A character tag system would be very nice but to go as far as a ship tag system? It might be interesting but a character field would easily cover it. The best way I could think of to put in character search system would be have pretty much the same thing that FF.nazi uses.

 

It would just have to be made clear that character names in the tags should only designate main pairings. It would seriously blow if I was looking for Harry/Luna and I searched for Harry and Luna in tags only to get a thousand stories ranging from Harry/Blaise to Harry/McGonagall in which Luna was added into the tags only because she is a somewhat important character in the story.

 

I'm not sure you'll need a pairing tag. Character tags are pretty good in their own right. I used the character tags on FFnet quite often, and it was pretty good.

 

But the downside of the FF.net version is that the author has to pre-indicate the pairing.

This makes it difficult for authors who want to keep the pairing a secret, or just don't want it to be the focus of their stories.

But I suppose the benefit in terms of ease of finding the stories may outweigh that.

 

An "exclude ship" field would be good. So you can exclude from your search all the ships you don't like. Like the one that Schnoogle has (not that the Schnoogle one works, but the same concept is behind it).



^^The Schnoogle one.

 

I don't know if this is possible, but could you add a proximity feature so the names you chose would have to be within a word or to of each other. That would help exclude the fics that for some reason have to list every character in the story and then we wouldn't get results for harry/Ginny Draco/hermoine Ron/Squid/Luna/Dumbledore

 

Using a system like on ff.net is idiot proof, it would be great to have.

 

I love the concept of the exclusion system Taure mentioned. As a person who is not a fan of ships it would be nice to at least have the option to weed out ships I just out right refuse to see.

 

I'm still undecided on the shipping problem, because I think it is great if I can search for a specific ship when I want to sit back and just read something safe and romantic, but something like FictionAlley's search filter is too unwieldy.

However, I think that it is important to have special character tags. This can be built into the tagging system itself (via an extra DB field). In fact, you can even distinguish between main character and secondary character that way and have it integrate into the existing tagging system.

What I have also noticed currently--I don't know if this has been addressed--is that tags are only be single words right now (at least on the tags page). I am worried that a lot of little words will begin to erode the usefulness of the feature.

 

Well, I'm not really sure. But if you add a character tags system, or something like what ff.net has, you really should add a separate pairings option.

Because on FF.net, I might be looking for a story that focuses on 2 characters and their interactions. On ff.net, the tags system is now almost solely used for pairings.

Lets say I want to read a story with meaningful character interaction between Harry and Malfoy. (Never going to happen btw) What do you think would happen if I put those character tags in and searched? Slash-fest results.

I'm not sure how you could work this out, but a separate system between characters and pairings would be appreciated.

 

Remember that Lord Ravenclaw has to actually program all this shit. It should be simple and effective. What would be most effective is the fanfiction.net type system along with a system that keeps pairings we don't want out. [i.e. Sort of what Taure said]

But I also think that the Schnoogle system doesn't help much. Yes, I can block out Draco/Harry or whatever but it won't block Snape/Harry or TMR/Harry unless you put that in as well. We need a system that has a bunch of boxes or something that we can check to keep a CHARACTER out, not just one certain pairing.

I'm a hypocrite. ^ That sounds about as hard to program as what you guys have been recommending.

 

Maybe you could differenciate between pairings and (other) important characters. That way, you could for example search for a H/G story with Draco as an important antagonist (yeah yeah, fat chance et al).

 

I don't know what the site's slash policy will be like, but it would be nice to be able to simply not see slash pairings at all, though of course, being hypocritical males we might want to see femslash listed separately.

In all honesty, if we could just filter out man-slash and Harry/Ginny pairings, that would probably make a lot of people happy.

I'm not a programmer, so I have no idea what sort of suggestions are actually feasible or worth the effort - though I wouldn't think it would be too difficult to require the authors to click a 'man-slash' 'fem-slash' and 'Harry/Ginslut' box before being allowed to submit the story. Even if it simply showed up as a sub-category, it would probably still be progress.

Thanks.

 

There's a slash filter you can enable/disable in your user preferences and I'm pretty sure it only filter male-slash

 

Sadly my main problem is something you probably can not solve unles you require your authors to do a lot of pre-submit information.

For example, I was reading a Harry/Hermione smut fic (so sue me, I like to see Harry bang the mudblood). The fic was going all nice, until all the sudden Snape catches the two and joins in the action. Needless to say I was sick to my stomach for about a day afterwords, matter of fact it still bothers me.

Point being if you could somehow stop that from happening it would be great. However, I realize it would be next to impossible to do so. Unles the authors were able to choose the ship Harry/Hermione/Snape (shudder) before submitting the story.

 

Lord Ravenclaw, I noticed something on my control panel.

Option:

Show slash No

Does that save me from seeing any slash fic that might get past our vigilant eyes?