Suggestion - SMUT prefix in NSFW

[Odin]

I'd like to suggest having a SMUT prefix added as an optional alternative to the generic NSFW prefix in the NSFW creative writing and quests subforums.

Over the years the NSFW forums have gotten flooded with stories\quests that either aren't actually NSFW or are barely so with authors using excuses like "it's in NSFW because of violence and strong language!", or "there might, maybe, one day, be a future chapter or omake posted with sexual content and I want to leave that option open!" as excuses (although a fair amount also just straight up admit that they post it there because they're aware the NSFW forum will get them more views)

Cuz, let's be honest, while certainly not everyone that comes here does so primarily for sexual content that's not available on other forums a large chunk, possibly even the majority of forum goers, do. And it's become harder and harder over the years to actually find that content. (And on the flip side this will also make it easier for those who aren't looking for smut to filter it out)

I'm aware that users can add a smut tag to their threads but there are also several similar tags that they can add instead (which makes filtering by tag inconsistent) and tags aren't nearly as visible as prefixes when looking through threads given that they're smaller, at least on mobile on this site they're not visible from the main page (not sure about PC as I don't use it for viewing the forum), their placing isn't as prominent with the way prefixes are at the very front of the story titles, and they're often mixed in amongst a bunch of other tags.

I'm also not recommending that this be some sort of mandatory thing or anything that the forum staff would enforce or apply. It would just be an optional choice available to thread creators to select that prefix if they want to. (Although I do wonder how hard it would be for the forum admins to find any threads in those sub forums that have the smut tag and mass update them to also have the prefix)

Of course that will lead to not every story that the prefix applies to having it but I expect the sheer visibility of prefixes will make its existence common knowledge and that many authors who are writing that content will choose to apply it to make their story stand out more from the non-smut stories.

Thoughts, concerns, suggested changes, etc.?

 

[LurkingInTheDeceit]

My take on the overall idea is 'can't hurt'. Edit: Thought about it some more, and I've become more ambivalent.

Some potentially useful information for finding smut as is-

I'm aware that users can add a smut tag to their threads but there are also several similar tags that they can add instead (which makes filtering by tag inconsistent)

Click to shrink...

The relevant Canonical tags for smut are:

Spoiler: smut

porn
explicit content
r-18
lewds
nsfw
lemons
erotica
bed-shattering smut
bitter smut
first time smut writer!
he's a bard. of course smut.
i just wanted to write wow smut okay?
only the finely picked smut from my own brain
over the top smut
shameless smut with some plot
smut ahead try finger but hole
smut for the smut throne
smut heavy before plot hits like a wrecking ball
tasteful smut
terrible smut
way more smut than initially intended
wide range of smuttiness
amature parody porn
artisanal hand-crafted pornography
bad porn
porn for the porn god
realistic porn
that means porn with feeling
behold my field of lewds
dumping excess lewdness onto the internet
ecchi and lewds
fic will have lewds -- this isn't crossposted sb slop
you're a lewd one
first lewds by yours truly
first time lewds
gooey lewds
hark for the lewds have arrived
hotter stickier and lewder
I lied lewds all around
kinks and lewds galore
lewd and crude
lewd and fun
lewd and proud
lewd as fuck
lewd fantasy
lewd hell
lewd shenanigans
lewd yet wholesome
lewdness in abundance
lewds accidental and intentional
lewds ahoy!
lewds for the lewd god
lewds inclewded
lewds of questionable quality
lovey dovey lewds
mix of lewd and wholesome
o lord give lewds
oh my how lewd
possibly bad lewds
probably high-lewd later on
proliferating lewds
silly lewds
so fucking lewd
some weird lewds
the dice gods are lewd
the dice got its lewds
the dice wants more lewds
the lewd spreads
weird lewds
writing exercises in lewds
all the fucking fetishes
fuckfest
lewd tags in chapter
lewd all the things
adult themes
dark erotica
erotic fanfic
rational erotica

