Change up pitch

[LargoKitt]

It would be great if we could change story categories and add or subtract tags without having to submit the story all over again. Any other 'easy tailoring' might authors want?

 

[IWroteThis]

You can submit those kind of changes as an edit, so you don't lose comments, ratings, etc. The specifics are in the FAQ.

 

[TheWritingGroup]

You can submit those kind of changes as an edit, so you don't lose comments, ratings, etc. The specifics are in the FAQ.

And @LargoKitt knew that. It would still be nice not to wait weeks for the changes.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

And @LargoKitt knew that. It would still be nice not to wait weeks for the changes.

Patience solves the issue a combined 90% of the time.

Finish the story before publishing any part of it and that solves 70% of the need to go back and change things.

Edit the story and involve beta readers to catch typos and such and that would eliminate the need to go back and fix these 20% of the time.

Obviously, the percentages mentioned are imaginary, but the validity of the examples is still there.

Ninety percent of the reasons I have heard mentioned for people wanting to "adjust" what they have already published is the fact that they weren't patient. The other ten percent is typically a mistake when submitting, such as misspelling the title or forgeting to include tags when submitting.

 

[TheWritingGroup]

Ninety percent of the reasons I have heard mentioned for people wanting to "adjust" what they have already published is the fact that they weren't patient. The other ten percent is typically a mistake when submitting, such as misspelling the title or forgeting to include tags when submitting.

Certainly.

But allowing a creator to add/remove tags without approval doesn't have any obvious downside and would save both the author and the site staff time. Win/win!

 

[ElectricBlue]

Certainly.

But allowing a creator to add/remove tags without approval doesn't have any obvious downside and would save both the author and the site staff time. Win/win!

Save even more time if the author thought about it in the first place.

Seems a lot of folk submit stuff half baked, and other folk want the site to accommodate the slackness. It's not hard to get it right, first time.

 

[ronde]

It would be great if we could change story categories and add or subtract tags without having to submit the story all over again. Any other 'easy tailoring' might authors want?

This would result in a logistical nightmare for the site. How would the site know you didn't also play around with the wording of the story as well? The only way would be to compare the two versions and that would probably require putting both versions into some software package like Word that could compare the two and highlight the changes.

The need to change can be easily avoided if you follow the old advice of "Think before you act."

 

[Voboy]

Finish your stuff properly, then publish.

That's the solution to the OP's problem. Fixing this is entirely within our own hands. No need for the site to change anything at all.

Finish your stuff. Properly. Then publish.

 

[BeechLeaf]

Hm. I want to direct traffic to my fluffy bunny story by adding the tags 'child porn'. 'underage', 'snuff', and 'bestiality'. Should I be allowed?

To avoid this, should tags be from a pre-existing approved list? So a story revolving around dogs in a park can't be tagged 'dogs', 'park', because they didn't think of adding those harmless ones to the list?

This is one of those suggestions that makes sense and is simple from the user end, but is a plate of spaghetti at the implementation end.

 

[LargoKitt]

Patience solves the issue a combined 90% of the time.

Finish the story before publishing any part of it and that solves 70% of the need to go back and change things.

Edit the story and involve beta readers to catch typos and such and that would eliminate the need to go back and fix these 20% of the time.

Obviously, the percentages mentioned are imaginary, but the validity of the examples is still there.

Ninety percent of the reasons I have heard mentioned for people wanting to "adjust" what they have already published is the fact that they weren't patient. The other ten percent is typically a mistake when submitting, such as misspelling the title or forgeting to include tags when submitting.

I'll take all that. I have a policy of 'leaving it alone' until I get some objectivity and see it as an editor or independent reader. But I am looking at something else. Case in point: my story Izumi's Gift is about a young woman who builds a custom sex device for herself. I listed it in the 'Exhibitionist & Voyeur' category because she literally gets off on looking at herself and that was the spark for the story. But it is also about a masturbation machine. So it could be fun steering it into Toys and Masturbation to see if those aficionados like it. And (spoiler alert) it ends with a futanari episode, so one could also steer it toward those fans. And there can be a 'Hey, I could have added that tag' which occurs after a comment or reread.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

People should simply stop asking for changes. You've seen that it all falls on deaf ears. Literotica is what it is, and you should just accept the reality of it.

What would be nice and what would truly fuel progress in this sense is having alternatives. Websites that are as good as or better than Lit. As long as there is so little competition, and as long as they are so incompetent, nothing of significance is going to happen.

 

[LargoKitt]

This would result in a logistical nightmare for the site. How would the site know you didn't also play around with the wording of the story as well? The only way would be to compare the two versions and that would probably require putting both versions into some software package like Word that could compare the two and highlight the changes.

The need to change can be easily avoided if you follow the old advice of "Think before you act."

