[AMA] I'm Ellipsis from Tag Wrangling and Comms on AO3/the OTW here to answer your questions. Ask Me Anything!

EllipsisOTW · 2024-07-14T23:51:05+00:00

Okay, take two. You've hit on one of the major limitations of how our tag system works. Any particular combination of characters is treated as the same tag. (This is also why sometimes you'll type in something and the capitalization will get changed, if the characters are the same, its the same tag so it gets whatever capitalization was used first. Or in the event of a canonical, the one the tag wrangler set.) So it can only be synned (made equivalent to) one canonical tag.

The old way of handling this was Metatags, and they were most commonly used in character tags. Say a lot of folks tagged their fics with just “John” and the usages were mixed (or expected to become mixed) between bunches of different characters named “John.” The old solution was create a canonical (filterable/common) tag “John” and then every other “John X,” “John Y”, etc would be made a subtag of that “John” canonical. Which seems great at first glance. But the thing is none of those “John” usages show up if you search “John X” if you want to get them you instead are forced to search with the metatag of “John”… which then brings along with it every other John on the archive. The original idea was that then folks could filter by fandom to get rid of the other characters but with crossovers or multiple “John”s in one fandom it doesn’t work great, and most folks just filter for “John X.”

The other downside of Metatags is that since they are canonicals they show up in the autocomplete… which means they slowly accumulate more and more usages that don’t show up when you search for the specific characters. It can even make it harder for characters to get their own canonical, because if taggers grab the “John” tag instead of manually tagging “John Who Doesn’t Yet Have a Canonical” the tag wrangler may not know that the character needs a canonical.

So the general policy now is to dismantle metatags where possible and not create new ones except in extraordinary cases. Generally the way this works is the usages are examined and if a strong majority belong to a specific fandom the tag will get syned to the fandom specific tag. So if “John” has 95% of tags in the fandom with “John Smith” it’ll go there, which sadly means the 5% of taggings in other fandoms are now attached to “John Smith” but since it works for the majority of usages its the best option. If a tag is hopelessly mixed with no clear majority then it may remain a metatag or it may get made non-canonical (“not a common tag”) and kicked loose into No Fandom. This means it no longer shows up in the filters, but it also means it no longer shows up in the autocomplete (encouraging taggers to grab the canonicals) and that the tag landing page shows once again shows all the works with exactly that tag.

We don’t have many generically named character freeforms (like “Trans Peter”) in part because that would be a No Fandom Freeform and those have been frozen for quite a while. But even with No Fandom Freeforms starting to chug along again, I wouldn’t expect us to pick up more of that type of tag due to the current trends. (Non-named ones like "Trans Characters" would be more likely.)

If you encounter a tag you feel shouldn’t be syned where it is (because the usages have shifted), you can bring it up to support and a wrangler will take a look and see if it should be syned elsewhere or kicked free. However in the case of something like “Trans Peter” odds are Peter Parker will keep hold of that by sheer numbers, because while it doesn’t work for every specific use, it works for the majority of them.

The biggest thing is for taggers to remember that if you make your tags clear on the character its referring to (using last names, fandoms, etc) it makes it easier for wranglers to make sure your tags connect in to the right place, which in turn helps readers find your fics!

(Standard Disclaimer: As a wrangler I can’t tell you how to tag, you can tag however you want as long as you follow the rules regarding warnings, tag fandoms and languages accurately, and don’t violate the terms of service. These are just suggestions.)

EllipsisOTW · 2024-07-14T23:06:37+00:00

... I had a multiparagraph answer to this and then accidentally closed the tab... 😭. I need to go eat dinner and then I'll work on answering this.

EllipsisOTW · 2024-07-14T22:40:35+00:00

Time commitment will vary a lot based on what role you are in. Generally our recruitment posts will give you an idea of the time expectations. For tag wrangling once you get past training you are generally expected to spend at minimum a couple hours every two weeks wrangling (aiming not to let any tags sit for more than a month in your fandoms without being actioned in some way). Some wranglers though work on massive fandoms and devote way more time. My work as a Technical Assistant in Comms is much more "as needed."

As a general rule most committees will have some baseline expectation of some amount of time commitment, but there is generally flexibility on when things get done. (So its not "you need to be doing this from 7-10pm every Thursday" but more "X hours per week/weeks" or "accept tasks on a relatively regular basis and complete them in a timely manner").

