Site Post » UPCOMING CHANGE: Severely limiting the number of character tags · 8:53pm Apr 10th, 2012
So for a long time now we've had a big problem on the site with people using our Character Tag system incorrectly. You're supposed to use it to tag the MAIN characters in your story; that it to say, the ones that will play a large role. In most good stories, this number realistically shouldn't climb above five, maybe ten at the most (for very long stories with ensemble casts). For a while we've just let you tag a very large number of characters (I think it's like 20 or 30 or something ridiculous), but we've just turned away stories with this many characters by default anyway, so there's no point in having this high limit.
After some discussion with knighty, we're considering severely limiting the number of characters you can tag a story with, probably to something like 5, and no more than 10. In addition, to help facilitate this change, we're going to introduce the Mane 6 and CMC tags, for those specific groups of characters. We'll be adding these tags even if we don't go through with the big change. EDIT: Also, to be clear, you could tag "Mane 6" and "Twilight Sparkle" if you liked, to show that the Mane 6 are involved in a story, but that Twilight is extra important.
The reason that this is a big problem for the site is mostly that it hurts readers. For example, if you want to search for a story about Gummy, and you search for the Gummy tag, you're going to get about 86 results as of the time of this writing. However, doing a text search for Gummy only yields 6 stories! That's an 80 story discrepancy! If we force authors to select their tags very carefully (because they only get a limited number of them), we make the tag choices much more meaningful. If you don't tag your story correctly, you are eliminating a lot of potential hits from searches. We also reduce potential abuse - people who tag extra characters just so they can get extra hits for their story.
Consider this example. An author writes a story that's primarily about a party that Pinkie Pie is throwing for everyone in Ponyville. She ends up going to everybody's house to deliver an invitation and she has some interaction with everypony she meets. She meets with Zecora, Cheerliee, The Mayor, and a bunch more.
Now let's say there's a reader who wants to read some stories about Cheerilee. They decide to search the Cheerilee tag, because that makes sense, right? Unfortunately, they get a ton of stories! They click on this new author's Pinkie Pie story, only to see that Cheerilee is barely in the story at all. She's briefly mentioned in a couple of paragraphs, then it's back to Pinkie Pie! That isn't what this reader wanted at all.
These scenarios are pretty common, and indicate that the tagging system is broken, and something ought to be done about it. We decided that severely limiting the number of tags is the best solution to this, short of overhauling the system completely (we had no ideas on this front). The only other solution is to manually police stories for tagging violations, which would be completely infeasible even with a team of pre-readers, which we also aren't interested in bringing on board. In addition. this change would apply retroactively, so we wanted to get the word out there in case authors would like to change their story's tags themselves before the change goes live.
What do you think about this change? Do you think there's a "magic number" of character tags that we should use? Perhaps this change isn't necessary at all? We don't like to restrict the author's freedom to do what they like with their story, but we have to consider the reader as well. We think this change would benefit every author, though. Let me know what you think.
... Let it stay the way it is.
If it must change, move it to 16.
Character tag limits is extremely necessary.
If I want a Lyra story, damn it, Lyra better have a big part in it.
Thank poul<3
I'm all for this change. I could easily foresee 5 or 10 as being good maximums. Definitely like the idea of the "Mane 6" and "CMC" tags as well, go for it.
Perhaps you could use a bot system to figure out how many times the name of a certain character is mentioned in a story? I don't know; just a suggestion you can go off of further if you'd like.
>Cheerilee is barley
lol dumbass lrn 2 spell
At first I was worried, but then you said that there'd be a mane six tag. I agree with this update, as like you said, there are many stories with character tags whose characters barely appear. (I would like to point out, though, that including more than one or two character's name in a summary is probably hard to do while keeping the summary good.)
Thank you for the forewarning.
66051
That's not exactly a trivial thing to code.
I have a feeling this might stir up some controversy, but I think this is for the best, especially since you're adding Mane 6 and CMC tags.
While you're at it, you might also possibly want to add individual tags like "The Wonderbolts" and "Pets" and "The Apple Family".
I'll have to get rid of some tags in my own stories, but what the hay, it'll make things easier for readers and authors alike.
66056
Hmm, yeah, I'll think about that. Not bad suggestions
As long as the "Mane 6", "CMC", and possibly "Princesses" tags are enabled - I don't see a big problem with this.
Something has been needed for a long time, even some of the more popular and well known stories are guilty of this. I think TCTAC had every character tagged at one point, even though they didn't even show up once. It eventually got fixed, but either something like this or punishments for abusing it needed to happen, and punishing would take far too much manpower.
66055
True, but you could also use a basic crawler or something, though that might be a stretch. Actually, a friend of mine and I (as well as a bunch of other developers we recently recruited) are working on a site of our own and we will likely be using something that could search through text like that. I doubt that we'll have anything I could give you anytime soon, but I could PM you if we ever get to that point.
