Archive Testing, 1... 2... 3...

[icarus]

An Archive Of Our Own is in testing. To help facilitate this, I am slowly uploading fics there and assiduously providing feedback on what works, what doesn't. Hopefully my suggestions are helpful and not too redundant.

Please let the archive know if you note any problems:

Tanlines & Dogtags

First Signs Of Magic: Hermione Granger

A Moment Of Sin

My question for you is on tagging in the An Archive Of Our Own. Yes, it sorts by tags like delicious.

What would you like to see in tags so you can find what you want to read? What makes a good tag? How general should I be? How specific? How much should I customize tags to the content of the story? Is there such thing as "over-tagging"?

For example, for Tanlines & Dogtags I have the tags:

* drama
* pre-slash
* ust
* mild angst
* photography
* art

While for A Moment Of Sin I only used the tag:

* prostitution

I realized, huh, I'm not sure how to do this.

This is in your interest. If I tag badly, it will make it difficult for you to find what you want. It also helps me, so thank you all very much in advance.


ETA: Based on your suggestions, here's what I have for tags: http://archiveofourown.org/en/users/Icarus/profile

Length: shortfic, medium length, longfic, novel length

Character: All prominent characters are listed, even if they're not the main pairing.

Time: season, pre-OotP, where relevant.

Genre: humor, angst, romance, darkfic, drama, crack!fic, au, bdsm, pwp

Pairing generalities: rairpair, crossgen, chan

Story themes to help people beeline their searches: prostitution, polyjuice, photography, gay bar, gun kink, wingfic, crossdressing, non-con, exhibitionism, skinny dipping, etc.

Series name: Primer to the Dark Arts, Beg Me For It, Skinny Dipping, and First Signs of Magic series names (and future series names).

It's clear to me that your ability to filter and find stories will depend upon successful tagging by the authors.

Comments

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

This is how it was explained to me by Connie when I was trying to make NC-17 scenes in Primer to the Dark Arts conform to Fiction Alley's R-rating. She told me think of it as a camera. What does the camera show?

[elizabeth-rice.livejournal.com]

But that's just the problem.

I'm writing a story. It's not a movie, a video or even an image. It's words. Every reader's experience may be different. Every reader may imagine, visualise, or picture the story or novel differently.

So how can I imagine a camera and use a movie rating system?

There is the rating system that bookstores and libraries use: general, young adults and adults.

But I don't know how a publisher decides which story is Young Adults and which is Adults only. I don't know the criteria.

I have no intention of misleading any reader. I will provide a full summary (and maybe genre) for my future stories so there shouldn't be any room for misunderstandings.

I will do everything that I can to inform a potential reader of the kind of story s/he is about to read. Beyond that, it's out of my control.