Here's a theory: categories hinder more than help

[Bramblethorn]

In conclusion, there's no real reason to keep the categories (other than 'tradition', the nemesis of all positive change) and there's plenty of reasons to remove them.

Thoughts?

Yep, I've been arguing this for years. I see categories as a relic of the days when webpages were largely coded by hand and people defaulted to organising them like file folders. A lot of the opposition is tradition for tradition's sake, though there are a couple of issues that would have to be resolved if shifting to tag-focussed navigation.

Tag wrangling: Ao3 needs a lot of volunteer effort to keep tags organised and meaningful. I don't think this would be quite as much of an issue for Literotica, because a lot of the ongoing tag work for Ao3 is due to its fandom focus - every time a new show comes out, they need to deal with tags for that and separate "Crowley (Supernatural)" from "Crowley (Good Omens)" etc. And it might be possible to use the info Ao3 has already defined, IDK the niceties of that. But it'd need to be addressed.

Contests and other stuff organised around categories: obviously can't have a contest for every possible tag! I guess one option would be to have contests only for the tags that correspond to current Literotica categories; that'd look pretty much like it does now, only multi-category stories might be eligible in more than one. Things like toplists could just be replaced with a search function - "show me stories with X combination of tags, ordered by score/posted in last week/..."

 

[M_K_Babalon]

Which is great for readers, but doesn't solve the problem for writers.

The only writer that benefits from the current model is one who writes stories that fit tidily into the boxes I gave examples of in my post. If, for example, you write LW that isn't BTB, or Romance that isn't HEA, you're punished by the expectation of those categories. That's not right, is it? And what about if you dare to write something that spans more than one category? How often does this forum get asked the 'which category' question? Hell, I've asked it myself at least twice.

Lit isn't just for the readers. I wouldn't even say it was primarily for the readers. At the risk of stating the bloody obvious, there wouldn't be any readers without the writers (and equally, little point writing without the readers). It's a mistake, IMO, to punish one group at the expense of the others. But removing the categories penalises no one, while opening the floor for the authors and tearing away the artificial constraints with which we are currently compelled to comply.

Noooo... the only writers that "benefit" are the ones
Noooo... the only writers that "benefit" are the ones that can adapt. And by adapt, I don't mean pander to the loudest crowd. Nor do I mean write tidy fit, to the letter stories. I still don't mean that when I say aim for a catagory. Aim... not target. Yes, the ones with no adaptability or self-control do be asking which catagory. Nothing wrong with variety, that's what life is and we reflect that in our writing. Of course they don't know what catagory, they went balls to the wall with excessive writing. I always respond in those threads; "what's the main focus of the story?" If you drown it out, of course you're not gonna know, the intent was lost in the sauce. Yes a deep story with well thought characters are going to cross the bridges. Put a piece of every catagory in a story if ya want, no real big deal-- as long as everything else stands behind the whole intent for writing it. Write a story with a married trans couple, where one not only cucks the other, but forces them "against their will" to bottom for their own same gender relative while they watch. Does it go in T/C, NC/R, I/T, Fetish? what's the forefront to the story? Which tropes are playing second fiddle? It's a transgender story first those are the main characters and the hopefully goal of writing it to begin with. Everything else comes after the fact they are trans.

As far as the site goes; the site of course is designed out of convenienve tothe owners with intent to cater to, and work for the readers. This is pretty much every site. Writers need to work to make the site work for them, and that's by adapting to how the site works. Like a job. Those who don't are just self-inflicting their own problems. As a writer, ya gotta adhere best you can to how the site works, just like you would YouTube as a YouTuber. If all I wrote were Foxtrot and Family Circus orgy fic on ao3, and wanted to expand to ffn or here, clearly I'd need to reeavaluate and adjust my writing. If you love the freest of freeform no limits writing, cool, no problem, this just isn't the site for that. Wattpad, sol, xnxx are right there.

And as far as the readers go, it's like that song; don't fear the reader.

 

[alohadave]

So without categories, how do you propose to conduct Top Lists?