I kinda like this. I have the "mane 6" as part of my story, but not all are really a major part. (Yet they still have an impact) It'll just organize everything a bit more in my opinion
66069
obvious problem for this is Lavender Unicorn Syndrome, sometimes the character name is only ever mentioned once or twice, then alluded to the rest of the story.
This is very reasonable. I can live with 5 or 10. As for the tags, they are a great idea, and should have more than just 'mane 6' and 'CMC'.
66075
Yes, and due to the obviousness of that I had realized that as well. We could probably implement a list of the common ones that could redirect it to the character name. It wouldn't have to be 100% accurate, anyway; it would mainly just to give an estimate of overall frequency. For example, if a story has a Twilight Sparkle tag, yet the crawler or whatever we would be using could only find a small number of mentions/references to her, that tag could be 'flagged' or something of that sort.
You just nailed what I would suggest (about Mane6 tags and CMC tags). I don't know about "magic numbers"... but I think that 8 should be its top limit.
I don't see a problem at all with this change. On the contrary, I agree with what was presented. It will make the searches for the tagged characters turn out with better results and it would also disencourage anyone from tagging their stories just "to get the views".
The only authors that would be affected by this would be the ones who (like I did before I decided to split them up) write one story and every chapter is a different One-Shot. I don't know if the rules were updated so these kinds of stories are forbidden, but in the case they aren't, then it would be somewhat of a nuisance towards such authors (even though there are very few stories like this).
I concur with this, though five would kind of leave out the people who like to make AU mane-sixes; maybe make it at least six?
Is it wrong that the main thing I got from this is that we desperately need more Gummy fics?
Ten's a good number to go for, and adding in tags to group together characters would certainly make it less cluttered. The only thing I could add to it would be some way to rank the importance of the characters in the fic, like what order the heads appear in or something.
THANK YOU
Excellent excellent idea, make it so captain!
I agree.
I also like the Mane 6 and CMC tags, cuz in some of my stories, if they have mane 6 and cmc and, say, lyra and bon bon, (idk) I can't do that!
66098 Well, you could use the Mane 6 tag if all appear and then add the "Twilight" tag if she's the mane character in your story. That's what I'll do for TER and TSC.
Mane 6 and CMC tags? Oh yeah, I'm definitely all in for this. It'll help reduce clutter, make searching easier... Well, I hope you go through with these changes, and maybe add an "Everypony" tag for stories with large amounts of involvement. Of course, some people may not like the change, but I think those people will be the minority.
Keep up the great work.
As long as Mane 6 and CMC tags are added, this sounds like a good idea.
66049
Yes, I agree with this. The update's all good. Adding in Mane 6 and CMC tags also sounds very useful.
Perhaps stories with more words, more length could be allowed more characters considering the length? Not sure if that sounds practical or not.
Something that just came to mind: What if we also had a way to mark characters as being romanced? So even though I have Twilight, Celestia and Luna as major characters, only Twilight and Luna would have little hearts... or an extra border or something around their portraits, for those people who don't immediately recognize the mass of the moon in us short tons
It still might cause some incorrect search results if you have multiple pairs, but I think that's better than nothing. I suppose if you really wanted to be fancy you could let people mark actual pairs, but then you have problems with love triangles and... better to just keep it simple, I think. Just a single marker for "this character is romanced in some way in this fic".
I like the idea behind this change, and I would suggest adding more group tags for groups of three or more (The Apple Family, The Cakes, etc). Another potential tag for those large-cast fics like Total Magic Pony Island would be an "ensemble" tag or something of the short. Some sort of tag that makes it obvious it's a large cast.
I love this idea. I see no problem with it.
As for this: we're considering severely limiting the number of characters you can tag a story with, probably to something like 5, and no more than 10, I say that it's fantastic.
I think that 5 is good, but it should be 5 individual tags, as if the big group tags dont count towards the max. just my thought.
I think limiting character tags is an excellent idea. 5 seems too little; 10 seems too many; not sure where the sweet spot would be there. I guess I'd lean toward erring on the side of giving authors more tags in case their stories really do have a fair few main characters - I hate the idea of punishing authors who are trying to use the system as intended for the sins of those who aren't.
How exactly will this be applied retroactively? How will you know you aren't removing the key character tags and leaving behind the unimportant character tags?
66051
66055
That's an interesting idea. At time of story submission, count how many times each character name appears. How to use that info could vary - perhaps list "suggested" character tags, to guide the user toward a desired outcome (give the top 5 characters mentioned, etc). But only be a suggestion, in case the system has misunderstood something, or there's OCs, or characters will have a bigger role in later unsubmitted chapters, etc.
Perhaps have a secondary character tag group used to show supporting characters? Because I for one know of many stories where there are supporting characters who play a crucial role.
Im diggin it
66124
I think 10 is a good maximum. If you want a sweet spot, I'd just go with lucky 7. 10 provides from breathing room for the rare super-epic that does indeed involve a lot of characters. Tags like "Mane Six" and "CMC" will definitely cut down on character tags even in epics, though.
As for applying it retroactively, I imagine existing stories that have all six of the Mane Cast tagged will automatically be converted to just the "Mane Six" tag. Same goes for stories that have all 3 CMC tagged, it will convert it to "CMC" tag. If the tags still exceed the maximum of 10 (or whatever the max ends up being) then I suppose it will just cut off characters. The author will have to go back and make changes, if necessary, and if they're still around. It's not a perfect solution, but it's necessary if this change is going into effect.
66130
This has been discussed already. That would require a coding overhaul and wouldn't exactly solve the problem of excessive tagging. Even so, if these stories involve supporting characters in crucial roles, do they REALLY have 15-20 of them playing crucial roles? I doubt it.
66130
Here's the thing, though: The whole idea behind making this change is so people who are searching for fics about their favorite characters don't have to weed through fics that barely contain them. I had this experience when I was searching for Lyra and Bon Bon fics on EqD and one turned up that actually shipped Octavia and Lyra, with Bon Bon only showing up occasionally. Nobody's gonna search for their favorite characters in supporting roles, so having that secondary category would only be for the author's purposes. The character tags were designed more with readers in mind rather than writers.
Oddly, having a smaller tag max will probably make me put more tags in x) At the moment I'm terrified of putting in some that I'm not sure count, but if there's a smaller max, I'll want to fill it. Rotating ensemble cast makes tagging hard.
Definitely for group tags though.
THIS was needed a while ago. I'm tired of fics with a character enabled who only shows up for a second.
66137 I was more or less suggesting it not to be included in the search feature, but just to be displayed on the story just so that a fully accurate description is available.
66135 Also what about short story collections that feature all characters? Or stories that follow a different character every chapter?
66130
I don't think anyone actually goes looking for stories where their favorite character (or any specific character) steps on-stage for five minutes to deliver a profound statement and then disappears again. These are exactly the kinds of appearances they are trying to get people to stop marking.
66144 As I mentioned above, it wouldn't be in the search feature, just displayed on the story page for the sole purpose of accuracy. It wouldn't affect the search options at all.
I like it a lot, especially with the introduction of mane6 and CMC tags. Until it was almost impossible to find a story that focuses on a character using the tags. Six main characters is still plenty to chose from, considering other archives limit it to two.
Tag limits could work. My main concern though is that this won't necessarily stop authors from tagging characters with a small role. Say the tag limit is 8 and the story is focusing on only 1 main character. That's still 7 small characters being tagged
Still though, 7 small characters being tagged is better than 20 small characters being tagged
Limit or not, I can deal. I do like the prospect of group tags like the Mane 6 and CMC, especially if a limit is put in place and enforced.
I am 100% behind this with the inclusion of a mane 6 tag and cmc etc. IMO, this would massively improve the tagging system.
66147
You mean in the post that was submitted thirty seconds before mine? Yeah, I didn't get a chance to see that
I didn't mention searches though. The search algorithm isn't the only thing that looks at story entries. Any information included in a story's description and statistics should be for the purpose of someone seeing it at finding it useful, which secondary characters just... aren't.
66124
>How exactly will this be applied retroactively? How will you know you aren't removing the key character tags and leaving behind the unimportant character tags?
We don't, we'd basically just straight up chop them off and collapse stories with the mane 6 tagged into the group tag
I was JUST thinking about this issue this morning. I wanted to find a Rarity fic but I kept getting ones about, well, NOT Rarity.
I am definitely behind the idea of condensing some characters into one tag, and also limiting the number of tags altogether. NO good story should have more than ten MAIN characters. MAIN, as in, a character present in nearly every chapter, involved in almost every situation and having dialog EVERY few chapters.
That aside, I have a question as well. Can you add important characters to your tags retroactively as they get introduced, so as to not spoil future events, or do all of the characters need to be tagged as soon as the story is published, even if said tagged characters are not yet in the story?
I love the idea of the Mane 6 and CMC tags-could I suggest an Apple Family tag as well? I go to search for an AppleDash shipping, so I search Romance Applejack and RainbowDash, and get all these stories about someone's OC who talks to Applejack and RainbowDash for about a paragraph each about his crush on Rarity. Not what I wanted. I love this idea, but I'd say maybe a 8 character tag limit is good.
66143
I'd probably run into that issue. Given a 10-character limit, I'd likely simply use the Mane Six tag, a few notable BG characters (assuming they're in one of the short stories), and then "Other" tag.