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Tag Voting

Suggestion New

Persimmon

Fruity
Joined
Mar 19, 2016
Messages
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Many stories and quests are untagged or undertagged, and some are incorrectly tagged. Back when QQ was much smaller this wasn't such a huge problem, but as QQ's content portfolio explodes more and more time is consumed just to find your desired content.

It's clear increasing search efficiency is imperative, and more complete tagging is a flexible and effective solution. Obviously we can't have our limited pool of moderators/adminisrators manually grind through the ever growing pile of lewds, hence distributing the task amongst the userbase.

Thus I propose a system based on the one the Sad Panda site. Users discuss how to define tags within community threads, then are able to vote/downvote tags onto story/quest threads, the community directly deciding whether a story deserves or does not deserve a tag, minimizing administrative strain and hopefully prevents the moderators from being accused of bias.

To prevent spam accounts or bots from tag trolling, voting on tags could be restricted to subscribers/donators. We can also allow older accounts to vote, if the administration doesn't want to pressure people into paying.

To avoid stripping their control, thread authors can be granted a veto or tag opt-out in general.

I see there was a previously a topic on this subject which was dismissed due to technical difficulties, but its been half a decade now with major software changes and perhaps it'll be easier to implement?

EDIT: I see theres alot of users who are rightly terrified of Ao3... A way to avoid this would be strict control over tag categories/definitions and perhaps even a much lower tag limit, perhaps 5-10. The hentai site I'm trying to lift this tag voting system from doesn't have this issue, likely due to its userbase zealously downvoting excessive/fraudulent tags.
 
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What could be useful for me is if there was a system for readers to suggest tags, where the author is the only one who sees the suggestions. The author can then choose to add them or not, but it would at least be an easy feedback mechanism to know what other people think the story is about.

In my case, I don't really know what tags are correct or incorrect for the story I'm writing. There are a lot of potential tags out there, so I err on the side of not including a tag unless I think it's part of the story's main focus. But it's entirely possible there are some tags I should be applying that I just didn't consider as something tag-worthy.

People could, theoretically, just suggest tags in the comments, but the odds of that ever happening are around zero percent (especially when only 1% of readers are motivated to post any kind of comment at all). Though that might just be the same story with any other user-tagging system, where only one or two people care enough to use it, and that ends up skewing the author's perception. So, I don't know. Best steelman I can think of is to follow the EAST framework for herding sheep: the thing you want them to do should be Easy, Attractive, Social, and Timely.
 
What could be useful for me is if there was a system for readers to suggest tags, where the author is the only one who sees the suggestions. The author can then choose to add them or not, but it would at least be an easy feedback mechanism to know what other people think the story is about.

This just seems like an easy avenue to harass authors. Not to mention that adding any feature that allows any form of communication between 2 or more users will just increase staff workload.

In my case, I don't really know what tags are correct or incorrect for the story I'm writing. There are a lot of potential tags out there, so I err on the side of not including a tag unless I think it's part of the story's main focus. But it's entirely possible there are some tags I should be applying that I just didn't consider as something tag-worthy.

Speaking personally, the only tags I think an author should make sure to have are Fandom and whether or not there is any: incest, loli/shota, yaoi/yuri, harems

Edit: Just to head off any arguing, I understand that's a personal belief and that the staff are uninterested in making more work for themselves just to satisfy individual user preferences.
 
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Paying money doesn't make you inherently trustworthy nor entitle you to, essentially, post a sign over other people's stories of what you think people should know about them.
Money is a pretty effective way to stop bots/spam accounts from trolling. If the admin doesn't like the connotations, they can also allow older unpaid accounts to vote too.

And I did mention author veto, thanks for the strawman.
Oh boy, more of this nonsense.

It has been repeatedly made clear that tags are not going to be enforced nor standardized. And they're absolutely not going to allow people to tag others' stories.
Tags were a cute decoration when QQ was started. Tags would be convenient when I joined. Today there are >29k threads on this QQ and the trend is 'line goes up'.

Times have changed, gramps.
In my case, I don't really know what tags are correct or incorrect for the story I'm writing. There are a lot of potential tags out there, so I err on the side of not including a tag unless I think it's part of the story's main focus. But it's entirely possible there are some tags I should be applying that I just didn't consider as something tag-worthy..
I've found the SadPanda system (if you know, you know) extremely accurate. I've heard it was worse in the past but generally these kinds of systems get better the larger the userbase.
 
