Can Fandom Tags Be Cleaned Up and Locked Down?

[Ultrabenosaurus]

I was clicking through random stories on the Latest widget on the homepage and saw that one of them was ranked #1 in "Harry Potter / Solo Levelling" which seemed very impressive given the popularity of those two franchises!

However, the author has actually just created a singular fandom tag of "Harry Potter / Solo Levelling" and they're the only author using that fandom tag, so, naturally, they're ranked #1!

Popping onto the Series Finder and typing into the Fandom box reveals stuff like this:

Each one of those, including "HP, Marvel, DxD and more…" are singular fandoms... Which basically makes them useless. Unless you painstakingly add every single one in the series finder, you can't simply pull up all the Harry Potter stories. It also makes the ranking shown in the status box thingy pointless, as being #5 in "harry Potter" doesn't take into account stories tagged as "Harry Potter", "Harry Potter verse", "Harry Potter Books", "Harry Potter Fandom", etc.

Please can the fandom tags be cleaned up, and authors prevented from being able to just make up anything they want with impunity? Like having a drop-down menu of existing fandoms to select from and an option to request new ones that requires moderator approval.

Alternatively, fandoms should be removed as a form of ranking - they're inaccurate at best, intentionally misleading at worst - and from the Series Finder - where they're as much or more a hindrance than a help, it would seem.

 

[RepresentingWrath]

I agree they should be cleaned up. I doubt it is possible.

 

[Rezcore]

Maybe the existing ones could be collapsed and new ones could require approval

I agree they should be cleaned up. I doubt it is possible.

That could work?

 

[RepresentingWrath]

Maybe the existing ones could be collapsed and new ones could require approval. That could work?

Sounds good to me, but I am not an admin.

 

[Rezcore]

Sounds good to me, but I am not an admin.

Make a good one, but you're probs too busy.

 

[RepresentingWrath]

Make a good one, but you're probs too busy.

Bruh. I am no Tony, I don't know what is good for him.

 

[Arkus86]

I am biased against fanfictions in general, but damn, this is bad even for fanfiction standards. It's like the authors are specifically trying to make it harder for people to find their story by not sharing a common fandom tag.

Maybe the existing ones could be collapsed and new ones could require approval

This would be the best solution, rather than locking them down entirely - you simply can't have predefined tags for every possible fandom, but requiring approval or request for new ones is a good middle ground.
Collapsing existing ones is the harder part I believe - that is, filtering out every tag matching a certain fandom by somehow finding every possible variation of how it can be written, including misspelling, splitting tags that contain multiple fandoms...

 

[Ultrabenosaurus]

Collapsing existing ones is the harder part I believe - that is, filtering out every tag matching a certain fandom by somehow finding every possible variation of how it can be written, including misspelling, splitting tags that contain multiple fandoms...

That is actually something "AI" might be good for. Export the list, ask it merge them including misspellings, and you should at least get a good starting point. Maybe.

 

[LuoirM]

Agree and I think the solution is simpler than ever... When you write something like "hary potter" it will ask "Do you mean Harry Potter and you can click on that to join the tags among other ppl

Source: I never touch a line of code before in my life

 

[Macha]

Sounds good to me, but I am not an admin.

Not yet.

 

[CosmicWolf]

The AO3 approach can also be taken.

Which is to simply link all those tags. So if you search for the 'HP' tag, you also get results like 'Harry potter', 'Herry poter' etc. etc. And tags like 'HP/MCU' would link to both fandoms.

So people can simply all add new tags and the likes. But then they do they will get asked to link those new tags to existing ones. (with links of course being allowed up for review.)

 

[CharlesEBrown]

Hairy Palmer and the Sharon Stone?

 

[Arkus86]

The AO3 approach can also be taken.

Which is to simply link all those tags. So if you search for the 'HP' tag, you also get results like 'Harry potter', 'Herry poter' etc. etc. And tags like 'HP/MCU' would link to both fandoms.

So people can simply all add new tags and the likes. But then they do they will get asked to link those new tags to existing ones. (with links of course being allowed up for review.)

I would not rely on people who can't be bothered, or don't want to, tag their story properly in the first place to go the extra step and link their made-up tag to an existing one.