Suggestion: Enforce correct tagging.

[Jourmungrad]

I don't know if anyone else gets annoyed by this, but I dislike having to read most of a chapter of a story to find out about certain tags that aren't listed that I wouldn't want to read about in the first place.
A few examples.
: Female-protag: [ https://forum.questionablequesting.com/threads/star-wars-the-force-wills-sw-si.17895/ ]
: Gay/lgbt: [ https://forum.questionablequesting....ar-trek-si-x-chaos-gacha.34229/#post-11146692 ]

These are only two examples, but do you see the point? I don't want to read a gay protagonist fanfic, but I have to read on to find out if it is or not. I was okay with the femboy protagonist, but not with the missing LGBT element.
This is really only because I don't want to waste time reading a chapter or two, only to get invested and be let down later.

Is it possible to encourage people to add these tags to their stories? It would make the Filter function a bit more accurate and wouldn't waste other people's time while the search for something they would enjoy.

Thank you, Regards Jourmungrad.

 

[Cherry Lover]

The problem with this is that "tags I don't want to read" is a very personal thing. Almost anything in a story could end up being something certain people don't want to read. What is more, tags are not designed to be a warning, they're designed to indicate to people that it's something they might want to read. Just because a fic contains one single scene of gay sex, it doesn't follow that someone who is into gay sex will want to read it and, thus, it shouldn't be tagged as such.

 

[humon]

Indeed, I just ran into this problem only a few minutes ago when I tried to add a bunch of tags to my thread to cover every concept it gets into, and it limited me to 20 tags max. So some things are just gonna have to go untagged.

 

[Silvercrystal]

This is just my personal opinion,

Quit being so easily offended.

A good story doesn't suddenly become less just because of a spicy scene and the best part it's all fiction, do a little mental gymnastics with your imagination and adjust the scene how you want to enjoy.

 

[A Standup Philosopher]

Indeed, I just ran into this problem only a few minutes ago when I tried to add a bunch of tags to my thread to cover every concept it gets into, and it limited me to 20 tags max. So some things are just gonna have to go untagged.

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Truly, a shameful display.
You should be drawn and quartered, and the mods should be publicly shamed!
QQ should be like AO3, where you can have a virtually unlimited number of tags, to create a wall of text that people have to read through before they can even get to the summary!

 

[Wretcheddskyz]

This is just my personal opinion,

Quit being so easily offended.

A good story doesn't suddenly become less just because of a spicy scene and the best part it's all fiction, do a little mental gymnastics with your imagination and adjust the scene how you want to enjoy.

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Mods shouldn't bring personal opinions in to their job.

And wanting correct tags, especially female protagonist and yaoi as this site gets overrun by a certain group of people from the other trash forums because of mod overreach, is not being "easily offended"

Straight people exist and men exist, not wanting to read that stuff is PERFECTLY ok, and it can be jarring for it to come out of nowhere, especially when you're not into it all all. L take.

Loli should say it's Loli, any hint of a gay MC or themes should be classified as such, rape and darker themes should be tagged as such, female protagonist should be tagged. These are not crazy things to ask for.

 

[Cherry Lover]

Mods shouldn't bring personal opinions in to their job.

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He wasn't posting as a mod, he was posting as a normal user, hence the lack of coloured text.

And wanting correct tags, especially female protagonist and yaoi as this site gets overrun by a certain group of people from the other trash forums because of mod overreach, is not being "easily offended"

Straight people exist and men exist, not wanting to read that stuff is PERFECTLY ok, and it can be jarring for it to come out of nowhere. L take.

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So, straight porn should be tagged as well, then? And yuri? And male protagonists? Or is it just the things you don't like?

Loli should say it's Loli, any hint of a gay MC or themes should be classified as such, rape and darker themes should be tagged as such, female protagonist should be tagged. These are not crazy things to ask for.

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Like I said before, the purpose of a tag is to tell people what a story is about, not as a content warning. If there's one rape scene in an entire story, people who are actually looking for that kind of content aren't going to want it tagged. Similarly, if there's one gay scene, people looking for gay porn won't want that tagged.

 

[A Standup Philosopher]

Mods shouldn't bring personal opinions in to their job.

