13 KiB
[META] Improving tags
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Author: u/STL *
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URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/3fizgp/meta_improving_tags/
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Score: 21
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Created: 2015-08-02T17:42:37
Post:
There are a lot of stories being posted here, and that's great! However, I find most of them to be poorly tagged, which makes it difficult to skip over stuff I'm not interested in (e.g. fanfics where I haven't seen canon), find stuff I am interested in (e.g. fanfics in familiar universes), and check out new stuff (e.g. original works).
Without blaming any posters/authors, I'd like to go through some of today's posts as examples:
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"[FF][RST] Team Anko, chapter 16" - This is Naruto fanfic, but I can't tell from the title and I haven't seen canon. "[FF:Naruto][RST] Team Anko, chapter 16" would be significantly more helpful.
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"Fall of Oso, Chapter 6: Second Order Consequences" - This is an original work, but I can't tell from the title. I also don't know what genre it is. "[ORIG] Fall of Oso, Chapter 6: Second Order Consequences", plus a genre if possible, would be better.
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"[??] The Dusty Hat, by China Mieville" - The question marks add nothing. At least the author is noted.
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"Pokemon: The Origin of Species, Chapter 22: The Decisive Path, Part I" - Doesn't need tags, because this is clearly Pokemon fanfic. Unless it's highly subversive Charles Darwin fanfic.
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"[RT]? Red Legacy" - Would benefit from being marked as original: "[ORIG][RT?] Red Legacy"
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"[FF] Parody of Stargate Atlantis" - Canon clearly identified, needs no improvement. The [FF] tag is redundant, but there's something to be said for uniformity.
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"[RT][FF] Significant Digits, Chapter Fifteen: Brute Existent" - Another example where I can't recognize what this is. Looks like Harry Potter, but if it's actually chained from HPMOR, that's also important to note.
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"[RT][MK][FF] Roll the Dice on Fate - Allies and Enemies Arc" - More Naruto, can't tell from the title.
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"Brainstorming Rationalist Stargate [BST][MK][FF]" - This is mistagged (tags should come first, and BST should probably exclude FF, it's not a story itself).
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"[Worm FF] Agent of Cauldron" - Very nicely identifies the canon. (As it happens, I've read Worm, so I probably would have recognized the Cauldron reference, but tags are for everyone.)
Does anyone else agree?
Bonus rant: I don't think that [MK] is a useful tag, or relevant to rational fiction. In its most extreme form (I'm looking at you, Two-Year Emperor), "look at how this system can be hilariously exploited" is simply parody. Nothing wrong with that, but it doesn't really have anything to do rationality. If anything, the existence of a hilariously-exploitable system that hasn't been exploited indicates that the universe's characters aren't really applying their intelligence. In less extreme forms, discovering a system, acquiring abilities, and steadily exploiting their consequences is rational, but simply makes for a good story (I'm looking at you, Mistborn and Stargate).
Comments:
u/Chronophilia [+16] sci-fi ≠ futurology (56 minutes later)
The point of tags is that they can be searched for easily - type "[RT]" into the search bar and you'll get all the posts with [RT] in them.
With that in mind, people making up their own tags is worse than useless. [Worm FF], for example, won't show up when searching for [FF]. We need to have a SMALL number of tags with clearly-defined purposes listed in the sidebar. A lot of the ones there are hardly used, and would benefit from a cleanup.
It's okay to just write things in the title. Not everything has to be tagged.
u/Sagebrysh [+8] Rank 7 Pragmatist (an hour later)
We probably should still have a tag for original content.
u/Chronophilia [+7] sci-fi ≠ futurology (an hour later)
Good idea. [OC] seems like a natural fit. But let's get rid of some of these over-specific tags first.
u/ancientcampus [+1] juggling kittens (4 days later)
While I like it, OC will mean "Original Character" to too many people, especially given the non-insignificant amount of fanfiction here. Other ideas? Perhaps just [O]? Something else?
u/STL [+7] (an hour later)
You're right (I don't use search). I'd still like to see tags for fanfic ancestors: [FF][Naruto], [FF][Worm] would work.
u/gommm [+6] (20 hours later)
If we start using [FF:HPMOR] or [FF:Worm] to tag Fanfiction with the relevant work then it's easy to search for fan fiction. We can just search for [FF in that case and get all fan fictions. Likewise, searching for [FF:HPMOR] would give all hpmor derived fanfictions.
As long as we agree on a formatting, I think adding the name of the original story makes sense
u/RMcD94 [+1] (an hour later)
It doesn't seem to be that there are that many fanfics that get posted here that it would be difficult to separately tag what it is a fanfiction of.
That is to say 99% of the rationalist fanfiction come from 1% of fiction so tagging it isn't hard. [HP],[HPMoR],[Naturo], etc would all work as searchable and as long as people are consistent it would work. Also include the [FF] tag there, and a [OC] tag for when it is OC.
u/Chronophilia [+2] sci-fi ≠ futurology (an hour later)
Why not just have people search for "Harry Potter" or "Naruto" if they want to find fanfic of a specific domain? There aren't many keywords that indicate, say, original content or brainstorming, so those need a tag of their own. But a [HPMoR] tag would be redundant.
u/RMcD94 [+3] (an hour later)
I don't think a HPMoR tag would be redundant, fanfiction of HP and fanfiction of HPMoR are often two very separate things.