Spoiler: pure smut

it's just smut
really it's just smut
borderline porn without plot
but porn's the focus
mainly porn
more porn than plot
mostly porn
mostly porn without plot
porn as plot
porn before plot
porn is the plot
porn with a little bit of plot
porn with the pretense of plot
porn without plot
just sex
sex scenes only
mostly lewds
mostly lemons
it was designed to be pure smut
lewds every chapter
"plot" before plot
pwp
smut-heavy with pics
the porn has the plot in a mating press

Spoiler: sex and violence

gore and porn
sex and death
killing games... but lewd
a lot of sex and violence honestly
the action is violent but the sex is vanilla

Spoiler: plot and porn

smut is not the only mature thing you'll find here
1 plot with porn
smut with plot but characters keep pushing plot
the smut bleeds in
plot and porn will weld together for the story
plot sociology and porn
plot with porn(sorry qq)
porn is part of plot
porn with feelings
lewdness of varying degrees
medium lewd
medium-lewd
varying levels of lewd
plot and 'plot' are like yin and yang
plot and plap
there's plot and there's "plot"
40% smut
porn with excessive amounts of plot
action and smut

Spoiler: plot before porn

comedy before smut
plot until smut
romance and smut later
smut is relatively tame and few
most lewdness implied/offscreen
honestly... closer to lewd romance than 'plot'
smutty omakes sometimes
smut in side-stories only
sex scenes by omake
lewd in omakes only
lewd omakes only
lewds by omake
lewds in the extras
no lewd in main story
"plot" will be in index
nsfw in side content
nsfw omakes are encouraged
op wants lewds
vaguely lewd

Spoiler: eventual smut

no smut til third year
smut after i learn how to write it
smut and romance is coming
but will be a long time before any lewd
it's a baratheon so yes lewds but later.
lewds don't happen until around canon time
no lewds until ~16
nsfw in side content eventually

Spoiler: possible smut

as lewd as you want it
lewds allowed
lewds as soon as you go for them
lewds available
lewds can happen
lewds may or may not happens depending on choices
lewds not the intended goal
some options more lewd than others
the dice decides your lewds
most SFW
mostly SFW

Spoiler: sfw

probably no smut
probablynoporn
there probably won't be much porn lol
author won't be writing sex scenes
may not have sex stuff
offscreen lewds
no sex probably
not truly nsfw
first SFW story
mostly safeish to work
sex might not appear at all
no lewd just swearing
no lewds is new for me too
no sex yet
currently not nsfw
SFW for now

If you search for (or exclude) the spoiler title tag, you'll also get the results for (or exclude) all the tags within the spoiler. I'll also be consolidating some more smut relevant tags in my next tags batch, whose focus is kinks.

Be aware that if you search for multiple tags, it'll return threads with all of them, not threads with any of them - I wouldn't advise searching 'smut' and 'pure smut' simultaneously, as you'd only get 47 results, rather than the 3,161 + 133 threads those tags are composed of. Filtering your results by exclusion can be more nuanced, as there's no such issue.

 

[Smuthunter]

I'm all for it. Non-smutty fics being allowed in the NSFW subforum is stupid in the first place but that ship sailed years ago.

 

[Sogen]

I'm all for it. Non-smutty fics being allowed in the NSFW subforum is stupid in the first place but that ship sailed years ago.

Click to shrink...

Agreed. This is a workable alternative, the only problem I can foresee is getting authors to actually use it.

 

[KaneLives]

Biggest issue. Tag enforcement. It's off the table entirely. Having a perfect system is all well and good, but if it's not used... then what's the point. I had a similar idea, and while good on paper, it only works if a super majority use it correctly.

