Story tags are a complete mess on this site

[englishnospeak]

I've been noticing this for years, there are thousands of stories here but many stay hidden because the author just don't get how to use tags properly. It's a shame cause some of these stories are legit awesome but you gotta hit the jackpot with advanced search and the right keywords to find them.

And what more, some great stories get low ratings cause some jackasses for whatever reason decide to rate them down. The story's fire but it gets dragged down cause of some tag incompetence.

So I sometimes go to other sites where authors actually know how to tag their stuff. Fixing this tag mess is a no brainer. Until then it's a bit of a struggle to sift through the chaos and find the real gems.

Sort it out authors and site moderators!

 

[EmilyMiller]

I’ll get right on to that, Sir.

Can I get you a coffee as well?

Em

 

[alohadave]

You could highlight stories that you feel deserve recognition.

 

[AchtungNight]

I tag with a lean toward people who think like me, not to generate the most views on my story.

This. AO3 has a better system and I use it well, I hope.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

If you feel tags are a mess here on Lit, you should go to AO3... I don't think that even some future ChatGPT 5000 would be able to fix and categorize all those tags properly

 

[gunhilltrain]

I've been noticing this for years, there are thousands of stories here but many stay hidden because the author just don't get how to use tags properly. It's a shame cause some of these stories are legit awesome but you gotta hit the jackpot with advanced search and the right keywords to find them.

And what more, some great stories get low ratings cause some jackasses for whatever reason decide to rate them down. The story's fire but it gets dragged down cause of some tag incompetence.

So I sometimes go to other sites where authors actually know how to tag their stuff. Fixing this tag mess is a no brainer. Until then it's a bit of a struggle to sift through the chaos and find the real gems.

Sort it out authors and site moderators!

First of all, the moderators (all one of them?) are not going to get involved with that. It's too much to do.

Then, there are tens of thousands of authors here, all using their own methods. Usually, I try to use all ten tags allowed, but sometimes I only can think of eight or nine. Usually I have something about the setting (college, office, etc.), one or two about the characters (older woman, younger man), a hint of the plot (betrayal, break-up), and the sexual activities involved (assuming there is something to say about that). What more do you want? You can look at my stories if you wish and see how I've done.

https://www.literotica.com/stories/memberpage.php?uid=4162715&page=submissions

 

[KeithD]

I want my readers to suffer trying to find my stories by use of tags.

 

[Paul_Chance]

I believe you should use as obscure tags as possible. Make the readers earn your stories.
LOL - just kidding. The tag system here is typical. The alternative is forced tags (a limited, if large, vocabulary). Makes for a better searching experience, but it's like categories. Someone would always find something wrong with them.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Fixing this tag mess is a no brainer. Until then it's a bit of a struggle to sift through the chaos and find the real gems.

Sort it out authors and site moderators!

The tags lists have evolved organically over twenty years, so what do you propose to do?

In any event, tags are up to authors, we can use any word we choose. Are you going to prescribe we can only use a limited set?

 

[EmilyMiller]

Another vanishing OP.

Em

 

[M_K_Babalon]

I've been noticing this for years, there are thousands of stories here but many stay hidden because the author just don't get how to use tags properly. It's a shame cause some of these stories are legit awesome but you gotta hit the jackpot with advanced search and the right keywords to find them.

And what more, some great stories get low ratings cause some jackasses for whatever reason decide to rate them down. The story's fire but it gets dragged down cause of some tag incompetence.

So I sometimes go to other sites where authors actually know how to tag their stuff. Fixing this tag mess is a no brainer. Until then it's a bit of a struggle to sift through the chaos and find the real gems.

Sort it out authors and site moderators!

Tag usage is no fault of the site. The voting thing, well; yeah, yeah, voting... blah, blah, blah, voting blah.

 

[Bramblethorn]

If you feel tags are a mess here on Lit, you should go to AO3... I don't think that even some future ChatGPT 5000 would be able to fix and categorize all those tags properly

Seriously???

Ao3's tag hierarchy is vastly better organised than here.

On Literotica, "femdom", "female domination", "female dominant", "dominant woman", and "dominant female" (plus many more) are all completely separate tags. There's no connection between them. If I want to find femdom stories through a tag search, I have to guess at every possible synonym some author could have chosen for that concept.

As an author, it's hard to figure out which of those I should be using. I can go look at the tag cloud for the category, read all the tags, figure out which ones equate to femdom, and pick the most common. But that's annoying even for just one tag; if I have ten different ones it's going to be a major pain, especially if I'm tagging for something that's not common in the category and may not even appear in the word cloud. Lots of authors don't bother, exacerbating the whole tag fragmentation problem.

On Ao3, although there are a lot of tags, those tags have been organised into a meaningful structure. So if I wanted to find femdom stories, I could do this:

- Pick any one of those tags, let's say "dominant female"
- Look up that tag: https://archiveofourown.org/tags/dominant female

What's this I see?



When I click on "femdom", I get a huge list of tags that have been flagged as synonyms: https://archiveofourown.org/tags/Femdom

If I then search on "femdom", I get stories for all those synonyms.

The difference is even bigger if I'm looking for some combination of themes. If I want to find all the stories about a woman tying up another woman? On Literotica I'd have to figure out all the possible synonyms for "femdom", all the synonyms for "rope bondage", and all the synonyms for "femsub", and then search each combination individually. That can easily end up requiring hundreds of searches, most of which will turn up nothing.

But on Ao3, if I search on "femdom, femsub, rope bondage", it covers all those combinations in one search. It'll find stories tagged "femdom, femsub, shibari" and so on, even if I had no idea that shibari was a type of rope bondage.

 

[Jackie.Hikaru]

Another vanishing OP.

Em

OP flying by AH with his protips:

 

[StillStunned]

I've been noticing this for years, there are thousands of stories here but many stay hidden because the author just don't get how to use tags properly. It's a shame cause some of these stories are legit awesome but you gotta hit the jackpot with advanced search and the right keywords to find them.

It's quite simple, actually. If you want to find those awesome stories, just search for "StillStunned".

 

[onehitwanda]

OP flying by AH with his protips:

Negative, Ghostwriter, the platform is full.

 

[SimonDoom]

I agree it could be improved. It's often not at all obvious which tags to choose, and I try to be fairly careful about it most of the time. If I have a choice of several I typically will choose the one that is most commonly used, per the tag chart.

 

[KeithD]

Truth be told, in choosing tags, I give priority to tags that will allow me to locate and populate stories in future themed anthologies for the marketplace.

 

[lovecraft68]

Tags are over rated. I never use all 10 and the ones I use are very simple.

I have 21k followers because I write stories that for whatever reason go over well here.

Maybe the story and not the tags is the key. That and spending more time on said story and less time fretting every goddamn thing other than the story