I don't like that you want put the burden of categorizing works that aren't fanfiction on the users who post them. They already need to wrestle more with hosting, the submission interface (which doesn't even tell you what you can embed and how to do it) and now they also need to be better acquainted with the TOS (and remember which tags are the right ones since people use many different words for the same work types) than those who only submit fanfiction and can rely on what the interface tells them. But despite the one-dimensional posting format the works are still called 'works' and it is counter-intuitive for you to declare that the default is 'fan fiction'. I think if you want to introduce mandatory medium tagging you should
a) include a separate field for that since using additional tags for it is not the least bit intuitive - those tags have been introduced as completely optional for a long time now
b) have all works be tagged - from a user POV I don't understand why only the filtering for and filtering out of non-fic should be wanted when it is equally possible that someone might want to filter for or filter out fanfic. (Example: If I search for 'meta' and 'art'/'fanart'/'drawing'/etc a lot of fic gets pulled up in my searches that I can't filter out except with awkward workarounds like sorting for word count.)
All put together the proposed changes would result in a situation where handling non-fic requires so much more energy, time and attention from non-fic posters and consumers that to me it would clash with your welcoming text on the front page and your diversity statement.
Since the tagging would just be another workaround in my opinion this should just not be included into the TOS at all and the energy should be directed to developing categories. I agree with the concerns others voiced about policing what is appropriate nonfiction and what isn't.
Comment on Proposed Content Policy ToS and FAQ changes
salty_catfish Mon 01 Jul 2013 12:11AM UTC
Last Edited Mon 01 Jul 2013 10:38AM UTC
Comment Actions