Is a tag enough or should you really put a warning?

[darkquasar]

So I'm still figuring out etiquette when posting stories. Especially when it comes to how to tag them.

In a story where a male character cleans the male main characters cock with his mouth, or blows him, but everything else is sex between the MMC and a woman. Beyond that, there is no sexual contact between the men.

Had a comment on a story I just posted saying there should be a warning at the start of the story.

The story already has a "bisexual male" tag, is that sufficient, are there better tags for the above scenario, or is an actual warning at the top of the story needed?

I figured if someone objected to male/male contact of any kind, the bisexual male tag would be enough warning without giving away anything about the plot.

 

[crookedletter]

I'm of the mind that this site is for literate adults, and we should be able to trust literate adults to check tags if there are elements of stories they might object to.

I would guess that if someone is unable to perform that step to protect themselves from choosing the wrong story, then your warning text has a decent chance of being ignored, too. But maybe it would fend off a would-be hater or two.

 

[SmilingLez]

I would think that a tag would be enough but then again some people do not look at the tags. If you have room in your description and you want to cater to those type of folk you could always add "bisexuality"

 

[YmaOHyd]

I do not search by tag and do not click to the tab that shows tags. Because they're not visible by default, if you're concerned I would include that information in a foreword. When you click into a story, the foreword is there in front of you; the tags are not.

 

[old_prof]

I suspect that the majority of readers never look at tags.

 

[PennyThompson]

Opinions vary, as with all things on Lit

Because of the way story tags are displayed, I think many people never see them or think to check them.

Personally, I put an Ingredients List at the top of my stories. I make them a little silly, but I also include the sexual combinations involved, plus any acts or situations that I think might be polarizing to some readers. E.g.:

Ingredients list (Spoilers!):
2 cups unprofessional conference behavior
1 cup cis-female/non-binary sex
1 cup M/NB/F/F group sex
1/4 cup cis-male/non-binary sex
1/2 cup fear of cheating, jealousy
(only) 1 bed

I've gotten largely positive comments about them, and it makes me feel good to include them, so I do!

 

[WaxPhilosophic]

Ingredients list (Spoilers!):
2 cups unprofessional conference behavior
1 cup cis-female/non-binary sex
1 cup M/NB/F/F group sex
1/4 cup cis-male/non-binary sex
1/2 cup fear of cheating, jealousy
(only) 1 bed

Cooking with Penny makes a great holiday gift. Pre-order now!

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

So I'm still figuring out etiquette when posting stories. Especially when it comes to how to tag them.

In a story where a male character cleans the male main characters cock with his mouth, or blows him, but everything else is sex between the MMC and a woman. Beyond that, there is no sexual contact between the men.

Had a comment on a story I just posted saying there should be a warning at the start of the story.

The story already has a "bisexual male" tag, is that sufficient, are there better tags for the above scenario, or is an actual warning at the top of the story needed?

I figured if someone objected to male/male contact of any kind, the bisexual male tag would be enough warning without giving away anything about the plot.

I add short paragraphs at the beginning of most of my stories to set expectations. I've recently started adding tags. I've found it just doesn't make a difference. Unless they're using them to search, people ignore tags, and they don't read warnings. Your best bet is to do whatever due diligence makes sense to you, and ignore the comments from people who don't read your caveats. Good luck.

EDIT: If they ignore your warnings, you can always paste their comment in the Comments that leave you shaking your head thread so we can all laugh at them with you.

 

[TarnishedPenny]

It’s your call, but I remember Winston Churchill’s definition of a gentleman, that being a man who never offended except on purpose. Many (myself included) don't read tags first.

 

[SmilingLez]

Is it necessary to have a NSFW tag on a story since Literotica is basically NSFW?

 

[darkquasar]

Opinions vary, as with all things on Lit

Because of the way story tags are displayed, I think many people never see them or think to check them.

Personally, I put an Ingredients List at the top of my stories. I make them a little silly, but I also include the sexual combinations involved, plus any acts or situations that I think might be polarizing to some readers. E.g.:



I've gotten largely positive comments about them, and it makes me feel good to include them, so I do!

That ingredient list is hilarious!


Thanks for the feedback everyone.
After reading a stories title, and description, the next thing I do before reading it is checking the tags, and figured that was the norm.

 

[IWroteThis]

Because of the way story tags are displayed, I think many people never see them or think to check them.

