About Tags

Dear lushies, lushettes, and various other generally lush people,

lend me your ears, please. We need to have a talk.

About tags.

1. What are those, anyway?

-- See the red pill underneath your story? It signifies the genre/category you put your submission in. The little gray pills next to the red one are tags. You can add up to ten tags to a submission. Your tags can/should include stuff like additional (!) genres, plot points, dynamics, characters, settings/locations, fetishes, kinks, sexual practices...

2. Uh huh. What are they for, exactly?

-- Spoilers, actually. They let your readers know what your story is about, and entice them to read it. Also, they enable them to find it! (Note: Making the tags more useful in this latter regard is on the top of the wishlist-to-the-devs. So far, you can find stories with the same tag by clicking the little gray pill.)

3. Okay. How do I add them?

-- In story edit mode, scroll all the way down to find the [[Tags]] field, type the tag you want to add to your submission into the input field. A drop-down menu should appear (if it doesn't. check you're entering the tag in lower case. The input box defaults to sentence case at the moment on mobile. That fix is on the list one day). Find the entry and left-click on it. Your tag should now show up (below in bold in a little box, with an X next to it) afterward. Done.

4. Man, that drop-down menu is being such an asshole!

-- If you are typing in the tags box on a mobile device, it defaults to Sentence case at the moment, so it won't find any matches. Tags need to all be lower case to bring up the drop-down of matches. (Thanks to WannabeWordsmith for this note!)

-- If the drop-down menu still doesn’t appear at all, it may be a tech problem. Check your internet connection, your browser function, etc. If nothing works, raise a support ticket.

-- Check your spelling. It's c-u-n-n-i and l-i-n-g-u-s and c-u-c-k-o-l-d, y'all. Masturbation doesn't have anything to do with masters, so ‘masterbating’ and ‘masterbation’ are out. ‘Spanking’ contains two Ns. ‘Straight’ has neither a U nor a Y in it, folks! 😒

-- The search feature on this site is... ... ... unique. When you want to add a {foot fetish}-tag and enter the two words into the search field like that, the search result will be the cumulative results of EVERYTHING {foot} and EVERYTHING {fetish} in the database. Therefore: enter ONE word first – ‘foot’ - then check to see if the tag {foot fetish} is already listed.

-- If you still come up empty, you have the option to create a new tag all the way at the bottom of the drop-down menu.

*** SOME NEWS ***

Due to the generally wonderful option to create new tags, Lush has tags like Kirk had Tribbles in that one episode. There are endless duplicate entries with slightly different spellings, plenty of misspelled ones, plenty of cryptic/meaningless ones. As of today, there are around 15 000 of them (brought down from 24 000 last week. Still some way to go.).

Some moderators have started culling the herd for everyone’s convenience.

You can help us and yourselves by following these easy steps:

A) As mentioned above, PLEASE proofread your tags. Try to not create misspelled new tags.

B) When you enter a tag and there's nothing in the drop-down menu that appears, please try a different spelling, or even alternative words that mean the same thing instead of hitting [[create{tag}]. For example, instead of ‘pussyeating’, try ‘eating pussy’ or ‘licking pussy’ or even ‘cunnilingus’, see if there are already tags that fit; instead of ‘penis (something)’, try ‘cock (something)’, and so forth.

C) Avoid slashes, dashes, and underscores as the search function does not recognize them. Spell out numbers.

D) Please don't give your tags the Human Centipede treatment! Enter them one by one, separately, without punctuation between them - just the word you want to tag. No more {cuckold;wife;bull;big dick} and {schoolgirl,panties,naughtyteacher}, please. Enter {cuckold}, then wait for the drop-down menu to appear below, add your tag, then type in {wife}, and so forth.

E) In general, separate tags, i.e. add {kinky} and then {schoolgirl outfit} instead of {kinky schoolgirl outfit}. Untangle your tags.

*** ⚠ ***

-- We’re deleting all the Taggy Centipedes, and/or fuse them with other, more compact/more popular tags. If you want to save the tag-ipedes you put on your published story, please go to your story (in your profile), scroll down to hit [Edit], then edit your tags. Add them one by one as described. Lastly, delete the tag-ipede, then hit [Submit] to confirm. (If you only change your tags, your story will not go back into the queue.)

-- We’re also generally combining tags. {wet snatch}, {wet cunt} and {wet vag} all get renamed/combined into {wet pussy}, for example. If you tagged your story with both {wet snatch} and {wet pussy} in the past, it will now have two {wet pussy} tags. Again: Go to your story, scroll down to [Edit] and fix that.

