#and i'm 75% they're going to be hell to implement

[giddydelphiresearcher]

Scalpel and gel working, along with guidelines for both incisions and excisions! With this there's now 4 tools, so my next step will be to implement the tool wheel for smoother tool switching. Also, the scalpel's collision detection can skip over things if you move it too fast. Gotta fix that tomorrow.

[razielim]

The most useful search-by-tag results that no one implements would be to have a "RANDOM" option BUT, followed by a "Randomize Again" button, and radio button options of:

75th percentile (of interactions within that tag)

50th percentile

25th percentile

All

If I'm looking at a specific tag, I don't want entirely random posts. I don't.

But I do want some variety beyond just "Most Popular" which might end up being the same five admittedly decent posts for ten fucking years, or "Most Recent" which might be a slew of uninteresting posts for five weeks straight.

Most platforms don't implement "Random" in search options at all, which is a loss, but imagine how good "Random" could be if you knew that the order is totally random across the entire history of the tag, including oldies you might've missed and brand spanking new takes, BUT it's also posts that have gotten a fairly decent number of interactions within the context of that subject's activity rates. 75th and 50th would be great places to poke around. Now, maybe you've run out of 50th percentile posts in your small fandom, or maybe you want to go looking for more undiscovered pearls in a large fandom, but you don't want the absolute bottom-of-the-barrel spam or unrelated tirades. 25th percentile, boom! And hey, maybe you really DO want truly random. That IS a great baseline to offer.

Platforms be implementing "For You" pages with all sorts of algorithms, tracking, AI decisions, and even killing chronological pages to get people to use those unpopular implementations without ever even trying out the more analog option.

Imagine you could not just save your favorite tags to search, but save the SORTING preferences for that tag. Now you throw that together onto a "Your Tags" page. You save your small fandoms at 25%, your big fandoms at 75%, and you save some current events or musicians at "Most Recent" so you don't miss anything that pops up. Maybe the platform also gives you the option to adjust the relative weight of a tag. You want to see MORE of your small fandoms than your large fandoms, if possible? Little slidey scales with locks or a priority drag-and-drop customizer on the sidebar.

Congrats, you've created a "For You" page that actually draws people to use it, customize it, browse it, and hell probably even TALK about it positively. Add the ability to add your top five tags from your top five favorite blogs/creators to show up on that page in chronological order, and people would never feel the need to leave that page because they'd never feel that they're missing out on their real connections to look at things relevant to their interests.

There's still the trouble of seeing posts from people who HATE the thing you're trying to see more of, but boy, you're already eliminating a lot of that trouble by not having an algorithm incorrectly guess which tag was the most relevant one from those other posts you liked when it's trying to find similar ones. Example: You liked twenty #sheith #vld posts, and the "For You" page serves you a bunch of #vld posts that are anti-sheith bc it didn't understand that #sheith was more important to you than #vld. If you're in control and have the ability to track 25th+ percentile #sheith, your likelihood of seeing anti posts on your randomized page drops significantly.

Yes, the platform still gets to prioritize people and posts who are already popular, which is important for user participation, retention, attention, and their whole business model, BUT the whole of the process isn't entirely in the hands of the company now. Users get a say in whether they maybe want to see some low-interaction posts on their frequently-refreshed random page, and if so, on which exact topics.

"For You" pages are random enough to break through the monotony of "Most Recent" and "Most Popular", but they're BAD random. Give users GOOD random as an option and see "For You" usership climb among that holdover demographic of people who still enjoy curating their experience.

[chen-chen-chen-again-chen]

For the WIP Game! (I went and updated the original post so it has links to all the answers, if folks want to check those out. Sometimes my brain good!)

@you-remind-me-of-the-babe asked me about the WIP called Will suck dick for books! 😆😆 I did not anticipate that folks would ask about works in fandoms they are not familiar with but I am LIVING FOR IT~~

I'm also going to go ahead and tag @fatalfangirl here because (methinks??) you have partaken of the Haikyuu. Going to also tag @thewesterndoor because YOU KNOW WHAT YOU DID lolol jkjk who got me into Haikyuu and whose Take/Ukai fics I ADORE.