 

[SnarkLord]

I..want to say no.
Not just because of already mentioned tags xiating and enforcement being 'AhahahahaNO'
It's because of setting expectations
Like
Dull honesty here
If you preface a story with SMUT, it being the very first thing people see, before even what the title is...I'm not expecting a story that has a good/balanced mix of plot and eroticism.
No
I expect it to be 'sex. Sex again. Sex some more. Give the thinnest of excuses why the story exists while everyone rehydrates. Then it's sex again.'
A very, *very* small amount of stories ive countered on this site fits that.
And i'd honestly think alot of readers would have the same expectation upon entering such a thread.
And while i do very much enjoy smut in my stories...a thread where it's all smut and little to no other content? ...that's maybe once in a blue moon, if at that..

Also
The moment it's implemented you'd have the two of extremes of 'this has so much porn, you should totally label it smut instead of nsfw' and 'there's not enough porn here to justify it labeled smut instead of nsfw' (with the latter extreme having optional 'brilliant' commentary like 'the author should stop trying to write any kind of story here they labeled it smut and im only interested in smut' or , 'what you're writing/how you're writing isn't smut, you should completely change how and what you write for it to be smut')

 

[Pupika]

I expect it to be 'sex. Sex again. Sex some more. Give the thinnest of excuses why the story exists while everyone rehydrates. Then it's sex again.'

Click to shrink...

It's similar for me. The first thing that came to my mind reading the suggestion was the "Porn without Plot" tag from AO3. If I saw a thread prefixed with [SMUT] I would expect it to be nothing more than sex. If the title piqued my interest I might click on it if I'm in the mood for smut, but more often than not I would more than likely just skip past it.

 

[Odin]

I..want to say no.
Not just because of already mentioned tags xiating and enforcement being 'AhahahahaNO'
It's because of setting expectations
Like
Dull honesty here
If you preface a story with SMUT, it being the very first thing people see, before even what the title is...I'm not expecting a story that has a good/balanced mix of plot and eroticism.
No
I expect it to be 'sex. Sex again. Sex some more. Give the thinnest of excuses why the story exists while everyone rehydrates. Then it's sex again.'
A very, *very* small amount of stories ive countered on this site fits that.
And i'd honestly think alot of readers would have the same expectation upon entering such a thread.
And while i do very much enjoy smut in my stories...a thread where it's all smut and little to no other content? ...that's maybe once in a blue moon, if at that..

Also
The moment it's implemented you'd have the two of extremes of 'this has so much porn, you should totally label it smut instead of nsfw' and 'there's not enough porn here to justify it labeled smut instead of nsfw' (with the latter extreme having optional 'brilliant' commentary like 'the author should stop trying to write any kind of story here they labeled it smut and im only interested in smut' or , 'what you're writing/how you're writing isn't smut, you should completely change how and what you write for it to be smut')

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Personally I largely consider what you're saying a feature rather than a bug. If someone's writing a story\quest that can be considered "smut" or "porn", regardless of if it also does or does not have plot, then it should have enough and\or high enough quality erotic content to be able to masturbate to it and should be labeled\tagged as such. Just having one or more sex scenes in a work doesn't automatically make something "smut" or "porn" nor does writing a 100k word novel that includes a single relatively short erotically descriptive sex scene. On the other end if your work has descriptive sex scenes every chapter\post or two then, well, sorry if you don't want it to be "smut" or "porn" but that's what's being written in that case.

There are threads that are going to manage to fall into true grey areas but in my experience it's generally not hard to tell true smut from non-smut 99% of the time and authors already have to make a choice of whether to define their content as smut\porn in tags with those cases so this isn't too much different other than the fact that it's a more strict yes\no choice. And it's not like this would replace the tagging system or take a notable amount of effort to use so authors can always easily change it if they want and\or use more nuanced and descriptive tags to better define exactly what type of sexual content is present. There's also nothing preventing an author from noting in their thread title in some way that their story\quest is an actual story in addition to being smut if they feel that strongly that it would be ignored as nothing but sex.

