fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #3366 ]

⌈ Secret Post #3366 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 055 secrets from Secret Submission Post #481.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

09. http://i.imgur.com/twjudN8.png

Oh noooo, anons who probably won't leave kudos or comments anyway hate me!

Now I want to do it just to spite you.

They could probably just blacklist your name anyway, so. You'd just be keeping new fans away by being obnoxious over someone who isn't even interested anyway.

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2016-03-23 01:20 (UTC) - Expand

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(Anonymous) - 2016-03-23 03:06 (UTC) - Expand

mimi-sardinia.livejournal.com - 2016-03-24 01:06 (UTC) - Expand

It kinda makes the entire fanfic experience way more unpleasant when people do this...

You don't really know that, though. You're assuming that no sensible, good readers would ever be turned off by the excessive use of tumblresque tags, and that simply isn't the case. I read lots of fic, and I make an effort to leave kudos/reviews for the ones I enjoy as a thank you to the author. But since (like a lot of people) my free time is limited, I have to be selective about what I read. If I saw an author using tags like that, I'd have doubts about their judgment and writing ability and it might prompt me to skip that fic in favor of another. I very much doubt I'm alone in that, either.

(Anonymous) - 2016-03-23 06:37 (UTC) - Expand

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mimi-sardinia.livejournal.com - 2016-03-24 01:07 (UTC) - Expand

caterfree10 - 2016-03-27 18:51 (UTC) - Expand

Yep. It's the worst thing in the fucking universe.

I have a bookmark on Ao3 that has 1800+ words worth of tags. The only good thing is that is it a series and when you bookmark a series, all the tags for each story add up. So, you don't usually see that many but damn it is annoying.

I have seen some stories that have as many tags (if not more) in the pics. Could be worse, at least those are tags that seem appropriate to the story. I saw one fic that just tagged all the popular things (including pairings) the author could think of so it would show up in more searches.

I've never understood search engine pimping. If the reader has deliberately gone out of their way to exclude fics like yours, and on AO3 they really do have to put a lot (far too much) of personal effort into getting the search engine to exclude fic like yours, then why in the name of sanity do you think they are going to want to read yours even when you do get it into the search returns? Is it that they feel entitled to have lots of hits, or is it genuine delusion that people will like it if they just see it? Because that latter doesn't work for leaflet scams, why would it work for fanfic?

Whenever I see a fic that's over saturated in the tags section, I always just skip it because my eyes can't take sorting the mess out. I dislike it when authors tag every tiny detail in their fics in general, I always assume that it's because the actual fic is lacking in substance for some reason. Authors who don't tag anything or even put in a summary are just as bad though.

I just scroll on past any fic that has such a ridiculous number of tags. Tag the main things your fic is about and move on, you don't have to tag every single background character ever.

(Anonymous) - 2016-03-24 23:03 (UTC) - Expand

I feel like using a series to illustrate this is cheap, low fruit. A series is simply going to accumulate tags like this, it's how the system works and I won't shame a series for doing this.

Overdoing it on a single fic, I might give you a side-eye... but you know what? Who the fuck cares.

(Anonymous) - 2016-03-23 00:03 (UTC) - Expand

Fucking co-signed. KISS folks. It isn't that hard.

This

(Anonymous) - 2016-03-22 23:57 (UTC) - Expand

Re: This

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(Anonymous) - 2016-03-23 00:50 (UTC) - Expand

I don't hate anyone that does this but it is annoying, that being said I tend to just gloss over the tags and go straight for the summary to see if the story will interest me anyway.

I'm just not inclined to read it because it makes it unclear a) who's the main pairing and b) what the hell it's actually about.

Tag spam = I fuckin scroll past unless there's honestly nothing else in the section.

+1

Most of the time is so obvious that the people doing it are either: tagging for even the smallest detail, making the tags useless; or tagging without understanding AO3, so they use 10+ tags for the same stuff.

And neither gives me confidence that the story may be worth reading.

A huge block of tags is what makes me scroll over the fic, unless it's a tiny fandom with three fics.
Character(s), Ship(s), major triggers and maybe what kind of AU. No need to tag anything else.

Upside is, it's like a huge sign saying "SKIP ME!" on mediocre writings (has to be, as the author evidently doesn't use their brain).

(Anonymous) - 2016-03-23 03:47 (UTC) - Expand

(Anonymous) - 2016-03-23 07:15 (UTC) - Expand

Yeah, I'm never going to read anything that has that many tags. There's no way to tell what your story is actually about.

I don't hate people who do this, but I skip their fics. If they don't have the common sense and skill to use the tagging system succinctly and effectively, I don't hold out much hope for the ability to write a decent story, so I don't want to waste my time.

Late, but....
I really don't care. I generally just ignore a big block of tags like that, look at the summary and then see if i like it. Who cares? Just scroll.

My general rule for this is that I don't read a fic on AO3 if the tags take up twice the space or more than the summary. Because ix the tagging is annoying, the fic probably is, too.

Yup, that is the most fucking annoying thing. It gives me the exact same reaction as 'omg i suck at summaries lol'. Skip right over that bullshit.

I dunno how the tagging system works over there, but they should implement the thing where only the first 5 or so tags show up in searches and the rest are just extra info but don't clog every tag.