Fiction Section categorizing

[tina21]

I find the Fiction section pretty messed up! I don't mean to be rude but I scarcely can find anything, even more the fictions I used to be subscribed!

The search hardly gives me any results, and I'm not clicking in any of the options except the series and tags, message, posts, entry titles and every time it varies!

Most authors also don't post their fandom or the pairings in the titles or the info under the titles in the brief info under the titles, so i feel like I'm in a wild goose chase!

Not the Alphabetical categorizing helps either since I'll have to go to every letter to in search for the fandoms I like!

So I was wondering if in the Alphabetical categorizing instead of under every letter being the title of a fic, to be series!

That of course only in the FanFiction section! Since it can't really apply in the Original!

Or at least something to help the search or a basic form in which the Auhors will make post the details of their fandoms

[CrisNoWait]

Tina I feel you. After the update I still don't have all the *slow to update fiction* since I cant remember their titles .

Well did you try by pairing, I know if its a popular pairing it will be time consuming... it may help for lesser know m/m. Also I know that by Title the stories do not come up, I've done that before and resorted to paging through, after typing in pairing..<.< its frustrating. But I'm sure there is a way we just need to understand it...

[tina21]

Neither pairing worked, not well at least

And yesterday the thread just didn't want to load!!

[angerbda]

Do you mean that most of the entries are not categorized with keywords/tags?

... I think there are 2 steps, one which is linking an entry to one of the category, while editing or creating this entry, and the other one is to add keywords/tags... But, that is right few authors did the extra step to edit their old stories (which I can understand, having to go through all of it)...

But, I thought, at some point, that a research in "posts" would also trigger some keywords... unless the search function was modified to make it faster and less resource consuming...

Is the problem more on the author side, not providing the information in which the search is performed, or the search function itself not giving proper results (in case the information is there in the entry description somewhere)?

[tina21]

I think its more on the author's side and not search! the search would work if the author's put the info needed!

Lots of Fanfics are being post like : "The Versailles Rose by xxx_author" [btw total random title I don't even know if it exist]
how the heck am I supposed to know the fandom and pairing ...?! And its not 1 or 2 but the majority!

So I either go through all the pages of the fan fictions, Completed and In-Progress, trying to find fandoms and pairings I like or either I drop the whole thing!

[Ferus37]

I think that if the problem is with authors not categorizing their fictions properly then any change in the way the categories work will have the same issue.

If I understand your suggestion right you want the alphabetical listing to list the fandoms instead of the title of the stories. In order for a listing like that to work the fictions need to have a fandom assigned. As you stated a lot of authors have not assigned a fandom to their own stories so the change would encounter the exact same problem.
It would be the same as the search function is now when you click a fandom to search for it. If the story doesn't have the fandom attached then it won't show up.

There is really only one way to fix this as far as I can see, and that is to manually assign fandoms to all the stories. That is a lot of work. A LOT of work.

When we made the fandom listing in the old section we were quite a few people working together, and it still took time and effort. Not to mention that in that listing we only gathered the links to the stories under each fandom. In this case we would have to edit entries, meaning the moderators would have to do all the work. (And there is a boatload more stories now compared to then.)

I don't really see that option working out. And I don't think it's fair to push that much work onto the moderators just because authors don't assign fandoms, ratings, pairings, etc. to their own stories. It has to be the author's own choice whether he/she wants his/her own story to be found easily by readers. If some authors don't want to do the work on their own stories then why should someone else?

I am all for getting the fiction section perfect, clean and easy to maneuver, but there is only so much that can be done without the help of the authors who post there.

[CrisNoWait]

I agree Ferus that would help, but there is the issue that many of the stories on Aarin are by long gone author's or those the just dont want to learn how to "update" their older stories with the new layout. its a shame that the old Fandom index went to waste it would have been a unique way to locate each story based on how the author posted it in the Fandom index and just update the thread so it will reflect in the new forum search method.

[orangewillow]

The old fanfiction index wouldn't have worked, sadly. Since the move changed the URLs of all the stories.

[Ferus37]

I agree Ferus that would help, but there is the issue that many of the stories on Aarin are by long gone author's or those the just dont want to learn how to "update" their older stories with the new layout. its a shame that the old Fandom index went to waste it would have been a unique way to locate each story based on how the author posted it in the Fandom index and just update the thread so it will reflect in the new forum search method.

If the author is long gone, then they most likely don't care whether their story is read or not. If it mattered to them they would most likely still be sticking around.

If the author just doesn't want to learn how to make a story easier to find for readers then quite frankly that is their problem. Why should other people dedicate time and effort to fix it when they can't even be bothered to do it themselves?


Personally I would be willing to help go through the stories in the fiction section, like we did with the fandom listing in the old section, but there are a few issues with the idea itself.

For one, is it right to just go in and edit the info on someone else's story? Would you like it if someone just went into your story thread and started writing a summary, or assigned pairings or fandom?

Should regular members be given temporary moderator powers in the section, or would the moderators have to do the work after all? I am back at my point of it not being fair to push work onto moderators because people don't/won't make an effort themselves.

And how many people would actually be willing to do the work someone else should have done already? I am having troubles getting past the fact that the authors should be doing it themselves if they want their stories to be easily accessible to readers.

Like I said, I am willing to help, though there are limits to how much time and energy I have. Plus the fact that I have no authority to actually go in and change anything at all in the section. (Apart from my own stories.)
Doing something like adding fandoms to all the stories in the fanfiction section requires a tremendous effort from a lot of people, and it requires a lot of planning. (That is IF we get past the "adding things to someone else's story" part...)

[angerbda]

The old fanfiction index wouldn't have worked, sadly. Since the move changed the URLs of all the stories.

Is there no trace of a mapping between old and new section thread addresses?
I don't know how the migration was done, but I wonder if there is no possibility to find back the relation between old and new... If there is such mapping, you can update the fandom index...