-- In general, weird tags may show up on your stories that don't really fit or mischaracterize your story. Apologies for the inconvenience! Please fix them individually!

5. Help, my tags keep disappearing?! I swear I added them!!!

-- Many users have encountered the Very Hungry Taggerpillar. It's a mystical creature that lives in the digital ether and feeds on tags, so that they vanish from your stories on their way into the moderators' queue. This is annoying for everyone. Please don't get angry at the story mods when they point out that you might want to add tags to your submission. 😓 We're trying to help your story get more views!

-- It often appears that taggerpillars find shelter in the shade of your various java script blockers, adblockers, ghostery etc. browser add-ons. Therefore, try whitelisting lush and disabling all those nifty add-ons on this site. Alternatively, try switching to the browser on your computer that doesn't have any of those extras. (You all have that one browser on your computer, I'm sure.) It should improve the overall Lush experience, too.

-- If that still doesn't work, you can always add tags post-publishing, or politely ask the mods for help.

(～￣▽￣)～ … and that should be all for now. Any questions or Trouble with Taggles, feel free to message me. I'm starting to get the hang of them ～(￣▽￣～)

Kind regards,

cydia/The Admin Team

Thank you, Cydia. I had some weird happenings with tags on a story that I submitted yesterday, so much so that I mentioned it in the 'Note to Moderators' box.

I had tags disappearing, had wording changed and also the order in which they were added and made sense chronologically changed.

I now know the culprit was The VHT.

Tags disappearing - That's the taggerpillar again. I'm not knowledgeable enough to say whether this issue can be solved on the Lush servers side, or whether it's due to the user side's browser settings/features. I do know that switching to a browser without the adblockers etc can help. (Not just with tagging issues, but with uploading hiccups and endlessly spinning circles.)

Wording changed - Yeah, that was probably me. For example: I see {cheat}, {dirty cheat}, {cheats}, {cheatz}, {cheater}, {cheatr}, {cheating}, {cheatng}, {cheated}, {she cheated}, {she cheats}, {he cheated}, {cheating wife}, {cheating husband}, {cheating_husband}, {cheating-husband}, {cheating-huband}, {cheat gf}, {cheating gf}, {cheating on gf}, {cheater boyfriend}, {boyfriend cheats}, {boyfriend cheated}, {cheating_on_boyfriend}, {cheat affair}, {cheating sex}, {cheet}, {cheeter}, {chet}, {cheatt} and {chea} (...to name just a few...) and combine them all into one tag: ({cheating}). Hope the changes weren't too far off so far. There will be more to come for a bit.

Order of adding - I am honestly not sure whether the order of adding is necessarily linked to the order in which they are displayed at the end. Seems to be this way most of the time, but not always. It's another... unique feature of this site

Again: Sorry for the inconvenience. We're trying to whip things into a more useful, user-friendly shape.

Quote by cydia

Wording changed - Yeah, that was probably me.

I did not mean that the wording was changed by a Mod, it changed (more than once) before submission.

I type my stories direct to Lush, saving draft very frequently, and I added tags before the story was finished. Although saved, when I next went in on 'edit' to continue typing the story, the tags were not all the same as originally added, nor in the same order.

I eventually gave up on trying to get the tags as I originally wanted them and in the order I intended. The story is now online but the tags are not as initially added nor in the order originally added or intended, but it is no big deal.

There's no guarantee on ordering. As far as I know, the tags have no intrinsic notion in this regard. It may be that they're assigned in the order they are added, but I'm not certain.

If a mod alters a tag or removes a combo tag and replaces it with one or two others, they will probably get added to the end of the set.

Quote by cydia
I see {cheat}, {cheater}... etc

Yeah, most of those I'd do the same. They're all identical, with the possible exception of the cheating+person combos. There's an argument in today's tagging system that discrete tags for:

• {cheating girlfriend}

• {cheating boyfriend}

• {cheating wife}

• {cheating husband}

will yield better results than:

• {cheating} {girlfriend}

• {cheating} {boyfriend}

• {cheating} {wife}

• {cheating} {husband}

Because the search terms aren't additive. And certainly people who are after specifically cheating wife stories, don't want to wade through all the other combos.

Now, when we get proper combinatorial tag searching capability, it won't matter and - at that point - having them separate is likely to be better. But for now, as long as the familial terms have been kept associated with the stories, it'll do.

The only advantage to having popular combos is that, with a limit of ten tags per story, having every term as its own tag means someone might run out of topics. Especially on longer stories that have multiple plot elements.