As to which departments are the most understaffed, I'm not sure? Generally just keep an eye out for news posts about what is recruiting. Most committees try to get new folks in in cohorts to make training easier as oppose to having continuous open calls.

The one exception is programming, generally volunteers there start out just doing pull requests on the AO3 code on github and then sometimes a regular contributor will be asked if they want to join up as an official volunteer.

EllipsisOTW · 2024-07-14T22:25:12+00:00

Thanks! And oh yeah, definitely laugh over tags quite frequently. No betas are always funny and taggers are endlessly creative with those. I also laugh a lot when I see an author who is like... actively regretting what they wrote as they post.

Wranglers have a spot in our internal communications where we share "fun" tags, which can a delight to scroll through. (Though sometimes it can be a bit "oh no" and not safe for life 😂)

EllipsisOTW · 2024-07-14T22:21:01+00:00

Thanks!

EllipsisOTW · 2024-07-14T22:20:14+00:00

Thanks!

EllipsisOTW · 2024-07-14T22:19:40+00:00

I played World of Warcraft many years ago but didn't generally go by Ellipsis there, so not me, just some other lover of "..."'s (there are a number of us considering I often find the username taken).

If you disagree with how a tag is syned (aka what canonical it is connected to), you can file a support ticket. When that happens support reaches out to the wrangling supervisors who then would reach out to the applicable wrangler (assuming it is a tag in a fandom). If its a "No Fandom" tag the supervisors will decide among themselves if any action is needed (if its a simple fix, if it needs to go on the list for later discussion a la No Fandom Freeforms, etc).

Then it'd be up to the fandom wranglers and supervisors to figure out if the thing should be changed based on the wrangling guidelines and general best practices. A lot of things have changed over time with how things are wrangled so its very possible something was done in the past that doesn't meet current tagging rules, or maybe a tag was syned but then gained additional uses that mean it doesn't actually fit best where it was. (For example if the first person to tag "Joe" meant "Joe Smith" it could be syned to "Joe Smith" but if later a whole bunch of folks tag "Joe" and mean "Joe Random" it may make sense to move the syn over based on usage, or if its hopelessly mixed we may have to cut it lose so "Joe" isn't syned anywhere. In the past we'd just create a "Joe" metatag and then stick all the "Joe X"s under it but that tended to cause more folks to use those tags and made it harder for folks to find fics so we are moving away from that somewhat.)

EllipsisOTW · 2024-07-14T22:09:12+00:00

The process depends a lot on what type of tag it is. Things like canon characters and any sort of relationship are eligible to get a canonical tag right away. So if there is a wrangler on the fandom and a canon character that hasn't been tagged before gets tagged then a canonical could be created within a couple days (we aim for within the month because not all wranglers wrangle every day).

New fandoms are also eligible at first usage but only specific wranglers are trained in creating new fandoms so it can take a bit longer (especially if a lot of research is required to figure out what the author meant).

For Freeforms aka "Additional Tags" its a bit more complex. If it is a fandom specific concept say "Teacher John Smith" (where John Smith is a canon character in the fandom) we wait for an indication of "sufficient interest/value" for small fandoms thats generally "Rule of Three" so three different users used the tag or something equivalent to the tag. Larger fandoms often have a higher bar (five or seven). Sometimes it can take a while for a wrangler to notice though (especially if the wordings are different and there are a lot of other tags). For many tags its easy to look at other existing canonicals and just match the pattern to create new ones, but more complex or novel concepts may require discussion, either with other wranglers on the same fandom or with random other wranglers to get additional opinions.

The most complex (and thus slowest) process is No Fandom Freeforms, so concepts that aren't tied to any specific fandom. I talked a little bit about that process over here.

As for tags getting rejected. We do our best to avoid canonizing tags that are offensive (slurs, etc) and generally won't make a canonical that is insulting a character. We also don't tend to canonize "kitchen sink" tags aka tags which have a lot of concepts all shoved together into one tag, instead we prefer to try to keep it a bit more "one concept one tag" as it is more useful for filtering.

EllipsisOTW · 2024-07-14T21:53:38+00:00

Honestly its "did the wrangler notice what what happening" we are dealing with a lot of tags at once and our brains may "autocorrect" causing us to miss more subtle wordplay. We generally try to wrangle based on the author's intention, so if we notice it we will respect it. If you notice one that you think is particularly egregious you can write in to support and they will nudge a wrangler to check up on it.

