Tag mustn't have special characters

[JJA122]

Hi, I was wondering why an error message comes up when you try to use "/" and "&" in story tags. It states: "Tag mustn't have special characters."
It seems you can ignore the message and publish the story. And seemingly everyone does so? I am talking about stories that use the tags: "d/s" and "s&m", tags that are being used in recently submitted stories.
I am curious why this is, since it discourages authors to use the right tags.

 

[Budman0_0]

It also rejects the + sign. As in M+/f to indicate multiple Males dominating a female sub. And it you Cut and Paste you can get Cap's into the tag, but if you type them in it converts everything to lower case.

Is there a Feature Request somewhere that the admins review - because I'd vote for more flexibility on tags.

By the way, I'm an HTML coder and I completely understand WHY special characters are restricted. The way they are storing and including them in the web page they could be used to embed code into a page. But there are coding ways around this problem that are pretty standard in the industry.

 

[ElectricBlue]

It also rejects the + sign. As in M+/f to indicate multiple Males dominating a female sub. And it you Cut and Paste you can get Cap's into the tag, but if you type them in it converts everything to lower case.

You're responding to a five year old post, just so you know (it being your first post).

Is there a Feature Request somewhere that the admins review - because I'd vote for more flexibility on tags.

No. The site has a very slow improvement methodology, and pretty much have their own agenda. I've been her ten years and in that time have seen only two major upgrades, with fiddling with the finer details in between.

By the way, I'm an HTML coder and I completely understand WHY special characters are restricted. The way they are storing and including them in the web page they could be used to embed code into a page. But there are coding ways around this problem that are pretty standard in the industry.

The site has legacy software dating back at least 25 years, so 2025 industry standards might not be particularly relevant.