Holiday tag

Hi there,
I had the craziest idea this morning as I was trolling some of my old stories. Every year we have a holiday challenge, but there is no way to find the older holiday stories after that unless the author has included holiday keywords in their summary. I started writing for the holiday challenge in 2006 (I know, I know!) but sadly, those stories will probably never get read again. Yet people might want to read a holiday story...if they had a quick way to find them.
What about adding an actual 'Holiday' category to the 'General' category? And then if we wanted, we could put holiday stories there - and not just winter holidays, but Halloween and April Fool's as well, since those tend to get their fair share of stories as well.
But then, some people might want their story in the category it belongs - ie, Marauder or Romance or whatever. So what about a holiday warning? It's not a warning, per se, but more of a tag, but then people could search the holiday warning and pull up all the stories with a holiday flair.
I would definitely go back and add it to my old stories, and I would probably use it as well, to find holiday stories from the past when I'm in the mood this season.
Just an idea - thanks for listening!
~Gina :)

Hmmm, that's interesting. I was actually thinking about something like this; my idea was something of a calender feature. This way, you can tag your story with a date (not just a holiday, but dates like July 31st, May 2nd, or September 1st) and search for that date like you would a genre, warning, etc.

Gina--I really like this idea. For *cough* more prolific authors who have pages and pages of stories, this would certainly be helpful. How possible is it mods?

Caroline--Not sure what you're talking about or what you mean. Why would you need a specific date?

Can I add something here in my capacity as a Mermuggle? We try and do themed episodes for special occasions, but unless someone specifically recommends one, it's really hard to find them. I have been able to direct the team towards competition winners when I can find the threads, but that's not always an option.

Having a holiday tag/warning (if it has to be classed as that) would be very beneficial.

~Carole~

In case you want to search for something on a specific day that isn't a holiday. For example, let's say someone wanted to search for a story about the Battle of Hogwarts. Instead of searching through massive amounts of stories, you can search (maybe with a drop-down menu?) for May 2nd.


EDIT- Oops, this was supposed to be in response to Lilly's post.

I think that would be slightly more complicated. For a start, what do you do with chaptered stories that span a length of time? Would you put the date as the one when the story starts, or the main event of the story, like the Battle of Hogwarts, or the death of Lily and James? What about one-shots that span a length of time, or stories that feature several main events? What about stories that concern events that we don't know the date of, like the torturing of the Longbottoms, or the murder of Dean Thomas' father? I think that would be a little complicated to execute.

I do like the idea of a holiday tag, though.

Sarah x

I think these are both good ideas, but agree that the calendar would be more complicated.

In response to Sarah's query on time span and unknown dates, I think that the calendar would probably be an option, a bit like you don't have to put warnings on fics if they don't need them.

So any word on a holiday tag? It would be great to add it to Christmas fics from years past so readers who are in the mood can find the stories they want quickly! I think just a general holiday tag would be more than enough to start with. Thanks!

Can I second Dina's suggestion? (or even Gina .... :o ) I'd also add that from a Mermuggle POV, it would make searching for stories for a particular episode so much easier for us and also the people who nominate stories.

~Carole~

A holiday tag would be awesome! It would definitely make it easier to find stories that I want to read, so I am "thirding" the motion Gina has put up. Pretty please???? :)