As I recall, the word “snuff” was included in at least two of the story summaries for the stories I removed. Were it not for the larger issue of fan fiction for profit, I’d have merely hidden the other four and asked that the warnings be made clearer if I did not think the current tags were sufficient. After 6 years moderating for AFF, I’ve been sandbagged by more than enough unexpected content to be well able to know when tags need to be added. I read things every week I’d not read by choice, but I do it because I value what AFF stands for in terms of artistic freedom. And yes, we try very hard to make sure trigger issues are labelled, but the answer isn’t always simple.
For example, I do not consider the Shota or Loli tags an acceptable substitute for Minor1 or Minor2. They are not clearly defined by age ranges, and are anime-specific. Similarly, Noncon is never a substitute for Rape as far as I’m concerned, and I will not accept Noncon in place of the Rape tag. We actually don’t have much snuff fiction here, and while we all might have varying ideas of what constitutes Contro content, we have a clear label for BDSM as well as for SandM. I’m not sure how specific you want Torture to be defined, but I’d strongly suggest having to add tags for every possible act of torture ever conceived of by the human race would be exhaustive to create and not terribly useful. Despite a personal fondness for the Wicker Man, I can’t imagine Ritual Immolation would be a frequent tag choice.
Similarly, I would not recommend free-for-all tagging such as I’ve seen elsewhere. It would completely negate any ability to search by tags, a feature we’ve recently been able to expand, and one which has been requested for quite some time.
But in this particular instance, we were asked to review newly posted material because of unlabeled content. A larger issue was revealed, which resulted in the stories being removed from the site, and which disappointed other readers. The long and short of it is that we’re not going to please all the people all the time, and in this case, I’m not sure anyone came away happy.