Multiple "Catagories" per story:

Grimbous just clues in that we're talking about multi-category stories WITH improved filtering tools. lol (I plead guilty to skimming.) I was imagining still searching one category at a time, as it is now, but with the stories having multiple categories. Big difference.

Hey, anything that helps readers get to what they are after I am all for. I still think an improved tag system is the way to go though.

 

Cant believe I haven't upvoted this yet.

Add in the option for the categories to automatically double as tags and you got a deal.

Here's how this should work:

First, we have general categories, which define the genre of the erotic fiction (Sci-fi, Fantasy, Mystery/Thriller, Horror, Romance, etc), and which you can only define 1 of. Then each story can have up to two secondary categories/sub-categories which covers significant overlap with other genres.

Finally, you can add themes to your story (Teen, Non-Con, Incest, BDSM, Fetish, Voyeur/Exhibitionism, and so forth) which describes the primary forms/types of sex, ages involved, etc.

All three will automatically add their equivalent tags to the story, and all three would make it easier to find things.

 

Category Organization seems to be similar to your suggestion.

 

I actually prefer this single main category system. I do however understand why people would want this, simply because some stories leave me thinking shouldn't this be in this other category? even though it technically is in a correct category currently.

I am one of those people that will go category by category checking several pages for new stories or stories I think I forgot to bookmark/favorite.

However a featured category section using the same list would be fine. While it wouldn't let the same story show up in multiple categories, it would allow for more specifying.

Basically where you have category show on the front page you could also have a line for featured. (Limit it to 3 or so or it would just end up like tags.)
Example, the blue lines would be featured categories, in this case I guess Teen, Incest(? Haven't read the story), and Group Sex

Now how this could help in the categories themselves, would be as mentioned before having a + and - list of all the categories where you could pick however many you want to be able to filter.

I honestly think this would be the best of both worlds since it lets you at a glance get more of an idea about the story and if you are interested in it, while not increasing the saturation of categories and you will be able to filter stories better. (actually because it would allow the author to specify a main focus probably slightly better).

 

After some thought, I think I prefer the single category system. The whole point of a category system is to allow stories to be sorted by their most important theme, to a certain level of genericness. In this regard, I think it's not the system itself that causes many of these strange issues, but rather the available range of categories. There's too much crossover where stories are conflicted between two categories, and nothing really available for others. I feel like, especially based on what you often find within, categories like Fetish and Fantasy are rather ill-defined. I don't know, I want to consider this a little more.

 

I think what we need is to have two types of categories. One that refers to the setting of the story, another that refers to the style\fetish

Real-life\Lesbian
Fantasy\Romance
Sci-fi\BDSM
Fan-fiction\Exhibitionist & Voyeur

It even makes migration to the new system easier because all existing stories can become something like

Fantasy\Unspecified
Unspecified\Incest