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

[arcanetrivia]

I'm a bit of an outlying data point since I don't care about being "spoiled" and I gather that most people do.

1. I always read tags. I guess by tag is the way I search most often, because I am looking for fics that include one particular character in my fandom.

2. n/a

3. Does it contain the character I am looking for? What pairings, if any, are there? How long is it? Does it contain any of my personal squicks or things I'm not interested in reading (e.g. most crossovers)? What genre is it (comedy, adventure, romance...)? Is it alternate universe/reality? What is its rating (general/teen/adult)?

4. n/a

5. I guess I could see that becoming spoilery. The author could potentially give away quite specific things if they wrote non-canonical tags in a certain way.

I wonder if others would appreciate being able to expand/collapse that area on the page, and being able to set a preference to have it expanded or collapsed by default?