[le sigh]

[tellitslant]

Dear fic writers,

Why do you make it hard for me to find your fic when you post to a community?

So, it's possible that in the course of studying for finals I re-watched the entire first season of House and then proceeded to buy myself the second season as a post-finals "congrats for not dying" gift to self. ;) And it's similarly possible that I'm reminded how much I love House/Cuddy and have been poking around the house_cuddy archives.

It is so hard to find fic there.

If I'm reading an archive page looking for fic, I am looking for something with "fic" in the subject line. I'm not going to click on every subject that looks like it's a title - I don't even know the episode titles well enough to separate those out. And I'm probably not going to click on entries that just say "my new fic!!" because that looks amateurish. Ideally I'm looking for "Fic: Title (rating)," though I don't expect it and am pleasantly surprised when I find it. That's what I'm used to from newsgroups waaay back when, and it covers all the bases. It tells me it's a fic, the title is there if it's a series or something, and the rating tells me what I'm getting into. It also provides most of the info for the fine folks doing newsletters. On a pairing-centric comm pairing and/or character doesn't need to be mentioned, but on, say, dw_femslash it probably should.

I'm not saying my way's the best, I'm just saying - isn't that what other people look for when fic-hopping? The subject line is the first thing people see of your fic - why make it hard to find or remember or recognise? Fic-writing is, after all, all about promoting yourself.

Bonus mention for tags. I realise not all comms have tags and authors posting to the comm are at the mercy of the maintainers on that one. But if the comm has tags, for god's sake why not use them? Again, it makes your fic so much easier for people to find. Also it makes the mod less annoyed. *is of course not speaking from experience* ;)

Anyways. This has been a mild annoyance lately as I attempt to decompress from exams. Am I just overly finicky? Is there a hip new reason for not using the subject line this way? *g* Thoughts?

Comments

[1istener.livejournal.com]

It would be neat if they did that, but I also wouldn't mind if they put all that right at the top of the body of the post, above the cut-tag or as the text of the cut-tag.

Of course that makes it harder to find in archives, but I think often when people post fic, they're not thinking about readers in the future. They're thinking about readers RIGHT NOW.

So I would be unsurprised and non-annoyed if it was "read my fic!" for the subject, and then "Title (rating, character/pairing) - brief description" in the body, and then a cut-tag. For example.

It would be awesome if there were tags for each character.