Fandom background: Haikyuu!! is an earnest and hilarious volleyball anime where everyone is gay and chaotic and loveable. It's SO SO GOOD and like all sports anime, it is not necessarily just about sport but about FEELINGS~

Pairing background: Takeda Ittetsu/Ukai Keishin

Takeda (Take-chan): looks like a cinnamon roll but could actually kill you, English teacher, glasses nerd, his superpower is bowing at like 1000 km/h, head coach but he knows nothing about volleyball at the beginning of the series (he just stepped in to fill a void b/c he a good human), cries easily, tries to use poetry to motivate high school athletes, terrifyingly good at holding his liquor, in my headcanon he's a beast in the sack

Ukai: looks like he could kill you but is actually a cinnamon roll, Reformed Gangster Vibes, in his late 20s but his energy is always Kids Get Off My Lawn, lightweight, easily manipulated by cute English teacher into coaching a high school volleyball team even though he has full time jobs running a convenience store and helping out w/ the family farm because (in this fic) he's Weak for Dat Ass

The fic: a canon-adjacent and canon-compliant take on (some of) the events in the series, but focused on the relationship between Takeda/Ukai, these baby adults who have somehow accidentally co-adopted 14 chaotic teens.

There's fake dating, nerding out about books, soft boyfriends being super soft and domestic, dating/married even if they don't realize it, and a backstory involving writing your phone number in the back of a book, lending it to a hot stranger, and somehow running into them seven years later.

U want a snippet? here's a snippet. I has lots of snippets. (This bad boy is sitting at like 75% in my drafts folder):

"Look, are you going to buy something or not?"

"Are you going to coach the boys' volleyball team?"

"No. You should try a meat bun, they're pretty good." 

The Nice New Teacher buys a pizzaman, which is kind of adorable. "I'll come back," he says, but it's hard for him to sound threatening around a mouthful of steamed bun. 

And another, a little later on:

Keishin's gotten used to being accosted by the Nice New Teacher every few days, so he's a little weirded out by a sudden radio silence. In that time, he reviews the store inventory, decides to implement a new organization system for the frozen foods, and even washes the windows. It's a slow couple of days, okay? 

He literally just finishes throwing GunGun bars at a couple of punks from the volleyball team - the one with the shaved head catches the protein bar in his teeth, what the hell is Take-chan teaching them - when the store phone starts ringing. 

"Lo, Sakanoshita Market." 

"Ukai-kun!" Take-chan exclaims. He sounds breathless and excited, as if he's been eager to talk to Keishin all day, which is kinda adorable and - weird, Keishin corrects himself, weird, and not adorable, and definitely not a little bit charming. 

"You again," Keishin sighs, as if he's got about fifty million other things that he could be doing with his time, instead of re-reading One Piece. 

And then later, after Keishin's ass is well and truly Trapped:

"Er, thanks," Takeda says, flushing.  "I, ah, as you can see, I… I have a lot of books." 

"Do I need to stage an intervention, Sensei?" 

Takeda scratches the back of his head. "My mother was a librarian," he says, laughing a little. "So I come by it honestly." 

Keishin finds himself squinting at a silver flask resting between a bunch of cookbooks. There's writing on it in English, in fancy Gothic lettering, and he manages to just make out Will suck d- before Takeda suddenly materializes there, his smile very bright. 

"Hope you don't mind red pepper, there's a lot of it in the yakisoba!" Takeda says, his voice a bit higher than usual. "We should eat!"

THANK YOU for letting me blather about this fic in a fandom other than Carry On, LOLOLOL!!! It's so fun to come back to this and definitely makes me excited to FINALLY FINISH AT SOME POINT THIS YEAR RAWR~