(Partially) fixing the tag system

[ItsMeParker]

+1 on keeping a distinction between SI, OC, and SI/OC.

They lend themselves to very different stories.

SI's are very distinctly the author from our world, often having plot knowledge that informs their plans.

OC's often having their own power systems and/or backstories that the plot/drama revolve around.

SI/OC's being a mix of the two but still their own flavour. Very generally an oc backstory/power with author morality/decision making.

 

[Borland30]

(Parahumans) is good for disambiguation, and I wish more people used it. As I recall, Worm is published on Parahumans website, and has a sequel Ward, probably also published there.

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Well, maybe. But is there a need for disambiguation at all if we all know what the word Worm mean in this context? It is not some obscure thing here.
Fun fact, there's only five fics and one snippet thread with Ward tag. Huh.

 

[Turkeyboyeli]

a general ship girl tag would be nice there are to many separate fandoms with them and people tend to tag
shipgirl, ship-girl, shipgirl, boatgirl, kanmusu->Kanmusu
makes it impossible to find a fic with them without multiple separate searches specifying fandom names (arpeggio of blue steel, Kancolle, Azure lane.)
Kancolle, & kantai collection should also be merged

 

[SnarkLord]

So, just to clarify so that folks aren't confused.
The mergers are just for aggregating the search function, this is jut literally background stuff you usually cant see and don't know about.
The actual tags you see on the stories wont be affected at all.
In fact if people don't actually read this thread they may assume some tags get automatically linked together, instead of it being effort put in by staff


As SI stuff we already mentioned multiple times...
Just wanted to make a distinction it doesn't get accidentslly merged/people don't know about it and just lump it into SI stuff
Friend insert should absolutely remain distinct from SI tags as that's very much a collaboration work between two(or more) compared to the average SI story..

(Joke suggestion; connect Nihilo and the friend insert tag)


Admittedly, while I'm willing to give a suggestion or twocif it occurs to me, never thought that so mqny people would put so, so muxh attention on tags..mainly because i rarely search by tags, and instead by keywords(with tags maybe being used to narrow a search), if i bother searching stuff instead of just browsing the main page
like
Genuinely unsure i i want to know how much Tim some of you waste including/excluding tags on AO3

 

[TroubleFait]

I can imagine a system where you can deselect synonyms as you search, if in your particular circumstance you don't want it.

It could solve the issue of the mods not knowing if some tags should be made synonymous or not, with either side having drawbacks.

 

[EllaWolf]

So, just to clarify so that folks aren't confused.
The mergers are just for aggregating the search function, this is jut literally background stuff you usually cant see and don't know about.
The actual tags you see on the stories wont be affected at all.
In fact if people don't actually read this thread they may assume some tags get automatically linked together, instead of it being effort put in by staff


As SI stuff we already mentioned multiple times...
Just wanted to make a distinction it doesn't get accidentslly merged/people don't know about it and just lump it into SI stuff
Friend insert should absolutely remain distinct from SI tags as that's very much a collaboration work between two(or more) compared to the average SI story..

(Joke suggestion; connect Nihilo and the friend insert tag)


Admittedly, while I'm willing to give a suggestion or twocif it occurs to me, never thought that so mqny people would put so, so muxh attention on tags..mainly because i rarely search by tags, and instead by keywords(with tags maybe being used to narrow a search), if i bother searching stuff instead of just browsing the main page
like
Genuinely unsure i i want to know how much Tim some of you waste including/excluding tags on AO3

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I am afraid my shit got clocked, haha

For me personally at least I really love the AO3 system, makes finding something I would really enjoy reading so much easier and I don't have to second guess if its actually what I am looking for


One big example for me is flirting out M/M fics since I don't care for them. On AO3 it's with the press of a button. On QQ, I would have to exclude gay, yaoi, m/m, male on male, gay romance, and every single tag related so it deffo makes a difference

I did try searching by tags on QQ for a bit but it quickly became an exercise in absurdity. I am grateful that authors on this website give you the premise in the title but a more robust tag system would I think make life easier

I heavily doubt QQ will be close to the AO3 system but any improvement is always better. And a huge thank you to the staff for undertaking this

 

[crystalwatcher]

There's like, four(?) Honkai Impact tags.

And two Star Rail tags I'm aware of.

 

[NotInventedHere]

I can imagine a system where you can deselect synonyms as you search, if in your particular circumstance you don't want it.

