I mean, it's probably never going to happen
I have no idea how a site handles fanfiction/Archive of Own content.

I just thought it'd be cool if e621 archived furry stories just as we do with images.
and had a system entirely based on how FiMFiction handles their fanfics.

With a popular demand, upvote/downvote ratio.

Just a place to condense literature for wannabe furry writers.

Again, it'd be pretty cool if e6 could provide such a place.
I just wanted to get my thoughts out there.

Now that I think about it. Some posts do have an entire (at least chapters) in their descriptions, usually found in Pools.

The ability to tag literature with the same tag set as e621 would be a huge help for finding this kind of content. Currently I randomly stumble on FA pages and hope it has what I'm looking for. We could even link images and literature to each other.

Aww, did you read my post?

I'd be in favor of it, but it seems doubtful that it will actually happen.

It would be nigh impossible to go through potentially thousands of words (per submission) just to verify the viability of a tag.
Not to mention that uploading guidelines and quality standards get thrown out the window completely, and anything goes for text.

Literature, at this point, should only exist in the description section with an accompanying artwork.

There are also other issues I have raised for the idea on another similar thread.

> How FimFiction handles their fanfics

And how is that? What are the rules about tagging there, do they produce an overall usable search (unlike, say, AO3) and a minimum of useless tags? Isn't tagging defined by the author, who is also in 99% of cases the uploader? If so, it's not obvious that it would be compatible with e621.

I have used Boorus in the past that allowed text posts without much trouble, although they didn't have nearly the same high quality tagging standards, so, who knows.

sipothac said:
I have used Boorus in the past that allowed text posts without much trouble, although they didn't have nearly the same high quality tagging standards, so, who knows.

This isn't quite the same thing, but fluffybooru and later fluffy-community acted as a reposity for text-based media. Even if you're not interested in the content, you might find the format helpful.

This is where you realize you need to build it.

alphamule said:
This is where you realize you need to build it.

If only I had the skill and the patience to learn...

closetpossum said:
If only I had the skill and the patience to learn...

Or cheat and use off-the-shelf stuff.

peacethroughpower said:
This isn't quite the same thing, but fluffybooru and later fluffy-community acted as a reposity for text-based media. Even if you're not interested in the content, you might find the format helpful.

FluffyBooru was the main thing I was talking about having text posts. with it essentially being a crowd-sourced creative writing project it makes sense to have text posts on there. and I liked the text posts on there. stuff like Fall of Cleveland and GiantNeckbeard's other stories are some of the best pieces of content ever made in the community and are essentially required reading.

but I'm not sure it'll translate to a website as large, broad as e6 with e6's philosophy. I'd imagine dealing with tagging text posts to the same standard as how we deal with images would be difficult. we kind of already have an idea of what it'd be like with old text-based SWF posts like CoC, MVOL, and Paraphore (although with those you had to grind, save scum, and kinda just flail to experience everything, so...).

Literature with the tagging standards of e6 would be absolutely amaizing. The only issue is that it would likely require a lot of back end work such as ui overhauls for text posts and server changes/optimization to get it to work well. But the tagging practices and sorting options of e6 would already work very well with text based media.

If we ever did host literature (which would be awesome) we would have to use an honor system of simple content warning tags and characters. There isn't much else we could do. Then again, we do live in the future now and we have AI, so we could potentially train esix to suggest content tags.

In the meantime, AO3 is probably what you guys are looking for. It has a pretty good tagging system with characters, copyrights, and content warnings.

I'd love this to be a thing.
Plenty of stories I've read more than a decade ago now that are... just gone.

rainbow_dash said:
If we ever did host literature (which would be awesome) we would have to use an honor system of simple content warning tags and characters. There isn't much else we could do. Then again, we do live in the future now and we have AI, so we could potentially train esix to suggest content tags.

I'm glad that the idea is not entirely off your radar guys.
Glad to hear that the implamentation of AI could help soften your loads if a Literature section was created.
If it's within the radar, it's pretty good news
_____________________________________________

I also want to add because E621 is like an archive for media (ARTWORK) and sometimes e6 is the only place to find certain things when those original posts get deleted.

Literature should be protected by e621 as well.

bahebros said:
I'd love this to be a thing.
Plenty of stories I've read more than a decade ago now that are... just gone.

As they said. We shouldn't let furry literature disappear like that, it needs to be preserved...at least that's my opinion.
Not only that, we gotta be able to write our own original stories here and let people enjoy another form of content.

Would it make sense to put furry literature on a different site managed by the same people? Similar to how e6ai is the same software but a different set of data.

Mainly I think it would be good to have a site for furry literature, and have it be searchable with many of the same tags from e621, but it doesn't have to be the same site.

aaronfranke said:
Would it make sense to put furry literature on a different site managed by the same people? Similar to how e6ai is the same software but a different set of data.

Mainly I think it would be good to have a site for furry literature, and have it be searchable with many of the same tags from e621, but it doesn't have to be the same site.

why build a new site and have the same authority manage it? It just creates extra work and an extra load on the people who run this entire opperation.
Why not just build off the good foundations and roots we already have in front of us.

closetpossum said:
why build a new site and have the same authority manage it? It just creates extra work and an extra load on the people who run this entire opperation.
Why not just build off the good foundations and roots we already have in front of us.

The good foundations are for images and animations, not text, so things will have to be entirely reworked for stories and writing, which naturally means it would be best to have it on a different site.

snpthecat said:
things will have to be entirely reworked for stories and writing

would they, though? we'd just need to use slightly different standards for tagging .txt files, I don't see any problems with using our current tagging system on text posts. we've already had a sort of test run on how this would go on old text-based flash games like my_very_own_lith, paraphore, and corruption_of_champions, and those worked out relatively alright and text posts would be way easier to deal with than those, since you don't need to mindlessly grind for hours on end to read all the parts of a .txt file.

also creating a new site would mean potentially losing out on a large chunk of the visiterbase. not to mention there'd also be a loss of a considerable number of dedicated taggers and other power users and contributors.

darryus said:
would they, though? we'd just need to use slightly different standards for tagging .txt files, I don't see any problems with using our current tagging system on text posts. we've already had a sort of test run on how this would go on old text-based flash games like my_very_own_lith, paraphore, and corruption_of_champions, and those worked out relatively alright and text posts would be way easier to deal with than those, since you don't need to mindlessly grind for hours on end to read all the parts of a .txt file.

also creating a new site would mean potentially losing out on a large chunk of the visiterbase. not to mention there'd also be a loss of a considerable number of dedicated taggers and other power users and contributors.

The solution to that is a sister site... Literally just have a button for stories that leads there?

alphamule said:
The solution to that is a sister site... Literally just have a button for stories that leads there?

but would that even be necessary? is there a problem with having text posts just show up with the rest of the post types that already exist?

darryus said:
but would that even be necessary? is there a problem with having text posts just show up with the rest of the post types that already exist?

It would dilute searches. Unless there was an easy way to only search for text posts or only art posts, I'd imagine that some people would get annoyed.

strikerman said:
It would dilute searches. Unless there was an easy way to only search for text posts or only art posts, I'd imagine that some people would get annoyed.

type:txt -type:txt or have an autoapplied text_post tag, like how webm and flash work(ed).

the only real worries I'd have about allowing text posts is upholding the quality standard of the site and/or avoiding spam. having a janitor read through an entire short story or chapter of a larger story in order to accept it seems like it'd be quite a bit more of an ask than "does this image look like shit?". and, assuming we allow normal member-level users to make text posts, would we need to worry about users making spam posts?

pretty much the only booru I've used that allowed text posts was fluffybooru. it was fine there, but the fluffy pony community was like 4 layers deep into subculture, so everything was way smaller and the quality standard was borderline non-existent.

darryus said:
but would that even be necessary? is there a problem with having text posts just show up with the rest of the post types that already exist?

strikerman said:
It would dilute searches. Unless there was an easy way to only search for text posts or only art posts, I'd imagine that some people would get annoyed.

The standards and tagging tendencies and everything would be different. It would be like having music-only posts on here. It would only really make sense if it was an entirely different database.

At least for images, we have stories in descriptions, already, but no way of searching those easily. You can't search for quotes on descriptions for example.

alphamule said:
The standards and tagging tendencies and everything would be different. It would be like having music-only posts on here. It would only really make sense if it was an entirely different database.

At least for images, we have stories in descriptions, already, but no way of searching those easily. You can't search for quotes on descriptions for example.

I don't see how the tagging standards being different wound mean that a separate database would be needed. for the most part the tags we already have would be just as applicable to a text post as it would to an image or animation, it's just the content being tagged is textual rather than visual.

darryus said:
I don't see how the tagging standards being different wound mean that a separate database would be needed. for the most part the tags we already have would be just as applicable to a text post as it would to an image or animation, it's just the content being tagged is textual rather than visual.

Well, the 'dilution' and the fact that most people aren't going to be wanting to find stories? Probably a bad assumption, I guess?

alphamule said:
Well, the 'dilution' and the fact that most people aren't going to be wanting to find stories? Probably a bad assumption, I guess?

I mean, people could just blacklist text_post, so I'm not sure dilution is really that big of a problem. assuming we don't just get a torrential flood of text posts, everything would be more or less business as usual.

in my opinion having stories on here would be a pretty big boon, it's kind of an untapped market for us. at this point it's really the only medium that we don't serve that places like FA and IB do.

While I like the idea, I think there are a few issues to work out first.

How would quality be judged? Who has permission to approve works?
Would staff approve or deny works based on just skimming and checking for obvious errors? Most of the current approvers are users who are expected to judge images well. Would there need to be a separate class of users for textual posts? Would current approvers be allowed or expected to manage text as well? Do users with auto-approved upload permission automatically get granted approved textual uploads as well?

Would e621's tagging work for text?
Whoever is uploading a work has likely read it or has at least some idea of the content, but unlike an image it's hard to verify quickly if the tags are valid. On the other hand, there might be less mistakes in the first place, since some tags would be much less ambiguous in text rather than visually.

Would incomplete work be allowed, and how would updating a story be handled?
Would incomplete stories be allowed to be uploaded? Can such stories be updated if large parts change or a story is finished later? Who would be allowed to make these changes - only the uploader? Anyone? Could the author get access to the post, if needed? Would it need to be something like the current post replacements system, or could regular users be expected to maintain the content as well as the tags? If most users are allowed to edit, how do you verify that the work uploaded here is the same as the work uploaded elsewhere? Do staff need to check for changes somehow?

I would like to see an "e6 for text" but I think it might be better as a separate site. I do wonder how much of a user base a second site would have, though - it might be better as a feature of e621 just to make more users aware that it exists. Even then I wonder how many users would be interested, especially in maintaining uploaded work.

At least the storage requirements would be much lighter for text than images.

sys-yok said:
While I like the idea, I think there are a few issues to work out first.

How would quality be judged? Who has permission to approve works?
Would staff approve or deny works based on just skimming and checking for obvious errors? Most of the current approvers are users who are expected to judge images well. Would there need to be a separate class of users for textual posts? Would current approvers be allowed or expected to manage text as well? Do users with auto-approved upload permission automatically get granted approved textual uploads as well?

Would e621's tagging work for text?
Whoever is uploading a work has likely read it or has at least some idea of the content, but unlike an image it's hard to verify quickly if the tags are valid. On the other hand, there might be less mistakes in the first place, since some tags would be much less ambiguous in text rather than visually.

Would incomplete work be allowed, and how would updating a story be handled?
Would incomplete stories be allowed to be uploaded? Can such stories be updated if large parts change or a story is finished later? Who would be allowed to make these changes - only the uploader? Anyone? Could the author get access to the post, if needed? Would it need to be something like the current post replacements system, or could regular users be expected to maintain the content as well as the tags? If most users are allowed to edit, how do you verify that the work uploaded here is the same as the work uploaded elsewhere? Do staff need to check for changes somehow?

I would like to see an "e6 for text" but I think it might be better as a separate site. I do wonder how much of a user base a second site would have, though - it might be better as a feature of e621 just to make more users aware that it exists. Even then I wonder how many users would be interested, especially in maintaining uploaded work.

At least the storage requirements would be much lighter for text than images.

... Why do I get the creeping feeling I'd wind up getting voluntold to help out with the approval process if/when such a side-site/upload category got added?