And wanting correct tags, especially female protagonist and yaoi as this site gets overrun by a certain group of people from the other trash forums because of mod overreach, is not being "easily offended"

Straight people exist and men exist, not wanting to read that stuff is PERFECTLY ok, and it can be jarring for it to come out of nowhere. L take.

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1. He isn't on the job, at the moment. That's why he isn't using his mod voice. And before you say that his being a mod means every time he logs onto this website makes his presence here being 'on the job', that is fundamentally absurd. He doesn't lose the right to having an opinion on a website that he experiences content on, just because he's a moderator. That's why he made sure to be clear that it was just his opinion, instead of doing or saying anything that could make it seem like it was a mod opinion.
2. using the phrases 'certain group of people' and 'trash forums' doesn't lend much weight to your argument, it just makes you seem like an idiot that can't cope. Also, if you think 'female protag' is new on QQ because of people coming here from other forums, you must be new here.
3. Yes, they do, and yes it is perfectly fine. Yes, it can be jarring. Get over it. Sometimes you will find yourself coming across media that isn't quite what you expected. Welcome to the wide world of media.
4. Wanting people to do better with tagging is fine. Wanting to make it a rule that people are punished for, as the title of this thread implies, is cringe. Lying in the tags, perhaps more tolerable, but not tagging everything someone might take issue with? Absurd.

 

[Wretcheddskyz]

So you're saying that mods words don't carry more weight, just because he's conveniently off the clock? To me it seems like an attempt to shut down the conversation.

There's been a huge influx of people coming from Sb and other forums that had trouble with moderators, that have brought more of those certain tags, compared to even like a year ago. And nice cope harder, seems a tad antagonistic doesn't it?

I think their is certain tags like yaoi, Loli, that are tagged and then you have the rest of the stuff that doesn't have those tags, so "straight" fics don't really need to be tagged, but they usually are tagged harem or have some mention of sex. Seems disingenuous to act like you don't understand that, whether you think so or not there are more straight people in this world. That doesn't make straight people better than gay or bi, just means there's a lot more of an audience.

I think young straight men deserve space in a medium dominated by yaoi, and females, and that's exactly what QQ was, at least for me. And you shouldn't be forced to waste your time reading something just to have tags you're completely opposed to thrown in your face.

Like I would be upset if I was reading a story tagged normally and then 15 chapters in bam beastiality, or gay orgy or whatever.

Certain things NEED to be tagged.

 

[Cherry Lover]

So you're saying that mods words don't carry more weight, just because he's conveniently off the clock? To me it seems like an attempt to shut down the conversation.

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Literally nothing any of us post in here has any real "weight". Sure, a moderator might get listened to slightly more than someone else, but if they were actually seriously considering implementing your demands, they would ask the moderators anyway, if only because they're going to have to implement it.

There's been a huge influx of people coming from Sb and other forums that had trouble with moderators, that have brought more of those certain tags, compared to even like a year ago. And nice cope harder, seems a tad antagonistic doesn't it?

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Frankly? Tough shit. You're not obliged to read anything on here.

I think their is certain tags like yaoi, Loli, that are tagged and then you have the rest of the stuff that doesn't have those tags, so "straight" fics don't really need to be tagged, but they usually are tagged harem or have some mention of sex. Seems disingenuous to act like you don't understand that, whether you think so or not there are more straight people in this world. That doesn't make straight people better than gay or bi, just means there's a lot more of an audience.

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So, basically, yes, you mean "just the things you dislike".

I think young straight men deserve space in a medium dominated by yaoi, and females, and that's exactly what QQ was, at least for me. And you shouldn't be forced to waste your time reading something just to have tags you're completely opposed to thrown in your face.

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QQ is not and never has been a space specifically for "young straight men". Nor, as a straight man myself (I can't claim "young", sadly), do I see any problem with female protagonists, and, whilst I'm not interested in yaoi, I am capable of just, you know, not reading it. I do in general think it is nice for people to tag what sexuality the protagonist is, and maybe even their gender, but enforcing it is way too much effort for it to be worth it. And forcing someone to tag a massive fic as "yaoi" because it has one single yaoi scene (even amongst a bunch of straight scenes) is idiotic beyond belief and potentially highly misleading, because anyone who sees that tag will get entirely the wrong impression of the fic.

