Indeed, Sir

Just to give everyone a heads up, LJ in their infinite wisdom stupidity have decided that using forward slashes in tags is no longer valid. Obviously this is having a huge effect on LJ fandom, as pretty much everyone uses a / to denote a pairing.

Considering this is new and people are protesting it, this may change again soon, but as I'm going to be away for a week and don't want the tags to be broken for that long, I'm changing them around to use plus signs (+) instead. If they fix this, we'll go back to the usual slashes right away.

Thank you for your patience.

ETA: Official story from LJ is that the slash error is a mistake and they're working to fix it. The tags will go back to normal once I get word that it's all fixed.

We've had a lot of requests and suggestions lately, so this is your mods testing the waters a little. Please read the following thoughts on the options before voting in the poll.

Basically, the request is for specific tags for each author/artist. An example of this in a community can be seen at donaldtimmy, and there would be an option for hiding the tags in a separate link so they wouldn't clutter up the sidebar.

There are a few problems with this option, one of which is that when searching through tags, LJ is only capable of going back to skip=380 before it stops working. This might not be a problem for most of what we're using tags for, but in any prolific community it starts to become an issue eventually. Another issue is manpower - ideally, once we have the tags created then anyone can add them, but we have to know what tags to create first. And we do have a rather large number of tags already.

The second option is to update the memories. This would allow for practically unlimited organization with just a few clicks needed to navigate. The LJ memories feature is pretty straightforward and would not clutter up the main page at all. Again, the issue here is manpower and time.

My solution for the manpower problem in either case would be to recruit as many volunteers as possible to help collect links and names. If we choose to do tags, we'd need a list of all the authors and artists who have posted to the community and ideally the URLs to all their posts. Then the mods could create tags and either tag the posts or delegate the tagging to the volunteers. If we choose to update the memories, a similar system would be needed - volunteers to go back through the comm and collect links so mods can add them to the memories. If necessary, we can make a post where members could reply with their links and collect them to make a master list from which to work.

Of course, if there is enough demand, we can do both. The collection of links and names would be similar anyway, and once posts are in the memories anyone can find them and tag them once tags are created. So really it's a question of aesthetics and which method all of you would find most user friendly and useful in finding stories and art.

[Poll #1478500]

Thank you all for voting. We welcome your comments and suggestions.

Okay, so the new tags system has been up and running for a while, and many of you are doing great jobs with tagging your posts. That cuts down on my job considerably, so thank you :)

However, I thought it was about time we had an info post about the new tags and how everything works, to cut down on confusion and to help everyone choose the right tags.

( A Guide to the Use of Indeesir Tags )


Okay, I think that's everything. If anyone has any questions about specific tags and their use, or would like to request a tag, reply here. I'll put the link of this post in the community info so it can always be found.

This is OT, but I've had a request to make an announcement, and it's for a good cause that could very well affect fandom in general and thus this community in the future. So, here we go.

If you weren't already aware, there's an election going on for an LJ user representative to be added to the LJ Advisory Board (the one that Brad's on). Fandom is trying to get One of Us elected, partly to have a pro-fandom representative to argue our case if needed, but also to keep the anti-fandom candidates and known spammers/trolls out. There's lots of information about the candidates in fandom_votes, if you're curious.

Also, here's a link to a summary of the platforms the three fandom candidates, which fandoms they're in, and how to vote. Full list of platforms here.Run-off voting works differently than other sorts of ballots, so don't vote for the same person three times; make unique 1st, 2nd, and 3rd choices. Even if you don't like the three current fannish frontrunners, please consider looking at all the options (more than the top 3 are fannishly endorsed) and voting.

Voting in the first round ends Thursday! Candidates need 50% of the vote to win, so there will likely be elimination rounds and the like. Watch LJ news for updates!

Thank you for your attention! We now return to your regular Plummy broadcast.