Honestly, if it was added to the main site I'd just have it be an excuse to have checkboxes on the search that filter entire categories of posts. Animation, Audio, Image, and Text come to mind in that circumstance, as well as providing a future means for further expansion without splitting into subsites for each individual topic, such as if e6 decides one day to start hosting model/rig files for 3d work, or other such things. That's all speculative, of course.

"Would there need to be a separate class of users for textual posts? Would current approvers be allowed or expected to manage text as well? " Sounds like an avenue for denial-of-service, haha.

the additional workload of doing quality standard checks, as well as the potential for low-effort spam would definitely necessitate users being pre-approved before they're allowed to upload text posts.

I can almost see why people would think MODs should be responsible to sit their ass down and skim every story in order to make sure it's safe for approval and that's one of the reasons they say that this wouldn't work.
But we are living in a 25% Futuristic world...we have AIs now. Could just get an AI to read the story at a faster rate than any human and watch for certain controversial words, material, and then possibly even tag accordingly if the uploader did a crappy job at it themself....

idk...I'm just saying, the tools are available for those with the brains to use it. (I'm not smart enough at programs or AIs)

closetpossum said:
I can almost see why people would think MODs should be responsible to sit their ass down and skim every story in order to make sure it's safe for approval and that's one of the reasons they say that this wouldn't work.
But we are living in a 25% Futuristic world...we have AIs now. Could just get an AI to read the story at a faster rate than any human and watch for certain controversial words, material, and then possibly even tag accordingly if the uploader did a crappy job at it themself....

idk...I'm just saying, the tools are available for those with the brains to use it. (I'm not smart enough at programs or AIs)

Absolutely fucking not lmao

Not only are most networks not equipped for that sort of thing (they are horrendous in fact at this) but also, you're asking every uploader to essentially submit their art for scraping?

Fuck that

demesejha said:
Absolutely fucking not lmao

Not only are most networks not equipped for that sort of thing (they are horrendous in fact at this) but also, you're asking every uploader to essentially submit their art for scraping?

Fuck that

While I agree that using AI for that isn't a good idea, it is possible to use AIs without them being trained on the material.

Anyway, I believe if we add a literature section, we may want to reconsider the tagging standards used in stories. I don't think the level of detail we use for images is appropriate for stories. We can't tag a story table and book because it contains the sentence "He put his book on the table." But the major tags, like genders and most kinks, would definitely be included.

vulpes_artifex said:
While I agree that using AI for that isn't a good idea, it is possible to use AIs without them being trained on the material.

Anyway, I believe if we add a literature section, we may want to reconsider the tagging standards used in stories. I don't think the level of detail we use for images is appropriate for stories. We can't tag a story table and book because it contains the sentence "He put his book on the table." But the major tags, like genders and most kinks, would definitely be included.

While it is true you can use them without training them, this poses its own problem: the already useless tool cannot ever be not useless.

If it cannot "learn" the contexts under which our tagging system functions, it cant do the job of tagging. If it cannot understand the content of the writing, how is it going to judge appropriateness?

The thing is, it literally cannot. These networks aren't "intelligent" enough to comprehend most writing well enough to make those kinds of judgement calls.

We have to sit and ask ourselves also here, to what scrutiny are we judging these works?

We *already* have arguments over quality of drawn art. I can guarantee that 90% of users here aren't lit majors and can't do the judgement. What defines "approvability?"

Machines cant do this now, and until they are human level, never will.

WE cant even do it.

Which brings me back to my initial point. The only way for a system like this to even function? It requires the system to learn what a Proper Upload looks like, and needs to be trained on thousands of examples.

Tagging would be even moreso a struggle.

demesejha said:
Absolutely fucking not lmao

Not only are most networks not equipped for that sort of thing (they are horrendous in fact at this) but also, you're asking every uploader to essentially submit their art for scraping?

Fuck that

Bruh, what is you talking about? I didn't say Art I said Literature.

demesejha said:
While it is true you can use them without training them, this poses its own problem: the already useless tool cannot ever be not useless.
If it cannot "learn" the contexts under which our tagging system functions, it cant do the job of tagging. If it cannot understand the content of the writing, how is it going to judge appropriateness?
The thing is, it literally cannot. These networks aren't "intelligent" enough to comprehend most writing well enough to make those kinds of judgement calls.
We have to sit and ask ourselves also here, to what scrutiny are we judging these works?
We *already* have arguments over quality of drawn art. I can guarantee that 90% of users here aren't lit majors and can't do the judgement. What defines "approvability?"
Machines cant do this now, and until they are human level, never will.
WE cant even do it.
Which brings me back to my initial point. The only way for a system like this to even function? It requires the system to learn what a Proper Upload looks like, and needs to be trained on thousands of examples.
Tagging would be even moreso a struggle.

k, I get it, AI bad. We need human to do the deed.
Cause AIs cannot function on the level needed to properly process furry literature.
My, so passionate is your reply.
I just thought to lighten the load of MODs if we ever had a lit section just get a robot to do the heavy lifting.

demesejha said:
[...]

closetpossum said:
Bruh, what is you talking about? I didn't say Art I said Literature.

I believe literature is a form of art.

I don't think the tagging system used of pictures would work for text, tagging everything that is mentioned in a story would result in a terribly long list, and pretty much useless to find what one wants.
So I guess an AI for that would have to work in the following manner:

1) Have a pre-made list of tags, and each tag has a list of words and phrases that should result in this tag.
2) Tags applied by the AI would have a percentage showcasing accuracy, which results from the amount of matches in the tag's word list.
3) Users would still be able to edit tags, and the information of added/removed tags could be used to train said AI further. (Not sure how it would deal with tagging abuse though)

As for approvals, literatures could use a longer unapproved period, be automatically approved if it gets enough upvotes-to-character-lenght ratio( and deleted with enough downvotes? Bad art can look good, but are there redeeming qualities for badly written text?)

...or something like that

I disagree with the sentiment in the above posts that a separate site would have difficulty getting users and that would be a problem. We can link to it from e621 in many places if needed. Regardless, if there were a low amount of users, that's fine, it's less to moderate anyway.

Literature will always be less popular than visual art and has different (but also similar) tagging needs, it's better to keep it separated as another site instead of annoying e621 users with text posts in their search results.

aaronfranke said:
I disagree with the sentiment in the above posts that a separate site would have difficulty getting users and that would be a problem. We can link to it from e621 in many places if needed. Regardless, if there were a low amount of users, that's fine, it's less to moderate anyway.

Literature will always be less popular than visual art and has different (but also similar) tagging needs, it's better to keep it separated as another site instead of annoying e621 users with text posts in their search results.

I don't see how adding text posts to e621 would really annoy users. there's already posts that annoy users as it is, and there's already a way to deal with it, it's called the blacklist.

creating a new site or even a new section on e6 seems entirely unnecessary and would probably end up with it being DOA. I mean, look at Blips and Sets, they're linked to at the top of literally every single page on the entire website, and how many users even know that those exist, let alone know what they actually are. if something isn't actually integrated into the core experience of the website it's not going to get used and it's going to end up being a waste.

if it'd be feasible to include text posts along side images and animations, and I believe it is, I don't see why they shouldn't be.

sys-yok said:
While I like the idea, I think there are a few issues to work out first.

How would quality be judged? Who has permission to approve works?
Would staff approve or deny works based on just skimming and checking for obvious errors? Most of the current approvers are users who are expected to judge images well. Would there need to be a separate class of users for textual posts? Would current approvers be allowed or expected to manage text as well? Do users with auto-approved upload permission automatically get granted approved textual uploads as well?

Would e621's tagging work for text?
Whoever is uploading a work has likely read it or has at least some idea of the content, but unlike an image it's hard to verify quickly if the tags are valid. On the other hand, there might be less mistakes in the first place, since some tags would be much less ambiguous in text rather than visually.

Would incomplete work be allowed, and how would updating a story be handled?
Would incomplete stories be allowed to be uploaded? Can such stories be updated if large parts change or a story is finished later? Who would be allowed to make these changes - only the uploader? Anyone? Could the author get access to the post, if needed? Would it need to be something like the current post replacements system, or could regular users be expected to maintain the content as well as the tags? If most users are allowed to edit, how do you verify that the work uploaded here is the same as the work uploaded elsewhere? Do staff need to check for changes somehow?