Like I would be upset if I was reading a story tagged normally and then 15 chapters in bam beastiality, or gay orgy or whatever.

Certain things NEED to be tagged.

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That sounds like a you problem, really. If you don't like a particular chapter, don't read that chapter.

 

[A Standup Philosopher]

So you're saying that mods words don't carry more weight, just because he's conveniently off the clock? To me it seems like an attempt to shut down the conversation.

There's been a huge influx of people coming from Sb and other forums that had trouble with moderators, that have brought more of those certain tags, compared to even like a year ago. And nice cope harder, seems a tad antagonistic doesn't it?

I think their is certain tags like yaoi, Loli, that are tagged and then you have the rest of the stuff that doesn't have those tags, so "straight" fics don't really need to be tagged, but they usually are tagged harem or have some mention of sex. Seems disingenuous to act like you don't understand that, whether you think so or not there are more straight people in this world. That doesn't make straight people better than gay or bi, just means there's a lot more of an audience.

I think young straight men deserve space in a medium dominated by yaoi, and females, and that's exactly what QQ was, at least for me. And you shouldn't be forced to waste your time reading something just to have tags you're completely opposed to thrown in your face.

Like I would be upset if I was reading a story tagged normally and then 15 chapters in bam beastiality, or gay orgy or whatever.

Certain things NEED to be tagged.

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1. Seems like you think his opinion shouldn't count because he holds a certain position...which strikes me as an attempt to shut down conversation, since you're saying he's not allowed to participate.
2. That's nothing new, really. I don't know that it's any more common now than it was back when I first joined up, or back when the site was founded.
3. A lack of understanding isn't the issue. We just don't necessarily agree with you that these things must be tagged. A lack of agreement doesn't mean a lack of understanding.
4. As a straight young man myself (for a given value of young, YMMV), get over it. See, I have that happen all of the time, where I'm reading a story, loving it, and then I run into something that ruins it and is horrible and it sucks. So I close the tab and move on with my life. I do not demand that rules be put in place and people be punished for it, because expecting the rest of the world to act in accordance to my expectations, to put in more work on their part because I can't handle just...dropping a story and moving on, seems to me to be a bit ridiculous.

Would it be nice if people would tag a bit more accurately, sure. Would I appreciate a, hmm, call it advisory statement on the main page, asking people to make sure they're tagging relevantly and accurately, sure.
But I won't expect it, wouldn't try to require it, and most certainly be aware of the fact that 'tagged normally' is a massive case of perspective, as is what consists of 'relevant' tags, and expecting someone to add a tag for anything that might put someone else off the story is genuinely insane. Because you might says 'just yaoi, or just female protags, or just lolis'...and someone else will say 'just violence, just politics, just swearing'. And another person will say 'just AU, just fetishes, just character death', and so on and so forth.

 

[Queen Fiona]

I think young straight men deserve space in a medium dominated by yaoi, and females, and that's exactly what QQ was, at least for me. And you shouldn't be forced to waste your time reading something just to have tags you're completely opposed to thrown in your face.

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Tell you what. We can do this, as long as everyone explicitly tags their heterosexual stories and their male protagonists, so I can ignore them all.












just so we're clear: this is sarcasm.

 

[UrsaTempest]

There's recent huge influx from SB or other places? Far as I know there isn't recent drama that caused it.

Hate to say this, but it sounds to me like you step out of your comfort zone and just figuring out QQ doesn't exclusively catered to your demographics. Lot of us are here way before you joined.

 

[A Standup Philosopher]

There's recent huge influx from SB or other places? Far as I know there isn't recent drama that caused it.

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I thought maybe I had missed something, since I'm not on SB unless I'm updating Shadows and Dust, not that anyone reads it. Yuri harem femshep with the Phoenix Force is not, apparently, something SB is super into.
Which is weird, and I say that with no sarcasm, but anyway.
I don't think they've stepped on anyone any harder than usual over there, and I've not seen any arguments in threads or anything either.
So the fact that you've also not seen anything, nor anyone else is mentioning something, makes me think this might be a bit of confirmation bias. They're seeing more of certain kinds of stories, and ascribing it to SB tyranny.