Perhaps don't have Top Lists based on category. Have an overall Top List based on score. Alternatively, sort tag searches by score.

What is the purpose of Top Lists, and who are they for? Are they for readers to find highly rated stories, or is it to stroke authors egos? It's not like we get anything from being on a Top List other than increased views.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Are you going to go through and retag hundreds of thousands of stories so they'll be useable with tag-based navigation? Fix all the spelling errors? Collate the dozens of varieties of saying the same thing? ( blowjob, fellatio, suck dick, etc. )

Moving to a good tag-focussed system (not just "current Literotica's bare-minimum tags minus categories") shouldn't require extensive retagging. Here's an example of how Ao3 handles that issue:

https://archiveofourown.org/tags/Blow Jobs

Some people have tagged their stories "Blowjob", some have tagged "Blow job", some have tagged "one (1) blowjob", some "brief blowjob mention", and many more variations on the theme. Ao3 doesn't try to convert all of those to a single tag. Rather, it defines all those tags as synonyms for one another, so that if I search on "blowjob" my results will include "brief blowjob mention". Spelling mistakes get defined as synonyms, so you'll see "Fellacio" (sic) and "oral sex (m recieving)" (sic) in there alongside "Fellatio" and "oral sex (m receiving)".

It also defines a hierarchy of related tags. "Blowjob" is a child of "oral sex", so if I search on "oral sex" I'll get all the stories with any of these variations on "blowjob", and "oral sex" is itself a child of "sex". In the other direction, "public blow jobs" is a child of "blowjob" and "office blow jobs" is a child of that.

Defining all that information requires a lot of volunteers (Ao3 has something like 160 tag wranglers), but it's already been done. Now that I've checked their licensing info, I'm about 99% sure their tag data would be free for Literotica to use, though if it were me I'd be slinging a thank-you donation to them as a courtesy.

The remaining work would then be dealing with any Lit-specific tags that aren't used on Ao3 (which would be a much smaller subset) and maybe identifying and removing tags that Lit would prefer not to support (which should mostly be a matter of looking at Lit's existing tag blacklist and checking what synonyms/child tags Ao3 has for those terms).

 

[M_K_Babalon]

Not really. You wrote a good story, which got unfairly (although predictably) dragged down by HEA fans.

Personally, I love the categories, because I love seeing my story on the new stories list in the category of my choice.

I loathe AO3's system, although I acknowledge that my way is not the only acceptable way

I don't use the tag system that much to know. I just pick a fandom and go down the list.

 

[RejectReality]

The readership has demonstrated since the beginning that they're slow to adopt change. It took half a dozen years for them to acclimate themselves to favorites.

Search has always been wonky. This is not some peripheral feature. This is delivery of stories, which is the primary function of the site. Take away what everyone is used to, force them into an unfamiliar and sometimes unreliable system, and they'll move on to somewhere that has a familiar environment or a tag system that's already gone through the initial catastrophic phase of alpha testing.

It's a recipe for suicide.

Visibility of curated tags is the key to fixing a lot of what's wrong with the category system, but abandoning the categories is an answer to nothing.

 

[GrushaVashnadze]

But removing the categories penalises no one, while opening the floor for the authors and tearing away the artificial constraints with which we are currently compelled to comply.

Agree wholeheartedly. But in this place, unlikely to change.

 

[Cali_Love]

Hmm. This thread feels . . . I don’t know.

When I was a child, Grandma taught me to fish. We’d catch some nice river or lake trout and then cook them together. Used to love eating them and then clearly remember choking on little bones (you could never get them ALL out) until I spent more time trying to get a clean fish than eating it. Now I can’t eat seafood. Any of it. In any restaurant, if I smell fish cooking, I feel a little fish bone at the back of my throat, making me sick. Ackk. These days, when I’m hungry, I drive by any seafood category. Won’t go there, and when I peruse any menu, will surreptitiously skip anything seafood and make sure it’s clear it won’t be in my order in any way.

My view on Lit, well, um, . . . Ackk.

