antennapedia

ok, when you put it that nicely - i've wanted to sign up for a while, but wasn't sure if i'd be able to remember my day, have enough stories to rec, and the like. But i'd like to try my hand at it! So, can I have Tuesdays? I'll even put something together for tonight...

:) The hard sell worked!

Tuesdays iz yours. Lemme just add ya to the allowed posters list...

lovely lady! thank you!

I'm interested in taking over the Wednesday slot when anidada quits--and soft_princess is too; we'd be happy to alternate weeks.

Woot! You now have posting access. Could you poke soft_princess into joining the comm? I'll give her posting access as soon as she does :)

I think anidada has one big all-time-faves farewell post planned, then you can step in.

I saw she was planning to do at least one more recs post, which is just fine. Gives us (we have to flip the coin to decide who goes first) a chance to pull our first recs together. *g*

I have poked her, and she says she has joined. :)

And you're live! Thank you so much for stepping in! I'm still new to running this thing, but I suspect having a variety of interests represented is good.

I don't know what Sofy plans to rec (my guess is that it'll be heavily Giles/Xander, but she does rec other things as well), but I have a feeling my recs will be more or less random--slanted toward the three Giles slash pairings I enjoy the most, but with a scattering of other things.

I do have a question, or perhaps a suggestion, or perhaps an offer. (Or all three.) I was going through the community trying to see what, on my mental list of "must-rec" fics, had already been recced, and the lack of memories and/or tags makes that hard. I can't add memories, and I can't create tags--it looks like I can tag entries (even those that aren't mine), but only with pre-existing tags.

Any thoughts about doing either of those? (The offer is that if you go the tag route, once you've decided on a strategy for tagging, I could give you a list of potential tags and go through over a period of a few days or weeks and tag the backlog, and tag new un-tagged posts every so often. (The tags list can be linked in the comm's userinfo or put in the layout, as you prefer, so people can search for fic recs.))

Again, though, just a suggestion or offer--it's just hard to go through here, and I'd like to not rec a *lot* of fic that has been recced before (though some repeats might happen).

Tagging the backlog of fic recs has been on my to-do list for some time. In addition to pairings, I'd like to do at least a little bit of content-related tagging to pick up the themed rec lists. Dark fic, humor fic, that sort of thing.

I prefer tags to memories for various reasons, but can be persuaded.

Does the tag list for maleslashminis represent your approach to tagging? Or what's your strategy? We can also take this to email if it's better. I suspect we're about to become v geeky & boring. (But time spent now getting it right will pay off long term.)

Tagging the backlog of fic recs has been on my to-do list for some time.

Excellent news. And yes, I know it's a pain to tag (or do anything) to a backlog of anything that size.

In addition to pairings, I'd like to do at least a little bit of content-related tagging to pick up the themed rec lists. Dark fic, humor fic, that sort of thing.

Seems reasonable. I suggest "crossover," so that those of y'all who like them can find them, and those of us who don't can see the tag and know to pass on by. *g* Also "AU" might be a good choice.

I prefer tags to memories for various reasons, but can be persuaded.

I... prefer both. Tags are incredibly useful, compared to memories, but have that inherent limitation that you can only view the most recent 100 entries with a particular tag. Which is fine, until the story you're trying to find is rec #101 tagged "giles/buffy."

Does the tag list for maleslashminis represent your approach to tagging?

The tag list for MSM represents my approach to tagging there. OTOH, those were set up that way for specific reasons, and with no intention of those being the primary way that people searched for old fic--and the two communities are very different. (And if you want to hear more about the reasoning, I'll be happy to expand, but I didn't want to go all tl;dr about my tagging rationale or my plans for effective searchability in the future. *g* )

Or what's your strategy?

I don't have a specific strategy in mind. But I suppose the question is, how do you expect people to be searching out recs? If you're only expecting people to search by pairing or the lack thereof, and a few fic categories (dark, humor, crossover, etc.), then tagging becomes simple.

Do you want tags to also indicate gen stories with a strong relationship between Giles and another character? (For example, one of the stories I'll be reccing is Giles and Buffy, very heavily. Do we want a "giles-buffy" tag, or something, so that people who are fans of that relationship can find those? I used that example specifically, because that's one tag I would *use*.)

Do you want to tag by reccer, as well? I suggest this because, for example, were that available, I'd pull up anidada's and lostgirlslair's recs, as they're the reccer whose taste is *most* similar to mine, and therefore the people most likely to have recced something I'm considering including in a post. But also, if I'm looking for something to read, I'd pull up their recs first. And people *do* use who the reccer is when looking for recs--there are people who do recs lists that I know not to bother looking at, because they'll rec stuff that I don't care about, and people whose recs lists are invaluable to me because we like similar types of fic.

I *considered* the possibility of tagging by author, and then realized that I was on unholy crack. Unwieldy, and probably not useful in this case.

Er. I give way too much thought to organization. Seriously.

Heh. As a software engineer I have learned that a lot of thought about organization up front saves much pain later on.

I had no freakin' idea that the tags feature was so broken. Um. Hmm. I still like tags, however, because they are visible on each post, suggesting to the reader that they can click and get more of the same. Memories are less present. Crap. This means one has to use both.

Note also that the presence of "Giles" in relationship tags is redundant, given that for this particular community we know that Giles is important to each story. However, I like your relationship suggestion generally. I also like your reccer user name suggestion, because I do agree that people seek out reviewers whose taste is similar to theirs. Heck, I do it with movie reviewers too.

