Recs organization
Feb. 26th, 2022 09:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
doranwen posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
fictional_fansI realized I had a question about how to organize recs and thought "where can I ask it?" Of course, the answer was "at fictional_fans". :)
If you're looking through a recs list for a fandom, one which is more than just a tiny handful of fics, how do you want to see the fics ordered? By the main ship(s)? By where it occurs in canon? Does it depend on what the canon is? (For instance, I could imagine fic recs for a TV show might be more useful organized by where each appears in the show, compared to those for a film.) Do you like to see both ways, depending on what you're looking for? (e.g. anything that features your favorite ship vs. fics set within the first season only because you've not seen the rest yet) (I presumed that within those two categorization methods, one would organize the fics by author and then title.)
See, I'd set up my master recs post by fandom, and the posts for each fandom large enough to get its own post (or more than one), I organized by ship. The biggest one (which required four separate posts to get them all in) being a series of movies where at least half the fics are shippy for a single pairing, I figured that made the most sense. But my fic database *does* let me tag fics for their position in canon (and I do that for each fic), so it's quite possible for me to set up posts organized by "times" such as "pre-film 1", "post-film 1", "during film 2", "AU", "distant past", "future", "multi", "indeterminate", etc. Whether I *should* do so or not was the question I could not answer, because I don't know whether people would want to browse fics that way.
Note that for a post organized by time in canon, all fics would also be marked with which major ships were present, they just wouldn't be *grouped* together by ship. The reverse would not be true, however - at least, I haven't marked times for individual fics in any post yet. I *could*, though. (Possibly relevant - of the other four fandoms which got their own posts, two are TV shows, one's a film, and one's a film and book combo where the two mediums were similar enough that I combined them into one post.)
So I welcome your input. (If you never read recs posts at all, I'd also be curious to know why.)
If you're looking through a recs list for a fandom, one which is more than just a tiny handful of fics, how do you want to see the fics ordered? By the main ship(s)? By where it occurs in canon? Does it depend on what the canon is? (For instance, I could imagine fic recs for a TV show might be more useful organized by where each appears in the show, compared to those for a film.) Do you like to see both ways, depending on what you're looking for? (e.g. anything that features your favorite ship vs. fics set within the first season only because you've not seen the rest yet) (I presumed that within those two categorization methods, one would organize the fics by author and then title.)
See, I'd set up my master recs post by fandom, and the posts for each fandom large enough to get its own post (or more than one), I organized by ship. The biggest one (which required four separate posts to get them all in) being a series of movies where at least half the fics are shippy for a single pairing, I figured that made the most sense. But my fic database *does* let me tag fics for their position in canon (and I do that for each fic), so it's quite possible for me to set up posts organized by "times" such as "pre-film 1", "post-film 1", "during film 2", "AU", "distant past", "future", "multi", "indeterminate", etc. Whether I *should* do so or not was the question I could not answer, because I don't know whether people would want to browse fics that way.
Note that for a post organized by time in canon, all fics would also be marked with which major ships were present, they just wouldn't be *grouped* together by ship. The reverse would not be true, however - at least, I haven't marked times for individual fics in any post yet. I *could*, though. (Possibly relevant - of the other four fandoms which got their own posts, two are TV shows, one's a film, and one's a film and book combo where the two mediums were similar enough that I combined them into one post.)
So I welcome your input. (If you never read recs posts at all, I'd also be curious to know why.)
no subject
Date: 2022-02-27 04:47 pm (UTC)I hadn't thought of sorting by length. Recthething had a theme-focused month once where each week had different themes, and one of those was fics under 1k, another was long fics - but other than that I haven't tried to sort that way. I always list wordcount for every fic, but don't group by it. I could easily do so, but I wouldn't want to post recs multiple times on the same comm, and I don't think I have enough people wanting to follow mine just for recs posts, lol. But if someone asked me to make a post with that organization, I would totally do it - it'd be simple!
Author's always a given, within the overarching organization system, I always have fics by author and then title.
Hmm, I wonder if I ought to be putting times with the fics that are grouped by ships? It would make things simple for people wanting to know what they're about - but it'd be a bit of work to set up for existing posts (there are close to 1000 Matrix recs in those four posts).