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Yeah users can't talk to admins ever or its a betrayal. Are you 12?

You ran to admins over catching "so much flak" over this post. All I've seen is genuine discussion. No one mentioned betrayals. Just stop being such a victim, bruh.

I saw the admin you cried to on the homepage viewing this thread earlier. With the lack of an admin thread warning… yeah. Let's be real.
 
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You ran to admins over catching "so much flak" over this post. All I've seen is genuine discussion. No one mentioned betrayals. Just stop being such a victim, bruh.

I saw the admin you cried to on the homepage viewing this thread earlier. With the lack of an admin thread warning… yeah. Let's be real.
Yeah, I asked an admin (and not even a stranger) for feedback. You're acting like I'm mass reporting everyone that disagrees with me. So sad.

Lol, where did I ask for mod action? Could it be, le gasp, perhaps I desire an admin to take a look at adding Tag Voting? The subject of this thread?
 
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…you Liked my post, where I asked people not to fight, and then you proceeded to continue the fight. Why would you do that?

I didn't use mod-colour last time, so let's try this again. If you continue, I will ban you from your own thread. The same goes for anyone else. Any further posts should be on-topic.
 
It's clear increasing search efficiency is an imperative, and more complete tagging is a flexible and effective solution.
ao3 technically has the same problem of scalability. compared to QQ's NSFW tag, ao3 only mandates, 5 tags, technically? character relationships, genre, warnings, and fandom. audience is null since we're all 18+. (right?)

there's a reason why tag wrangling is a duty over there. mandating more tags isn't necessarily more efficient, it just creates more work. in ao3's case, it's backend work, mostly invisible to users.

strictly speaking, would forcing authors to do ao3-style disclosures have an effect? probably. it would also codify a need for moderation to enforce the mandates.

hm. i think this issue has been beaten to death. years ago.

Voting on tags could be restricted to subscribers/donators, as this helps prevent spam accounts/bots from tag trolling. You can also allow older accounts to vote, if you don't want to pressure people into paying. You can grant the author veto authority or tag-opt-out entirely to avoid stripping their control.
a council of opt-in readers, discussing the tags of works. perhaps a thread just for that thing? the 'genre-discussion thread' or 'tag thread' or some imaginative name. the implementation already exists, it allows for people to tag authors in it, and would be a bit more engaging than the already-present recommendation threads.

-

i think the bottom line, no matter how you hash it; is that someone, somewhere, is going to have to do more work. if there really is a passion and font of energy behind this, why not just make some kind of apropos thread?
 
Yeah, I asked an admin (and not even a stranger) for feedback. You're acting like I'm mass reporting everyone that disagrees with me. So sad.

Lol, where did I ask for mod action? Could it be, le gasp, perhaps I desire an admin to take a look at adding Tag Voting? The subject of this thread?

QQ is a place where people come to NOT have to deal with so much micromanaging. Tag voting takes tagging power away from the author, very few people on here who write stories would be interested in that. This is a contrary kind of place, telling us you want to take away control is something most of us view in a hostile light. Plus, most of us have seen whats become of Ao3 and have a less than stellar opinion of overtagging lol. Less is more.
 
a council of opt-in readers, discussing the tags of works. perhaps a thread just for that thing? the 'genre-discussion thread' or 'tag thread' or some imaginative name. the implementation already exists, it allows for people to tag authors in it, and would be a bit more engaging than the already-present recommendation threads.

-

i think the bottom line, no matter how you hash it; is that someone, somewhere, is going to have to do more work. if there really is a passion and font of energy behind this, why not just make some kind of apropos thread?
QQ is a place where people come to NOT have to deal with so much micromanaging. Tag voting takes tagging power away from the author, very few people on here who write stories would be interested in that. This is a contrary kind of place, telling us you want to take away control is something most of us view in a hostile light. Plus, most of us have seen whats become of Ao3 and have a less than stellar opinion of overtagging lol. Less is more.
It works very well for a certain hentai site (are we allowed to talk about it here? I always see other users refer to it as Sad Panda) where the tags are very accurate and make finding works/excluding turnoffs very easy.

