Tagging question

[annavere]

I'm soliciting second opinions here, please.

As I know more about tagging now than when I started, I am planning to go back through my posted works and add tags like "angst" and "complicated friendships" and so on, to be more descriptively helpful going forward. *

I have also learned there is a tag for "unbetaed" which gets used. I figured people would just know I didn't have a beta because I've never thanked one in the opening notes - but if that is not the case, or if it instead makes me look like a rude person who does not thank her betas at all, then have I been in error? Should I be using that tag?



*If you've read one of my works and think it really needed a tag I didn't include, please feel free to let me know.

Comments

[argentum_ls]

IMO, the unbeta’d tag is for when you’re posting something you know you didn’t put a lot of effort into. I think it’s like a CYA for when you know there’s going to be mistakes and you don’t care.

Personally, it’s not a tag I would use, even for my work that is unbeta’d. With rare exception, my unbeta’d work is still work that I put a lot of effort into.

It’s also worth addressing the fact that having a work beta’d doesn’t guarantee that it’s better than if it hadn’t been. Ideally, of course, that’s the point. But, like everything else in fandom, betas are a voluntary job and very few people who volunteer for it have any training in editing.

[annavere]

This is a very helpful amount of context, thank you so much!

[senmut]

I agree with above. The unbeta tags are... very optional, and better for fics you wrote in a heat of a moment and threw on the archive as is.

[annavere]

Ah, good to know. Thank you!

I am... entirely incapable of writing in the heat of the moment, or of non-obsessive editing. :)

[havocthecat]

It's fine not to have tagged it. Sometimes I tag a Stargate fic "No Beta We Die Like [character known for dying]" because it's funny! Also because frankly, even my not-betaread SG1 fics are going to be pretty damn good so I don't really care if people know I didn't beta, I also edited that fucker 3x before it went on the Archive.

There are nuances to tagging that you'll pick up! But asking is also good too. I for sure am more of a tagger now than I am when the archive first started. And some of my longer fics have so many tags, my older stories are kind of a wasteland, tumbleweeds in the tagging section.

[annavere]

Most of what I've learned about tagging is from observation, but I'm glad I put this question to the community. Thanks for your input!

[havocthecat]

Tagging and tagging theory is wild and you ask can ask ten different fans and get twenty different opinions, for real. (Except for "Sexy Times With Wangxian," the story with tags that broke everything. Actually, there were a lot of opinions about that story. It was bonkers.)

But tl;dr, I wouldn't stress too much about it in the long run.

The Sexy Times saga, but on Fanlore, so you don't have to read the real thing. Because no, just no.

[annavere]

Wow, that's... something.

[brightknightie]

You should, of course, tag however you like! It's up to you!

FWIW, I personally don't choose to read stories tagged or introduced as unedited or unbeta'd or rough draft. Those tags seem to declare lack of effort and lack of caring about the reader experience. (And they seem to have come out of more recent fan culture on more recent platforms that I'm not very familiar with, so of course this is a cultural and age thing. I'm just not young enough to embrace this tag.)

I'm not always lucky enough to be able to find a kind beta reader to help me -- though my friends are lovely and repeatedly help me out, even in fandoms they barely know! -- but I edit and polish as well as I can on my own in those cases; I don't tag about it.

[annavere]

There's definitely a consensus forming and it's very helpful to me. Thank you!