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cinderella-ish · 4 months

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Fruits Basket Ao3 Media Tags Poll Results, and Some Thoughts on Ao3 Fandom Tag Wrangling

Over the past few weeks, I've put out a few polls to find out how other Ao3 users are using the different Fruits Basket media tags. Here are the results!

(Obligatory disclaimer that a tumblr poll by one user with fewer than 50 followers is hardly scientific data)

For writers, it looks like most of us (52.6%, or 10 out of 19 respondents) are tagging more than one media type every time, and an additional 10.5% are sometimes tagging multiple media types (total of 63.1%, or 12 out of 19). 31.6%, or 6 out of 19, are only tagging one media type. I believe the person who selected "other" hasn't posted Fruits Basket work yet, but indicated they'd be likely to tag all three.

Of note: even though far more works are tagged with the manga tag than either anime, including when I excluded crossovers, the 2019 anime had the most works updated since January 1 of this year excluding crossovers at 25 (vs 4 for the 2001 anime, and 12 for the manga).

For readers, it looks like most of us (46.4%, or 13 out of 28) are filtering by relationship or character. (Sometimes I think I must be the only person who will read fics for any relationship or character if the premise is interesting!) For those who search using media tags, the manga tag is by far the most used at 17.9%, or 5 out of 28.

Then, 50%, or 14 out of 28 readers don't expect anything different between the three media tags. And that number raises to 78.6%, or 22 out of 28, if you include people who only expect minor differences between content found at each of the three tags.

So, why did I do these polls (and what are my thoughts on how these tags should be wrangled)? More info below the cut!

At some point between when I joined Ao3 and now, the tag "Fruits Basket" went from being a metatag that contained all 3 Fruits Basket media to being made a synonym of the manga.

In practical terms, what this meant for me was that I could no longer sort or filter all Fruits Basket works at once. I would instead have to go to all three media tags separately, and would have to repeat searches for all three media tags if I was looking for a specific trope. Additionally, I didn't actually realize this change until a couple of months after it occurred. I almost missed one of my now-favorite fics because of this change!

Worse still, it means that when I filter out crossovers, any works that are tagged with more than one Fruits Basket media are considered as "crossovers." If I want to filter out actual crossovers, it needs to be done by manually clicking all other fandoms under the "exclude" option.

So, I sent a support ticket to Ao3 asking them to either reverse this change, or add a similar "All Media Types" sort of tag.

They responded after about 12 days, letting me know that the Archive is no longer creating "All Media Types" tags, and is actually dismantling them where possible. The goal is for users to be able to find what they're looking for, and to avoid confusion, which apparently "All Media Types" tags can cause, both for creators and browsing users. They pointed out that searching by relationship or character would allow me to see all works across media tags with those characters (although this doesn't solve my problem).

(Note: no shade to this Ao3 volunteer - I'm not upset at this answer, and they were only communicating Archive policy and were very professional and gave me good and important info!)

Anyway, this confused me, so I sat with it for a bit. I did some searches of the Ao3 blog, the Reddit and Tumblr, and some tag wrangler's Tumblrs where they talk about tag wrangling, but couldn't find anything about dismantling "All Media Types" metatags. So, I decided to get some data. Hence, the polls.

Other than my continued surprise at how many people search by relationship (multishipper problems...), the polls basically aligned with what I expected. So, if I'm using the tags in a similar way to most other users, this can't be the best way for these tags to exist.

I sent a followup request outlining some of what I shared here, then decided to browse Ao3 fandoms outside of Fruits Basket to see how other fandom tags, especially anime/manga fandom tags, were generally canonized.

On the Fandoms page, several "All Media Types" tags are present (Star Wars, Les Mis, Newsies, Batman, and Captain America, to name a few). Additionally, several "& Related Fandoms" tags are also present.

But this might not be a fair comparison. Star Wars has had movies, TV shows, comics, novels, video games, audio novels, radio adaptations, theme park rides, and more. A broad metatag makes sense for that fandom.

Or maybe the Archive just hasn't dismantled those "All Media Types" tags yet?

So, what about other anime and manga? Well, several (including the extremely popular BNHA and Naruto, as well as the shoujo that's always being compared to Furuba, OHSHC) are canonized as (Anime & Manga). Some (like Haikyuu!! and AoT) are canonized so both the manga and the anime are synonyms to the overarching fandom name.

And what about a manga that had two adaptations? Well, Fullmetal Alchemist has an "All Media Types" tag, which acts as a catchall for the 2003 anime, the live action, Bluebird's Illusion (which is apparently a fan-made game?), and a single tag combining the manga and Brotherhood.

So then, I did another search for information on how the Archive is handling "All Media Types" tags.

That search led me to a Tumblr post on tag wrangling guidelines from way back in 2013. Obviously, that post was out of date, but it led me to a handful of other posts, and eventually to the tag wrangling guidelines on the Ao3 website.

I actually didn't know the wrangling guidelines were publicly available before this, so this was exciting! After some brief searching, I was able to find some relevant policies:

Wrangling Guidelines - Metatags still mentioned "All Media Types" metatags in their guidelines, so perhaps those guidelines are out of date? Or instead, they're for those exceptions where "All Media Types" tags make sense?

That page led me to Wrangling Guidelines - Fandoms, which was MUCH more informative.

Under "Base Rules" > "Shared & Similar Names/Multiple Media" > "General Disambiguation Suffixes" it says:

General Disambiguation Suffixes are a legacy disambiguation format and last-resort disambiguation options for fandom tags that could not be easily separated into specific media. Fandoms disambiguated in these ways are no longer being created and are being removed where possible.

General Disambiguation Suffixes includes "All Media Types," "& Related Fandoms," and "Ambiguous Fandom."