It could solve the issue of the mods not knowing if some tags should be made synonymous or not, with either side having drawbacks.

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Just gonna tag @LurkingInTheDeceit so this doesn't get lost in the noise, because if it's possible this would solve a lot of people's concerns and provide a lot more power to the search function.

 

[xihute]

So, just to clarify so that folks aren't confused.
The mergers are just for aggregating the search function, this is jut literally background stuff you usually cant see and don't know about.
The actual tags you see on the stories wont be affected at all.
In fact if people don't actually read this thread they may assume some tags get automatically linked together, instead of it being effort put in by staff


As SI stuff we already mentioned multiple times...
Just wanted to make a distinction it doesn't get accidentslly merged/people don't know about it and just lump it into SI stuff
Friend insert should absolutely remain distinct from SI tags as that's very much a collaboration work between two(or more) compared to the average SI story..

(Joke suggestion; connect Nihilo and the friend insert tag)


Admittedly, while I'm willing to give a suggestion or twocif it occurs to me, never thought that so mqny people would put so, so muxh attention on tags..mainly because i rarely search by tags, and instead by keywords(with tags maybe being used to narrow a search), if i bother searching stuff instead of just browsing the main page
like
Genuinely unsure i i want to know how much Tim some of you waste including/excluding tags on AO3

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How will the aggregation work? Can the linking be one-way or is it always two-way?

Example: tags 'Worm', 'Ward', 'Parahumans'.
Link 'Worm' -> 'Parahumans', 'Ward' -> 'Parahumans'

Will searching for 'Worm' result only in showing what's currently tagged by 'Worm' or it will show 'Worm', 'Parahumans', 'Ward'?

 

[NotInventedHere]

Will searching for 'Worm' result only in showing what's currently tagged by 'Worm' or it will show 'Worm', 'Parahumans', 'Ward'?

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The goal, as far as I understand, is to do the latter. If there's thread A tagged "my hero academia" and thread B tagged "boku no hero academia" and those tags are made synonyms, then putting *either* "my hero academia" or "boku no hero academia" into the search or filter will return both thread A and thread B, without having to put in both.

 

[xihute]

The goal, as far as I understand, is to do the latter. If there's thread A tagged "my hero academia" and thread B tagged "boku no hero academia" and those tags are made synonyms, then putting *either* "my hero academia" or "boku no hero academia" into the search or filter will return both thread A and thread B, without having to put in both.

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I think so too, but I want to make sure, because it does change how I would prefer tags to be grouped.

What about the "double tags" like "worm au" that (imo) should be two separate tags: 'worm' and 'au'. It's not in the scope of what is done currently?

Edit:
Here are direct synonyms, 1 to 1 in meaning, pretty much:
{'worm', 'worm (parahumans)'}
{'worm au', 'worm au obviously'}
{'worm cyoa', 'worm cyoa inspired', 'worm cyoa v1', 'worm cyoa v17'}

I don't think there's a need to distinguish the version of cyoa in search results.

 

[Seihai-kun]

Oh god it's finally happening thank you! I'm gonna give my own list of the Fate subseries to be merged too. I'm not sure how shit like "x au" and "x elements" are going to be handled so I didn't bother including them.

{fate - fate series} fate series

{fsn - f/sn - fate stay night - fate stay/night - fate/stay night} fate/stay night (rant: who made that 4th one? why there's 3 pages of it? are you people stupid?)

{fate zero - fate/zero} fate/zero

{fate apocrypha - fate/apocrypha} fate/apocrypha

{fate extra - fate/extra - fate/extra/ccc/extella/link} fate/extra

{fate strange fake - fate/strange} fate/strange fake

{fgo - fate grand order - fate/grand order} fate/grand order (note: there's 3 different variations of "fgo part 2 ending spoilers" tags that probably dont need to be included)

(prisma illya - "fate/kaleid liner prisma illya - oath under snow"} fate/kaleid liner prisma illya (note: I'm surprised "prillya" isnt also a tag, so I'll suggest it probably should be made and included for future proofing just in case)

 

[NotInventedHere]

(note: there's 3 different variations of "fgo part 2 ending spoilers" tags that probably dont need to be included)

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The three different variations of "FGO part 2 ending spoilers" probably shouldn't be included in the general FGO tag, but they should be made synonyms of each other.
{some fgo ending spoilers - spoilers for fgo part 2 - fgo part 2 spoilers apparently}

 

[R.A.G.]

