So, I've had this problem for a while now. I finish a book and want to find something new to read. Everybody may be thinking: "Been there, done that, so what?".

Well, little old me is a very picky reader. I oh so hate harem and anything to do with it. Unfortunately, nearly 70% of the books I stumble across have that thrice-cursed harem tag.

But that is not even the main reason for me wanting a Tag-Filter. I, and presumably a good number of other people, pick their books according to their mood. When I feel down, I want to read something fluffy or funny, and no drama or tragedy. But trying to find a perfect fit in this sea of stories frustrates me to no end. Sure, one can just type in the tag they're looking for in the search bar, but more than anything, I want a way to exclude certain tags (yes harem tag, I'm looking at you).

Thus, I want to ask you wonderful people and fellow readers: Are there others out there who would appreciate a more detailed search option? What other search features would you be interested in? If not, then how do you manage to find your books of interest? Have I perhaps overlooked something?

REMINDER: This is a personal opinion and it may or may not vary from yours. It is your right to have your own believes, however, if you feel the need to protect any of the tags mentioned above, this is not the place to do so since the tags themselves are not the topic of this discussion. Thank you for your understanding.

I wish you happy reading and stay healthy.

(ू•ᴗ•ू❁)

    CreepingDarkness you could try to search by Google I think.
    I did this a lot, for example, I want to search for comedy, I just type, comedy web novel and it did bring me to the comedy one.
    Something like that.
    Writing romance, horror, or tragedy works too I guess.

        Carciphones_02 Thank you, I may try that in the future. However, does this also work for excluding tags? Because, although no-harem is also a tag, not every author uses it.
        I would love to type something like for example [search: romance, adventure, magic |exclude: harem, tragedy, hentai], and then have a list with only stories that meet these criteria.

            There's also the problem that authors can generate tags themselves. So while you could search for say Action, that wouldn't pick up the ones labeled ACTION, AcTiOn, Aktion etc and so forth.

            Not only is there variants of different capitalization there's also misspellings, run on phrases and so forth.

            So while authors and readers have been crying for such a search it would first require gutting the existing extensively flawed tag system.

              Darth_Xiane Yes, indeed. I do, however, believe that putting in the work and effort to completely overhaul the existing system would be a necessary undertaking that will have to be done at some point in the future. It would be for the best though, if they did not wait for too long to execute this change.

              Competition never sleeps, and once something new and/or better pops up later on, it would become increasingly hard to adjust things then. Unless, of course, they simply could not care less about their common reader base, and instead want to bet on the loyal ones to stay and continue to spend their money.

                  You said something important here, CreepingDarkness . They are 'sleeping' in delaying this improvement. New platforms with better searches will appear, and a good search was what made Google excel and suffocate other searching services.
                  I'm a librarian by profession and I'm appalled by how broken and lacking their search is. Retrieve information cannot be overlooked in a directory of books!
                  It's obvious they undersell their novels, because the readers can't reach their catalog, only a small surface that appear in the top 10, first half of the app. They are kind of sitting on the top of a pile of money, but unable to use it. it's okay, I'm sure there's a lot of trash along with the money, but there's unused money in form of underrated and under advertised novels, that readers don't know how to find.
                  They don't have a good policy to declutter the catalog from novels with no content. Sometimes I think it's a strategy to appear they have more novels than they actually have.
                  Like, if a person doesn't have a contract and just wrote two paragraphs in two years, why not to send a notice telling they will delete dropped novels unless the user resume posting?
                  It doesn't do any good to hoard novels if the readers can't find them. How deep do you search for a story? Will good stories be buried forever for bad tags and bad advertising? If a novel doesn't perform well in the first weeks, it becomes buried forever because the tags and filters are poor, to say the least.
                  Sometimes I think they are too focused and amending a broken old app when they should probably make a new one to better display and sell the hundreds of novels they have under their catalog.

                      HinataPerolada Although I have never really learned it as a profession, I did work at a library for a bit over a year, and thus I can only agree with you. I like having a solid system to organize my things, be it for books or games or tools or whatever. This here, in my eyes, is but a chaotic collection at best, and it makes me feel really uncomfortable.

                      If it were me, I would establish a list of main-tags for genres, sub-genres, fandoms, and also specifications, like, is the protagonist male or female? Is he/she human or not? Is he/she an original character or taken from another story? Or maybe there are multiple protagonists? Then, I believe it to be necessary to add age restrictions and warnings for specific content. I only rarely see some authors mention gore or sexual content warnings in their descriptions.
                      And even with those tags provided by the system, the authors could still create their own tags for - for example - character pairings and the like.
                      But this set list of tags could then also be used to filter out the rankings for aforementioned tags and criteria, which would heighten the chance of discovering niche novels that would have otherwise gone unnoticed.

                      Regarding those novels that have been dropped, or not been updated for a longer period of time, I think that they could perhaps be organized in some sort of archive? Like, if a novel is not updated within, say, 3 months, the author will get a reminder and it will automatically get the status of [hiatus] assigned to it by the system and then get lower priority when searched. When half a years has passed since the last update, the author gets a notice and his work will get the status [dropped] assigned to it and it will then be put into an archive. Like that, it will no longer appear in a search and can only be viewed if one were to actively look for it by its name and the name of the author. Lastly, once a story has not been updated for a year, the author gets a warning and if he/she does not react within a week, the story will be permanently deleted. Of course authors can assign the [hiatus] and [dropped] status themselves if they wish to do so.

                      This should, as you put it, help 'declutter' this nightmare of a mess just a little bit.

                      I myself have at least 20 stories in my library that have not been updated for a year or so, but, although it may be in vain, I still somehow hope that one of them will be picked up again and continued. And it is somewhat sad to search for a new novel to read, find one with an interesting description and get hyped, only to then see the 'last update 6 months ago' down where the chapters are. Could really do without it.

                          Good suggestions!
                          I think they should develop a go-through creation wizard to help authors to index their books, with CreepingDarkness's suggestions. You'd start with,
                          "is your character..."
                          ( ) male
                          ( ) female
                          ( ) ensemble/ multiple main characters
                          and go through options to help with language, multiple Popular tags, genre and subgenre, and content warnings.

                              6 months later

                              This app really needs a tag filter.

                              I am sick of finally finding a novel that looks promising and then discover that there is a romance or harem tag on it! I am so done with the romance/harem genre but that seems to be the most popular type of novel there is on this app...

                              Ehh....harem is about 85% horrid and 15% good (or at least readable). It is still better odds than "system" novels. -shudders-

                              So I fully support a usable search engine that includes exclusion!

                                a year later

                                CreepingDarkness Yes, but there would need to be a "completed" novel option along with "hiatus" and "dropped."

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