 

[Wretcheddskyz]

Needlessly antagonistic pandering. Certain tags carry a certain amount of weight, "the tough shit, get over it, it's not for you, you're not obliged to read shit here" is not the argument you think it is. Neither is "well I don't think you should punish people for tagging wrongly" when that is not at all what the OP actually said.

Is it possible to encourage people to add these tags to their stories? It would make the Filter function a bit more accurate and wouldn't waste other people's time while the search for something they would enjoy.

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And yes people will be less likely to criticize or even interface with an "opinion" from a mod telling you you're wrong, you do not get to have your cake and eat it too
.

Also you can literally find people talking about mods power tripping and censorship for a certain side over on sb on here, just use the search function.

 

[A Standup Philosopher]

Needlessly antagonistic pandering. Certain tags carry a certain amount of weight, "the tough shit, get over it, it's not for you, you're not obliged to read shit here" is not the argument you think it is. Neither is "well I don't think you should punish people for tagging wrongly" when that is not at all what the OP actually said.
And yes people will be less likely to criticize or even interface with an "opinion" from a mod telling you you're wrong, you do not get to have your cake and eat it too

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It's not pandering, lmao, that makes no sense. You're arguing that the rest of the world should create a hugbox for you by outlining every little thing that could take place in a form of media on the off chance that it's something that you don't like. Instead of, you know, possessing emotional regulation and just closing the tab and moving on with your life.
And yeah, it is what he said, when you read the title. Which is what I referenced.
Because to enforce something, there must be a rule about it. And people who break that rule are punished. That's what enforcement means.

compel observance of or compliance with (a law, rule, or obligation).

And the way you compel obedience is with punishment of those that disobey.
So yes,

4. Wanting people to do better with tagging is fine. Wanting to make it a rule that people are punished for, as the title of this thread implies, is cringe. Lying in the tags, perhaps more tolerable, but not tagging everything someone might take issue with? Absurd.

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this statement on my part is perfectly accurate.

 

[LurkingInTheDeceit]

So you're saying that mods words don't carry more weight, just because he's conveniently off the clock? To me it seems like an attempt to shut down the conversation.

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Mods are generally normal users, who before they volunteered for the job enjoyed participating in various aspects of the forum, including discussions. That they're now staff doesn't mean they agreed to stop doing any of that, and, if that were a requirement, I'd personally become somewhat skeptical of the motives of anyone agreeing to do so. I wouldn't have.

They're free to have an opinion, and you're free to disagree with it. Silver went out of their way to make sure you knew that it was just their opinion, which is all that can be expected.
————
My opinion: I agree with Cherry. While it'd be nice, in theory, if you knew whether a fic included various elements you know you'd enjoy, and it doesn't have ones you wouldn't, the implementation of that kinda of thing isn't that easy. There's too wide an array of preferences and opinions regarding what is important enough to tag.

We could put in an excessive amount of effort creating and enforcing an AO3 style tagging system, with everything a passing user can prove added to the list, but that seems like a cure that's worse then its disease to me, for both the user-experience and mod workload. The way it works now does okay. If you come across stuff you don't enjoy, that sucks, but it's also life. If you want, you can politely ask authors to add X or Y tag as appropriate, but they're also free to have a different vision of what tags they should have.

 

[UrsaTempest]

I do find it greatly amusing QQ is considered place full of lesbians and gays.

 

[Terrabrand]

Certain tags carry a certain amount of weight,

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yes oh great high lord, objective arbiter of taste, who decides the certain weight all tags hold. We should all bow to his grand high lordship, the Objective Arbiter... some dude with less than 100 posts of which 3 are in this one thread.

like the fuck you on about? Obviously some tags are going to generally need stricter tagging, but the OP wanted, of all things, female protagonist tagged as if this is some highly controversial tag!

If I put the protagonists gender up to the thread, it's nearly certain quest players will make them a girl without a second thought. If anything it's male protagonist that is locally controversial.

 

[Wretcheddskyz]

You're being pedantic,

I do find it greatly amusing QQ is considered place full of lesbians and gays.