(In regards to the amount of pure smut content that gets posted to the site now, that is in fact the primary issue that brought this up in the first place. Such content used to be much much more prevalent than it is nowadays and the influx of authors flooding the NSFW forums with content that either isn't actually NSFW or that they intentionally make just barely meet standards for what could be considered NSFW in order to post it there to get higher viewership is a large reason why such content has gotten drowned out on the site over time. While this certainly wouldn't fix such a problem hopefully it would at least help some)

EDIT: Also the fact that it does have a relatively strong "yes this story has a lot of sexual content" implication will hopefully prevent people from inaccurately using it on their threads in order to trick people into reading their content the way they currently do by putting stories\quests in the NSFW forums that really shouldn't be there.

Biggest issue. Tag enforcement. It's off the table entirely. Having a perfect system is all well and good, but if it's not used... then what's the point. I had a similar idea, and while good on paper, it only works if a super majority use it correctly.

Click to shrink...

The site's never going to have any sort of enforced method of defining what level of sexual content threads have. The practical restrictions on implementing such systems simply makes it unfeasible and many such systems such as reader tagging, aggregation, additional alternative sub forums, volunteer additional staff, etc. have previously been brought up and dismissed already so there's no point in waiting for such a perfect system to exist. This at least is something and given the prominence of prefixes when viewing threads, the ease of setting and\or changing prefixes, and that there would only be two prefix options to choose between rather than the relatively freeform and vast number of options available for tags would hopefully result in it getting used relatively frequently when it's appropriate.

 

[Passing Pinecone]

There's also nothing preventing an author from noting in their thread title in some way that their story\quest is an actual story in addition to being smut if they feel that strongly that it would be ignored as nothing but sex.

Click to shrink...

... This feels like, through the power of scope creep, we'd get description-in-the-tags in the title.
[SMUT][NSFW][BUT NOT COMPLETELY SMUT][THERE'S A LOT AROUND CHAPTER 15][AND I MEAN A LOT][BUT INTERMITTENT OTHERWISE TO ALLOW FOR THE PLOT][SOME IN THE FIRST COUPLE OF CHAPTERS TO SET THE TONE][BUT SERIOUSLY THE STORY IS ALSO GOOD][FATALPULSE STYLE ON OCCASION][BUT LIKE THE MILDER SORT][EXCEPT ONE OCCASION WHERE IT ISN'T][CHARACTER DRIVEN][THEIR PSYCHOLOGICAL HANGUPS MOTIVATE THEM, AS EXPECTED][THERE'S CHARACTER DEVELOPEMTN TRUST ME][BUT THE SEX IS ALSO GOOD AND WORTH READING THIS FOR] Is It Wrong To Have A Young Woman's Record Of Training Companions In the World Dungeon? (Acchi Kocchi/Worm AU/K-SysApoc/others)

 

[Lady Naga]

I'd read that.

 

[St3f]

Over the years the NSFW forums have gotten flooded with stories\quests that either aren't actually NSFW or are barely so

Click to shrink...

Won't the same happen if SMUT prefix is added? I mean, i get what you say, but nowadays QQ isn't like it was in 2015, or rather 2020 since that's where i registered. People are used to most, or even fully SFW baring a few chapters, works being in the NSFW forum. Heck, i would that say that nowadays seeing actual porn is surprise rather than expectation. As in chapter, not as in story, which is even rarer.

To my understanding, people moved to QQ because they didn't want to deal with censorship, they got that. Afterward, things moved in the way they did, because authors wanted more people to see their works. NSFW got more trafic than SFW, and things ended up as they did. Adding another prefix, won't change that. Instead it will lead to the new prefix either being over used to draw more traffic, or not used because people don't bother checking out whatever is marked with it.

Point i am trying to make is, that nowdays this is the "forum culture" around here. Adding prexif (or multiple of them) won't change that. The reasons things ended up as they did won't go away, and won't be properly adressed. Sure, it can help, in theory, but what will it even be used for? Short stories? Snipped threads full of random smut? Long stories where by word count is at least 50% is smut? The only solution, by my understanding of what you want, will be harsher rules, and their enforcment. Thing is, this will will require system to be created, implemented into the forum's code, enforced by staff, and so on. Even with all that, if critical mass of users decide to just ignore it, or authors curtain their posts to barely fit withwhatever criteria will be most-optimal for getting reader, it will be for nothing.