One time I did find a tag that was irrelevant, downvoted it and commented that tag was inapplicable. A week later I had checked back and the tag was gone. Another time I came across a wholesome comment chain along the lines of "cant find footjob" "check page 64" "thanks king"

10/10 cannot reccommend enough

Again, I mentioned Author veto and opt-out, preventing authors from losing control. For authors who do want better tagging and don't want to put in effort they can turn it on.

Ao3 is a trash fire for many reasons, but alot of the overtagging epidemic is on the authors side
 
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It works very well for a certain hentai site (are we allowed to talk about it here? I always see other users refer to it as Sad Panda) where the tags are very accurate and make finding works/excluding turnoffs very easy.

One time I did find a tag that was irrelevant, downvoted it and commented that tag was inapplicable. A week later I had checked back and the tag was gone. 10/10 cannot reccommend enough

Again, I mentioned Author veto and opt-out, preventing authors from losing control. For authors who do want better tagging and don't want to put in effort they can turn it on.

Ao3 is a trash fire for many reasons, but alot of the overtagging epidemic is on the authors side

It's kind of NOT on the authors side. The sitewide meta for tags on Ao3 is a mess, and a lot of it is imperative from the site itself. I've had stories with almost a million words that were hugely popular on other sites with less than 10k views on there because there wasn't enough tags. The site encourages it with nonsense like the "rule" that you can only have seventy five tags or whatever. Like that rule was a request from users to try to tamp down on the overtagging nonsense, and the site basically just trolled everyone about it. If you want your story to be SEEN on Ao3 you need like fifty tags, and that's a result of the search algo setup as much as anything users do.
 
If you want your story to be SEEN on Ao3 you need like fifty tags, and that's a result of the search algo setup as much as anything users do.
That's Ao3s fault for incentivizing lowest common denominator behavior.

I can't remember my sadpanda password atm, but I recall one of the most popular works on it had less than 10 tags. (it does have megagalleries with 1000+ pages and 100+ tags but they're very unpopular.)
 
Again, I mentioned Author veto and opt-out, preventing authors from losing control. For authors who do want better tagging and don't want to put in effort they can turn it on.
ah, i misunderstood what you were talking about by voting. to be clear, since i seem to be confused still; you want to create a quest-like interface where readers can vote on tags for author's stories? i had a completely different idea (but it's irrelevant).
 
ah, i misunderstood what you were talking about by voting. to be clear, since i seem to be confused still; you want to create a quest-like interface where readers can vote on tags for author's stories? i had a completely different idea (but it's irrelevant).
So with Sadpanda when viewing a work and looking at its tags, you can click on them and manually upvote/downvote the tag. Underneath the tag section there's a bar where you can type in and suggest a new tag if its not already there, plus a comment section where members can discuss the work or shitpoast.

I've seen comment chains like "is this incest or nbr" "i checked the jp site and they're cousins" "alright lets downvote inseki" and looking up at the tags it was correctly labeled, thanks to bigdick6969 and moonrunereader!

With a sufficiently large base of autists your site too can have well pruned and searchable tags, without forcing the administrative team etc to manually review all the works.

(If we're really terrified by Ao3 we can institute a hard 10 or even 5 tag limit)

(you can also poast your own idea here since its relevant)
 
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So with Sadpanda when viewing a work and looking at its tags, you can click on them and manually upvote/downvote the tag. Underneath the tag section there's a bar where you can type in and suggest a new tag if its not already there, plus a comment section where members can discuss the work or shitpoast.

I've seen comment chains like "is this incest or nbr" "i checked the jp site and they're cousins" "alright lets downvote inseki" and looking up at the tags it was correctly labeled, thanks to bigdick6969 and moonrunereader!

With a sufficiently large base of autists your site too can have well pruned and searchable tags, without forcing the administrative team etc to manually review all the works.

(If we're really terrified by Ao3 we can institute a hard 10 or even 5 tag limit)

(you can also poast your own idea here since its relevant)

I'm going to be honest, I don't think adding downvotes to the tagging system is going to do anything useful or pleasant for the site. We don't even have downvotes on POSTS lol.
 
I'm going to be honest, I don't think adding downvotes to the tagging system is going to do anything useful or pleasant for the site. We don't even have downvotes on POSTS lol.
*shrug* That site is the most searchable / comprehensive / scalable hentai site I've ever used and its thanks to its tagging system.