Some folks be missing the point. When we are *required* to put a story into a category we just may limit its readership. We can add tags that augment or 'counter' that category. But *without changing the story* it would be good to say to a new group, "Hey, how about this?" Readers get to stories different ways. Lots look at 'New'. (Have they really read all the old ones?) Some choose their favorite author, or category. I search on tags when I am considering a theme and want to see if it 'has been done to a fare thee well.' Maybe some folks only read something with a rating over 4.91 (or below 3). But it would be fun to add some readers without hassling L & M.

 

[TheWritingGroup]

Some folks be missing the point. When we are *required* to put a story into a category we just may limit its radership. We can add tags that augment or 'counter' that category. But *without changing the atory* it would be good to say to a new group, "Hey, how about this?" Readers get to stories different ways. Lots look at 'New'. (Have they really read all the old ones?) Some choose their favorite author, or category. I search on tags when I am considering a theme and want to see if it 'has been done to a fare thee well.' Maybe some folks only read something with a rating over 4.91 (or below 3). But it would be fun to add some readers without hassling L & M.

The prescriptivists in this thread want you to think of everything possible in advance, so you never need to add a tag after upload.

 

[LargoKitt]

Hm. I want to direct traffic to my fluffy bunny story by adding the tags 'child porn'. 'underage', 'snuff', and 'bestiality'. Should I be allowed?

To avoid this, should tags be from a pre-existing approved list? So a story revolving around dogs in a park can't be tagged 'dogs', 'park', because they didn't think of adding those harmless ones to the list?

This is one of those suggestions that makes sense and is simple from the user end, but is a plate of spaghetti at the implementation end.

The number of tags is limited at the start and certain are prohibited. I wanted to include 'death' because the story includes, well, death, but it's a no no. So prohibited stuff ain't gonna fly. But maybe tags can be 'auto vetted'. Categories? I don't see a problem. Maybe Laurel does.

 

[Katie_Mae]

But allowing a creator to add/remove tags without approval doesn't have any obvious downside and would save both the author and the site staff time. Win/win!

Tags are moderated. There's no set tags, so you can write anything in there.
Eg, if your story features the death of a main character and you tag it "death" as a kind of content warning, this tag will be stripped prior to publication as "death" is a banned tag. So allowing free editing of tags would require a way for those tags to still go through moderation, or for the site to switch to using a set list of approved tags.

Either way, it would be a lot of work for the site with no real benefit for them.

Categories appear to be somewhat moderated too, in that I've heard of Laurel either putting a story in a different category to what it was submitted, or including an editor's note at the beginning. (eg, a story containing non-con you want put in something other than the non-con section)

My first story I forgot to copy/paste the tags I'd written so I do get the desire to want to go back and add tags as I've felt it myself. There's other sites which do things differently, we can post there, lit will have no shortage of writers here.

 

[Britva415]

The prescriptivists in this thread want you to think of everything possible in advance, so you never need to add a tag after upload.

I'm a writer, and I don't want to need to add a tag after upload. I don't know but I would imagine that this would be a pretty uncontroversial goal.

Does that make me a prescriptivist? Does it make people who affirmatively want to not get it right the first time right?

What my descriptivism says is that making changes afterward is a pain in the ass that takes a long time, so, maybe don't ignore that groundtruth fact, and don't pretend it isn't worth saying to newcomers who might not already know this information.

 

[LargoKitt]

To reiterate: This is more about adding than changing. A store may have an apron department section, but a smart marketer will put some aprons in an end cap next to the cookbooks. And sometimes you highlight the aprons on Mother's or Father's Day. So. Rebranding? Positioning? Without hassling the management. Or open a discussion about allowing stories to live in several categories.

 

[LargoKitt]

I'm a writer, and I don't want to need to add a tag after upload. I don't know but I would imagine that this would be a pretty uncontroversial goal.

Does that make me a prescriptivist? Does it make people who affirmatively want to not get it right the first time right?

What my descriptivism says is that making changes afterward is a pain in the ass that takes a long time, so, maybe don't ignore that groundtruth fact, and don't pretend it isn't worth saying to newcomers who might not already know this information.

Britva, tell me you never have said, "Maybe this story would have done better in ____ category." Or when you were choosing a category you had to 'flip a coin' a bit. Dunno. Maybe you write very tight to gertain genres. My stories sometimes overlap.

 

[Britva415]

Britva, tell me you never have said, "Maybe this story would have done better in ____ category." Or when you were choosing a category you had to 'flip a coin' a bit. Dunno. Maybe you write very tight to gertain genres. My stories sometimes overlap.

I don't know what you're trying to optimize. Is it sound to plan to make changes after publishing, before you publish the first try? My opinion is, no, that is not sound.