 

[yibala]

The categories in Lit are designed to facilitate ease of finding a story for the random visitors that come to the site. That is, to my mind, their sole purpose. It's a purpose that can be achieved in a myriad of other ways - AO3, for example, almost-exclusively uses tags - and Lit already has this capability. So, if the categories are there for a purpose that can be achieved in other ways, ways that already exist, why have them?

That's not a reason to do away with them, just an observation that they're not necessary.

I tend to agree. Categories here only "work" to the extent that authors and readers agree on the themes of the story, which is often presuming a lot. In the case of Loving Wives, agreement is impossible, because there are at least two opposing LW factions, and no easy way to determine which faction an LW story is written for without reading it. You've pointed out other category ambiguities. Categories like Novels and Fetish are so overbroad that they are almost useless. The situation is so unclear that savvy authors have identified "trump" categories to try to make sense of it all - but of course many writers and readers are not clued in to that esoterica. Stories languish in obscurity because writers don't know what categories to best put them in, and intended audiences may never discover them.

Tags, on the other hand, provide for nuance and precision. There's no BTB tag, though that seems like a clear theme in many LW stories. There are "cheating wives" and "revenge" tags that could serve a similar purpose. But tags aren't prominently displayed on Lit like categories are. Many readers never even see the tags, or know to look for them.

All of my stories here are epic fantasies, and most of them are in the SFF category, where relatively few readers ever see them. Most of my stories also have strong themes of Group Sex (orgies and threesomes) and or Lesbian Sex. I could, and have, placed stories in other categories, namely Romance, in part to get more eyes on them. But then, what is the SFF category actually for? Non-erotic stories with lasers and/or dragons?

Funny story: I categorized my last posted Lit piece as Romance, but noted in the tags that it had transgender (and BDSM) themes. The last comment I got - which I still ponder to this day - was, "you are in the wrong category, that's not transgender, it's gender bend." Um. What??

P.S. - As has already been stated, a demand for HEAs in Romance is not specific to Lit audiences; it's pretty much a requirement in the genre. At least from what I've found: "WTF - the male love interest can't die at the end and it still be considered Romance...?" Tragic and/or Frustrated Romance is apparently not a thing.

-Yib
My stories

 

[Astrotrain]

How about if you make it so you can list the same story under more than one category, as many as is relevant?

 

[Trionyx]

When I go to a bookstore (remember those?) I like to see various sections so I know where to look. Over there is Sci-Fi, and around the corner are the bodice rippers and back there are the mysteries. I don’t have to look at the book jacket (tags) of every single book in the store to see what it is about. The sign above the bookshelf lets me narrow my search quickly. Categories, while perhaps not perfect, do the same thing.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

How about if you make it so you can list the same story under more than one category, as many as is relevant?

No, you will just find authors abusing the system by carpet-bombing as many categories as possible just to gain more eyeballs. It would be an admin headache to actually read through each story to judge which categories they legitimately belonged to.

Thanks for digging up a three month buried thread by the way.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

But now that I'm here ...

When I go to a bookstore (remember those?) I like to see various sections so I know where to look. Over there is Sci-Fi, and around the corner are the bodice rippers and back there are the mysteries. I don’t have to look at the book jacket (tags) of every single book in the store to see what it is about. The sign above the bookshelf lets me narrow my search quickly. Categories, while perhaps not perfect, do the same thing.

Absolutely. The trouble is that at lit the categories are poorly organized and haven't changed in what 10? 20 years?

The categories are highly restrictive to content. Speaking as a writer who does not consider category when brainstorming or drafting at all, I often find no obvious category to place my work once it is complete. As so many authors write specifically to please a category, there are many stories that just never get written, and that's a shame.

Ideally we should have a kinky decimal system but since lit submission is a self-serve affair, authors can't be expected to understand such specific complexity when decimalizing their work. So that's right out.

The best solution that I can think of is more categories or more specifically sub-categories.

