One's own fic on del.icio.us

[lobelia321]

A question to those of you with much nouse about how to use del.icio.us:

Have you any suggestions on how best to integrate one's own fics into a page that is otherwise a recs page?

isiscolo and minervacat posted some really interesting advice on how best to organise tags and tag bundles on del.icio.us but I'm still a bit at a loss on how to tag my own fics (that is, fics written by myself). In my own del.icio.us, I've currently put my fics under the tag of 'ownfic' (which is not a commonly-shared tag, I don't think) and left off the tag 'fic' -- because I found if I put them under 'fic', they'd get all mixed up with my recs and I didn't want my recs and my self-pimps to be in the same category. Also, my recs are intended for the world at large (hey, everybody, read these fabulous fics!) while my ownfics are primarily intended for me (so I can find the link quickly; so I can track who adds me to del.icio.us).

So I don't want the fics (wot i rec) and my ownfics to contaminate each other, as it were. I want them to appear quite separately on del.icio.us. In addition, my ownfics share a) fandoms and b) character pairings with everybody else's fic. So when I (or anyone) click on 'fic', I get a list of characters; and when I click on a character (e.g. Rodney McKay), I inevitably get my ownfics mixed up in the list with other peoples' fics.

Any hints at all on how you manage this issue? Or on how you've seen other people manage this issue?

Comments

[musesfool.livejournal.com]

I have a separate account for my own fic on del.icio.us. Which isn't up to date, because I have written a ton of fic, but it seemed the best way to not get it all mixed in with my recs. When it's fully up to date, I hope it can be used as an easily searched index, since I've written in a lot of fandoms, and my site isn't searchable at all.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

A very interesting and elegant solution. The only thing would be that your ownfics are not recognisable as such and searchable as such across del.icio.us, because the fic isn't marked with an author (that is, you have to be at your site plus know that these are fics by you, in order to identify what anything is). If, e.g., I stumbled across one of your fics by doing a search, I wouldn't know what it was or by whom. Hm, I'm now pondering a kind of 'About' link at the top of every tag bundle, to explain to people how a particular site works and link to sister sites, such as recs. Also, because you've chosen wildly different names, it would never have been apparent to me that you are one and the same person. Where, I guess, an 'about' link would come in useful. Hm. *ponders all of this*

But this seems to me very useful for separating ownfic from ficrec.

I like a lot how you've added a 'date' tag to your ownfics. To me, it is really important when something was posted. I'd love to do it for all ficrecs as well but often it's difficult to impossible to recover this data. Thanks for the really helpful hints! *goes off to play around with delicious*

[musesfool.livejournal.com]

If, e.g., I stumbled across one of your fics by doing a search, I wouldn't know what it was or by whom

Ah, well, that part doesn't bother me so much, though I suppose it probably should. The way I figure it, "musesfool" is my LJ username and also was the name of my website for a long time (it's still in the URL), so I figure people who are interested in my stories already know that musesfool = victoria.p, so I'm looking at it as a searchable index of my website that people would get to from other places, rather than via surfing del.icio.us itself. If that makes sense.

I don't really feel a need to associate it with my recs account, though I suppose if I wanted to be really thorough, I'd use victoria.p as a personal bookmarks account, and unfitforsociety as the recs account, because that's the name of my recs page and LJ.

I just figure the people who are going to be using this will already know this stuff - I have a hard time conceptualizing that people would end up at any of my stuff without looking for it in the first place. Huh.

I like a lot how you've added a 'date' tag to your ownfics. To me, it is really important when something was posted.

Since I've been doing this a long time now, it was important to me to keep track of that, yeah.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Heh. But I, for example, have networks and subscriptions so when the tag 'wraith', for example, pops up anywhere, it is posted to me, no matter who the author. I guess I can then click on the link and discover the author and then post it to del.icio.us with a revised header, *g*. I will often read an author's recs if I like their fics because I figure our tastes might be the same (that is how I stumbled upon Cimorene's recs page, for example, which opened all sorts of eyes for me). And if someone recs stories I adore I might be led to think, hm, and what have they written? Do you see what I mean?