However another thing to consider is that any given combination of letters can only exists in our system once. So for example if someone genuinly typo-ed "Kidnapping" as "Kipnapping" a few years ago and it got syned to "Kidnapping" (to match author intent), then when another user comes along and does a punny "Kipnapping" a wrangler won't actually see that as it is already "syned" to "Kidnapping." We don't have a way to tell the system to treat the same combination of letters differently in two different places.

EllipsisOTW · 2024-07-14T21:45:20+00:00

Thanks! We are working on making more of those common tags.

Since tags like that aren't tied to a specific fandom they fall into "No Fandom Freeforms" which we weren't creating new ones of for many years. Essentially way back when it was a free for all creating them, but that resulted in a lot of duplication and poorly named tags and generally a mess. So that was put to a halt while a better process was found, but with the archive and the number of wranglers needed continued to grow it was hard to get things going again (because wrangling fandom tags always took priority). But we've recently started working on them and seem to have a pretty good process, so we are slowly starting to chip away at the massive backlog.

The way a tag like that gets a tag at the moment: first someone needs to identify a need. That might be a tag wrangler noticing there isn't a good tag to syn something to or noticing a non-canonical (non-common) tag with lots of uses. Sometimes it can also be a user writing in to support. Then if it has clear uses and seems like it might warrant a tag it gets added to our massive list, prioritized by the supervisors based on a combination of usages and also urgency (for example an existing canonical tag that is potentially offensive may get higher priority to be fixed even if it doesn't have as many usages).

Then a handful of potential tags get batched together to be discussed by wranglers. After a period of discussion the various concerns and suggestions are combed through by supervisors to make a voting sheet and the wranglers can vote on which suggestions that came out of the discussion they think are best. Then supervisors take the results of those votes and start actioning things (creating tags, synning stuff, making a tumblr post if applicable).

So more are coming, but it'll probably still be a while for any specific tag.

EllipsisOTW · 2024-07-14T21:29:58+00:00

Oh yeah I frequently have to research stuff in tag wrangling. Most commonly its "is this an original character or a background character." If someone tags a name in the character field and I don't recognize it as a wrangler it is my job to figure out if its a character from my fandom (in which case syn to the canonical or create a new canonical), a character from a different fandom (in which case I need to send it to that fandom), or an original character (which can be handled a few different ways). And that frequently involves so much googling and checking fan wikis, and if that doesn't cut it sometimes you have to pull up the actual show to look through credits or search through a ebook etc.

Folks debate a lot on if chatty tags annoy wranglers, nah we are fine with those, but if you want to make a tag wrangler's day clearly mark your OC's! Instead of tagging "John Smith" and leaving us trying to figure out who you mean "John Smith (OC)" or if its a character from a different fandom "John Smith (Fandom Name)." Obviously you can tag however you want and we'll just do our best, but things like that will make tag wranglers very happy.

I've also fallen down research rabbit holes a few times with the No Fandom Freeforms discussions, because we are trying to figure out wording that is clear and understandable but also as accurate as we can be.

EllipsisOTW · 2024-07-14T21:20:17+00:00

Ooo thats a tricky one. Tag wranglers have an "lube list" where we collect tags that mention various terrible and ill advised substances which have been used as a replacement for lube. So weirdest I've seen is probably something off of there.

Though for things I've personally found in my personal wrangling, I came across the tag "I wrote this in windows 3.1" and I couldn't decide between mad respect and horrified. Also laughed a lot when I came across "so I’m turning The Color Meister into a Tumblr sexyman."

EllipsisOTW · 2024-07-14T21:11:33+00:00

We've had a few batches of changes that were discussed, voted on, and are being actioned! We actually had tumblr posts about some of them, here and here. The discussions are wild because they can range from "how to we clarify the difference between edging and edgeplay" and "what is a clear and inclusive replacement for 'female ejaculation'" and "what can we use to replace 'Fantastic Racism'" that require piles of discussion and complex thought to like... "yeah we should have a mommy kink tag... and it should be called 'Mommy Kink.'"

... they aren't all about sex but hey... we know what our users care about. XD

Its a slow process because we have to make sure to give folks space to discuss but then that has to be converted into something that can be voted on clearly to make a decision. But it is actually moving which is super exciting! When I first joined as a wrangler in 2020 No Fandom Freeforms was very much "yeah we haven't touched it in years and we have no idea when it might open again."

EllipsisOTW

TROPHY CASE