Question about collections

[sketchme]

There's an option on the "New Collection" page where the wording is a bit weird. What does this mean?

"This collection is unrevealed"

That the collection is hidden from public view?

I'm wanting to make some reading lists and I'm thinking of using collections.

Comments

[noracharles]

Unrevealed means that the author names are hidden. Every fanwork in an unrevealed collection will appear to be authored by "Anonymous".

[sketchme]

Thanks for the explanation, I never would have guessed that. How are you meant to know it's referring to the authors inside the collection, and not the collection itself.

So then what does the next option mean? "This collection is anonymous"

[noracharles]

Oops, my bad. I got mixed up and said the wrong thing to you in my first reply.

"This collection is anonymous" means that author names will appear as "Anonymous", and "This collection is unrevealed" means that none of the fanworks in the collection will be shown at all, instead there will be a placeholder saying "Mystery work".

I'm sorry, it's pretty confusing for me too, even though I have actually moderated collections before.

[alexseanchai]

Fanworks have to be added to a collection by an author, so I'm at a loss for how you could make a reading list using a collection.

[sketchme]

I didn't know that. But I thought you could bookmark something to a collection. Which I've just tried to do and you can, but it has to be one that you've already bookmarked. Which I didn't know and don't want.

[erinptah]

One of the big things collections were designed for is exchanges like Yuletide. So authors can submit their works before the deadline (while the collection is unrevealed), and they'll only show up as "Mystery Work" in the collection, and be unavailable from the author's page. For that particular exchange, reveals happen on December 25, so everything goes public -- but is still anonymous until (IIRC) December 31, at which point it comes off anon and all the authors' names are attached.

But yeah, collections are for author-submitted works, not reader-created link lists. If you want to make a reading list, either us the "Mark for Later" option on works, or use "Bookmark" and then tag the bookmarks with the theme of the reading list they're going on. (You can use the tag search to find out if a fitting tag already exists, and if it doesn't, you can make one up.)

[sketchme]

Yeah. At first I thought they were only for exchanges, but because I saw collections that just had bookmarks, I thought I could create a list. But I'm learning it doesn't work as I hoped it would.

The bookmark idea is good, but I normally only use that for fics I've read and like. I might try it though, as I see no other way. You can't organise the mark for later page into different lists, plus I don't like how delete works on that page.

[erinptah]

Well, you can make bookmarks that are specifically recs, which makes them easy to filter out from the rest of your bookmarks (for both you, and other people looking at your bookmarks page). You can also set bookmarks to private, so nobody else can see them at all and get any ideas about whether you endorse the fic in question. Maybe one of those options would make them more functional for you?