Edgerunner and 2077 are two different time periods and thus shouldn't be merged.

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I agree, its why the tag that merges them instead of just tagging both is a problem

 

[SnarkLord]

There's like, four(?) Honkai Impact tags.

And two Star Rail tags I'm aware of.

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Idk about HSR, but Honkai already got aggregated

Stuff like "x AU* may end up being aggregated in the same ttag
Like
Functionally you're still searching for that fandom and it very, VERY much depends on each individual author what they consider an AU
There's also the fact that authors probably tag a story just "x AU", and not"x" , so in fact by not onclusing AU in the aggregate/search, you're just missing out on potential stories.


Edit:
At the cost of possibly sounding rude...just don't complain about "x AU" and wanting to separate it into multiple tags.
Not only do authors have limited tag space they may wish to use otherwise, it's a wonderful shorthand to signify that the story (probably) has larger departures from canon, and if it's just included into aggregation you can just skip the story if it bothers you

There's also he fact that mods wont mess with people's tags unless its very specific circumstances, so there's no change on already existing tags, which separating tags would do(and if threads alrewdy maxed out the tags, what, demand the author to drop one of the tags simply to include AU?)

Edit 2 Electric boogallo:
Forgot that full aggregation would mean folks searching "x AU" would give them all "x" results
While yes, it's a bit of complication, i don't see any reasonably easy way to fix it

 

[AztecCroc]

{pokemon - pokemon adventures - pokemon anime - pokemon au} pokemon

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Do not. Those are three very different canons, and AUs shouldn't be merged into the base tag. If you want to see all of them at once just do a title only search with the word Pokemon that'll also grab any story with a tag with Pokemon in it since tags are treated as an extension of the thread's title.

{digimon - digimon adventure - digimon tamer} digimon

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Same issue here.

 

[NumberSix]

Oh god it's finally happening thank you! I'm gonna give my own list of the Fate subseries to be merged too. I'm not sure how shit like "x au" and "x elements" are going to be handled so I didn't bother including them.

{fate - fate series} fate series

{fsn - f/sn - fate stay night - fate stay/night - fate/stay night} fate/stay night (rant: who made that 4th one? why there's 3 pages of it? are you people stupid?)

{fate zero - fate/zero} fate/zero

{fate apocrypha - fate/apocrypha} fate/apocrypha

{fate extra - fate/extra - fate/extra/ccc/extella/link} fate/extra

{fate strange fake - fate/strange} fate/strange fake

{fgo - fate grand order - fate/grand order} fate/grand order (note: there's 3 different variations of "fgo part 2 ending spoilers" tags that probably dont need to be included)

(prisma illya - "fate/kaleid liner prisma illya - oath under snow"} fate/kaleid liner prisma illya (note: I'm surprised "prillya" isnt also a tag, so I'll suggest it probably should be made and included for future proofing just in case)

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IMHO some of the smaller fate subverses can be rolled into the main fate tag.
Strange fake for example hasn't really been received that well from what I see.

If we are to be overly specific you should also have a Carnival Phantasm tag, since that was IMHO a lot more popular than Strange Fake for example and produced lots of memetic material.

With Prillya there is the minor problem that it can refer to the Prisma Illya version of Illya and her setting. It serves as both a character tag and a series/universe tag.
Prillyaverse would probably be better as a series/universe tag and Prillya can jsut stay as a character tag for when somebody puts her into an isekai/crossover.

For instance there are at least three (EDIT probably 4 since there are at least 2 where FSN Illya summons Prillya) where she ends up in FSN and maybe one where she ends up in Fate/Zero, as well as one where she ended up in DxD.

 

[Oglymogly]

don't forget 'gacha', some folks leave off the chaos bit
I would personally like to request merging celestial forge, celestial grimoire, celestial dojo, celestial catalog, celestial chaos, and all other such derivatives so I can filter them all out at once

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Gatcha is a more catch all term that's older than the Chaos Gatcha. So if I want Chaos Gatcha that'll pull more than I may want. From what I understand this change will affect searches both ways, so it needs to be careful.

To be fair, there's only 4 stories from last year with that tag, and only 3 older than that. So it's not a big deal either way. But less seems to be more here, especially for a first pass.

Thank you again to everyone working on this! I have tried using tag searches before, so hopefully now I will again.

 

[NumberSix]

Gatcha is a more catch all term that's older than the Chaos Gatcha. So if I want Chaos Gatcha that'll pull more than I may want. From what I understand this change will affect searches both ways, so it needs to be careful.

To be fair, there's only 4 stories from last year with that tag, and only 3 older than that. So it's not a big deal either way. But less seems to be more here, especially for a first pass.

Thank you again to everyone working on this! I have tried using tag searches before, so hopefully now I will again.

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Franky there is as much point in having a gatcha tag as there is an <insert game genre like FPS/RTS here> tag.
Chaos Gatcha is a quest/game mechanic from what I understand, as is that Wiki gatcha-like thing.

 

[NumberSix]

Ok, here is a ore concrete suggestion.
{foz, znt, zero no tsukaima, familiar of zero} => zero no tsukaima or znt. I like the shortness of znt, but zero no tsukaima is more specific. Znt or Foz could cause collisions with otehr fandoms potentially.

 

[Avernus]

The misspelling of "Exalted" as "Exaulted" should be merged with the correct version.

 

[Foxxxy]

Maybe adding in a way when people make tags they can combine it with other popular tags with Mod approval? I.e super op af MC is similar to overpowered protagonist, which can also prevent malicious tagging like I have seen mentioned with the various Fate, Warhammer and house of the dragon/asoiaf

 

[Seihai-kun]

IMHO some of the smaller fate subverses can be rolled into the main fate tag.
Strange fake for example hasn't really been received that well from what I see.

If we are to be overly specific you should also have a Carnival Phantasm tag, since that was IMHO a lot more popular than Strange Fake for example and produced lots of memetic material.

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No. We're merging multiple spellings of tags to make easier to find (or exclude) stuff, not erasing tags for failing an arbitrary standard like popularity. What you want is a tag hierarchy tree system, which IIRC is possible but wasn't put into consideration here, so I'm not bothering.

With Prillya there is the minor problem that it can refer to the Prisma Illya version of Illya and her setting. It serves as both a character tag and a series/universe tag.
Prillyaverse would probably be better as a series/universe tag and Prillya can jsut stay as a character tag for when somebody puts her into an isekai/crossover.

For instance there are at least three (EDIT probably 4 since there are at least 2 where FSN Illya summons Prillya) where she ends up in FSN and maybe one where she ends up in Fate/Zero, as well as one where she ended up in DxD.

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I don't think this is an issue at all. Shoving a character into another setting is just bog standard crossover stuff, so both setting should be tagged anyway. "Illyasviel von Einzbern" is its own tag, with no differentiator between her FSN self and her Prillya self, but just having a Prillya tag should tell you which it is.

 

[Ayashi]

All three of these merged tag ideas need to have their word order reversed; so it'd be "eventual harem, likely harem, possible harem". Small nitpick, but it's better grammatically and is how literally every other tag system out there does it.

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Will reverse them.

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On this part, I believe it would be better to keep them as is. Because while grammar is a thing, I believe the more important issue here is practically:
A user doing a Tag search for (or against) Harem type tags will always start by typing "harem".
If the tags are worded in the more grammatically correct way "XxXxX Harem", then the user will not see them unless they specifically search for these tags. Which means they'll have to know these tags exist in the first place.
Whereas if the tags are kept worded as "Harem XxXxX" then the search engine will suggest this list of tags to the user.

In general, I feel this approach of "<general idea> + <specific niche or conditional modifier>" format should be kept in mind for most tags with multiple words.

 

[uflesh940]

Impreg, impregnation, breeding and so on could be merged

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I'd be hesitant about merging impregnation with breeding. Strictly speaking, the terms are synonymous, but in practice they're used differently enough that I have an impregnation fetish, but not a breeding fetish. I do think impreg and impregnation would be a good merge, though.

 

[NumberSix]

I don't think this is an issue at all. Shoving a character into another setting is just bog standard crossover stuff, so both setting should be tagged anyway. "Illyasviel von Einzbern" is its own tag, with no differentiator between her FSN self and her Prillya self, but just having a Prillya tag should tell you which it is.

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FSN Illya is kind of evil most of the time before the routes that redeem her, she and Prillya are so different they might as well be different characters.

 

[Seihai-kun]

FSN Illya is kind of evil most of the time before the routes that redeem her, she and Prillya are so different they might as well be different characters.

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I know they're different characters, I'm saying it doesn't matter if you're using the setting tag as a character tag because you should be using the setting tag anyway.

 

[Have a Little Feith]

lol. Appreciate all the feedback, but, it's a lot. I'm gonna be replying to it all, so, bear with me. Spoilered whenever a reply involved more than one quote to save space. Also, I'm probably gonna file for an extension on that 48 hours deadline. Once I've integrated all of the feedback into the proposed mergers, I'll post the new list, and reset the clock.

So, consolidating all the leads to look into for convenience.
Probably gonna save branching out into all of that for the second batch of mergers.
Will add both of those to the list.
I'm probably not gonna merge asoiaf and got tags, with one being the show and the other being the book (with distinct differences), but I will merge all the got variations.
I'll think about this tomorrow, but I'll definitely try to separate these out into more tags.
Will likely change to that.
Will look into maybe adding 'rape', 'sexual assault', and other stuff like that to that merge list.
Mostly, it seemed like there could conceivably be a deliberate difference when tagging each, and I'm not sure people are actually searching/excluding either tag. It seems more 'setting expectations for the thread' tbh, so merging them at all is probably unnecessary (but also harmless, and I've got the duplicates already, so…)
Will keep them separate.

Will add, and look for similar variations.

Spoiler: abbreviations

QUOTE="Have a Little Feith, post: 12872908, member: 67493"]
Hotd is a problematic one, because before "House of the Dragon" there was "Highschool of the Dead" using that abbreviation.

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Yeah, that's a tricky one I'm not sure what to do about. That's, incidentally, why in the guidelines it says series/descriptors should be fully spelled out, as abbreviations/acronyms can very easily mean multiple different things. I think this is a case where the damage is done, and I can't really merge HotD into either House of the Dragon or Highschool of the dead.
We won't be adding tags to any stories, but it's a tricky issue. Will think about it tomorrow.

We aren't trying to reduce the total number of tags, per se, so it doesn't really matter whether a tag an author uses is necessary or not.

Where that wouldn't cause potential other problems, I can preference conciseness.

Not sure how search relevant those terms are, as opposed to 'setting expectations'/'having fun with tags'.

'High School' is grammatically correct, and the one official sources seem to use, so will probably stick with that.
SB has different tag categories, but that's an exclusive add-on we can't access.

I won't merge 'bi male' and 'bi female' variations into an overall 'bi' tag, yeah, though authors themselves might not make the distinction when tagging.

We won't be adding tags to threads.

Yes, using 'Advanced search', and you can filter out multiple different tags as well.

We have a limit of (10?) tags, and aren't inclined to increase it.

Will reverse them.
It either replaces the merged Synonyms in the threads they're in with the new Canon tag, or, as Jade says, only affects search. I haven't tested it, but probably will, tomorrow.
Thanks!



Okay, it's time for me to sleep. If I haven't quoted your feedback, it's likely because you posted after I started writing this.
[/QUOTE]

Minor nitpick/correction, you borked one of your quote tags (funnily, it was quoting me, lol). It's missing the opening square bracket.

Now, one thing I dislike about this site is that if you put quotes inside spoilers, it messes with how long the quote is, cutting it short, more often than not. But I'm not sure how that can be fixed, outside of changing how Spoilers and Quotes interact. Like a quote with a spoiler works fine, but a spoiler with a quote inside acts up, so the fault in coding logic is there.

 

[Ayashi]

Minor nitpick/correction, you borked one of your quote tags (funnily, it was quoting me, lol). It's missing the opening square bracket.

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Okay, this is just hilarious

 

[Sleepwalker]

For example: female mc, female protagonist, female lead, female oc, femmc, femoc, female si, etc. → female main character.

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An Original Character and a Self-Insert are not synonyms.
An Original Character is when the author creates a character from scratch.
A Self-Insert is when the author models a character on themselves.

From a practical standpoint, a Self-Insert is almost always an OC or an OOC, but an OC or an OOC is by no means necessarily a Self-Insert.

And technically, none of the above need automatically be considered the Main Character.

And "si is not an si"; I really don't know what to do with, my best guess is it should go with the non-self inserts, as thats the best meaning I could guess.

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I've come across a couple of stories where the MC thought of herself as a self-insert or an isekai character, but it turned out she was actually a character from that world who had gained knowledge of the story in some other way. Perhaps this tag refers to that kind of plot twist, but it still confuses me more than it explains.