Making the decision and then feeling really sorry about making that decision after seeing disappointing "performance" is a valid feeling and a valid motivation to try to change it later. But that's different from anticipating from the very beginning that you'll submit a change later.

If we had a better system, I wouldn't have a negative attitude about making changes "just because you can." But in the system we have, we really kinda can't use it that way.

I understand that what you're saying is "well, let's fix it." And I'm not speaking against that. I'm just reacting to getting accused of prescriptivism when talking about sound vs. unsound ways to approach the state of the art as it is.

I don't think that it's true that we want people to get it right the first time. I mean, I do want that for myself, but what I'd like for other authors is to not have the false confidence to go off half-cocked and then find out too late that, practically speaking, they don't have the safety net they think they do, or the one they think they should.

And that results in the conclusion that maybe they should try to get it right the first time, but it's not motivated by prescriptivism, it's motivated by seeing people get burned when they don't approach publishing with some care.

And by "get it right" I'm not even saying there's necessarily a right and a wrong choice. I'm talking about making a choice you're comfortable committing to.

 

[Voboy]

To reiterate: This is more about adding than changing.

No. Sorry. It's about changing.

An addition is a change, if it happens after submission.

And there is truly no point in "opening a discussion" about anything you want site management to do, if it doesn't help the readers. Clear categories help the readers. So. Clear categories are what this site has always had and will continue to have.

I'll reiterate: if you're second-guessing your category choice after submission, you're doing it wrong. Do your second-guessing before you submit. Sorry if you don't like that answer, but it's the correct answer.

 

[Katie_Mae]

To reiterate: This is more about adding than changing.

Yes, but what's the benefit to lit?

You're suggesting they move from moderating tags at the time of submission, to allowing unmoderated tags to be added. A person could add any tag. Eg "under 18" or whatever.
We can already add tags, they just need to be moderated.
Changing the site would take a lot of time and money, and while it may benefit someone like me, who once forgot to copy and paste my tags into the submission box, I don't see how lit would benefit from dropping this moderation step.

But, the good news is its not up to me or anyone in this thread. If you think this change will benefit lit then you could always contact them with the feedback, and explain.

Tbh, if it were up to me, I'd uphaul the category and teasing system completely. But as it is, I've got no say in it, just like I had no say when they removed the erotic art category.

 

[IWroteThis]

Is there a list of banned tags?

The story I'm currently editing has a comment in the author's forward to check the tags due to dark themes, but that won't work if they get yanked.

 

[Britva415]

Is there a list of banned tags?

The story I'm currently editing has a comment in the author's forward to check the tags due to dark themes, but that won't work if they get yanked.

There are banned tags, but I don't think there's a list you can just go view.

I think the way it works is, you couldn't enter them at all in the first place if they were banned, so, they're unlikely to get yanked unless they're tags which deserve to be on the list but have just somehow never been added to it.

Do your tags you're worried about have to do with any of the rule-breaking content prohibited on Lit? If not, I don't think you have anything to worry about.

EDIT: Just tried it on a draft story. No, there isn't an up-front validation preventing you from using a banned tag on a story, so, if you did that, then, yeah, it would probably get rejected and sent back. However, I still believe that if you really had tags which were subject to ban, you'd probably know you were playing with fire. It's also possible to figure out ahead of time whether a tag is banned by searching for it and seeing if any stories have it - provided that it isn't a deliberately novel tag, contrived on purpose to work around a ban.

You'd know.

 

[Voboy]

Is there a list of banned tags?

The story I'm currently editing has a comment in the author's forward to check the tags due to dark themes, but that won't work if they get yanked.

I'm not aware of one.

What you might want to do is create a dummy submission, then type in the tags you intend to use. Keep track of the ones it rejects, and presto: there's your list, and that's also a collection of terms you might include in your foreword as a specific warning (if you're so inclined).

Then, just don't submit your dummy.

 

[IWroteThis]

There are banned tags, but I don't think there's a list you can just go view.

I think the way it works is, you couldn't enter them at all in the first place if they were banned, so, they're unlikely to get yanked unless they're tags which deserve to be on the list but have just somehow never been added to it.

Do your tags you're worried about have to do with any of the rule-breaking content prohibited on Lit? If not, I don't think you have anything to worry about.

EDIT: Just tried it on a draft story. No, there isn't an up-front validation preventing you from using a banned tag on a story, so, if you did that, then, yeah, it would probably get rejected and sent back. However, I still believe that if you really had tags which were subject to ban, you'd probably know you were playing with fire. It's also possible to figure out ahead of time whether a tag is banned by searching for it and seeing if any stories have it - provided that it isn't a deliberately novel tag, contrived on purpose to work around a ban.

You'd know.

The main tag I was worried about is assisted suicide. Doing a search, I found one story with that tag, so it's apparently okay. I don't know why I didn't think about checking for prior usage, so thanks.