A poll on title formatting

Jan 31, 2008 11:56

Time to re-format all my titles! I tried to read some fic this morning, and then I realized I can't until I have this formatting thing nailed down. Which means I probably won't be able to read fic for another week. Dammit.

ETA: Again, dammit. In the last option of the first question, assume that "by cherryice" appears right before "(fic: Heroes ( Read more... )

paralyzed by indecision

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Comments 15

minervacat January 31 2008, 19:12:35 UTC
I think I'm an anomaly in that I look to the titles of things for very little information; basically, I just care about having the title and the author up there, because I honestly do check the tags to get any further information -- fandom, pairing ... and I guess that's it, since I couldn't really give a crap about word count or rating.

But that is just me.

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catechism January 31 2008, 19:39:21 UTC
I wonder if it's maybe just the way I tend to view del.icio.us posts? Which is, for the most part, through my RSS reader. If I'm actually on the site itself, then I'll read the tags or use intersections to drill down to the stuff I'm looking for. But all my network stuff shows up in Vienna, which I love, but which prints the tags in a very small font and it's really difficult to read them.

I am thinking about getting rid of ratings. I don't know. I don't care about them, but it's not hard to add them, and I like having the information in case... I don't know, in case I need it later?

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Oops, an RSS reader? bluecimmers January 31 2008, 19:44:14 UTC
Uh, sorry about the rant below. (I think a hot button got hit.) Such an RSS feed really throws my advice out the window. Maybe consider an alternative feeder?

Really, really, sorry. Didn't mean to yell.

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Re: Oops, an RSS reader? catechism January 31 2008, 20:08:49 UTC
Hee, yell all you want! I yell about del.icio.us ALL THE TIME. I think my time here has made me feel that capslock = friendly and amusing. So no worries. And, in fact, I have ranted right back at you. *grin*

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TMI! TMI! - The eyes get enough exercise, already. bluecimmers January 31 2008, 19:41:13 UTC
All your choices had too much information! One can't just glance or browse through such a list of links - you'd have to slow down and read each line, and that's just wasting time, when you could be reading fic.

Imagine you're browsing in a bookstore or a library; walking along a shelf. What catches your eye first (other than color, which del can't do - yet) is the TITLE and AUTHOR. These are what peaks interest first.

Fandom, genre, pairing, rating, text size: put them all below in the notes and tags.

I only put fandom in the top when the title isn't unique, and can refer to different stories. For example, "Ties That Bond" by xparrot (xmagicalx) is a Smallville fanfic, and "The Ties That Bond" by Fran Hartman and Jessa Lynch, is an sg1 fanfic.

Really, try this. I can almost guarantee that you're browsing will go faster. If you're in the mood for a specific pairing or story length, use your tag filters, and let your eyes catch onto TITLES or AUTHORS, which will lead you to what to read.

seriously.

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Re: TMI! TMI! - The eyes get enough exercise, already. catechism January 31 2008, 20:06:37 UTC
But... if you're in a bookstore, you've gone to a specific place to browse, right? You KNOW you're in a sci-fi aisle or a poetry aisle or whatever. That information isn't right in front of you, but you've still got it. And you know if you're looking at books or magazines or CDs ( ... )

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What can an RSS reader really do? bluecimmers February 1 2008, 23:30:03 UTC
Now, I have no knowledge of what RSS readers do, I don't use one myself. But I wanted to mention a few possible options to get you out of the quandary of creating something for yourself, while still being useful for others.

1. Can your feeder use color? Fic is pink and meta is blue, vid is orange and news is boring brown.

2. I think I once came across a reader that could shorten/modify link names. The programming went like "start at "special symbol" end at "special symbol." With this, you could just hide the stuff you don't want to see for yourself. - This option may not be for real, however.

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Re: TMI! TMI! - The eyes get enough exercise, already. trascendenza February 1 2008, 01:31:37 UTC
Oh, wow, I am so the opposite. I don't care about titles or authors when scanning fic links. I scan for fandom, pairing and wordcount in titles if I have the option, in that order. I only put in title and author for other people! I feel like, at a library, I can also see the wordcount by the size of the book, and I definitely sometimes pick out books by their sizes, like, sometimes I'm in the mood for a small romance paperback, etc.

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catechism January 31 2008, 20:37:53 UTC
(Tangent: You should have heard (seen?) my yelling when I discovered your del.icio.us account. It went something like this: OMG SHE USES PUNCTUATION LIKE I DO AND SOMETIMES *FOR THE SAME THINGS* AL;KSJG;AKLGJL;AKGJL;AKGJ;L)

So, hi. :D

I like your point about putting the information people care about most right up front. That is solid architecture. I guess I just don't know what it is people care about most. Hell, I don't even know what information *I* care about most, because it changes based on fandom. Sometimes my list looks like this: author, rating, kinks, wordcount, title, fandom, pairing, genre. Sometimes it looks like this: fandom, genre, pairing, wordcount, author, title, rating, kinks. So. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know! This is SO HARD.

An X/Y fic and a X fic that happens to have X/Y in it will be tagged the same, but one will have X in the title and the other will say X/Y. Which makes some people go crazy reading my tags, I'm sure.Interesting. I'm terribly inconsistent about this. If a story is largely gen with a side ( ... )

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stepps January 31 2008, 20:23:00 UTC
Huh, seems like I'm the only one who likes to see the rating in the subject line? I guess I've just honed my fic searching criteria to PAIRING, RATING, AUTHOR. I look for those three things when deciding if I want to read a fic. Everything else is useful, but usually I'll know what fandom I'm looking at by what pairing it is, or what tag I'm currently searching.

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catechism January 31 2008, 20:28:05 UTC
You know, now that you say this... I think, for me, rating really depends on what I'm reading. If I'm reading in a large fandom or pairing, then I do care about rating. But if it's a very small fandom, it matters less, because I'll read anything I can get my hands on.

Also, I have caught myself feeling cheated in the past when I am reading a fic that is marked as being shippy and there isn't any porn. If it were marked as shippy AND rated as G, then I would have either not read it or not felt cheated after the fact.

So... maybe I do care about rating!

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stepps January 31 2008, 21:21:24 UTC
If it were marked as shippy AND rated as G, then I would have either not read it or not felt cheated after the fact.

Exactly that! When reading HP fic I tend to not bother if there isn't porn, unless something is highly recced, but bandom I pretty much read everything regardless of rating because there is so much less fic to choose from, but I still want to know going in if I should expect a smoopy pg ending or a nice hot nc17 ending :) Plus, if I happen to come across an incest pairing by a faved author, I'd like to know if it's under an R rating and safe for my sensibilities :)

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trascendenza February 1 2008, 01:54:23 UTC
OMG. I could only answer TWO QUESTIONS on this because I am SO INDECISIVE about titles right now that I have no set opinions yet! Fuckin' a, man. This title business is so hard. This is where I always get stuck, because I change my opinions on Best Titling Practice about every two minutes ( ... )

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