On Tagging · 8:38am Jun 6th, 2016
The tagging system for Fimfiction continues to confuse me. It makes sense, mostly, though I can’t help but wonder why the tagger considers “Slice of Life” and “Adventure” mutually exclusive, when it is plainly evident that stories can be both in equal measure, particularly if they run on for long enough, and more importantly, when certain stories do have both tags. Which is probably because they weren’t exclusive in the past, and the change in the tag editor was introduced after these stories were last touched, but it doesn’t explain the logic.
But more importantly, I’m still at a loss how should Aporia be tagged. Should it have a “Mystery” tag? What about “Drama” or “Thriller?” Is it even thrilling enough for the latter? There are a few tags I’m pretty certain of – “Human,” is obvious, and so is “Alternate Universe,” or rather, not having it, just like “Anthro” and “2nd Person.” But other than those, I’m really at a loss, there’s no “Meta” tag or “Philosophy” tag or “Pretentious Drivel” tag, so I’m left with trying to approximate them with what’s available.
I also kind of dislike the tag soup you typically see on a Human in Equestria story, where they try to cram bloody everything in and label the story “Dark” when it never even properly gets to the dark part, so I would also prefer to keep the tag count down to at most four.
Now that we’re at least a quarter in, and it’s about to get more exciting than usual for a while, I think I can ask the readers. What do you think it should be tagged, and why? Which characters, beside the Mane 6 as a unit, should I tag, assuming the average distribution of narration remains more or less as it is in the currently existing 21 chapters?
Well, I'd say the "mystery" tag definitely applies.
That "slice of life" and "adventure" are exclusive is weird, yes. It's the only tag-exclusivity I've ever heard people complain about, leading me to ask the question... what other tags are exclusive? Are any other tags exclusive?
Thriller.... I dunno. *shrug*
Drama... makes me think of situations where "feels" are surging high in what previously may have gotten a "sad" tag, but not actually being "sad". If that makes sense.
4002321
No, that's the only pair, and clearly, they're only exclusive on editor level, not on database level. My guess is that sometime in about 2014, a decision has been made to make them exclusive when they previously weren't. It's pretty difficult to track down the relevant site blog post for obvious reasons.
There's also the weird disconnect between the meaning of "Sex" tag when applied to a "Mature" and a "Teen" story which would be best served by the introduction of "Innuendo" tag, but I think it's too late for that...
Well, I guess we'll see about it when we'll reach chapters 25 and 26. :) I'm pretty definite it's not a "Tragedy," because there is a happy ending in the plan, but I'm not so sure about "Drama."
Thank you. :)
I've long complained about the teen, mature, sex, and gore tags. The thing is, it's mostly subjective. You tag your story on the honor system, and if a site moderator thinks you've overstepped the boundaries, they have the liberty to re-tag your story.
I've put my story as "Teen" even though it presses the boundaries in terms of gore. That's mostly because it's a war/adventure story, and gore happens. But the point of the story is not to be gory. It's not Immortal Game (which was tagged teen for the longest time incidentally). A lot of factors go into considering what tags you need. Things like how often does your story venture into certain territory. Single instances I doubt would rarely affect the tags unless you had a single instance of explicit clop for example.
Speaking of clop, that is the main reason I'm rather irritated with the tagging system. Most people associate "Mature" with clop. So I've got to do whatever I can to avoid the Mature rating, because my story is not clop.
An easy solution would be for there to be an actual clop tag. But the thing is, the site mods actually want there to be as much clop as possible and don't want people avoiding it (unless they are underage). Fact of the matter is, the site is run on ad revenue, and clop brings the cash in. But they have to cover their asses to avoid any litigation problems, so anything "mature" needs to have a filter on it. That means the only way to view mature stories is to have an account and deliberately turn that filter off. I know I've got fans who don't even have accounts, so that would really hurt the story to make it Mature.
4002354
Amen to that.
Well, not quite. They don't show in any listings otherwise, but a direct link still works, it just gives you a blocking "are you underage" question.
4002333
I don't know if it's changed, but previously "Comedy" and "Sad" were exclusive too.
I remember the blog post, 2014 sounds right, I think it was either Obs or Wanderer D and there was a lotnof explainingnin the comments the difference between "Sad" and "Tragedy," and why comedies could be tragic but not sad.
The idea was that the tags were meant for the overall tone of the story, rather then to single out erything that happened, or even every major aspect of the story. And it's always been the case that if you think you have a special case you can PM the mods to get an exception.
4002367
...That feels even more artificial to me.
Fun fact: It's possible to cheat the tag editor and enter two exclusive tags without involving a moderator. First you save the story with "Adventure" tagged, then you edit it again, open the browser debug console and add a "checked" attribute on the "Slice of Life" checkbox. Then you save it again, and get a story with both tags. The backend does not validate this, so it passes. It might be possible to do the same to produce more than five character tags, but I didn't investigate that.
This probably won't be taken well if anybody notices, though. :) Pretty sloppy of them, I wonder if I should send in a bug report.
4002354
The mature tag is meant for stories that shouldn't be read by anyone underage. I don't know if there's as strong an association of mature with clop stories as you say, though. Anything that has the tags 'mature' and 'sex' is most of the time going to be a clop story, but there are tons of stories that are tagged 'mature' and never get near descriptive sex. I do get what you're saying, though. It's kind of like how most movies that are rated 'R' will have extreme violence in them, with non 'PG-13' movies that are meant to be about complex adult stuff are comparatively rare. I don't think it's anywhere near that on fimfiction, even with the feature box as it is.
4002373
It makes sense if you think of Comedy and Sad as emotional tones and Tragedy as a style of plot.
If you're interested I did a blog post on tagging a while ago, and while much of my commentary is tongue in cheek, it might give you some stuff to think of regarding how to tag your story.
4002388
Well, it is apt in one thing -- "Aporia" is tagged "Slice of Life" because I didn't know what else to tag it. :)
4002382 Yeah the main issue for me is how a Mature rating would be detrimental to the story. I wager that a fairly large portion of my target audience doesn't have (a) an account, or (b) mature tagged on. So I'd lose lots of potential readers if it were tagged Mature.
I'm more annoyed by the character tags. There's no reason not to implement them for every new pony with an established canon name, but no, I need to use the incomplete selection of special groups to find stories about less common characters.
4002498
Depending on the implementation, the work involved might be more annoying than you'd think. I can't tell exactly how it works inside when looking from the outside, but certain dirty hacks in the implementation of bbcode tags make me think that for all the pretty modern exterior, inside, Fimfiction is fairly messy. Old school PHP4 kind of messy.
First, I for one appreciate the exclusivity of the "adventure" and "slice of life" tags. Almost every story is going to have at least a little bit of both, forcing the author to pick one lets readers know which it has more of, daily life or grand adventures.
I think you have most of the right tags, but I'm not really sure the "mystery" tag applies. To me a mystery story is one where the central conflict is answering a question, the type of question a detective would solve. "Who done it," "where is the missing object/person," "who is my real parent," etc. I agree that the central plot of Aporia is about answering unknown questions, but they don't really feel like "mystery" questions. They feel like scientific/magical/philosophical questions about the world of Equestria in general. I feel like stories about the true nature of the world aren't really "mystery" genre stories, anymore than Nature magazine is about mysteries.
4003691
Dunno, Umineko is all about figuring out who the author is, it calls itself a murder mystery. :)
But so far I have one vote for and one vote against, let's see if any more show up.
Spike, OC, and Mane 6 seems like an appropriate distribution of tags to me. Maybe throw in Celestia and/or Luna if they get more narration.
While Aporia contains a central mystery and a fractal rabbit hole of questions, the common use of the mystery tag is different. It really all comes down on why and for whom you use the tags. I say you could almost use the sci-fi tag ("any sufficiently analysed magic I indistinguishable from science") which would be more useful for the kind of people who would like your story.
Obviously, if you want to start a campaign to broaden the meaning of the mystery tag I would probably take part in it. I doubt it would be very effective, but then there is a relativ big selection of quite vulgar turns of speech in Italian about how every little effort counts, and all that popular wisdom can't be wrong
4005565
Generally, tags exist for the story to be found in search. :) But I guess it counts as a vote against the "Mystery" tag, which brings the tally to one for, two against, so I guess I'll take it off for now.
I'd rather campaign to define tags more rigorously and make more of them. Probably, make them a tree. As it is, the FAQ has only that to say on the meaning of "Mystery" tag: "Mystery stories involve some sort of situation (crime, death, disappearance) that needs to be solved. Usually several characters are involved, many of them with a motive to commit the crime or cause the situation that needs to be resolved." And formally, Aporia fits this definition, but is this what people are searching for when they click on the mystery tag?
There's a lot of folks mentioning their own interpretation of tags in comments, so I kinda have to wonder if people know about the tag information page under the "FAQ" menu in the navigation bar.
I haven't read Aporia so can't comment on the specific question of the post, but given that "drama" is about character drama (generating tension from character conflict and character growth), a glance at the story and description suggest it's apt. Honestly, most "Slice of Life"-tagged stuff on the site should be Drama instead, and the stuff that isn't is largely fluff that I'm happy to abandon.
4007370
Doesn't matter, actually. That's what the site administration thinks the tags should mean. What the tags actually mean is a consensus or average of what those who use them to search think they mean. :)
4008274
Oh no, linguistic prescriptivism vs. descriptivism…with a weak enforcing body, which only makes that worse.