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As is every single forum nowadays and before, QQ was actually pretty male dominated compared to space battles and stuff, a year ago. But straight men constantly being pushed aside and beaten down and told their wrong for not liking certain things, kinda puts a hamper on continued community.

Its only recently though that there's been an influx or more of that stuff.

 

[A Standup Philosopher]

like the fuck you on about? Obviously some tags are going to generally need stricter tagging, but the OP wanted, of all things, female protagonist tagged as if this is some highly controversial tag!
If I put the protagonists gender up to the thread, it's nearly certain quest players will make them a girl without a second thought. If anything it's male protagonist that is locally controversial.

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Truth.
I'm outline a story righr now, Pyrrha isekaied into FFXIV, and I warned my discord/patreon ahead of time 'hey, she's going to be bisexual, because expecting her to suddenly be a lesbian just because she isn't in remnant is nuts'.
So they promptly tried to vote to have all of the male characters genderbent into women.
by a massive margin.
I had to shut the poll down, because I couldn't trust them to consider story implications and such lol.

EDITING IN RESPONSE TO AVOID DOUBLE POST:
Bro, you realize that a good portion of the yuri and female protags written on this site are written by straight guys, right?
Like, you do know that women leads and women fucking women is pretty popular with straight guys, right?
*points at literally the entire Worm and RWBY fandoms, though RWBY also has Jaune getting all the girls fairly often, not to mention dozens of others*

 

[Wretcheddskyz]

"female protagonist tagged as if this is some highly controversial tag!
If I put the protagonists gender up to the thread, it's nearly certain quest players will make them a girl without a second thought. If anything it's male protagonist that is locally controversial"

I highly disagree with this, wow an author who writes certain stories has an audience catered to those tags? Shocker.

And you realize there's a large portion of straight men that aren't into Yuri, right?

Also confirmation bias. This is the only site where you can find a decent chunk of male authors writing straight romance, harem, etc.

Like no shit there's female protagonists in a female dominated medium lol.

 

[Terrabrand]

"female protagonist tagged as if this is some highly controversial tag!
If I put the protagonists gender up to the thread, it's nearly certain quest players will make them a girl without a second thought. If anything it's male protagonist that is locally controversial"

I highly disagree with this, wow an author who writes certain stories has an audience catered to those tags? Shocker.

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lmao you have no reading comprehension. When I first joined nearly every quest was female protagonist one way or another.

If I was talking about my own writing, I'd be mentioning a lot more futa!

 

[A Standup Philosopher]

Nobody tell him that Lesbian Porn is in the top five, usually the top three, of watched/searched categories on Pornhub, and has been every year for, like, always.

 

[UrsaTempest]

You're being pedantic,

As is every single forum nowadays and before, QQ was actually pretty male dominated compared to space battles and stuff, a year ago. But straight men constantly being pushed aside and beaten down and told their wrong for not liking certain things, kinda puts a hamper on continued community.

Its only recently though that there's been an influx or more of that stuff.

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I could show you statistics on fanfic site most known for yaoi, Ao3, straight (M/F) couple is usually the second most tagged, followed with Gen (no sexual/romantic pairing), then yuri.

And that's just example. In other place, it swap around. It sounds to me you hang around in a place with lots of queer people. If you don't like it so much, have you considered branching out elsewhere? Hell, most traditionally-published books usually has straight romance, maybe pick one and check their forum?

(this sounds sarcastic and maybe needlessly antagonizing, but this is genuine advice. I personally don't actually mind reading straight romance, but I don't need suggestion of them - they're easy to get, since they're everywhere)

 

[Queen Fiona]

Alright, alright, let me actually answer OP's and Wretcheddskyz's question, and why the answer is, most likely, 'no':

We could put in an excessive amount of effort creating and enforcing an AO3 style tagging system, with everything a passing user can prove added to the list, but that seems like a cure that's worse then its disease to me, for both the user-experience and mod workload. The way it works now does okay. If you come across stuff you don't enjoy, that sucks, but it's also life. If you want, you can politely ask authors to add X or Y tag as appropriate, but they're also free to have a different vision of what tags they should have.