For example, let's take Incest/Taboo. There is only one taboo that matters and that's incest, so if you write a non-incest taboo like say doctor/patient, absolutely no one is going to read it in I/T, and the very few who do will bomb the shit out of it. So it will end up in EC which will gain barely a few more readers.

Incest/Taboo should remain but it should have sub-categories in a hierarchy structure.

Master Category: Incest/Taboo
~ sub-category: Mom/Son
~ sub-category: Daddy/Dau
~ sub-category: Siblings
~ sub-category: Extended Fam
~ sub-category: Step and In-law
~ sub-category: Gen Non-Incest taboo

The author is free to post in the master category or the appropriate sub-category and can reach the audience that he chooses, whether that be broad or niche. Furthermore, by keeping the master category intact, all old stories can maintain their place without having to be moved or lost. Of course if the author of an old story is still active, he could have a one-time option to move his story in to a sub-category or not.

This will make it much easier for authors to place their stories for more specific audiences and make it even easier for readers to find more specific kinks. If a reader is into anything non-specifc incest so long as it's blood, they can peruse all the blood sub-cats and skip the step/in-law sub-cat. It's not difficult at all.

Romance could be as such.

Master Category: Romance
~ sub-category: HEA Romance

An author who wants to cater to the HEA crowd can post in the HEA sub-cat while an author who does not write HEA or wants to leave the ending otherwise unspoiled (HEA or not) can post in the standard master category.

This would be fantastic for fetish.

Master Category: Fetish
~ sub-category: Watersports/Bathroom
~ sub-category: Facial
~ sub-category: BBW
~ sub-category: Well-hung/Size Queen
~ sub-category: Impreg
~ sub-category: etc, etc, etc

So what if some of these categories only get three submissions a week. We already have Non-erotic and Letters and Transcripts. No one is upset that they're there. Smaller categories just makes it that much easier to find and be found. Plus, your work will stay on the new lists longer, days or even weeks instead of the 1-day flash that you get in incest or Loving Wives.

This will also keep the downvoting at a minimum. Sure, it's not going to stop the BtB crowd from stomping all over the site on their hunt for lynch mob justice, but it will stop the HEA gang from downvoting non-HEA and it will stop the no-homo brigade from downvoting mfm (if we separate Group Sex into ffm, mfm, Harem/Reverse, and Orgy), and it will stop several other cliques who aren't vindictive so much as they are disappointed to read something that they didn't expect just because it was lumped in with what they actually wanted.

 

[Trionyx]

The categories are highly restrictive to content.

PSG, you make some very intriguing and persuasive points about how we should keep the categories and amend them. To use my analogy, the book store would have the burly Scotsman romance novels separate from the meet-cute modern romance novels. To have still-active writers amend their categories would probably overwhelm Laurel and cause the whole site to grind to a stop. Maybe we should just throw all previously published works into the ‘general’ subcategory and do the new ones in the newer, more detailed subcategories.

 

[alohadave]

Has his lordship become offended? You highness, besides YOU, who says they're not necessary? Shall we burn down the house because you stubbed your royal toe your grace? AO3 is a jumbled wasteland where good and bad stories go to die unread, barely remarked upon, in a flouncy interface that defies rational thought. And just because Literotica has tags, why does that mean to you that categories must be done away with? Does your majesty have a better idea?

Using this addlebrained "logic" all dogs and cats MUST be executed because they're no longer wolves and lions. And, your holiness, who made you the arbiter of what is and is not meant to be? Categories is not the end-all, be-all that you seem to think that it is.

Let's kick back for a moment at picture the look on Sir Altissimus' face when he sits down with his publisher and after reviewing the manuscript that his righteousness slaved over, the publisher says, "I'm going to put this in the Political Thriller category... what's the matter Mister Altissimus? Your face is turning red, haven't you ever heard of categories? You what? That's very funny. I'm sure Simon and Schuster might like to review this. thank you for your time."


Yet you gave no real reason to remove them other than a wordy, "I don't like them"

I'm sorry your majesty but here's the honest truth - no one wants to see annual awards like "Best story submitted from a portable device" or "Best Story Featuring an FMC named Clarissa"

Categories are there because the readers like them and use them.

