There are some specific situations I can see where the flags could be handy, because it's a way of allowing other people to easily filter stuff depending on situation -- e.g. reading a mixed fic community at a workplace where you're allowed to look at the web at lunchtime, as long as you're not looking at smutty stuff. Pretty much all of it can be handled by cut tags as well, but it offers another tool and a slightly different way to do things.
One thing I could really see it being useful for is a mixed fic community having a default setting of "adult content", but gen stories then being explicitly de-flagged. That lets mods keep kids out of the steamy stuff without having to lock them out of gen stories, in a way that cut-tags don't achieve. Of course it doesn't keep out anyone willing to lie about their age on their profile, but it does mean the kids have to actively look for it rather than stumbling into it.
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Date: 2007-11-30 12:01 pm (UTC)One thing I could really see it being useful for is a mixed fic community having a default setting of "adult content", but gen stories then being explicitly de-flagged. That lets mods keep kids out of the steamy stuff without having to lock them out of gen stories, in a way that cut-tags don't achieve. Of course it doesn't keep out anyone willing to lie about their age on their profile, but it does mean the kids have to actively look for it rather than stumbling into it.