Under "Fandoms With Multiple Media" it says:

Existing "All Media Types" tags may have new subtags added beneath them, but should no longer be created. The different existing media tags can be made into subtags under this metatag, as they are added to the Archive. There is no need to make an "All Media Types" metatag just to connect fandoms. Such fandoms can simply sit separately.

Bleh. I guess my hopes have been dashed.

...

But wait!

Under "Anime and Manga" > "Disambiguation Between Manga, Manhwa, Manhua, & Anime" it says:

Anime and manga fandoms should be canonised separately as much as possible. For fandoms where the completed manga and anime canons overlap enough to be considered one unified canon, or the user-made works do not specify whether they are for the anime or the manga, the disambig may be (Anime & Manga), with the terms in alphabetical order.

If canons do not overlap and users make tags for the separate canons, disambiguate with (Anime), (Manga), (Manhwa), or (Manhua).

For this second quote, IT USES FRUITS BASKET AS THE EXAMPLE.

So, I guess the tag wrangler(s) for Fruits Basket consider the manga and the (unspecified which) anime to... not overlap? Or not overlap enough? Again, this confuses me. The 2019 anime covered all of canon and only had extremely minor changes, and those were mostly done just to make it work better in animation instead of print. The 2001 anime only covered the first third or so of the story and had some bigger changes, but nothing outside the realm of what a fan might change in a fanwork for the manga.

So, what do I think would be the best outcome for the Fruits Basket media tags on Ao3?

When I think about it, I could see people who had only seen the 2001 anime benefiting from being able to search only for works relating to the 2001 anime. And I could see people who have read the manga/seen the 2019 anime being annoyed if the major changes of the 2001 anime were referenced on works tagged to the manga/2019 anime. But I can't really see that happening between the manga and the 2019 anime. Those changes were so minute, I doubt they'd be relevant most of the time.

So, with the caveat that I'm only one user, and I don't know for sure if my opinion is the one held by most users in the Fruits Basket fandom, here are some potential solutions that would work for me & (I believe) for most users in the Fruits Basket fandom:

bring back "Fruits Basket" as a metatag for all 3 media types, or

make the manga tag synonymous with the 2019 anime, with the new canonical reading [Fruits Basket (Anime 2019 & Manga)], and make the 2001 anime a subtag of that new combined tag, or

make both anime tags subtags of the manga tag

Anyway, if you wanted to know what I've been doing instead of writing over the past few weeks, this is it. 😅 I'd really love to hear what you think of my proposed solutions, and if the change caused problems for you as it did for me, or if it actually made things easier.

Info about another tag wrangling issue for Fruits Basket coming soon in a separate (much shorter!) post!

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ionalottabookmarks · 14 days

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So the thing about potentially losing "All Media Types" tags

Is that a reader, it's annoying. The primary tag I use for looking for fic would no longer exist, and I would have to choose a specific, smaller piece of the fandom instead. I wouldn't be able to exclude crossovers like Danny Phantom and Miraculous Ladybug without also excluding a dozen different versions of Batman that would now count as crossovers, too, without the umbrella tag. Some very specific fandom tag - who knows which one - would be flooded with all of the previous All Media Types fics, which may or may not belong there, and which are going to be a major nuisance to people actually looking for that specific tag.

But I'm much more concerned about this as a writer. Batman (All Media Types) is the tag I chose for my work, because it's where I feel my work belongs. If someone deletes that tag and moves my work elsewhere, that's a problem. I can hope it'll be moved somewhere semi-reasonable, like Batman (Comics), but given the Sherlock catastrophe, it could just as easily wind up somewhere like Batman (Nolan-verse). But wherever they move it, if I don't like it, I can go back and move it to somewhere else, to whatever I feel is the next best thing after All Media Types.

Because I've been hearing about this happening, and am still active on AO3.

If this hadn't become a topic of discussion online this week, it might, based on my writing patterns, have taken me up to a year to notice this change on my own, after it had been implemented. I would have noticed when I uploaded a new fic, tried to tag it Batman (All Media Types), and couldn't.

A lot of writers whose fic AO3 hosts are no longer consistently using AO3, or no longer writing for the same fandom, or go several years between posting new works, or otherwise are not going to stumble upon this change on their own. A lot of writers will never know their fics were arbitrarily sorted into a new category. And those fics are forever going to be where AO3 puts them, regardless of how poorly they fit there.

If I put my fic in Batman (All Media Types), and AO3 moves it to Batman (Somewhere Else), they're making a change to my fic - to how it's labelled, how it's stored, how it's perceived, that I did not consent to, and wouldn't even have been informed of by AO3. I do believe that this decision qualifies as changing my work, which is something I thought I could trust AO3 to never do.

If they're going to delete an existing fandom tag, the VERY LEAST AO3 needs to be doing first is sending some sort of notice to every user who's written for that tag, outlining where AO3 will be automatically moving the fic, what your other fandom tag options are for moving it yourself, and a date - several weeks in the future - when the change will actually be implemented.

Which still leaves plenty of authors uninformed and unable to do what they can for their works - authors who've changed emails, authors who've passed away, potentially authors who've orphaned their works or posted anonymously - admittedly I'm unclear on exactly how those processes work.

This change is currently on hold, and we don't know yet how it'll all shake out. But I'm very concerned about the potential implications for authors, and the precedent it sets. If they can just go and delete these long-standing and frequently-used tags, they could delete others. If they decide not to support the umbrella fandom Batman (All Media Types), what's to stop them also deciding not to support any other, smaller fandom that doesn't have another tag to go to?

I do believe that no one involved in this had any bad intentions, and I'm hopeful that with the feedback they've gotten, everything is going to work out well. But them quietly deleting fandom tags like this, without even making an announcement, has definitely shaken my faith in the organization as a whole.

#ao3 #all media types

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