That's it.

And if your main focus isn't on the reader, what the hell are you doing writing? Writing solely to amuse yourself is little more than masturbating with a keyboard. I will admit, you did inspire some good ideas (all better than yours) - sub categories is a great idea. I'd love to see a "Swingers" under LW, and "Bondage" under BDSM because that category can be buried under S&M. Allowing a story to be in multiple categories is a great idea

Dude, calm down before you stroke out.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Has his lordship become offended? You highness, besides YOU, who says they're not necessary? Shall we burn down the house because you stubbed your royal toe your grace? AO3 is a jumbled wasteland where good and bad stories go to die unread, barely remarked upon, in a flouncy interface that defies rational thought. And just because Literotica has tags, why does that mean to you that categories must be done away with? Does your majesty have a better idea?

Might want to check your edit settings. Looks like you accidentally switched on "belligerent douchebag" mode.

 

[SimonDoom]

A lot of suggestions pop up in this forum that the Site should offer MORE in terms of categorization and tagging. In many ways it makes sense to do so to accommodate the tremendous diversity of stories, which the current category system inadequately addresses. But there's a cost, too, to a more complicated, subdivided system, and I think people here aren't adequately considering the costs.

1. A system with more categories and subcategories is more complicated and takes more time to master. Most readers probably do not want to do that. I obviously don't know this for certain any better than anybody else here does, but my guess is that the current category system works just fine for the majority of readers, who want a fast and easy system to navigate their way to the stories they like. I suspect many readers would NOT see it as an advantage to be confronted with a menu that breaks down "incest" into all the different incest types. Many readers are probably infrequent, casual, or new readers whose tastes are not highly refined. They just want an incest story. More choices don't necessarily equate to a better consumer experience, overall.

2. As I've argued before, it's the reader's perspective that matters more-- far more than the author's perspective. The Site is not going to do anything that in any way hinders or diminishes or complicates the reader's experience, or annoys the reader.

3. History and tradition count for something--quite a lot, for a site that's been around for 25 years. Readers come to expect a certain kind of experience, and they count on it to find the stories they want. Change it, and the site risks losing readers.

4. A more complicated system, with more categories or subcategories, would be more difficult for the Site to manage. Awards and lists would be more difficult to manage. It would be more time consuming. The Site isn't going to do that without a compelling reason.


I've long supported a more robust and flexible--and visible--tag system, that users could adapt to customize their experience and find the stories they want more effectively. With customization, readers could tailor story feeds to match their tastes. Authors could more effectively reach the readers they want. But it would be a big chore to sit it up, one I doubt Laurel and Manu are prepared to take on, and until it IS set up and shown to work effectively as a substitute for the current category system, I don't see that system being scrapped, and I personally wouldn't want it to be scrapped.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

AO3 is a jumbled wasteland where good and bad stories go to die unread, barely remarked upon, in a flouncy interface that defies rational thought.

I agree. AO3 is a place where readers can search and find well-tagged fanfic stories, and that's about it. If you post anything else, it won't be found by almost any potential readers because the story won't be listed anywhere. Stories can only be searched for by tags, and since your original content has no such tags, it can only be found by sexual-related tags, which means that it probably won't be found by many. Sure, there are some popular sexual content tags like futanari and such, but if your story doesn't contain those... yeah, you are fucked.

Also, cheers for making me laugh with your angry post. I don't know why you found yourself so offended and triggered by this topic but it was quite a laugh nevertheless

 

[pink_silk_glove]

To use my analogy, the book store would have the burly Scotsman romance novels separate from the meet-cute modern romance novels.

Precisely.

To have still-active writers amend their categories would probably overwhelm Laurel and cause the whole site to grind to a stop. Maybe we should just throw all previously published works into the ‘general’ subcategory and do the new ones in the newer, more detailed subcategories.

I don't believe that it would overwhelm. First of all, all it would require is some one-time coding to allow a writer to 'self-serve' move a story once and not back and forth or skip around. Perhaps a bit tricky, but once the code is done, it works forever with no extra admin.