One thing to remember is that tags used to only be listed at the bottom of the story, and not everybody has realized they're available at the top now. I've explained how to view them to quite a few people, and I've seen many others I didn't reply to that indicated the commenter didn't know.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

Tags are useful for niche interests, but by the time I've clicked onto tags and back to a story, I could have read half the first page and decided from that whether I want to continue or not. Admittedly I'm not put off by much content but style usually deters me.

So knowing that most people either see Category, Title and subtitle, I sometimes add to that info by listing tags at the start, and often if it's a Contest or Event, where people see the title but *not* the description nor even the category.

If a potential reader is going to hate my content, it's in both our interests for me to deter them ASAP, eg:

WARNING: if you just clicked on the list of Literotica Valentine's Day stories, please note that this story is in the Gay Male category. It contains men fucking each other, and also British English.

If either of those repulse you, please hit Back now. I have many other stories with only heterosexual or lesbian sex, but I'm afraid the Englishness is unavoidable.

Anyone who didn't appreciate that wouldn't like the story, which scored quite well.

 

[darkquasar]

le gasp! not British English! Anything but that!

 

[crookedletter]

Just curious, for those of you who read stories here without checking the tags: are there certain things, i.e. a kink or a lifestyle, that if you came across in a story it would put you off to the point of dropping a negative comment?

I don't pore over ingredients lists before I buy a bag of chips. But if I had a food allergy I was concerned about... I might.

 

[alohadave]

I figured if someone objected to male/male contact of any kind, the bisexual male tag would be enough warning without giving away anything about the plot.

The problem is that unless you view the story from the author's page and it's not part of a series, you can't see the tags until you open the story, and most people don't click on the tab to see the tags.

They are more useful for searching for stories than as content warnings. Without the site making the change to show tags (and word count) on the title cards, this will keep happening.

 

[old_prof]

Just curious, for those of you who read stories here without checking the tags: are there certain things, i.e. a kink or a lifestyle, that if you came across in a story it would put you off to the point of dropping a negative comment?

I don't pore over ingredients lists before I buy a bag of chips. But if I had a food allergy I was concerned about... I might.

Most things that aren't my kink would just cause me to leave the story, but not otherwise bother me. But a few things would probably, including incest and real vengeance of a cheating spouse. I think those are why T/I and LW are trump categories, because that is a common feeling. I understand some people have gay male activity in the same bag. And then there's other upsetting elements, such as violence or suicide. Rape, which does slide through sometimes, should have a warning, but won't ever get it because that would bring it to Laurel's attention as well.

So I guess I think you need the warning for some things. I see tags mostly as finding things that satisfy your kink, more than a negative filter. Warnings are a negative filter, which is more important when a story is already selected.

 

[WittyUserName]

So I'm still figuring out etiquette when posting stories. Especially when it comes to how to tag them.

In a story where a male character cleans the male main characters cock with his mouth, or blows him, but everything else is sex between the MMC and a woman. Beyond that, there is no sexual contact between the men.

Had a comment on a story I just posted saying there should be a warning at the start of the story.

The story already has a "bisexual male" tag, is that sufficient, are there better tags for the above scenario, or is an actual warning at the top of the story needed?

I figured if someone objected to male/male contact of any kind, the bisexual male tag would be enough warning without giving away anything about the plot.

So, I agree with the people who said to assume your audience is made up of literate adults. The fact is, it isn't. I wrote a story where two women fell in love and put it in Romance. People were flipping out because they were expecting straight content and I should have put it in lesbian. I had a tag identifying it as lesbian, but that didn't matter to them.

You aren't wrong to just put the tag. Just like I wasn't wrong in just using a tag and justifying my choice because a lesbian romance is a romance(I didn't use lesbian because there was straight sex in the story, which I figured readers of lesbian wouldn't like). Just know that you'll probably get negative comments. You can't please everyone. If you think you might upset some people, a warning at the beginning might help.

I reiterate that you can't please everyone and people will complain no matter what. I have a couple of long series with lots of characters, so I posted chapter 00 with a cast of characters. I stated it was just a list of characters with descriptions for reference. And I still had someone comment that it was a boring story because they didn't understand it wasn't meant to be read like a story. Never underestimate people's ability to find something to complain about.

Too long, didn't read: a warning might help, but isn't necessary. Expect hate mail either way.

 

[Katie_Mae]

Content warnings are allowed, but not required. Unlike other more "friendly" sites, there's no expectation here to do content warnings. I do use some warnings here, but far fewer than I use on another site where I post.

It's worth noting, not all things you would want to content warn against can be tagged for (some tags are banned). A banned tag doesn't mean the topic is banned, just the tags are more designed to promote what's in a story. Warning against is a by-product. Eg, "death" is banned, because people shouldn't be actively searched for on a site that banns snuff, however, if you are writing a really hard hitting story about death, then it also means you can't tag it "death" as a warning.