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This argument has actually been mooted before, though not in this specific style. It's usually "this story isn't NSFW enough to be tagged with NSFW", and the mod answer has always been 'it's the author's decision, we don't want to make this a rule, it's too subjective and would be too much work'. This has been the answer every time it's come up, and it has come up repeatedly, and the mods have stuck to this.

I can't speak for the mods, obviously, but I can't really assume that the answer here would be all that different. Tagging is a courtesy, ultimately. Accuracy is nice, but not everything can be anticipated ahead of time, and what is going to peeve people off is impossible to predict anyway. I have a bunch of weird hangups that I couldn't reasonably expect anyone to give me a tag or a content warning for.

Most content here on QQ isn't my thing. This is a bit of a double standard, y'know? I wouldn't expect to get special treatment just because I generally prefer not to read male protagonist fics, which don't really get tagged. Thus, my sarcasm above.

An AO3 style system with the relationship matrix and all that is presumably possible, but would require a new plugin to be coded and tested - and that costs money, since pretty much all that functionality is coded bespoke for XenForo (usually by one specific guy, I think). That'd probably most likely, as many features on this forum are, be ported over from SB/SV if they have demand for it. And I don't think they do, so it's unlikely it'll happen here.

AO3, by the by, has a massive staff dedicated to managing its stable of tags, being funded by an entire charity dedicated to its existence which, in the backstory, involved a lot of prior homophobia, by the way and it still leaves everything entirely up to interpretation. Even the 'content warning' tags are completely optional. QQ has very few mods, and because it's a forum, they have more jobs to do than moderate stories - they also have to moderate discussions.

It's not that strange, as a result, that the mods would want to not create rules that make them more work for a fairly marginal gain. I would think that most people end up encountering stories with themes, topics, or characters they don't want to see without expecting it at some point in their reading career. And QQ isn't really meant to enforce any kind of culture one way or another, by the staff's own admission; there's no demand for such protectionism. QQ's just a place for smut and ended up mostly being overflow for SB/SV in the end, it's not a specific straight-guys-first haven and never has been.

I do find it greatly amusing QQ is considered place full of lesbians and gays.

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It is kind of funny, yes.

I'll avoid the color commentary. I might link to Catalog Man, though.

 

[UrsaTempest]

Royalroad and Ao3 both has specific gender protagonist tags, I think; and Ao3 has specific relationship types tags in addition to specific character relationship tags, just another example. So avoiding cooties female protagonists pretty easy on both of them. Or avoiding lesbians or gays for Ao3, amusingly.

You do need to dig them around yourself.

 

[Wretcheddskyz]

The passive aggresiveness is crazy, That's straight up gaslighting. AO3 is still dominated by women, you're not going to get much good male protagonists stories, and there's a lot of untagged yaoi. This site still has better male writers because it's not entirely filled with people like you guys, yet. But that's definitely changing.

And it's almost like I can say this stuff because I DO use AO3

and shocker avid supporters of these tags are supporting this so heavily, it's almost like a cult.

And the fact that you're so obsessed with getting me to leave this site for expressing my opinion is crazy. Let's chill out with the hostile attitude, there's no reason for it.

 

[UrsaTempest]

The passive aggresiveness is crazy, That's straight up gaslighting. AO3 is still dominated by women, you're not going to get much good male protagonists stories, and there's a lot of untagged yaoi. This site still has better male writers because it's not entirely filled with people like you guys, yet. But that's definitely changing.

and shocker avid supporters of these tags are supporting this so heavily, it's almost like a cult.

And the fact that you're so obsessed with getting me to leave this site for expressing my opinion is crazy. Let's chill out with the hostile attitude, there's no reason for it.

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Have you actually tried them yet? And you can... post on more than one sites? Read on more than one site??

What I'm saying is it sounds like you're too used with QQ and don't want to look for other place that might be more to your taste. Fine, fine, QQ is happy to have you, etc. But you missed out on a lot of things!

 

[LurkingInTheDeceit]

(usually by one specific guy, I think).

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Xon. I think new features generally go from SV -> SB -> QQ, based on the respective closeness of Xon to each site (the prior two they use as test beds), though QQ doesn't bother with getting everything SV/SB does.