There already is a general category: Erotic Couplings, and it's a huge sloppy bag o' vanilla that nobody reads. Having more specific places to post stories would reduce the number that default to EC and therefore make EC more manageable and navigable. I don't think it would make a huge difference to EC, but it would help a little.

 

[boytoyjoy]

AO3 tags work as well as they do because AO3 has legions of "tag wranglers" fixing and organizing tags on stories and maintaining a tag dictionary (I forget the archivist term for that) under the covers. Lit tags are more hit or miss. Lit's categories could maybe benefit from some reorganization but I wouldn't want to drop them altogether.

 

[M_K_Babalon]

But now that I'm here ...



Absolutely. The trouble is that at lit the categories are poorly organized and haven't changed in what 10? 20 years?

The categories are highly restrictive to content. Speaking as a writer who does not consider category when brainstorming or drafting at all, I often find no obvious category to place my work once it is complete. As so many authors write specifically to please a category, there are many stories that just never get written, and that's a shame.

Ideally we should have a kinky decimal system but since lit submission is a self-serve affair, authors can't be expected to understand such specific complexity when decimalizing their work. So that's right out.

The best solution that I can think of is more categories or more specifically sub-categories.

For example, let's take Incest/Taboo. There is only one taboo that matters and that's incest, so if you write a non-incest taboo like say doctor/patient, absolutely no one is going to read it in I/T, and the very few who do will bomb the shit out of it. So it will end up in EC which will gain barely a few more readers.

Incest/Taboo should remain but it should have sub-categories in a hierarchy structure.

Master Category: Incest/Taboo
~ sub-category: Mom/Son
~ sub-category: Daddy/Dau
~ sub-category: Siblings
~ sub-category: Extended Fam
~ sub-category: Step and In-law
~ sub-category: Gen Non-Incest taboo

The author is free to post in the master category or the appropriate sub-category and can reach the audience that he chooses, whether that be broad or niche. Furthermore, by keeping the master category intact, all old stories can maintain their place without having to be moved or lost. Of course if the author of an old story is still active, he could have a one-time option to move his story in to a sub-category or not.

This will make it much easier for authors to place their stories for more specific audiences and make it even easier for readers to find more specific kinks. If a reader is into anything non-specifc incest so long as it's blood, they can peruse all the blood sub-cats and skip the step/in-law sub-cat. It's not difficult at all.

Romance could be as such.

Master Category: Romance
~ sub-category: HEA Romance

An author who wants to cater to the HEA crowd can post in the HEA sub-cat while an author who does not write HEA or wants to leave the ending otherwise unspoiled (HEA or not) can post in the standard master category.

This would be fantastic for fetish.

Master Category: Fetish
~ sub-category: Watersports/Bathroom
~ sub-category: Facial
~ sub-category: BBW
~ sub-category: Well-hung/Size Queen
~ sub-category: Impreg
~ sub-category: etc, etc, etc

So what if some of these categories only get three submissions a week. We already have Non-erotic and Letters and Transcripts. No one is upset that they're there. Smaller categories just makes it that much easier to find and be found. Plus, your work will stay on the new lists longer, days or even weeks instead of the 1-day flash that you get in incest or Loving Wives.

This will also keep the downvoting at a minimum. Sure, it's not going to stop the BtB crowd from stomping all over the site on their hunt for lynch mob justice, but it will stop the HEA gang from downvoting non-HEA and it will stop the no-homo brigade from downvoting mfm (if we separate Group Sex into ffm, mfm, Harem/Reverse, and Orgy), and it will stop several other cliques who aren't vindictive so much as they are disappointed to read something that they didn't expect just because it was lumped in with what they actually wanted.

They're only restrictive to writers with no self-control. Some of them are vastly broader than others. If somebody can't make a story fit in something as broad as fetish, that's not the sites problem at all. Don't even need to be on point with a sniper rifle, just shooting a shotgun from the hip can get you there enough, but some of you are just standing there with a trebuchet full of gravel and the attitude of "ehhh.... some of it will hit".