I don't think the denizens of Questionable Questing are inherently inferior to Sad Pandas, so I don't see why we can't make it work here.
 
One is a piracy site where the authors pretty much don't know that their work is up there.
The other strictly enforces that you're posting your own work (or have a note from the author) and broadly privileges authors to present their work however they want.

It's not really comparable. In particular, QQ has the advantage that if you want to suggest a tag that would make a work easier to find for people who would be interested in it you can just post in the thread and suggest the tag to the author. Fics on QQ have a person who more or less has final authority on how they're tagged (administrative action notwithstanding) and who is presumably invested in the ability of readers to find their thread, so you can just talk to that person.

As a mod has already mentioned, enforcement of tags isn't going to happen. Any formal system that could be implemented is just going to amount to an alternative way to message an author suggesting the tag. I don't think I've seen a system like that on any XF2 site though so chances are it doesn't really exist anyway.

What would actually be helpful IMO is if you got a few hundred users together in a thread and conducted big polls on what the canonical way people would prefer e.g. "self insert" or "guro" to be tagged was and had a discussion about it and recorded the results. Then authors could easily refer to that thread and find which version (contraction, spelling, variant, name, etc.) of a particular tag people were the most likely to search, and then we could use that tag and more people would be able to more easily find our stuff. This doesn't require any software changes to do though, it just needs someone to run the thread. Of course, actually getting people to engage with something like that is easier said than done.
Note that this still wouldn't be a formal standardization and a lot of authors would ignore it anyway. But I for one would find it helpful if there was a record somewhere of my potential audience's claimed searching preferences when they were looking for the kind of stuff I might post.
A way to avoid this would be strict control over tag categories/definitions and perhaps even a much lower tag limit
This is pretty much the thing that most people don't want and staff don't intend to enforce, I think.
I see there was a previously a topic on this subject which was dismissed due to technical difficulties, but its been half a decade now
There was a thread less than half a year ago which was on a related topic that got an admin response. It's not all applicable but of particular relevance is I think the first line:
It's indeed possible to encourage people to add these tags! The method is actually quite simple- it's called politely asking.
 
One is a piracy site where the authors pretty much don't know that their work is up there.
The other strictly enforces that you're posting your own work (or have a note from the author) and broadly privileges authors to present their work however they want.
Um. I've seen creators upload their own works on it, ask for patreon/subscribestar support in comments and even argue plot/best girl/etc with users.. But most of the stuff there is indeed pirated.
What would actually be helpful IMO is if you got a few hundred users together in a thread and conducted big polls on what the canonical way people would prefer e.g. "self insert" or "guro" to be tagged was and had a discussion about it and recorded the results. Then authors could easily refer to that thread and find which version (contraction, spelling, variant, name, etc.) of a particular tag people were the most likely to search, and then we could use that tag and more people would be able to more easily find our stuff. This doesn't require any software changes to do though, it just needs someone to run the thread.
Seems reasonable. IIRC some imageboard linked boorus create and define tags via thread discussions.
Of course, actually getting people to engage with something like that is easier said than done.
Note that this still wouldn't be a formal standardization and a lot of authors would ignore it anyway. But I for one would find it helpful if there was a record somewhere of my potential audience's claimed searching preferences when they were looking for the kind of stuff I might post.
There was a thread less than half a year ago which was on a related topic that got an admin response. It's not all applicable but of particular relevance is I think the first line:
Hmm. I've almost missed some extremely memorable works whose the author couldn't be arsed to read a standards thread + manually tag and is barely/noninterested in self-advertising overall. In this scenario their halpful fanbase could do all the lifting.

Something like 1-2% of Sad Pandas ever bother voting and thats enough to run a system vastly more searchable than what we have here.

EDIT: LMAO. Further reading that thread the OP asks for (and receives!) an increased tag limit, directly contraindicating the anti-AO3 sentiment of posters here.

EDIT2: Reading that thread further, many objections come from the practicality of mod team enforcement. Community-generated tags + vote based tagging is completely different and requires minimal administrative oversight, especially if authors can disable player generated tags.
 