Ultimately, it's a balancing act to maintain a decent set of tags that will cater to the widest array of whims and allow people to find specific niche smut they want to consume, vs having so many specific terms and combos that each tag has one story associated with it. Or so general that one tag has 20k stories associated with it. Neither does anybody any favours when it comes to filtering for desired content.

We can always revisit them in future: as long as the spirit of the combined tags is maintained when we're rejigging them, we can split/combine them at will fairly easily. It does take quite a bit longer and is more effort to split/combine them and keep some combos, because it means doing multiple sweeps with the tools we have available to merge/rename/split certain terms, and then simply combine the remainder that are all pretty much the same. I can't do it for long periods of time because it does my head in!

Edit: interestingly, {cheating on gf} should be replaced with {cheating boyfriend} and vice versa. That's kinda subtle.

The story that I am currently writing has had tags changed, omitted, and put in a different order.

I am not sure that I like that, but I guess that is what I will have to get used to.

Update: Whew, the biggest bit of the cleanup is done! Down from 24 000+ tags to 9 000. Still a lot, but a lot better.

*** ⚠ *** Please check your stories individually and fix any taggy weirdness (sorry, it couldn't be avoided! Something something egg something omelette). If you only edit your tags, your story won't go back into the queue for re-approval when you hit "submit".

• You can still create new tags as usual in Edit mode, e.g. when you create a new submission.

• Remember to type in lowercase.

• Please check your spelling when you do.

• Seriously, check your spelling.

• No, sireously.

• Seriusly.

• Sereously.

• Sirriously.

• Ceriously

Avoid periods, commas, dashes, underscores, ampersands, numbers etc., please. They aren't compatible with the search function (at the moment. Maybe this will change? Maybe a hero will come along and give the search function an overhaul...? *wink wink nudge nudge*).

That should be all. Any tag-related questions and angry messages can be directed at me. I've already put on my helmet. Let's go.

Kind regards,

cydia ✧/ᐠ-ꞈ-ᐟ\

That was a brutal, dirty, mind-numbingly thankless chore - except I'm here to say thanks, so now it's not that, at least.

Great job, Cydia, and thanks again for all your hard work.

btw, i find it funny that a few of the tags we found were things like "iluvsprite" "spriteisawsome" and... i forget the others.. equally funny. "spritehasaniceass" possibly? (and no, for once, i am NOT making shit up lol)

Quote by cydia

Update: Whew, the biggest bit of the cleanup is done! Down from 24 000+ tags to 9 000. Still a lot, but a lot better.

*** ⚠ *** Please check your stories individually and fix any taggy weirdness (sorry, it couldn't be avoided! Something something egg something omelette). If you only edit your tags, your story won't go back into the queue for re-approval when you hit "submit".

That should be all. Any tag-related questions and angry messages can be directed at me. I've already put on my helmet. Let's go.

Kind regards,

cydia ✧/ᐠ-ꞈ-ᐟ\

Thank you for your efforts.

I can see one recent story of mine that now has a 'married man' tag but there is no married man in the story. I just want to remove that tag, not change it for something else, so if I click on the little 'x' and hit submit that will do it without the story going back into the queue?

There may well be other tag alterations once I check on the 350+ stories of mine.

I am reluctant to do this and hit submit until you promise that the story will not 'disappear.'

Thank you.

Paul

The story will be fine if all you're changing is tags. But try it on one story and if by some random act of nature it does go to the queue, shout here and someone will pop it back on the site pronto.

Quote by WannabeWordsmith

The story will be fine if all you're changing is tags. But try it on one story and if by some random act of nature it does go to the queue, shout here and someone will pop it back on the site pronto.

It works!

Thank you.

I deleted the tag that had no relevance to the story, hit submit, AND my story is still where it should be.

I have several other stories where the same tag appears two or, sometimes, three times. I might tidy those up.

In light of the recent changes to the story submission process, all edits you make to stories - including tag changes - are now going to be diverted to the moderation queue.

Please, if all you're doing is making tag changes, add a Mod Note to that effect so we can process them quickly and get the stories back on the site.

In the meantime, the dev team are working on improving the queue to highlight such changes automatically for us. But a mod note helps massively too, so please use them if you make edits to give us a heads-up what you've changed. Thank you.

It would be nice to have additive tags. Example. Choose spanking. Let it filter, then search schoolgirl, filter again. Then choose paddle. This would let you highly filter results.

Quote by Vampire_vixen
It would be nice to have additive tags.

I'd love that too. Not sure if it's on the "yes we'll do that" pile for the developers. I've mentioned it often enough they're probably fed up of me asking!