AU. Hmm. People might be interested in looking for all-human AUs, maybe for Wishverse stories, but I dunno how often... what the heck.

Okay, this is what I propose:

- tag by pairings, names in alphabetical order: "buffy/giles", "buffy/giles/spike/xander"
- any important non-Giles pairings, names also in alphabetical order: "dawn/ethan"
- "gen" for no pairing
- name of character for stories featuring that character or their interaction with Giles
- "crossover"
- "au" (all human verses, wishverse, anything that significantly tinkers with canon, in the judgement of the tagger)
- "humor"
- "dark"
- "kink" (I think we know this when we see it?)
- lj user name of the poster

I did consider putting Giles first in all pairings involving him, then thought better of it. Having just one rule seemed easier. Just so you know you're not the only mega-obsessional person here :)

So for your Giles & Buffy post, you'd use "buffy, gen, mireille719". My most recent post would be "antennapedia, anya/giles". My post last week, "antennapedia, buffy/giles, giles/xander, kink".

Comments? Improvements?

Heh. As a software engineer I have learned that a lot of thought about organization up front saves much pain later on.

As someone who is borderline OCD, I am aware that I over-organize to the point that it drives people insane. ;)

I had no freakin' idea that the tags feature was so broken.

I like tags, and they're very useful, but not as the sole indexing system for something like a collection of recs. Useful, yes--if I want more G/X fic, clicking the appropriate tag will give me up to 100 posts recommending the stuff--but definitely not comprehensive. (They're also frustrating because you don't combine tags well--you *can* search on multiple tags, but it gives you all the posts with *either* tag, not just the posts with *both*.)

Note also that the presence of "Giles" in relationship tags is redundant, given that for this particular community we know that Giles is important to each story.

Well, yes, but I wasn't suggesting specific formatting for the tags--just using something that would be immediately understood in the context of the discussion.

AU. Hmm. People might be interested in looking for all-human AUs, maybe for Wishverse stories, but I dunno how often... what the heck.

Judging by the popularity of AU fic--probably often enough to justify a tag. Not that there's *that* much Giles AU fic except for Wishverse, because he tends to be shuffled to the background of most of the all-human AUs I've read, but... it might be worth it. And to some extent, the tags are not just going to add searchability; once I've clicked on--oh, let's say I clicked on the "giles/xander" tag--and am scrolling through the list of posts, the "AU" tag or the "kink" tag or the "whatever" tag is going to also tell me which cut-tags it's not worth clicking, or which ones I might *want* to click.

- any important non-Giles pairings, names also in alphabetical order: "dawn/ethan"

Then that definitely needs to be explained to reccers, because seriously? I didn't plan on mentioning most of those in my recs, unless I was reccing the odd story that has a *fantastic* supporting role for Giles--which is highly unlikely. Now that I know, I will mention them/tag them as appropriate.

- name of character for stories featuring that character or their interaction with Giles

Ditto with the mentioning to reccers--I'd have thought to do that when the story was a relationship piece (a non-romantic relationship piece, in other words), but not in general. If I'm tagging my own posts, that's one thing, but now I'd know to *mention* that relationship even if that's not the aspect I'm focusing on in the fic. (For example, I could be reccing a fantastic Giles/Ethan story, but there's a lot of Giles interacting with Buffy--and I might not mention that, because that's not the aspect that made me think it was rec-worthy. But knowing how the tags work, I'd either tag it, or at least be sure to mention it so the tagger knew. If that makes sense.

- "kink" (I think we know this when we see it?)

I think most of those are "in the judgment of the tagger," but that's basically all we *can* do--especially when the backlog is being tagged and it's not the reccer tagging the post.

I did consider putting Giles first in all pairings involving him, then thought better of it. Having just one rule seemed easier. Just so you know you're not the only mega-obsessional person here :)

I had not, in fact, considered tagging non-Giles relationships, so that hadn't occurred to me.

Comments? Improvements?

Are reccers going to be tagging their new posts themselves? If so, we need to make sure that people know not to double-tag--as described here, for example, I could see someone thinking they should tag your recent rec as "antennapedia, anya, anya/giles." Beyond that, I think it's a viable system.

I'll take the approach of other comms I've seen: reccers can tag if they like; I'll clean up after the fact if they're not quite right. No worries. Keeping up with daily posts is much easier than dealing with the backlog.

And, as far as I can see, each tag should have a corresponding memory with exactly the same name. That'll be a nice pain to do. Sigh.

I'll tag a couple of weeks' of rec posts and see what it looks like. Anidada's last post will be fun to do :)

And, as far as I can see, each tag should have a corresponding memory with exactly the same name. That'll be a nice pain to do.

Yes, alas, it will.

And the tags look good to me so far. :)

Okay, I just did back to the beginning of December with this scheme. Tell me what you think.

I could do Saturday. I just hope I won't rec something that recced before. You don't have a master list or something, do you?

Recommending something that's been recommended before is just fine! The only suggestion I'd make would be to try to avoid something that's been pointed to recently, like say in the last week. But hey, it's not a rule, just a suggestion.

Saturday is yours! Schedule is lookin' great!

Some things deserve to be rec'd twice!

No worries, I read the posts in the com, so I'd recognize something recent. Glad to help out.