Topic: short_story to meta OR alias short_story -> story_in_description?

Posted under Tag Alias and Implication Suggestions

Beholding

Member

The bulk update request #11029 is pending approval.

change category short_story (1903) -> meta
change category medium_story (325) -> meta
change category long_story (742) -> meta
create implication short_story (1903) -> story (29078)
create implication medium_story (325) -> story (29078)
create implication long_story (742) -> story (29078)

Reason: Tags referring to description content should be meta, and short stories are stories.

Updated

Ruppari

Member

The implication does not work. Short story is vague tag, and is also used for stories written on the image itself rather than in description.

Beholding

Member

ruppari said:
The implication does not work. Short story is vague tag, and is also used for stories written on the image itself rather than in description.

short_story's wiki description explicitly says it only applies to stories written in the description.

Ruppari

Member

beholding said:
short_story's wiki description explicitly says it only applies to stories written in the description.

The wiki was written today. I would not use under 24 hours old short wiki entry that contradicts how tag is used for years as a definitive description for how a tag is meant to be used.

Watsit

Privileged

Defining short story to be "no more than a few sentences or a paragraph" seems rather arbitrary. Short stories can be somewhat long, several paragraphs or pages. What exactly constitutes a short story is debated, with some saying it "must have a definite design, which includes a point of departure, a climax and a point of test; in other words, it must have a plot", while others say it's "a brief prose narrative with an intense episodic or anecdotal effect". The line seems vague enough to not be taggable reliably, and be prone to misuse that makes it no better than story_in_description. Since descriptions can only have 50000 characters (including formatting markup, line breaks, punctuation, etc), any story in the description must be relatively short. A story in an image will also be limited by the image size, and need to be accompanied by enough relevant imagery, so must also be relatively short.

Updated

TheGreatWolfgang

Privileged

demonthedarkhound said:
Do we also want to get rid off medium_story and long_story while we are at it?

If it were to be changed to be similar to how we deal with low_res/hi_res/absurd_res (i.e., setting some range or limit to number of characters), I don't see why we can't have the same treatment with short_story/long_story.

If there was a way to calculate or search the number of characters used on a description, tagging could even be automated (barring problems with people purging the descriptions after the fact).
But it would probably require overhauling the tags and turning them into short_description/long_description instead while having story_in_description as a complimentary tag.
Thus, searching long_description story_in_description should return what you'd expect to find in long_story.

regsmutt

Member

The less description tags that exist the better. (The only one beyond 'story_in_description' that I think has utility is one that designates if it's 'official' vs 'some random gooner's fanfic'.) Get rid of any uses of this tag that are besed on description.

Beholding

Member

ruppari said:
This is still incompatible with the issue that the tag is also used for stories written in the image itself.

I think that would be better served by a "story in image" tag.

I notice we also have a story tag, which appears badly overused. It's tagged on everything from posts that contain stories in the image to posts with lengthy internal narration to posts that are purely visual.

I've changed the starting BUR to imply the <length>_story tags to story instead of story_in_description.

Watsit

Privileged

beholding said:
I've changed the starting BUR to imply the <length>_story tags to story instead of story_in_description.

There isn't a clear definition for lengths. What constitutes short vs medium and medium vs long will be different for different people. As mentioned, anything you can fit in the description or put in an image can be considered a "short story", which makes medium and long vague and subjective. Better to alias them.

Nin10dope

Member

demonthedarkhound said:
Do we also want to get rid off medium_story and long_story while we are at it?

I will say yes, because Short Story is a literary genre and a recognizable term. Medium and Long stories seem like comparative add-ons that were made arbitrarily.
I've also corrected the short_story wiki to a solid definition. I don't know where (or if) there is an authority on literature definitions and requirements, but it seems a very consistent minimum is 1000 words and can reach up to 10,000.

regsmutt

Member

I think there's some value to labeling single page vs 2-5 page vs over 10 page comics/stories. There are these tags for comics, but these don't cover 'illustrated page of text' images like post #5472277

Nin10dope

Member

If the word count is under 1000 and still offers character and/or plot development, it is called "Flash fiction"

regsmutt

Member

nin10dope said:
If the word count is under 1000 and still offers character and/or plot development, it is called "Flash fiction"

I'm not sure that literature definitions/terms are the best fit here because this is an image-based website. I know when browsing here, I personally kind of make distinctions based on how many pages I'll have to load instead of word count.

Nin10dope

Member

regsmutt said:
I'm not sure that literature definitions/terms are the best fit here because this is an image-based website. I know when browsing here, I personally kind of make distinctions based on how many pages I'll have to load instead of word count.

I mean you could probably eyeball it or give it your best educated guess based on the density per page and number of pages.

Watsit

Privileged

I wouldn't worry about trying to classify lengths of stories. They're all short, and I don't see a point in trying to distinguish "complete" stories vs partial/excerpts, or over 1000 words vs under 1000 words (I've never heard of "flash fiction" before, and never heard there being a minimum size limit to "short story", so non-writers will not know the "correct" tags and just use what feels or sounds right). A tag like story_in_image can be used to indicate the story is in the image vs in the description, if "story -story_in_description" isn't good enough.

Nin10dope

Member

watsit said:
I wouldn't worry about trying to classify lengths of stories. They're all short, and I don't see a point in trying to distinguish "complete" stories vs partial/excerpts, or over 1000 words vs under 1000 words (I've never heard of "flash fiction" before, and never heard there being a minimum size limit to "short story", so non-writers will not know the "correct" tags and just use what feels or sounds right). A tag like story_in_image can be used to indicate the story is in the image vs in the description, if "story -story_in_description" isn't good enough.

You'll find everything with googling "define short story"
A "complete" story is literally anything with a beginning, middle, and end. They teach that at all ages in school, so tags should never be invalidated by ignorance.
It would pretty largely be the difference between a single page comic (or a few pages, if someone wants to get semantic) and an actual plotline or realized character growth/progression.
And with stories being designated as meta tags, I'd say that it supersedes an individual twys format.
A lot of people enjoy following (and searching for) artists' attempts at creating a narrative and writing characters in length.
The excess of putting quotes around these terms and the word correct comes off as incredibly disparaging.