6

As for now, it looks like will be the only fantasy work by . I think it is confusing because some questions are tagged only with the title name, while others are tagged with both.

IMO, we should delete Rowling's tag, or at least make it a synonym.

2
  • Disclaimer: I'm not a Potter fan. This suggestion should serve as a precedent for all other one-work authors.
    – HuBeZa
    May 9, 2011 at 6:57
  • I disagree, Harry Potter is an extremely well known series. I believe it is satisfactory to have an exception for this and similar series.
    – PearsonArtPhoto
    May 11, 2011 at 2:47

3 Answers 3

Reset to default
6

We should make the tag wikis clear what the purpose of each tag is. In this case, the tag focuses on the work itself, and the the tag, like all author tags, is for collecting her works (redundant for the moment) and for discussing her as an author. Such as with this question:

Does J.K. Rowling deny writing fantasy?

2
  • 1
    That question is about Harry Potter. About the context (and specifically J.K. Rowling's idea of what HP is), not about the content, but we don't need such a fine distinction in tags.
    – user56
    May 9, 2011 at 19:31
  • 1
    @Gilles:Actually that was about JKR only. The viewpoint of the question was why a prominent author in SF would make such a statement.
    – apoorv020
    May 12, 2011 at 12:06
5

No, we don't, at least as long as JKR has written nothing else. “Harry Potter” is the better-known designation, and there are far more “Harry Potter fans” than “J.K. Rowling fans”.

I'm rather for removing . Of the three questions in this tag, two are also tagged , and the third could be (it's about the context rather than the content of HP but still about HP).

8
  • I think author tags are likely to be superior in the long term. e.g. Eddings writes the Belgariad, we tag questions as belgariad. Later he writes the Mallorean, the Elenium, etc. Do we then need mallorean etc? Better to have had david-eddings in the first place. We can't know (even if she died - look at Tolkien) that there will never be more works.
    – Tony Meyer
    May 11, 2011 at 2:35
  • 1
    I think people would call themselves "Harry Potter fans" if asked, but would also immediately read anything new from JKR, so are actually JKR fans.
    – Tony Meyer
    May 11, 2011 at 2:37
  • 1
    @Tony: I'm not sure about JKR, but so far we don't have a single JKR-not-HP question. For Tolkien, I think I see a distinction between tag:LOTR, tag:Middle-Earth and tag:JRRT. LOTR is for people who've seen the movie or read the book, and don't start with knowledge of the wider universe. ME is for people who've gone beyond LOTR already. JRRT is about his non-ME works or his personal or publication history.
    – user56
    May 11, 2011 at 6:49
  • @Gilles clearly if we go by existing usage then if there is one it should be HP. I think the instinctive choice for a "popular" series would be to use the series name (LoTR, HP, Twilight). Perhaps it is best to go with popular to avoid having to re-tag. The problem I have with this is how do we decide which works have the series tag, which have the author tag, and which have both. Do we need meta questions in each case? Always-author seems cleanest (maybe I'm trying too hard to be 'clean').
    – Tony Meyer
    May 11, 2011 at 11:45
  • @Tony:We can always add tag synonyms if she writes more books.
    – apoorv020
    May 12, 2011 at 12:00
  • @apoorv020 does synoynmising "series-new" to "series-old" really make sense? They are not synonyms in the typical sense of the word.
    – Tony Meyer
    May 12, 2011 at 23:31
  • @Tony:No. What I meant was that if she writes new series, series-old can be synonymed to jkrowling.
    – apoorv020
    May 13, 2011 at 4:55
  • @apoorv020 so you would also prefer a jkr tag over a HP one? With HP synonymised to jkr?
    – Tony Meyer
    May 13, 2011 at 23:12
1

In general, one-work authors should be tagged under the author's name (in the format described in this post). If the work is a TV series (where there are many authors, typically unknown), under the series name as discussed earlier.

If the single work is a single novel (e.g. a new author), then we don't need a tag for the work, because we'll end up with a huge number of these tags. Fans of the work can follow the author tag (and get the added benefit of seeing when the author does release something new - it is likely that they will be fans of that as well). If someone's trying to find questions about the work and doesn't search for the author, then the search ought to find the work title in the question.

In the case where the "single work" is a series, there is perhaps value in a series tag, although this is more the case when the work is particularly well known (as with , or ).

If a tag is missing from a question, then anyone can edit that to add it in, and the change doesn't even need approval for most users, since the required rep is low. (If the tag is new, then some users cannot suggest this edit, but they can flag or bring it up in meta or chat, and in most of the cases this is relevant to, the tag will already exist).

There may be some questions that are about the author and not the work (e.g. questions about fandom are on-topic) or about the work and not the author (e.g. questions about fan-fic). In those cases only a single tag is appropriate - it seems likely that the former would be much more common than the latter (i.e. author is preferable over series). The tag wikis help explain the difference, although hopefully people would guess correctly in these cases.

1
  • 1
    Privileges to create a new tag are required, one cannot just suggest a new tag unless they have the required reputation.
    – PearsonArtPhoto
    May 11, 2011 at 2:45

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .