Tags shown in thread lists becoming increasingly useless

[apeljohn]

When viewing a list of threads, for example in a forum, Xenforo displays a maximum of three tags associated with the thread. As best I can tell, where the thread has more than three tags, it picks the first three tags alphabetically to show.

This used to be a non-issue, since very few authors used more than a couple of tags. However, more recently - and particularly since the Archive Of Our Own site outages in November '25 - we've picked up authors who prefer AO3-style mass tagging, with potentially dozens of tags per thread. The first three are unlikely to be representative of the thread as a whole.

As a concrete example, the visible tags for this thread just have three different ways of describing the same setting (ASOIAF/GOT), which the author has presumably included to make tag searching easier. The more useful "Self-Insert" tag has thus gotten bumped off the list. Other threads have visible tags like: "active discussion makes the author happy" (or at least the first two words of same due to tag-length restrictions); incestuous combinations of "action", "adventure" and "action / adventure"; or both "anime" and "anime setting" (helpfully displacing the information on which setting). And then there's NSFW., for which I shall let you draw your own conclusions on which tag gets disproportionately displayed.

Given that some people have started using tags as a vehicle for humour ("no beta we die like men"), this ain't going away on its own.

The social fix here would be to make clear that, no, QQ is not a drop-in replacement for AO3, and that people should limit themselves to ~3 content-focused tags if they don't want unintended consequences to find them.

Alternatively, the technological fix would be to give thread owners some way to prioritise tags. That could be as simple as turning off the "sort alphabetically" logic, so that tags are presented in the order an author enters them, or as complex as adding a separate dialog for visible tag selection.

 

[Jao]

Spacebattles standardized the settings/universe tags, like there is only one setting tag for Game Of Thrones, maybe something like that could be done here.

I just checked and AO3 has a similar thing as well, just for the characters though.

Edit: apparently Spacebattles did the tag standardization 2 years ago, I thought it happened more recently. Where does the time go? Their thread on how their new tag system works: https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/a-new-age-of-tags-is-upon-us-tag-system-overhauled.1154332/ Though I am unfamiliar with the relationship between SB and QQ so I am unsure if they would be willing to share it or not.

 

[Lughman]

The social fix here would be to make clear that, no, QQ is not a drop-in replacement for AO3, and that people should limit themselves to ~3 content-focused tags if they don't want unintended consequences to find them.

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Honestly, as a writer on here, I like to use the tags to inform the reader on the content of my fics. For example: I could add 'psychological horror', but not all psychological horror will have depictions of gore inside, so now I have to add a gore tag. Same for other stuff that a reader should know about before going in. Three is not nearly enough.

And what, 'unintended consequences' would there be? Someone avoiding the story?

 

[humon]

As far as I understand it, tags are only for filtering/searching. Important information that tells you what the story is about should be put in the summary that you see when you hover over a thread. And often, the setting is identified in the title.

But yes, letting the author choose which 3 tags get displayed would be handy. Then we could fall into an informal convention something like, setting; genre; biggest kink.

 

[apeljohn]

A further observation: SpaceBattles doesn't sort the tags before deciding which ones to display in thread listings. Not sure if it's us or them that's doing something weird.

Honestly, as a writer on here, I like to use the tags to inform the reader on the content of my fics.

Click to shrink...

And, just to be clear, I have no problem with this if it's generally understood to be acceptable. Currently we're in a sticky middle ground where de jure there's no reason to think it's wrong, but de facto the tech doesn't handle it sensibly. So: change the policy or change the tech.

And what, 'unintended consequences' would there be? Someone avoiding the story?

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A reader avoiding the story when it would actually have met their interests, because the tag that would have given them that info was >3 in the alphabetic order. Or a reader wasting time clicking through to a story that held no interest to them, because the visible tags were ambiguous.

(I'm presuming that people do sometimes make click decisions based on the visible tags. Otherwise there'd be no point having them in the thread listing in the first place.)

A common example is where an author is relying on the tag system to convey setting info. For example, this story has no setting in the title and has the visible tags "adventure", "eldritch" and "isekai". You have to click through to find out that the setting is an original LitRPG. Similarly, you'd tend to skip past this thread even if your reading plans for the day included xianxia.

As far as I understand it, tags are only for filtering/searching. Important information that tells you what the story is about should be put in the summary that you see when you hover over a thread. And often, the setting is identified in the title.

Click to shrink...

That's been the historical norm on this site, yes. You could reframe my suggestion as: can we please clarify whether this norm is a rule?

If it's just a norm, there's no reason why ex-AO3 authors shouldn't carry on using the AO3 tagging conventions on QQ. And the failure of Xenforo to fully support them in this is therefore a bug that should be fixed.

If it's a rule, that needs to be written down and enforced to stop the "tags in thread listing" feature degenerating into uselessness.

(Incidentally the "summary on hover" feature isn't currently an adequate substitute for good tags, even if it is filled out sensibly, because it's not available to mobile users.)

 

[LurkingInTheDeceit]

There isn't a way people are supposed to use tags. They can optimise for search, use joke tags, set expectations for the thread, not use them at all, etc.

The idea where OPs can choose which three tags are displayed in the thread listings sounds good. @alethiophile and @ultima333 would know if it's possible.