Site Update » New tag information page · 12:35am Feb 13th, 2016
I have added a tag information page (also accessible in the FAQ dropdown) which provides guidelines for what the various rating and category tags should be used for. Please note that this is not intended to change how these tags are used, this is just documented already-enforced rules.
This should help answer questions like "does my story need to be tagged mature?", explain how teen+sex works, etc. Users have been requesting more details about what each tag is intended for for a while now, this finally provides that information in a (hopefully) easy to understand way.
I would also like to remind everyone that if you encounter a story with mature content that is not marked mature, you should report it. This is always a rules violation, and is enforced strictly. We want to make sure that users that have mature filtered out are not exposed to such content.
Is Freeze Tag's rules in there? Eldorado cheats so hard.
Please do report stories that have incorrect ratings or are missing gore/sex. If we aren't informed of an issue or mistake, deciding to ignore it and not report it is very inconvenient for everyone.
Nice!
Excellent.
Now...can you guys add a new tag?
I'm thinking "Bro".
Oh, excellent! This is something that I am very glad to see added.
Long overdue, but a nice surprise even so.
I'm not completely sure this actually makes things clearer to me, tbh.
For example, what exactly constitutes a 'highly charged sexual situation'? Or a 'lightly charged sexual situation'? I was just reading a story today that involved Applejack and Rainbow Dash kissing--is this a lightly charged sexual situation? should it be rated Teen-sex, rather than (I think) just teen? It strikes me as somewhat... weird to think of kissing as 'sexual' in the way it's defined here.
Another, more concrete, example is probably Chengar Qordath's Life and Times of a Winning Pony fic, with relation to the gore tag. The story doesn't have it, but at one point it does get fairly gorey, yet, at the same time, it doesn't seem very gorey to me at all--but I grew up on novel series like Animorphs and Harry Potter which get 'gore'y at times as well.
Maybe examples in other media would be helpful?
The description for tragedy could be stronger imho. I've seen some stories tagged as such simply because the ending was somewhat sad.
I don't suppose anyone would be willing to code in separate filters for mature-sex and mature-gore?? People who have the mature filter switched on for the reason of filtering out clop will also inadvertently filter out non-clop mature stories they might enjoy.
People have been asking for separate mature tags for years. An "Erotica" tag and filter would be very helpful.
Regarding the tags themselves... yes, it's been discussed to death. Mostly because of the highly subjective nature of it all. The M boundary seems to have quite a few number of factors, including severity as well as frequency of explicit content. Drawing a line somewhere would be quite difficult.
Also, there's the fact that in literature, there is much less risk of accidental exposure than there is with movies. A child can walk in during a sex scene in a movie and get exposed inappropriately, but you can leave a clop story open on your browser and a six year old is not even going to be able to read it much less be affected by those words. Frequency also plays a big part, since a rather long story can be tame for several chapters and then have some explicit content. Usually, people know more or less what they are getting into when sitting down to read a story. The idea of having to filter mature content implies an almost MPAA level of protection which is more appropriate for visual media than literary. Someone reading an M rated gory story needs to put active effort into that reading.
Interesting though, and thanks for making an information page to help people understand the purpose of the tags!!! I just still think it's a somewhat broken system as it currently exists, mostly because of the single filter. When I consider the purpose behind someone using such a filter, I think of it in terms of a reader wanting to prevent certain content from showing up in searches. Not that the content is dangerous per se. So the best option would be for the default to be "unfiltered" for new accounts as well as anonymous readings, and then when someone flips the filter on, certain stories don't show up based on the filter(s) they have selected.
May I suggest that the 2nd Person category has a note that not all stories written from a second person perspective count?
Also:
I think there's an extra word in the Adventure definition.
Edit: Fixed already, it seems.
Thank you. Thank you so much for this. I can't tell you how many discussions I've had about the tags because people were confused about what each meant (especially Random, whose definition according to mods has appeared to change over the years). And I love how the tags are all marked whenever mentioned. However...
Isn't this kinda against the rules in the first place? Like, that rule that fics must be related to Friendship is Magic? I mean, you strip out all the relevancy and what's left that's related to the show/movies? Or is this just saying that's it's not considered AU, regardless of whether it breaks the rules or not? Ooh, wait, is this saying that AU isn't an excuse to break the rule? 'Cause I could see people trying that.
3750652
It's saying AU is not an excuse to break the rules.
This makes things easier to understand, and also helps writers figure out if the tags they put on their stories are appropriate or not. This good, this is really really good.
I'm just waiting to see the new character tags that was said to come out a long time ago. I want to have my EQG stories be tagged with EQG characters
3750648
The tags update and improved global filters will eventually allow this.
To clarify: the ability to filter out just mature-sex and similar, likely through some splitting up of various tags. We will never make the default "show mature content", for a bunch of reasons I'm not going to get into details on here.
3750650
Err... what?
How would you write a story from a second person perspective in such a way that it doesn't count as "2nd Person"?
Yo, how do I stop this from showing up on my feed? I've turned off site posts and blocked you. But it still shows up.
3750693 Okay. He's a site administrator making a site administration update. It's not optional.
Awesome.
3750683
Seriously?!! That's awesome!
So, how will that work? Basically like the current system except with more options? See, the main concern is that people generally associate M with clop, right? So folks who don't like clop will often just skip over all M stories regardless of whether there's a sex tag or not, since the filter doesn't discriminate. Very curious what you folks have planned for this.