Has his lordship become offended? You highness, besides YOU, who says they're not necessary? Shall we burn down the house because you stubbed your royal toe your grace? AO3 is a jumbled wasteland where good and bad stories go to die unread, barely remarked upon, in a flouncy interface that defies rational thought. And just because Literotica has tags, why does that mean to you that categories must be done away with? Does your majesty have a better idea?

Using this addlebrained "logic" all dogs and cats MUST be executed because they're no longer wolves and lions. And, your holiness, who made you the arbiter of what is and is not meant to be? Categories is not the end-all, be-all that you seem to think that it is.

Let's kick back for a moment at picture the look on Sir Altissimus' face when he sits down with his publisher and after reviewing the manuscript that his righteousness slaved over, the publisher says, "I'm going to put this in the Political Thriller category... what's the matter Mister Altissimus? Your face is turning red, haven't you ever heard of categories? You what? That's very funny. I'm sure Simon and Schuster might like to review this. thank you for your time."


Yet you gave no real reason to remove them other than a wordy, "I don't like them"

I'm sorry your majesty but here's the honest truth - no one wants to see annual awards like "Best story submitted from a portable device" or "Best Story Featuring an FMC named Clarissa"

Categories are there because the readers like them and use them.

That's it.

And if your main focus isn't on the reader, what the hell are you doing writing? Writing solely to amuse yourself is little more than masturbating with a keyboard. I will admit, you did inspire some good ideas (all better than yours) - sub categories is a great idea. I'd love to see a "Swingers" under LW, and "Bondage" under BDSM because that category can be buried under S&M. Allowing a story to be in multiple categories is a great idea

why are you attacking him? He's not the only one who wouldn't mind doing away with tags, nor is he putting on airs about it and being an asshole.

I agree. AO3 is a place where readers can search and find well-tagged fanfic stories, and that's about it. If you post anything else, it won't be found by almost any potential readers because the story won't be listed anywhere. Stories can only be searched for by tags, and since your original content has no such tags, it can only be found by sexual-related tags, which means that it probably won't be found by many. Sure, there are some popular sexual content tags like futanari and such, but if your story doesn't contain those... yeah, you are fucked.

Also, cheers for making me laugh with your angry post. I don't know why you found yourself so offended and triggered by this topic but it was quite a laugh nevertheless

That's because ao3 is fan fic first and it's main purpose.

AO3 tags work as well as they do because AO3 has legions of "tag wranglers" fixing and organizing tags on stories and maintaining a tag dictionary (I forget the archivist term for that) under the covers. Lit tags are more hit or miss. Lit's categories could maybe benefit from some reorganization but I wouldn't want to drop them altogether.

Lit does have that to a degree.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

A system with more categories and subcategories is more complicated and takes more time to master.

Yea, I think it would take about 10 seconds longer. "My fave kink is golden shower. Gee, where would I find that? Hrmmmm ... oh, Bathroom and Watersports, perfect!"

my guess is that the current category system works just fine for the majority of readers, who want a fast and easy system to navigate their way to the stories they like. I suspect many readers would NOT see it as an advantage to be confronted with a menu that breaks down "incest" into all the different incest types.

Certainly there are a whole lot of readers out there (and it may very well be more than half) that aren't terribly particular, but the amount who are is hardly insignificant - somewhere between 20 and 50%. These people are worth pleasing. I suspect that they would greatly welcome this while the generic readers would not find this much trouble at all. I would think that there are very few readers who only ever stick to one category. Most have their four five or six go-to categories with ease. Increasing this to ten or twelve would not be a big deal, especially given the improved accuracy of the results of their searches. Yes, readers can be very lazy but an extra click or two to fap won't stand in the way.

As I've argued before, it's the reader's perspective that matters more-- far more than the author's perspective. The Site is not going to do anything that in any way hinders or diminishes or complicates the reader's experience, or annoys the reader.

