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Next time I have an attack of the organizing OCD, somebody stop me, please.

I've spent the last two days tidying up a few organizational things on my LJ. First, I added "previous" and "next" links to each chapter of my multi-chapter fics, since it didn't occur to me to do that when I started posting fic here. (So, uh, sorry to everyone who read my fics before today. It's much easier now!) While I was doing that, I decided to delete all the broken tags links on those chapters. I used to include a link to previous chapters - via the tag - on each chapter, none of which work anymore because I deleted all those tags a while ago.

I also re-tagged all my fic. I had decided it was kind of redundant to have stuff tagged, since I already have a fic index, and I'm anal about keeping my memories in order, and now I've got those links at the end of each chapter. But if I post any fic in the future, I'd have to tag that, so that people can track the tag for updates, so I might as well have everything the same. There's probably some quirky people out there who'd prefer the tags to the fic index/memories anyway.

In doing that, I realized how hard some of my stuff is to categorize. On the heels of the "who's a proper Spuffy fan" debate, I noticed that I have fics about Spike and Buffy where their relationship is completely platonic, and wondered if that should be given a Spuffy pairing tag or not. Then there are the secondary pairings, which are often present in my ensemble fics, since they're canon, but the scenes focusing on them can be few and far between. At what point does the Willow/Tara arc become significant enough to get a pairing tag along with Spike/Buffy? And then there's the gen fic, which I tried to tag by the most significant characters. But some of them have a lot of characters. Maybe I should make an ensemble tag.

I almost dread to ask, because it might mean going back and retagging everything again, lol, but what organizational things do you think are helpful in navigating an LJ? Are there other things I should change?

ETA: And why doesn't LJ allow you to tag multiple entries at once???

Comments

[seductivembrace.livejournal.com]

and I'm anal about keeping my memories in order

Oh, thank gawd, I'm not the only one. And, yes, I've done the what you have done. Boy, is it time consuming!

I usually tag my fics by season, pairing, the year it was written (makes it easier for my year end roundup), and whether it was written for a certain comm.

I use my pairing tag if the story centers around a them, whether it's platonic, pre-pairing (heh, new word), or actual pairing. I use my gen!fic tag w/ the characters involved in the story.

I don't have an ensemble tag, but all my long stories tend to be ensemble. *sigh* I'll just put ensemble up at the top of my stories.

One thing I don't do is have a tag for each title. That's reserved for my memories, if I can remember to do them. ^_~

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I'm trying to set things up so that people can find what they're looking for easily, except I don't really know how other people look for stuff, lol. For me, length and/or pairing is usually the first thing I look for, so I've got tags for pairings, and an index sorted by length. I used to have my fics arranged by season in the sidebar, but then I deleted the sidebar. :-\

One thing I don't do is have a tag for each title. That's reserved for my memories, if I can remember to do them.

I only tag the multi-chapter fics by title. I suppose it doesn't really matter once a fic is finished, but I know some people like to follow WIPs by tracking the tag, rather than friending the journal, so I want to make it possible to do that.

[gabrielleabelle.livejournal.com]

At what point does the Willow/Tara arc become significant enough to get a pairing tag along with Spike/Buffy?

I've been running into this as I've been tagging fics I've bookmarked. At what point does having Xander/Anya make it "count" as a Xander/Anya fic? I just don't know!

I tend to go for the practical: "Well, the tagging is for me to easily find these again. So if I'm looking for a Xander/Anya fic, would I want this one to pop up?"

And I hate trying to organize stuff on LJ. I've found the memories system to be too clunky to try to work with. That's why I opted to just have a chapter index as an actual entry for my longfics. And tagging? Gah! I tried to go back and re-tag my meta posts because I had more detailed tags, but it's so time-consuming.

And why doesn't LJ allow you to tag multiple entries at once???

YES!!! I would love to have this ability!

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I tend to go for the practical: "Well, the tagging is for me to easily find these again. So if I'm looking for a Xander/Anya fic, would I want this one to pop up?"

Exactly. I ended up only tagging two of my Spuffy fics with another pairing, and I'm already rethinking the Buffy/Riley tag for "Closure," lol. It's a pretty substantial part of the fic, but I doubt anyone who's a Buffy/Riley fan would enjoy it. :)

Blogger (where I have my RL blog) lets you tag multiple entries at once, and I love it. I'm cringing at the prospect of going back and adding an ensemble tag to 5 more 20-chapter fics one post at a time. :(

[rahirah]

Oh, ghod, I wish I could tag multiple entries. I have million of untagged entries, sitting there and mocking me...

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Yeah... in the absence of that, I decided to just tag the first chapter of each fic that included the ensemble. Which, in retrospect, I kind of wish I'd thought of earlier, before I did all the other pairing/character tags. I mean, if you click on the Spike/Buffy tag and get 152 entries to scroll through, is that really helpful? Especially since they're in reverse order. It'd be better if it just pulled up the first chapter of each Spike/Buffy fic, so you could choose which one to read, and then follow the links from there.

Yeah, I REALLY wish I'd thought of this sooner. *sigh*

[silverusagi]

I've also been re-organizing my LJ. Though I don't have enough fic that I'm messing with it, I've been messing with everything else.

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It's kind of addicting, isn't it? lol

[shinybaum.livejournal.com]

I used to like well ordered fanfic on LJ but then I realised if I like a fic I'll just click on any damn thing to get it. It's like a test to see if I care enough :D

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LOL! I guess that's one way to do it.