The moderator put tags that can be used. Personally, i search for whatever fandom catch my fancy at the moment, and use word count and sort by Watchers to narrow it down further. Complicating the system anymore than that is not worth it, in my opinion. Most of the regulars around here usually have favourite author, or a couple of them, or enough free time to check literary every new thredmark everyday.

 

[Odin]

... This feels like, through the power of scope creep, we'd get description-in-the-tags in the title.
[SMUT][NSFW][BUT NOT COMPLETELY SMUT][THERE'S A LOT AROUND CHAPTER 15][AND I MEAN A LOT][BUT INTERMITTENT OTHERWISE TO ALLOW FOR THE PLOT][SOME IN THE FIRST COUPLE OF CHAPTERS TO SET THE TONE][BUT SERIOUSLY THE STORY IS ALSO GOOD][FATALPULSE STYLE ON OCCASION][BUT LIKE THE MILDER SORT][EXCEPT ONE OCCASION WHERE IT ISN'T][CHARACTER DRIVEN][THEIR PSYCHOLOGICAL HANGUPS MOTIVATE THEM, AS EXPECTED][THERE'S CHARACTER DEVELOPEMTN TRUST ME][BUT THE SEX IS ALSO GOOD AND WORTH READING THIS FOR] Is It Wrong To Have A Young Woman's Record Of Training Companions In the World Dungeon? (Acchi Kocchi/Worm AU/K-SysApoc/others)

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I mean, while your post does take it to a logical extreme in order to help make your point more obvious, this pretty much already happens even if not to that extreme level.

If you look at the threads in the forum many of them already have non-story title content in them such as what setting they're in, details about the MC (such as "SI", "OC", etc), the type of story (xover, original story, au, fusion, etc.), what type of system or power the main character has (WC, chaos gacha, alt-power, etc), and several other things like that so I hardly feel that having one potential addition where a subset of authors that are writing stories that fall within the narrow gap of being both smut and a story with a proper plot that actually progresses at a pace that a reader would manage to find interesting even disregarding the smut content who are bothered enough by the idea of the potential readers that they would lose by adding a SMUT prefix add a short word or two if they decide to do so would really make a noticeable impact.

And it's not like doing that would in any way be required, it's simply a potential option to help in that narrow subset of cases.

Won't the same happen if SMUT prefix is added? I mean, i get what you say, but nowadays QQ isn't like it was in 2015, or rather 2020 since that's where i registered. People are used to most, or even fully SFW baring a few chapters, works being in the NSFW forum. Heck, i would that say that nowadays seeing actual porn is surprise rather than expectation. As in chapter, not as in story, which is even rarer.

To my understanding, people moved to QQ because they didn't want to deal with censorship, they got that. Afterward, things moved in the way they did, because authors wanted more people to see their works. NSFW got more trafic than SFW, and things ended up as they did. Adding another prefix, won't change that. Instead it will lead to the new prefix either being over used to draw more traffic, or not used because people don't bother checking out whatever is marked with it.

Point i am trying to make is, that nowdays this is the "forum culture" around here. Adding prexif (or multiple of them) won't change that. The reasons things ended up as they did won't go away, and won't be properly adressed. Sure, it can help, in theory, but what will it even be used for? Short stories? Snipped threads full of random smut? Long stories where by word count is at least 50% is smut? The only solution, by my understanding of what you want, will be harsher rules, and their enforcment. Thing is, this will will require system to be created, implemented into the forum's code, enforced by staff, and so on. Even with all that, if critical mass of users decide to just ignore it, or authors curtain their posts to barely fit withwhatever criteria will be most-optimal for getting reader, it will be for nothing.

The moderator put tags that can be used. Personally, i search for whatever fandom catch my fancy at the moment, and use word count and sort by Watchers to narrow it down further. Complicating the system anymore than that is not worth it, in my opinion. Most of the regulars around here usually have favourite author, or a couple of them, or enough free time to check literary every new thredmark everyday.