Yes, it's the readers' perspective that drives the traffic, we can't ignore that, but we also can't forget that the readers wouldn't come if the authors didn't post. They come here for volume which we provide, which gains more reader traffic which attracts even more writers, and so on and so on. It's a two-way street. I don't think that this would annoy anyone. I think that accurate sub-categories would be beneficial for all readers and for authors it would be an instant hit that we would have difficulty believing how we ever lived without.

History and tradition count for something--quite a lot, for a site that's been around for 25 years. Readers come to expect a certain kind of experience, and they count on it to find the stories they want. Change it, and the site risks losing readers.

You do make good points but this one in particular I really do not agree with. The folks who want story will have a much easier time finding the right story and the fappers will fap regardless. Furthermore, historically speaking, leaving something broken for the sake of 'tradition' never works. Facebook met the demands, Myspace didn't. Remember Myspace? The US presidential electoral college: a thoroughly antiquated system that can only produce a result anywhere near the actual popular vote by accident, yet in 200 years they can't find something better despite all of the technology available today? How's your typewriter? As long as you have whiteout and are willing to spend two weeks redrafting after edits it great, but the upload is still a bitch. But hey, if tradition works for Stephen King then it works for me too.

A more complicated system, with more categories or subcategories, would be more difficult for the Site to manage. Awards and lists would be more difficult to manage. It would be more time consuming. The Site isn't going to do that without a compelling reason.

The daily submissions would not be any more difficult to admin than today. Remember, choosing categories is 98% author self-serve. The number of categories does not change that. All that the admin does is check for trumps. The trumps aren't really going to change, so the workload won't change much neither. And the most admin work for submissions is screening those few that need a manual read regarding the rules, and that has nothing to do with category.

As for awards. I agree that it would be silly to have award for best pee story, award for best step-cest and so on and so on. The fix for that is to restrict awards to main categories only, and stories in sub-categories would only be eligible for their umbrella main category. For instance there would be no Mom/Son award, but all Mom/Son stories would be eligible for the main Incest/Taboo award.

I've long supported a more robust and flexible--and visible--tag system, that users could adapt to customize their experience and find the stories they want more effectively. With customization, readers could tailor story feeds to match their tastes. Authors could more effectively reach the readers they want. But it would be a big chore to sit it up, one I doubt Laurel and Manu are prepared to take on, and until it IS set up and shown to work effectively as a substitute for the current category system, I don't see that system being scrapped, and I personally wouldn't want it to be scrapped.

A more detailed and accurate category system and a more dynamic tagging system are not the least bit mutually exclusive.

 

[KeithD]

Master Category: Incest/Taboo
~ sub-category: Mom/Son
~ sub-category: Daddy/Dau
~ sub-category: Siblings
~ sub-category: Extended Fam
~ sub-category: Step and In-law
~ sub-category: Gen Non-Incest taboo

Did you purposely leave out Mom/Dau and Daddy/Son? If there was to be categorizing at this granularity, why leave those out other a site prejudice against gays?

 

[pink_silk_glove]

They're only restrictive to writers with no self-control. Some of them are vastly broader than others. If somebody can't make a story fit in something as broad as fetish, that's not the sites problem at all. Don't even need to be on point with a sniper rifle, just shooting a shotgun from the hip can get you there enough, but some of you are just standing there with a trebuchet full of gravel and the attitude of "ehhh.... some of it will hit".

No, this is just wrong. When you say writers with no self control, what you are really saying is writers who don't pander or write to cookie cutter formulas. This is the very definition of restricting what authors can write. If sticking to a formula is the only way to get a significant audience then there are going to be countless stories - stories that are unique and original - left unwritten, leaving us with a bunch of predictable cookie-cutter stories. The spirit of fiction can't help but weep at that notion.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Did you purposely leave out Mom/Dau and Daddy/Son? If there was to be categorizing at this granularity, why leave those out other a site prejudice against gays?

I assumed that gay would trump out to GM or Lez.

And I whipped those lists up quickly. If you have more sub-categories to suggest please do!