Story Headers anyone?

[33cl33]

I've noticed on other fiction boards that people tend to use headers (like TF, m-bot, f-bot, etc) to indicate what kind of content their stories contain - and I'm wondering if it would be a nice addition to the stories posted here at FC.

Each of us has very unique reasons as to why we come here and what we're looking for, and a lot of our interests don't always mesh.

I, for one, can't stand transformation stories, or even transformation as a concept altogether. I have nothing against those of you who are into that - and one could say it's a fine line as far as the fetishes go. And the writers who have been kind enough to share their work lately should not take this as criticism - I'm not in your intended audience anyway, and I see a lot of great, ambitious story writing going on. Keep it up.

My issue is - I don't get a lot of time to spend on here to begin with, so when I sit down and spend a chunk of time reading fiction only to find out it's chock full of stuff that makes me cringe - I feel my time has been wasted.

Best example - someone posts a link to a story, saying only "look - I found a story you all might like" and then it's all about fembots with dicks... or it basically turns out to be convoluted gay porn... straight guys like me with simple tastes tend to not want to come back to the site.

Simple indicator tags at the top of the story could help without giving anything of substance away.

Thoughts?

[Stephaniebot]

I know the feeling, but for the opposite reason, I'm only interested in the tf stuff 99% of the time. So yes, it would be handy if I didnt have to skim to know if it will be of interest or not

[droidlvr]

I'm curious about the no votes.

[wjbaines]

Of course, it shouldn't be "mandatory" or anything; authors' discretion, of course, as always. I plan to do so in the future, but what should the system be? Like what kind of code/abbreviations for our various categories?

[tectile]

Well, I would be one of the NO votes and I'll admit that it's for some unusual reasons.

A rating system could push me to not read a story that I could enjoy even though it contains material I'm not interested in.

33cl33 mentions a story I posted that contained material I'm really not into at all but the "GOTCHA!" factor made it work for me and I stand behind it.

If I had read a rating like violence, abuse, gay or something to that effect I could have easily just moved on and missed a worthwhile story.

I apologize if that story offended anyone. It is never my intention to offend and most of the responses to that post seemed positive to me.

Majority rules and if most members want ratings I will use them in future posts.

[minkwheel]

I ABSOLUTELY AGREE with techtile! -- I will admit that I do not read every story posted, but if I AM reading one that has something I sort of object to, I'll skim over that part and finish it up. Different bites for different likes. I am very glad that I took a chance and read some of the stories that I was standoffish with at first...I came away from them very entertained, and often inspired. My stories aren't everyone's cup of tea, and most of them won't have a shred of sex in 'em..... maybe suggestiveness ... but never flat out PLUG AND PLAY. I JUST WRITE to make a point or two, and to make people smile in the process. --minkwheel

[minkwheel]

OOoops... sorry.... 'TECTILE" ... solly for my poor grammarcy and spellerings there.

[keraptis]

I think the point of the proposal is that most of us don't have the time to read every story to find out if it suits our individual tastes. Speaking for myself I almost never bother to read any of the fiction posted here because such a tiny percentage of it caters to what I'm looking for. A system of "tags" would definitely make me visit the Stories forum again.

If putting such tags in the thread titles is asking too much, another way to do this would be for us to create a single sticky thread in the Stories forum, or one or more Wiki entries, that let the community maintain a simple list of stories (with links) that match a *small* number of key attributes. The attribute I'd be looking for is transformation stories, for example. It probably wouldn't be too hard to make the list.