Forum: Bug Report and Feature Requests

Feature Request: Hitten story tags.

Dominions Son 🚫

Here is a thought that came out of this discussion: https://storiesonline.net/d/s2/t1226/noticed-an-amendment-to-the-submission-coding-advice

Some authors have stated that they may not want to include certain codes for a particular story even if it's a major element and a possible squick because it could give away a plot twist.

The caution tag was mentioned and rejected as well as a "Surprise" tag was recjected as well, both for tipping that there is a surprise.

Then CW mentioned a "Hidden Tags" tag.

That gave me the following idea:

Allow authors to fully code a story but designate certain codes as "hidden"

The hidden codes would not be displayed to users on the story lists, but they would be used for category searches and category exclusion preferences.

Replies: Lazeez Jiddan (Webmaster)

madnige 🚫

Whilst adding attributes to tags, I'd suggest creating three levels:

Main (indicated by bold) where the subject of the tag is in the majority of the story

Normal (text as at present) for the majority of tags, where the subject of the tag has some significant but not major presence

Minor (text in brackets?) for tags where the subject of the tag has insignificant presence (or is off-screen and only receives a mention in the story)

Generating the search infrastructure to incorporate this could be hairy, but even without searches the added info would allow readers to differentiate between a story including tags MM (sci-fi) (say, a rump-ranger romp initiated by use of a hypno-ray before the story starts) and one including tags (MM) sci-fi (say, Steiner's 'A Perfect World')

Replies: Dominions Son

Dominions Son 🚫
Updated:

@madnige

Let's not over complicate things all at once.

Vincent Berg 🚫

Hiding story codes will be difficult enough. While I can see the benefit in quantifying tags (for how much they affect the overall story), it would be difficult to implement and maintain. Generally, if something happens off-screen, it should simply be left off. There's the story category (for the main subject of a story), which is separate from the general story codes.

Lazeez Jiddan (Webmaster)
Updated:

@Dominions Son

The hidden codes would not be displayed to users on the story lists, but they would be used for category searches and category exclusion preferences.

Before you guys get carried away with this, I will tell you now. No plans to implement this.

It's easy to do as the database already contains two lists for code. One is the short codes (old style) and it's the one used for searches, but it's never displayed, and the second one (long tags) used for display only.

The problem is expectations and support. I already deal at least with one inquiry per day as to why a story suddenly disappeared from the site for somebody. It happens when the member has a list of excluded codes and the author adds one to the story and it suddenly goes away.

So with invisible tags that affect search results, members will be confused why some stories that they can see on the home page, or wherever, never seems to appear in their searches.

So, while useful for certain things, this idea will generate more problems for me than it's worth it.

Replies: Switch Blayde Dominions Son

Switch Blayde 🚫

@Lazeez Jiddan (Webmaster)

So, while useful for certain things, this idea will generate more problems for me than it's worth it.

I agree.

And I don't think it would even solve the problem. In my story "The Hitchhiker," for example, what is being proposed is a hidden code of MM because that's the surprise at the end. But it's not an MM story because the reader is reading a MF story until the very end. So someone searching on MM and finds the story via a hidden MM code would be disappointed. They'd probably never even get to the end to find out it's MM.

Dominions Son 🚫

@Lazeez Jiddan (Webmaster)

So, while useful for certain things, this idea will generate more problems for me than it's worth it.

No problem. I wasn't sure if it was practical or not, but I had a complete enough idea that I thought is was worth having you evaluate it.

Thanks for the response though.

Replies: Vincent Berg

Vincent Berg 🚫

@Dominions Son

No problem. I wasn't sure if it was practical or not, but I had a complete enough idea that I thought is was worth having you evaluate it.

Thanks for the response though.

I agree. It's one thing to implement it, but it's difficult enough explaining how the codes work without trying to explain about the complications of 'invisible codes'.

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Forum: Bug Report and Feature Requests

Feature Request: Hitten story tags.

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