I would like to see an "e6 for text" but I think it might be better as a separate site. I do wonder how much of a user base a second site would have, though - it might be better as a feature of e621 just to make more users aware that it exists. Even then I wonder how many users would be interested, especially in maintaining uploaded work.

At least the storage requirements would be much lighter for text than images.

For quality and approvals, there would probably have to be a different set of volunteers. Unlike your average picture which can be approved or disapproved in a few seconds or after 1-2 minutes of thinking, every text post can vary wildly in length. A short chapter on one post, then the next post can have a chapter with a ten-thousand word count. I don’t see why the current Janitors can’t approve them if they want, though.

I don’t really see how TWYS (or rather Tag What You Read?) wouldn’t work. SoFurry already has a similar system of “unofficial tags” where users can put tags in, and the tags can even change per chapter. If the content warnings set by an author on a different site didn’t happen in their work, why should we tag it here?

Only real question is efficiency. Should a tag be valid for something that’s merely implied? A character might be lying or exaggerating about something. If the literature is multi-chapter, do we tag the work as a whole or just by chapter?

Obviously, if anybody tries to screw with the text not made by the original author, they’ll get warned or banned. As for incomplete works by the writer, there’s more than a few artists post their incomplete comics already, so writers can post their in-progress works so long as the chapter/post is obviously complete. If the post itself is obviously unfinished, then it’ll get deleted.

I would also love to see this, as someone who is largely a fan of literature, I've found myself groaning every time I have to try to find something on furaffinity - even stuff I've read before and forgot to favorite. I do think it might be wise to have this type of stuff on its own site though, as I like how undiluted e6's search is and I think the tagging of literature would be different enough that it would complicate the already great search system here.

If the ai crowd gets its own e6 framework site, then surely the literature crowd should be able to get one as well. Although that might not be as official. And who knows? Maybe you could still get an official endorsement.

It'd only require someone to set the whole thing up. I'd genuinely be surprised if you wouldn't be able to find the necessary team, considering how dedicated this community is.

mucous_lucas said:
If the ai crowd gets its own e6 framework site, then surely the literature crowd should be able to get one as well. Although that might not be as official. And who knows? Maybe you could still get an official endorsement.

It'd only require someone to set the whole thing up. I'd genuinely be surprised if you wouldn't be able to find the necessary team, considering how dedicated this community is.

Absolutely. I wish I knew how to program in Ruby, I was even asking a friend who is familiar with it if they had the time to take a look at the e6 source for this reason. I know I'd gladly read through stories to help moderate if a site like that needed volunteers.

casuallynoted said:
Absolutely. I wish I knew how to program in rust, I was even asking a friend who is familiar with it if they had the time to take a look at the e6 source for this reason. I know I'd gladly read through stories to help moderate if a site like that needed volunteers.

I'm an amateur programmer, but I haven't worked in rust before. I'm usually quick to learn how to write in languages I'm not familiar in, but I looked at the e6 code and there's just so many files to keep track of. I find the code incredibly difficult to keep track of and comprehend. But my inability of working with projects of this level of complexity has always held me back the most as a programmer.

mucous_lucas said:

casuallynoted said:
Absolutely. I wish I knew how to program in rust, I was even asking a friend who is familiar with it if they had the time to take a look at the e6 source for this reason. I know I'd gladly read through stories to help moderate if a site like that needed volunteers.

I'm an amateur programmer, but I haven't worked in rust before. I'm usually quick to learn how to write in languages I'm not familiar in, but I looked at the e6 code and there's just so many files to keep track of. I find the code incredibly difficult to keep track of and comprehend. But my inability of working with projects of this level of complexity has always held me back the most as a programmer.

...e6 is written in Ruby, not Rust?

wat8548 said:
I'm an amateur programmer, but I haven't worked in rust before. I'm usually quick to learn how to write in languages I'm not familiar in, but I looked at the e6 code and there's just so many files to keep track of. I find the code incredibly difficult to keep track of and comprehend. But my inability of working with projects of this level of complexity has always held me back the most as a programmer.

...e6 is written in Ruby, not Rust?

Whoops! I wrote this right after I woke up and my brain died. XD Thank you for the correction!