The reason people can't just search for those things is because it doesn't work.
https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/search?q=naruto&restrict_sr=on
Naruto (even though that Anko fanfiction has plenty of people saying it in the chat) doesn't bring it up. Unless it's in the title or if it's in the text of a self post.
u/jalapeno_dude [+4] (4 hours later)
I am mostly indifferent to the outcome of this discussion, but I disagree with this assertion:
"[??] The Dusty Hat, by China Mieville" - The question marks add nothing. At least the author is noted.
As I think it was intended to, the [??] makes very clear that the poster of the link is asking a question about the categorization of the work and would like other people's input about it.
On a related note, stuff like this is why I try to always post an explanatory comment (e.g noting the setting, justifying [RT] or [RST], and explaining why I think it's worth reading) when I submit a link...
u/alexanderwales [+3] Time flies like an arrow (5 hours later)
The explanatory comment is the one thing I really wish people did more often; it's not enough for me to see the tags, I want to know why you thought it was worth reading and recommending to me, especially if it's one of those million word epics that would take up my reading time for the next few weeks. Not so important for the web serials (which mostly exist for discussion of the most recent chapter rather than as recommendation per se) but there are a lot of things I've skipped over because there's nothing aside from some tags and a title.
u/jalapeno_dude [+1] (8 hours later)
Yeah. I guess in theory you could enforce this by allowing only text post submissions rather than link submissions, but not sure it's worth the resulting inconvenience.
u/alexanderwales [+1] Time flies like an arrow (8 hours later)
Yeah, not really worth it to do it that way. I think I'll try to change the submission page somewhat so that it gives some suggestions on how best to submit, which is a good halfway measure (and should in theory increase tagging as well).
u/PeridexisErrant [+1] put aside fear for courage, and death for life (12 hours later)
As I think it was intended to, the [??] makes very clear that the poster of the link is asking a question about the categorization of the work and would like other people's input about it.
Yep, that was the idea. It was both an interesting and confusing read, and I wanted to share/discuss that.
u/Empiricist_or_not [+5] Aspiring polite Hegemonizing swarm (3 hours later)
Bonus rant: I don't think that [MK] is a useful tag, or relevant to rational fiction. In its most extreme form (I'm looking at you, Two-Year Emperor), "look at how this system can be hilariously exploited" is simply parody. Nothing wrong with that, but it doesn't really have anything to do rationality.
Okay you don't like it, but it's a genre others here enjoy.
u/Sagebrysh [+2] Rank 7 Pragmatist (52 minutes later)
It would probably help somewhat if I actually remembered to use the tags at all. That said I do see what you bring up, and I definitely think there's some room for improving the tagging system.
u/alexanderwales [+2] Time flies like an arrow (5 hours later)
I'm look into changing the submission guidelines for when people submit links. Given the non-compliance thus far, I'm sort of doubtful that it's going to do anything, and I think removing things that don't have tags is too much moderator work (and probably just results in less stuff being submitted).
I'm kind of on the fence about fanfic tagging. There are a number of fanfics that span multiple franchises, and most of them are posted to ff.net where you can just read a synopsis and a whole bunch more information.
I'm also on the fence about adding a tag for original works, mostly because we already have a fanfic tag, and I would think that everything not tagged as fanfic is implicitly original.
[MK] tag is staying, mostly because it denotes a specific style, and is useful in that regard.
u/STL [+2] (6 hours later)
I guess my complaint is that if people are lazy about tagging, "original work" can't be distinguished from "forgot to tag fanfic". But thanks for listening to my concerns.
u/alexanderwales [+3] Time flies like an arrow (9 hours later)
I changed the CSS a bit so that the field below the submission is a little bit more visible, and added a line at the bottom about adding something about the world it's based on for fanfic. I don't anticipate that this will do much, given that people tend to fill out forms on the internet by just filling in fields then clicking buttons with the minimum of reading (which is what I do).
However, having a post like this probably helps a bit for making people conscious of keeping things organized.
u/STL [+1] (9 hours later)
Cool. However, I observe that "Characteristics of Rational Fiction" takes up so much space, "Posting Tags" isn't visible until you scroll down. Would condensing the first part into something like "Read the sidebar for the characteristics of rational fiction before posting" be more effective? Shorter stuff is more likely to be read.
Also, you're missing a close paren: "[FF] for fanfiction (please include what it's fanfic of, if possible"
u/alexanderwales [+1] Time flies like an arrow (9 hours later)
I just switched the location of those two; tags get shown first, characteristics get shown second. I don't know whether that's best or not, but it seems like the sort of thing that you might overlook before submitting (much more than looking over whether the fic is rational or not).
u/STL [+1] (9 hours later)
Sweet! Yes, I think this is much more helpful.
u/PeridexisErrant [+2] put aside fear for courage, and death for life (12 hours later)
removing things that don't have tags is too much moderator work (and probably just results in less stuff being submitted).
I could easily set up Automoderator to do this, but I think it would lead to fewer submissions and that's not worth it.
u/GaBeRockKing [+1] Horizon Breach: http://archiveofourown.org/works/6785857 (5 hours later)
I think [MK] is a useful tab if the MC comes from somewhere that gives them a different enough perspective on local physics/technology that they can optimize it in some way. It's still just basic rational fic principles to exploit situations to your advantage, but if the primary or important secondary purpose of the story is to optimize local mechanics, then [MK] is still a good idea, just like I'd rather see something tagged as [Fantasy][Steampunk] than just [Fantasy] or [Sci-Fi][Space Opera] than just [Sci-Fi].
u/FuguofAnotherWorld [+1] Roll the Dice on Fate (19 hours later)
Fair doos, I'll keep it in mind.