For something as innocuous as m/m content I wouldn't think a warning was required.

Putting warnings doesn't, in my experience, reduce stupid comments nor increase the score.
eg, I don't write in American English and the only stupid comment I've had "correcting" me was also on the only story where I had in the intro that it was not in American English.

I did do a small review on stories with author's notes, including content warnings, and I found, over all, the scores were on average marginally lower. However, the sample size was ridiculously small.

If you want to be courteous to your readers, then I think doing all you can to let them know what the story is about is a good thing. It's considerate of people's time. Blurbs. Content warnings/descriptions. Tags. Descriptive titles. Descriptions. etc. These are all things that help a reader decide if they want to spend their time reading your story. In my opinion, this makes your story more accessible and more new readers are likely to give it a go. Broadening your readership, however, can lead to lower scores, because it's not just your die-hard fans voting.

At the end of the day, it's up to you.

Some people really appreciate things like this, some people are strongly against it. As a reader, I appreciate little blurbs, intros and warnings (where necessary) from the author.

 

[designatedvictim]

I add short paragraphs at the beginning of most of my stories to set expectations. I've recently started adding tags. I've found it just doesn't make a difference. Unless they're using them to search, people ignore tags, and they don't read warnings. Your best bet is to do whatever due diligence makes sense to you, and ignore the comments from people who don't read your caveats. Good luck.

I edited in an Author Note into the beginning of my previous piece and put one plus a tag list in my new one that went up today.

I'd have to agree with the 'no-one reads tags while reading'-crowd.

 

[dirk2024]

So I'm still figuring out etiquette when posting stories. Especially when it comes to how to tag them.

I figured if someone objected to male/male contact of any kind, the bisexual male tag would be enough warning without giving away anything about the plot.

Opinions vary, as with all things on Lit

Personally, I love the tags! I search for stories with them. I review them when I open a story to see if it has what I want and what I don't want to read. It's not hard to figure out. The only thing I don't like is when the author doesn't use them, or even worse, uses nonsensical tags that no one would search for nor do they shed any light on the story. I tend to back out of those stories.

Tags also show up on the Author's page:

 

[anthrodisiac]

Oh snap, I use tags. I always assumed people read them, or most people searched by tags to find stories they want. I keep forgetting most people aren't me. It's unsettling.

Maybe for niche interests, the tags are more helpful. I usually include a list of common ones someone with interests in those more niche categories might search for (anthro, furry, scalie), plus whatever species I'm using, then the general sex acts or other pertinent categories. Someone who really wants to read fox erotica will probably search for fox or kitsune. Someone who's looking for mother/son incest can probably just go straight to T/I and find what they're looking for pretty quickly.

I guess it also depends on what you mean by "warning." Are you informing the reader they may come across content they might not like? Is there something that might be triggering to someone?

For my very first story I included a long warning label because there were a lot of fucked-up things about it, which quickly turned into me realizing how many different things I actually included in 10k words, and I may or may not have gotten glib after the first few...

And in case you wanted to get out before things get too crazy, here's what you can expect:

Monster girls/demons, bondage, non-con, dub-con, too-enthusiastic-con, claustrophobia, being buried alive, kink shaming, biting, claws, blood, torture - physical, torture - psychological, tendrils, mind probing, mother/daughter dynamics (non-incest relationship), Mommy/good boy (still no incest), breastfeeding, mind probing, affirmation, borderline vore (head in mouth), edging, MFF, and just general depravity—like interpersonal connection.

 

[Britva415]

I don't write an apologetic preface or a warning, but I do list the tags at the beginning of the story. For those who wouldn't otherwise see them before beginning to read.

 

[Bazzle]

I tend to say "This is a Bazzle story, it will contain vast quantities of drinking, smoking, peeing and smoking and peeing whilst drunk."

 

[TheLobster]

Oh snap, I use tags. I always assumed people read them, or most people searched by tags to find stories they want. I keep forgetting most people aren't me. It's unsettling.

I don’t think you should worry. You traffic in NonHuman, which I understand is a diverse category with a motley of largely distinct themes/kinks/whatchagonnacallits, so readers who seek those are presumably conditioned to check the tags.

T/I is similar (different familial pairings), and of course Fetish is probably the one where tags rule the day the hardest. Other categories don’t have such sharp internal boundaries, though, so tag culture is much less developed there and warnings about obvious icks are warranted.