#tag wrangling

[abcwordsurge]

ao3 tag wranglers are miracle workers. I posted a fic with a historical figure, the first one to use this tag, and I put it with just his first and last name (e.g. "john smith") and within a week the official tag was created with middle name and time alive (e.g. "john william smith (1703-1784)". which one of you beautiful wranglers is over here googling the date of birth of all these historical figures in fanfiction

[transformativeworks]

The OTW is Recruiting for Tag Wrangling Volunteer, Tag Wrangling Volunteer (Indonesian), Tag Wrangling Volunteer (Russian), Internal Complaint and Conflict Resolution Volunteer, Support Volunteer and Support Volunteer (Chinese)

Would you like to wrangle tags? Can you read and translate from Indonesian or Russian to English? Would you like to help your fellow fans use AO3? Are you fluent in Chinese? The OTW is recruiting! Learn more at: https://otw-news.org/2p8su59h.

[cinderella-ish]

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!

[martinsharmony]

This makes me want to volunteer and honestly I probably would if my current life circumstances were different

at a conference I attended recently, a researcher pointed to the difficulty of finding material in archives because so much depends on the metadata and the terminology used to describe things changes over time. "it would be so helpful," the researcher said, "if I typed 'lesbian' into the library of congress database, it would also show me results that were categorised in the 50s, when the materials were interpreted as 'intimate female friendships'"

which is what tag wrangles at Archive Of Our Own do incredibly effectively: searching for "omegaverse" also leads to "alpha/beta/omega dynamics" and "alternate universe: a/b/o" and so on. but ao3 achieves this frankly incredible categorisation and indexing system by the power of countless volunteers putting in hours and hours of unpaid and unthanked free time, and it's completely understandable that most archives do not have that kind of infrastructure, but also how incredible that a fan-run website has better searchability, classification, and accessibility than the library of congress

[ao3org]

Regarding Fandom Trees & AMTs

Tag wrangling is, on the whole, a fluid process. It's meant to be, because the way language is used and the way tags are used change over time. We're the first to admit that we don’t always get it right, and that we do sometimes make mistakes despite our best intentions. This is why wrangling decisions are not set in stone and are reevaluated periodically as circumstances change or as new information becomes available. 

In light of the impact that removing the Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms metatag has had, we have put that metatag back in place. 

When it comes to fandom metatags and fandom trees, there is no 'one size fits all' approach that works for all fandoms. Consequently, we have placed a hold on all structural changes to fandom metatags, All Media Types fandoms (commonly called AMTs), and fandom trees while wranglers discuss the need for additional guidelines and adjustments to our approach regarding these tags going forward. 

This hold will remain in place until tag wranglers have had ample time to fully reevaluate our fandom wrangling guidelines with the aim of making it easier for Archive users to find the content they’re looking for and filter out the content they aren’t. This guideline reevaluation process is something we are actively working on, but it will likely take some time to complete. We will update again once these fandom guideline discussions have come to a close.

Thank you for your patience and understanding.

(From time to time, ao3org posts announcements of recent or upcoming wrangling changes on behalf of the Tag Wrangling Committee.)

[poolofunidentifiedfluid]

just applied for tag wrangling because i have that data autism let me in

[thenerdyindividual]

So if you’re in a fandom like mine that has a shitty dad character, chances are you have come across the tag “[character]’s A+ Parenting”. I’ve used it multiple times, and it’s one that I’ve seen used across fandoms.

However, in the last weeks if you’ve tried to use that tag on your fic you may have discovered it missing. I recently tried to tag a fic A+ Parenting, and it didn’t come up. It remained on my other fics but I couldn’t tag my new fic with it.

I reached out to AO3 support asking about it, and this I was I received back.

“Hello,

Thanks for writing to us. There has been a general push to rename tags like this because the sarcastic use of "A+ Parenting" might not be clear to all users. For this reason, the tag "Uther Pendragon's A+ Parenting (Merlin)" has been made a synonym to "Bad Parent Uther Pendragon (Merlin)", and you should be able to find it in the dropdown under the new name.

If you prefer to use the other tag, you are welcome to copy/paste it into the Additional Tags field when you post a new work. Because it's a synonym of the new canonical tag, it will show up under the works listing at

https://archiveofourown.org/tags/Bad%20Parent%20Uther%20Pendragon%20(Merlin)/works

Please let us know if you have further questions.

Warm regards,

AO3 Tag Wrangling Support”

Personally, I find this frustrating. It seems like a pointless consolidation that takes away nuance. For me, “Bad Parent” implies active bad parenting, or that the character’s bad parenting is going to be a core tenant explored in the fic. Whereas “A+ Parenting” acknowledges, with a comedic tone, that the character should be doing a better job. Or is behaving in a way that is contradictory to good parenting, but the parenting isn’t a focus in the fic. It’s passive.

Regardless, given the proliferation of the tag, I think most people are aware of its use. It’s a fun linguistic quirk in fandom that is now being wrangled away.

But you can tell me your opinion.

[facingthenorthwind]

Why does this have "- Freeform" at the end? and other questions about AO3 tag suffixes

Have you ever tagged something only for it to get a suffix like Character, Relationship or Freeform stuck on the end when you hit save? Do you think it's ugly and want it to go away, but don't know how? You probably can't, unfortunately, but there are a few situations where you can.

A tag suffix is a hyphen followed by the name of a tag category. Tags are either Fandom, Character, Relationship or Freeform tags. The reason that a suffix gets put on a tag is that the wrangulator (the part of AO3's backend that deals with tags) can't have tags with the same name, even if they're in different categories. As a solution, it puts the category at the end of tags that have first been tagged in some other category. For example: let's say that someone tags Evil Mark Donk in the characters field because that's where they want it to appear on their work (which is a perfectly valid choice to make!). Then someone else comes along and tries to tag Evil Mark Donk in the additional tags/freeforms field. (That field is shown as "additional tags" on the posting form, but the wrangulator and tag wranglers call it the "freeforms" because that's what it was originally called.) When the second person hits save, it will appear as Evil Mark Donk - Freeform on their fic. This will also happen if someone tags Evil Mark Donk in the relationships field, but there it would appear as Evil Mark Donk - Relationship. It's ugly and it's annoying, but the wrangulator is trying its best.

So how do you get rid of it? Sometimes it turns up because you've accidentally put your tags in the wrong field. Maybe you wrote a fic where you tagged Evil Mark Donk in the additional tags field, and no one else had tagged for it before you, which means it doesn't have a suffix and everything's right! But then you write a second fic, forgot to select the "additional tags" field when posting and now suddenly you've got Evil Mark Donk - Character on your fic. If that's the case, all you have to do is move it. But what if the first person to tag it wasn't you, and they put it in the character field, so you're stuck with Evil Mark Donk - Freeform? You can choose a different phrasing for the tag that wasn't initially tagged in a different field, e.g. Evil!Mark Donk or Mark Donk is Evil.

You may also have the problem that on the first use of a particular tag, you accidentally put it in a field you don't want it to be in, and now even when you put it in the right one, it still comes up as Evil Mark Donk - Freeform! The wrangulator has betrayed you, and you will be stuck with the ugly suffix forever! Not so, my friend. The problem is that even though you deleted the character tag Evil Mark Donk, it's still floating around in the wrangulator, which hasn't noticed that you deleted it. What you have to do is wait for 24 hours (give it a few for leeway) and a part of the wrangulator called "the rake" will delete it. After it's been raked, you can go forth and post it in the additional tags field, and no suffix will appear!

Unfortunately, most of the time it's going to be that someone else tagged it in a category you don't want to tag it first, and you can't change it without changing the phrasing of your tag. Sorry!

Sometimes, taggers will add their own suffixes, and tag wranglers are extremely curious about why. If you've done this, or something similar like put (freeform) in brackets after a tag, please let us know why! What does freeform mean to you? You are of course free to put suffixes on manually if you want -- it's a valid way to tag! We are just fascinated by this practice and don't really understand it. Please enlighten us!

For more information about tags, I've written some other explanations about how tags work, such as how to tell what type of tag something is and tag capitalisation.

[miaqc1]

SquidgeWorld Happy Post 😀❤️

Squidgeworld Archive. 🧡

A cool "Ao3 clone" with many improvements over Archive of our own .

More relationship types: Queerplatonic, Antagonistic, Non-Binary/Male, Non-Binary/Female, Non-Binary/Non-Binary. Also more archive warnings.

If you have a series of Original Works they can be tagged as a Custom Fandom. Here are mine as example.

There is less delay in wrangling a new fandom compared to Ao3. No more 1 month+ waiting for very obscure fandoms to get wrangled!

Languages can be added to the archive upon request.

And no need to get an invite to have an account! Now you need one because of spammers and bots.

I invite you all to join. Have fun writing. 😀 ❤️

Languages List Update.

Spanish (Español) – LatAm is gone due to negativity. I felt bad for having requested it in the first place. I was confused between writing and video game localizations since those use both Spanish dialects.

New languages: Esperanto, toki pona, Greek, Norwegian and more.

About the other OTW-code/Ao3-like Archives

There are other OTW-code/Ao3-like Archives out there, 3 in total, but you can look for them yourself if you're interested to join them.

[tohru-oikawa]

Call for participants for interviews about tagging on Archive of Our Own

Hiya, I am looking to speak to fanfiction authors who publish and tag fanfiction on Archive of Our Own for a short online interview about the tagging system. This is to aid research for my dissertation for an MA in Library and Information Studies at University College London looking at the knowledge organisation of Archive of Our Own through the tags and tag wranglers.

If you are interested, you need to be:

Over the age of 18

Have published and tagged fanfiction of Archive of Our Own in the last 3 years (in any fandom)

Have some familiarity with the tagging system, including the role of tag wranglers (don't worry if you don't know much, i just want people who are interested in the tagging system really!)

