category and a rating (even on QQ authors must pick between Safe and NSFW). Liking about it is irrelevant.

This is about balancing rights of authors and rights of readers on the platform. Demanding 10 seconds of one author's time vs 0.5s from thousands of users is very fair.

Entire point of tagging things is to help users who want to discover content. Skipping tagging so your thread always bypasses filters is just another form of spamming.

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It is irrelevant what other forums do.
It is up to the authors how discoverable they want their stories to be.
It is the privilege of readers that they even get to read the stuff they write, they're not obliged to go into minutae of everything with tags if they don't want to.
Besides, you're acting like tags are the only way to find stories.
Search and advanced search exists for a reason, with an explicit option of "search titles and first posts"
Besides
The only right of readers is pretty much "enjoy the stuff the authors make", they don't get to tell authors what and how to write. Pointing out, grammatical mistakes, inconsistencies, and giving advice how the author cpuld improve? Yes. But not tell them "do x,y, exactly like this"

These limits exist only in your head. Posters can always edit their threads.

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That's working under the assumption that new members/writers would know it right from the get go.

The overlords, have, many, many, *many* times already said, they're not going to force users to tag stuff, or implement hard rules of "you absolutely must have x,y,z for your tags". They did so for the simple reason of "don't make a rule that wont be obeyed" and them trying to force it will only drive away writers.

 

[.We]

As amount of content increases, there has to be some way to organize it.

Tags are easy and proven solution.

Full-text search is very expensive and hard compared to simple tag matching. Not that full-text search is much use for cases like "avoid this one trash fetish I hate" or "list only pairings that match my orientation".

You're right readers have no right to demand things from authors, but QQ as a platform has duty to its users to protect them from abusive users like spammers.

 

[1eyed1]

Honestly while we are on this NSFW and Non-NSFW should really be tags that are attached to every story, the subforum distinction isn't respected anymore so there really needs to be a way to filter between them. And because you can add or remove tags you can start with Non-NSFW without having to hard commit to it and just swap the tag if/when you actually add NSFW content.

 

[SnarkLord]

You're right readers have no right to demand things from authors, but QQ as a platform has duty to its users to protect them from abu

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I truly, honestly fail to see on what basis you're comparing authors without tags as spammers. The are not even remotely similar.

Honestly while we are on this NSFW and Non-NSFW should really be tags that are attached to every story, the subforum distinction isn't respected anymore

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Its not merely a subforum distinction, it's also a division of "visible with login vs visible without login"
There's also the fact that its the general safe assumption that anything in the more public subforum *absolutely will* be safe for work.
Removing it would now force every on-work reader to consider "did the authornptoperly tag this as nsfw or not", where a mistag *will* get them in trouble due to an author forgetting to set/change the right tag.
The division is blatantly safer for hose readers.
And no, I'm not going into debate what individual authors consider nsfw, it's an argument done thousands of times with various valid takes

 

[1eyed1]

Its not merely a subforum distinction, it's also a division of "visible with login vs visible without login"
There's also the fact that its the general safe assumption that anything in the more public subforum *absolutely will* be safe for work.
Removing it would now force every on-work reader to consider "did the authornptoperly tag this as nsfw or not", where a mistag *will* get them in trouble due to an author forgetting to set/change the right tag.
The division is blatantly safer for hose readers.
And no, I'm not going into debate what individual authors consider nsfw, it's an argument done thousands of times with various valid takes

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Except that I never said anything about removing the other subforum, you just kind of made that part up yourself. The tag is exclusively for clearing up the NSFW subforum where there is at this moment 0 ways to know if a story is smut or sfw unless the OP puts it in the summary. Best way of searching for ACTUAL nsfw stories is to go into each thread and search for certain keywords but even that doesn't work because some writers use less common verbage.

 

[.We]

I truly, honestly fail to see on what basis you're comparing authors without tags as spammers. The are not even remotely similar.

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Not using tags is a way to game the system for greater index visibility.

No tags means there's nothing for tag filters to exclude. Thread without tags is always displayed unless manually put on Ignore.

Thanks to patreon there's even a financial incentive to do it; more eyeballs = more opportunities for conversions.

 

[SnarkLord]

Except that I never said anything about removing the other subforum,

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Ok, i do very much apologize, i totally misunderstood your original post.

Not using tags is a way to game the system for greater index visibility.

No tags means there's nothing for tag filters to exclude. Thread without tags is always displayed unless manually put on Ignore.

Thanks to patreon there's even a financial incentive to do it; more eyeballs = more opportunities for conversions.

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..ah yes, instantly jumping to the money making opportunity. That's assuming people know/care about such things.
Don't lump/judge a maybe minor part of a larger group of authors
Besides, even if you do happen on an author who uses patreon to fund themselves again, they're not doing anything wrong.

And i do truly honestly fail to see, why its so bloody difficult to hit ignore if you do find a thread like that you don't Like.

At the cost of possibly going into asshole territory please stop making a mountain out of a molehill and accept that some authors maybe possibly truly have a good reason they don't want to tag stuff stuff as part of x/y/z, and its their damn right to not share their reason

 

[.We]

Because Ignore List does not scale. It's not meant to be used for thousands of threads.

And I think publishing anything without sane metadata is an asshole move, not better than littering online spaces with trash.