Huh. If the tag FAQ says to use it for poly groupings, when the system automatically adds the same image to works whose authors have given no indication of polyamory, someone somewhere did not design this well.

In my experience most fans themselves are more interested in gender first, number of participants second. As in, people are more likely to look for slash, and be happy with two men as well as five, than to look for poly, and be happy with F/F/F as well as M/F/M. Do you think that's not the case?

I mean, there are plenty of other metrics we could apply to relationships in a fic beyond gender and number of participants. How much sex they have in the story, for instance, or what kind, how kinky it is, whether it's a crossover ship. To me the freeform tags feel like the most intuitive way of handling any of those. (...well, I would love a ticky box selection to designate whether a work is a crossover, but that's getting into fandoms rather than relationships.)

And poly fic is a thing I look for! But according to user tagging, there are many things that are more general-interest -- the "Kinks" tag has more than twice as many works as the "Polyamory" one, while "Oral Sex" has over five times the number. I'm not sure poly is a factor that should be elevated to the category level.