Tags and Spoilers

[wrabbit]

So I have noticed some fans saying that they prefer to ignore or not read the tags on AO3 because they might find them spoilery. As someone who doesn't consider many things spoilers I found this intriguing. I would like to pose a few questions to everyone:

1) Do you typically read tags? How often do you search by tag?

2) What kinds of tags do you find spoilery and why?

3) What do you want to know about the content of a story before you read? Why?

4) What do you not want to know about the content of a story before you read? Why?

5) Would whether you consider any tags to be spoilery or not be affected if the author wrote the content indicated by the tags creatively or in an atypical way?

Comments

[princessofgeeks]

I see what you're getting at, but for me it all comes down to what tags are for.

To me, they are for giving the reader accurate information about what's in the story. And by definition, that makes tags spoilery. Any attempt to make tags less spoilery infringes on the actual purpose of tags.

Coy or sly obfuscation with tags in order to attempt to not give away the ending or a plot twist is, imho, absolutely counter to the purpose of tags.

I repeat: If an author is against the entire idea of a reader knowing too much about the story in advance, the author should simply say "I do not warn" and "I do not tag" and hope the reader is down with that.

Even in profic that you buy in bookstores, there's a certain amount of expectation or reader/author promise implied by the genre. So rarely do we as readers plunge into something with absolutely zero expectations.

And yet, fanfic tags by design go way beyond that. They are intended to give real information. They are not for obfuscation.

I would be in favor of simply fewer tags than any attempt to coyly tempt the reader by subtly and poetically playing with the nature of the tags. For me, that kind of effort should be reserved for the fic itself. The tags are more like cold metadata.

But I don't do Tumblr, and Tumblr tags are indeed an art form that is probably bleeding into other places (like AO3) where tags are used. I myself would be in favor of resisting this trend.

But I am not really a good example to use, because I so rarely search for tags other than fandom and pairing.

Thanks for the thinky.