If this is you, and you would be interested in taking part, please fill out this form or send me a DM/email (uczcmdh@ucl.ac.uk) and I would be happy to chat about the study and give you more information.

[ao3-shenanigans]

How to get a non fandom specific tag canonised? Is there sb I can talk to?

Im talking about the "reading the books" tag which has like 9 pages worth of material

Hi, good question! Ao3 has a team of volunteers called Tag Wranglers who: “… are responsible for creating and properly formatting canonical tags. They also attach tags referring to the same fandoms, characters, relationships, or additional information to canonical tags.” (Archive FAQ > Tags > How are tags organized?)

They do a lot of really awesome work for the fandom and ao3 community!

There’s a whole system for how they work attaching tags to fandoms, however some tags can’t be attached for various reasons, for example:

“Some tags are too ambiguous to be assigned a specific fandom, but are used so frequently that tag wranglers do need to make them canonical. On these occasions, we create a metatag that collects all the related tags together. For example, the tag Bianca could refer to Bianca from Dragon Age, Bianca Reyes from Blue Beetle, or several other Biancas. If a user inputs just Bianca, this is then linked by tag wranglers to the other Biancas we know about, but it can't be connected to a single fandom.” (Archive FAQ > Tags > How do canonical tags work?)

I’ve attached the Archive FAQ > Tags link here as well as the (tag) Wrangling Guidlines, if you seek more in-depth answers!

[rolandtowen]

Making official tags like "Captain America Sam Wilson" and "Captain America Steve Rogers" is one thing. SPLITTING the movies though??? Makes no sense. And I'm saying this as an active writer of both Steve Cap and Sam Cap fics.

[transformativeworks]

More Updates to “No Fandom” Additional Tags

AO3 tag wranglers plan to update a handful of "No Fandom" additional tags. Check out the latest news post for details: https://otw-news.org/3kh3reux

[cinderella-ish]

Filtering Works in a Fandom with Multiple Media Tags on AO3

So, if you've been following me here for a while, you might remember my posts about trying to get the Fruits Basket metatag reinstated on AO3.

Today, someone posted in the AO3 and Fanfiction subreddits about this same issue, and long story short, some really wonderful AO3 volunteers helped me find a temporary solution to use until the wrangling team addresses this. The steps:

make sure you have a browser extension that allows you to use scripts (I use Firefox w/ Greasemonkey add-on)

add this script: Display Tag ID

Find the IDs for your fandom tags

Click here and scroll down to the "search within results" box

replace listed IDs with the IDs for your fandom tags

bookmark the search results page so you can return easily

Important Caveat: this will only include works in English. You could probably edit the URL to search in another language, but it will only be able to do one language at a time.

Below, I've linked some search results pages in my fandom(s)/fandoms I might eventually become more active in that you can bookmark.

Chainsaw Man

Demon Slayer

Fruits Basket | Crossovers manually excluded

Horimiya | Crossovers manually excluded

Invincible | Crossovers manually excluded

JuJutsu Kaisen

Skip to Loafer | Crossovers manually excluded

If you do this for another fandom, please reblog and add yours (or post in replies) so people can use it!

Notes: "crossovers manually excluded" may need to be updated from time to time, as people may write new crossovers!

If I don't link above to a results page with crossovers manually excluded, tumblr wouldn't let me link to such a long url (and I couldn't even exclude all crossovers without running into the limits of AO3's search function).

[hyperfixated-homo]

does anyone know if there's a way to make a original fandom into a common tag on ao3?

basically me and my friends (the sillies <3) have a lot of works on ao3 about our original universe, over 45 at this point. i'm trying to figure out if it's possible to make at least the fandom tag in to a common tag- that way we can save them all in one place easier. it would be nice if the character tags could be common too, but that's more complicated i believe

ao3 doesn't have support tickets open and i don't really know who to ask? is this even something we can do considering the "fandom" isn't even based on a fandom? it's literally just our own original works... but like, a collection of them. does that make sense?

[composeregg]

Some fandoms looking for cowranglers that people who follow me might be interested in:

Death Note

Naruto

Your Turn To Die | Kimi Ga Shine

Jujutsu Kaisen

Dark Souls

Final Fantasy XIV

There's a bunch of others like SMPs up for wrangling, the SCP foundation, Sonic, Total Drama Island, X-Men, Yugioh, some v-tubers, etc, lots of fun stuff and teams!

And there's always the currently unwrangled fandoms! Which include:

Slay the Princess

Code Lyoko

Ben 10

Bartimaeus Sequence

Bakugan

So many bands, fallout 3 and 4 and that one gotham show are unwrangled?? Touhou? Some Shin Megami Tensei games! Etrian Odyssey! The Home Alone movies! The video game OFF!

Applications are open until they get 120 of them or until September 18th!!

(They're also looking especially for people who speak Spanish and Portuguese! And Open Doors is also recruiting import assistants!)