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Uh, I hate to break it to you but there are still plenty of authors that write specifically smut\porn content on QQ. It sounds like that's not the content you're interested in personally and so maybe it seems like there just isn't any to you if it's not something you really pay attention to\look for (and given that the smut stories do tend to get drowned out by all the SFW or "bare minimum NSFW" stories that are posted in NSFW nowadays) but that content is still regularly posted in notable amounts even if not in the amounts that it once was.

Also the argument that effectively boils down to "oh even more authors nowadays intentionally and knowingly post things in what is objectively the wrong forum for their content so that just means it's okay now and it should be accepted without comment and how dare anybody be annoyed or frustrated about it" is absolutely wrong. Even if there's no hard rule or enforcement of it because of the infeasibility and headaches it would cause that doesn't make people knowingly posting things in the wrong areas or deceitfully doing the bare minimum to be able to sneak it into there acceptable.

And although the way that erotic content has gotten drowned out over time is the impetus that led to making this suggestion, the point of the prefix isn't necessarily to explicitly generate more smut on the site since that's unlikely to be a direct result (although if it does manage to convince more authors to post NSFW content that is actually NSFW I would consider that only a good thing) but rather to help more easily, clearly, and obviously delineate what content is of what type both for those looking for that content and for those who aren't interested in it.

As for what it would be used for... well, firstly, you gave several correct examples in your own post so I'm not sure completely what you're confused about but while there is no hard line in the sand of what defines content as "smut" it's also generally not super hard to figure out. A guideline I would probably use for such a thing just off the top of my head would probably be something like "if a story contains enough erotic content to be used for masturbatory purposes by a notable amount of the audience that consumes that content." Though again that's just off the top of my head and I'm sure that someone nitpicking at it could come up with issues with it.

And if it doesn't get used much the worst thing that will happen is... *drum roll*... It won't end up getting used much! And no significant harm will be done.

I'm also not sure what you mean by it would require a system be created and implemented in the code given that prefixes already exist and it would just be adding one option to that existing system or why you're mentioning enforcement being needed at all given that it's explicitly called out in the initial suggestion that it would just be an option rather than being something staff would implement or enforce. Nowhere in the thread did I state that forum staff should be responsible for ensuring how it gets used.

You mentioned the complexity that it would add but, it's literally just selecting one option from a drop down that would only have three potential options when creating or modifying a thread and the only practical change it would have is modifying the already existing text right before the title of a thread.

Also filtering by prefix is far simpler than searching by tags given that you can just select the prefix from the filter drop down, add any other filter criteria, then filter it rather than having to go to search, go to advanced search which then takes you to a different page, then either search everything for your tags or switch to thread search if you don't want to search everything and\or if your also including other search criteria and want to see results as individual threads, then put in your tags, then add any other search criteria, then if you only want to see individual threads as results also make sure to check the display as threads checkbox and then actually search.

 

[Lady Naga]

Frankly a SMUT forum would make me even happier, because worst case scenario it's not used, best case we get the NSFW by technicality stuff seperated out.

 

[LurkingInTheDeceit]

And if it doesn't get used much the worst thing that will happen is... *drum roll*... It won't end up getting used much! And no significant harm will be done.

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I mean, the effect I'd actually expect is the introduction of a new competing standard with more 'buy-in' but less nuance.

Whether this is worth it depends significantly on what proportion of the thread creators who are including the levels of smut you'd like to see currently aren't tagging it, how many of those people would use the new system, how much it'd reduce use of the nuanced system, and how many creators with levels or types of smut different from what you'd want (including 'one scene in the middle of 1 million words', 'plans to write smut in outline but thread dies', and 'is fetish content, but no sex') would use it, leaving you in a similar or worse situation than at present.

I don't know what the addition would result in, but it's not completely without theoretical risk. (Retracting my initial 'can't hurt' comment after this additional consideration.)