Tagging Guidelines

[mistress-tanwe.livejournal.com]

Despite the overarching persona account being used this year, I’m indy1776 and I’m the tagging moderator. Please don’t hesitate to ask if you have any questions about how or what to tag, if there’s something you need me to delete, or anything related to this subject. (Our wonderful volunteer is again lignota.)

A few general guidelines:

~ Please do not use the tags beginning with [year]. These are admin tags.

~ The formatting is, for example, character:frodo. Note that there is no space between the colon and the name. The same goes for every tag.

~ We do not use accents of any kind. Not everyone knows how to do them.

~ Check your spelling. A misspelled or misformatted tag still appears in the “available tag” list even if you correct it after the fact, and I have to manually delete it. (People can and have used misspellings and misformattings before because they appeared first in the list!)

~ If you are typing in the tags, don’t forget to seperate them with commas. If you don’t do this, the tags will appear as one long tag.

~ For those more familiar with AO3 and Tumblr: tagging on LJ is solely for organizational purposes within a community or journal. There is no need for tags such as “b2mem” or “tolkien fanfic” or the like.

What We DO Tag

~ Prompt: The prompt tag obviously varies year by year. Our tag this year is: middle-earth marketplace.

~ Character: Main characters only, please. Think of this list as advertising for readers; for example, there’s no reason to tag a Frodo-and-Sam-centric fic that only briefly mentions Rosie with “character:rose cotton.”

There is a long list. Chances are, the characters you need are already in there. (Don’t forget to check for name variations if the character has more than one.) If they aren’t there, feel free to create new tags for them! Just make sure it follows the above-mentioned format. (One note: please do not create group tags such as character:fellowship, as we prefer you to tag by individual character.)

~ Format: This is fairly simple. Is your work fic, poetry, artwork, etc.? Please note that all forms of poetry go under format:poetry. Also note that all drabbles and variations thereof (double, triple, etc.) go under format:drabble. (We use the true drabble definition of exactly 100 words.) There is no format:fic tag.

For fanfic, the format tag is dictated by length. Ficlets are 999 words or shorter, not including drabbles. Short stories are 1000 to 9999 words. (For reference, because we’ve yet to need these tags, novellas are 10,000 to 39,999 words and novels are 40,000+ words.) Chaptered stories go under format:chaptered regardless of the length of individual updates.

~ Genre: Also fairly simple. What genre(s) does your work fall under? If you don’t see one you think fits, please add it.

What We Do NOT Tag
Because this is a basic-level community, we’re limited to 1000 tags. We have over 500 already, so we need to stick with the bare minimum of usable information in our tag list.

~ Ratings: As there are two different systems in use here, it’s simpler not to. After all, it’s required in the header of your posts.

~ Warnings: This is also required information in the header.

~ Pairings: With literally hundreds of characters in the list (with more sure to come), the pairings are likewise numerous. We don’t have the space. It’s why there’s a spot for it in the header.

~ Creators: There are over a hundred members of this community, and more will join. It’s simply not feasible.

Everything Else

~ If you do not want to tag, you do not have to. Note that a volunteer or I will add tags to your post.

~ The bare minimum I would suggest using is [prompt] and character. If possible, please use all the applicable ones. It will make our job a lot easier, as a volunteer or I will add the ones you skipped. (As you can imagine, checking all the posts and adding missing tags is fairly time-consuming.)