I think it's getting one's head around the fact that del.icio.us is both a personal organising tool as a well as a shared bookmarks space open for the World.

[jaebi-lit.livejournal.com]

This would be a little annoying in that you'd have to go back and retag all your fics, but my suggestion is to come up with a description you like for all your fics (e.g. ownfic, mine) and then make it part of your character and fandom tags on your own fics. So tags for one of your fics might look like this:

ownfic, ownfic-PG, ownfic-SGA, ownfic-WraithLegolas, ownfic-McKay, ownfic-drama

That way, when you click on a character tag, your fics won't appear with other persons'. You can keep everything tagged on one del.icio.us but keep yours separate in the tags. An advantage of choosing a tag header such as ownfic and adding fandom, character, rating descriptors onto it is that in your tag listings, all the tags for your ownfics will show up together, instead of being scattered around.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Aha! Another really helpful hint! It is a bit of a bother but as I haven't uploaded all that many of my ownfics yet, it would actually be do-able. Musesfool came up with the suggestion of keeping fics and recs in separate delicious accounts; what I don't like about that is that nobody can tell that these are linked but the advantage is that you don't overburden one single account with vast numbers of tags and bundles. Hm, *ponders all of this*

Is what you have described to me what you do yourself?

[jaebi-lit.livejournal.com]

Well, I use my del.icio.us to keep track of other persons' fics, because I don't write very much, and all my fic is on LJ so I just sort it with LJ tags on LJ. But if I did tag everything on del.icio.us I would tag it like that, because I'm OCD about tagging by fandom, rating, pairing, length, etc. but wouldn't want to mix up my fics with the recs.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I don't use LJ tags because my lay-out won't allow them, and I like the search and tag facilities in del.icio.us so I thought this could be my default fic 'archive' as well as my recs page. Following the advice of someone whose name now escapes me, argh, I've renamed all my ownfic tags ownfic:character, ownfic:fandom and so forth. I will see how happy I am with this. So far, I'm quite satisfied! Thank you.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Duh!!! Having pulled up the comments page, I see that it was you who recommended this ownfic-blah system!! So double-thank you! Because so far I am really quite pleased with it! :-)

[jaebi-lit.livejournal.com]

Glad to hear that it's working for you! This has been an interesting to post to follow - abbylee's solution never would have occurred to me and yet it's really cool!

[abbylee]

Are you just wanting it so that *you* don't get them mixed up, or do you want to make sure that other people don't think you're reccing your own stories?

Because you could always combine links for your own surfing. Like first you click on http://del.icio.us/lobelia40/fic and then instead of clicking on the tag McKay, click on the + sign infront of McKay (on the sidebar). Then you get http://del.icio.us/lobelia40/fic+McKay.

For public consumption, you might prefer to change fic to ficrec which will make it more clear that it doesn't include your own fics. Maybe?

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I know the thing about the plus-sign, and I hope people who visit my del.icio.us site know this too -- because otherwise you'd really get into a muddle.

Are you just wanting it so that *you* don't get them mixed up, or do you want to make sure that other people don't think you're reccing your own stories?
I want to make sure that other people don't think I'm reccing my own stories.

I'm not entirely sure how your point about the plus sign will solve this muddle? *feels braindead* I thought about writing ficrec instead of fic; I will ponder this. I can always change it back again if it doesn't work out, can't I?

[abbylee]

Maybe I'm misunderstanding?

Lets say I go to your rec page. I click on "ficrec" to see what you like. I realize it's not just my favourite fandoms, so I click on "McKay" to narrow it down to Stargate and my favourite whiner. I start looking through, and notice that now not all the fics are recs, some of them are yours. I click on +ficrec, and now get only McKay stories that you recommend. Because it's called ficrec, as opposed to fic, its easier to see how to filter it further to get only recommended stories.

That would be my preferred method of surfing.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Aha, okay, I got you now! Thank you! All of these are very helpful and practical hints.