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Speaking personally, the only tags I think an author should make sure to have are Fandom and whether or not there is any: incest, loli/shota, yaoi/yuri, harems
Even fandom tags run into issues of - as an example - Star Wars/Star Wars Expanded Universe/Star Wars Episode X/Disney Star Wars, where none of these tags are the same and they also miss anyone who instead tags as Clone Wars.
Or as another example, Parahumans Series (Wildbow), which includes all of the below tags:
  • #Worm
  • copacetic
  • Finding Out - Fandom
  • Original Content (Parahumans Series)
  • Parahu
  • Parahuman
  • Parahuman Series - Wildbow
  • Parahumans - Fandom
  • Projection Quest - Fandom
  • Russian Caravan (Fanfiction)
  • taylor hebert - Fandom
  • Ward - Fandom
  • Worm (Parahumans)
  • Worm (Web Novel)
  • Worm (Web Serial Novel)
  • Worm (web serial)
  • Worm (web serial) | Wildbow
  • Worm (web series)
  • Worm (webnovel)
  • Worm - Fandom
  • Worm - Wilbow
  • Worm - Wildbow
  • Worm Makkey
  • Worm serial
  • Worm series
  • Worm verse
  • Worm web serial
  • Worm | Parahumans
  • Wormverse

Even in AO3, the tag wranglers put a lot of work into the fandom tags, and authors don't always consider that their fanfiction of one specific tale might also count as an entry into the larger universe the original story is part of.
 
I think tag requests, as I've seen them in the wild on QQ, tend to come from a kind of adversarial place. A user reads some percentage of the story, comes across an element they dislike, and they suggest adding a relevant tag so they (and everyone else) know it's there in advance. It's kinda saying 'tag this so people like me know your fic is bad in this way'.

Experiencing this, it's not too surprising both readers and authors on QQ are fairly against tag suggestions, conceptually, given they've mostly (or solely) faced negative examples of such.
What would actually be helpful IMO is if you got a few hundred users together in a thread and conducted big polls on what the canonical way people would prefer e.g. "self insert" or "guro" to be tagged was and had a discussion about it and recorded the results. Then authors could easily refer to that thread and find which version (contraction, spelling, variant, name, etc.) of a particular tag people were the most likely to search, and then we could use that tag and more people would be able to more easily find our stuff. This doesn't require any software changes to do though, it just needs someone to run the thread. Of course, actually getting people to engage with something like that is easier said than done.

Note that this still wouldn't be a formal standardization and a lot of authors would ignore it anyway. But I for one would find it helpful if there was a record somewhere of my potential audience's claimed searching preferences when they were looking for the kind of stuff I might post.
What I mean by tag consolidation and suggestion is kinda what you're talking about here, where all variants of a tag that mean the exact same thing get merged into a canonical tag. That's the thing that will happen, at some point. We aren't going to force anyone to tag their thread with anything, but, quoting myself, there's only benefits to combining stuff like-
'bi protagonist', 'bi-protagonist', 'bisexual protagonist', 'bi mc', 'bisexual main character', 'bisexual mc' etc
Probably, staff will just decide on the canonical tag, rather than polling the userbase for each one individually, but that's just my guess, not something we've decided. Those canonical tags could be listed in a pinned thread, so people know what to put to indicate a particular thing.

This would only affect already tagged threads, though.
 
  • #Worm
  • copacetic
  • Finding Out - Fandom
  • Original Content (Parahumans Series)
  • Parahu
  • Parahuman
  • Parahuman Series - Wildbow
  • Parahumans - Fandom
  • Projection Quest - Fandom
  • Russian Caravan (Fanfiction)
  • taylor hebert - Fandom
  • Ward - Fandom
  • Worm (Parahumans)
  • Worm (Web Novel)
  • Worm (Web Serial Novel)
  • Worm (web serial)
  • Worm (web serial) | Wildbow
  • Worm (web series)
  • Worm (webnovel)
  • Worm - Fandom
  • Worm - Wilbow
  • Worm - Wildbow
  • Worm Makkey
  • Worm serial
  • Worm series
  • Worm verse
  • Worm web serial
  • Worm | Parahumans
  • Wormverse.
This is abusive / egregious / disgusting and a prime example of what I hope a community thread should force into a single tag; if the author actually cares about the difference between these they can talk about it in their first post.
 
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