I'm really glad you've done this. This should really help clarify what is allowed or not allowed with certain tags. I always found Sex and Gore tags with the Teen and Mature ratings to be very confusing before this update.
3750723
That bug has been quite difficult to track down unfortunately. It'll get fixed... but I have to figure out what conditions cause it first.
Talking about tags - Will the 'wiki-like' character tag pages be implemented? (http://www.fimfiction.net/tag/rarity)
Knighty mentioned those some time ago.
3750731
Need a gender bender category, so many fics in this genre.
Yes.
Very yes.
But where are the new character tags?
3750759
I ran into some implementation problems and have unfortunately not had time to work on resolving them. Hopefully soon, I should have more time to work on Fimfiction fairly soon.
3750762
Noice.
Perhaps it's a bit late, but could you add a Princesses tag? I reckon it'd be pretty useful, what with the plethora of OC x Alicorn-Tetrarchy shipfics that I'm certain are abound here.
3750634
Kissing, of the sort you might see in a Disney movie, would not require the tag. Kissing, with a detailed description of the interplay of tongues, probably would.
3750691
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-person_narrative
This discussion came up when they first added the tag. In short, second person is a narrative voice, and by no means implies that the story is a reader-insert. The reader-inserts are what the tag is aimed at.
Edit: I still think it makes more sense to just call the tag Reader-Insert, so as not to confuse the (admittedly few) people who actually know what the term ‘second person’ means.
This is the reason I had to bump my fic, The Price of Love from Teen to Mature. I kinda got discriptive with a few of the scenes. Especially Fleetfoot's execution.
Thank you for making this page. I can see it being quite helpful if I have questions of which tags to use for my future stories.
3750770 Or... you can use a tag in addition to others... or you are using it wrong. Gratuitous self-promoting aside, it's not that the tags are wrong. A "sad" fic with only that tag on it should indicate the definition we are using. However, stories can have several strengths that don't fall into a single easy category.
I would go with "romantic" instead of "loving" here.
Also, a huge fraction of pornographic stories are labelled "romance" but are, in fact, porn, not romances (or even romantic porn). Would it be possible to get a separate pornography tag as a genre tag?
3750864 I debated on defining "Romance" as the more classical definition of the genre... but it would have confused the hell out of people.
"Wait... you mean romance doesn't just mean it's about cuddling and kissing and falling in love?"
3750871
Wait. . . you mean romance doesn't just mean it has those languages descended from Latin?
3750890 This guy gets it!
3750909
Loquerisne Latīnē?
3750699 Sweet thanks for clearing that up.
3750871
"A species of fictitious writing, originally composed in meter in the Romance dialects, and afterward in prose, such as the tales of the court of Arthur, and of Amadis of Gaul; hence, any fictitious and wonderful tale; a sort of novel, especially one which treats of surprising adventures usually befalling a hero or a heroine; a tale of extravagant adventures, of love, and the like."
Thanks, I've been wondering what the Drama tag specifically meant. So, none of my stories qualify, got it.
I'm a bit confused by what this means. Does this mean that any story that doesn't have the right tag will be removed? Or just mature stories?
The page does not seem to be readable on mobile (at least without rotating the screen).
3750960
Just like nearly every other site post about rule clarifications, we are not changing what it is we're doing with reports, rules, and stories; we are simply giving more information for everyone else to use themselves. We very rarely make retroactive changes to longstanding rules.
This information serves only as a clarification for anyone confused by the list of categories and ratings, something that comes up very often as a question from users to staff or in groups throughout the site.
While I have no intention of writing descriptions of sexual organs, orgasms, or the act of procreation. I figure humorous references to aphrodisiacs, nudity, phallic shaped objects, toys, chains, and whips, is well within teen guidelines. Based entirely on weird science and the scatological series of epic, date, vampire, and whatever starving parody films. Although I could be wrong...
3751027
There are occasional Mature stories that do not involve sex outright, but spend the entire story talking about or experimenting with the characters' sexuality and endless references to relevant content such as sexual aids, toys, etc. The sort of stuff that you don't see until late-night TV or on STARS and HBO for good reason.
If I'm understanding this correctly, this isn't how I've seen the Human tag used. Take one of my favorite HiE fics, My Little Balladeer. It's a crossover with Manly Wade Wellman's "Silver John" series, in which Wellman's (human) protagonist John is summoned to Equestria as a human. Does that mean this fic doesn't get the Human tag, just because John comes from a crossover with another author's work instead of being an OC? That doesn't seem to make sense.
3751053 , I completely get your point. And thank you for it. But 3751027 has a small point too - the show itself has a couple of humorous references to nudity ...
And also, thank you, 3750683 , for continuing to filter out Mature by default. I've got the filter off about half the time, but new users should have to make a choice to see them.
Are you ever going to give Blossomforth a tag?
3751093 If it's a crossover, then it's the tag being misused.
3751093 If it's a crossover character or setting featured in the story, even if the character(s) is human, then it gets the Crossover tag and not the Human tag.
I would argue that Crossover and Human are incompatible in stories, you can't have both in a story, it doesn't work at all.
It's why displaced was such a failure even before the first story featuring it was made, incompatible tags.
Adventure and Slice of Life don't work together.
Comedy and Sad don't work together.
I believe Human and Crossover don't work together as well, and should be made clear as such.
3750871
3750954
I can already imagine the rejection PMs. "Misuse of tag: Not written in romantic dialect."
And then the author arguing that half or more of the words in their story are romantic thanks to 1066 and all that. Thanks, France!
Of course, there's the more modern definition of "romance" as "romantic drama".