TAG: you're it
Aug. 30th, 2021 10:43 amI've been seeing lots of discussion about tagging recently on tumblr, discord and my f-list, ever since AO3 announced its decision to limit tags to 75. I think most of it is thoughtful and productive - I think awareness leads to people acting more thoughtfully (although as ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
wheatear has pointed out, there's no such thing as perfect tagging, though I'd argue that being aware of how and why people use tags in your fandom can certainly lead to "better" tagging. And I think the reason that AO3 made this decision is obvious: there's actually such a thing as "bad" tagging.
I think the most obvious offenders are like manspreaders on trains - it's not egregiously harmful that they're taking up more space than others, but it can still be a real nuisance (and may present significant obstacles to some, like those using a screen reader, who can't "just keep scrolling" past). And I think a lot of it can be attributed to ignorance? I think most of the people tagging their fics like it's an ingredient label, listing every character, setting and trope that appears, however minutely, are usually newbies to the whole fandom thing. Ditto those uploading every single shortfic they write as "chapters" of a single fic and tagging every iteration of fandoms and characters - I think they're unaware of how much of an annoyance it is to have this massive, mostly irrelevant "description" appearing in whatever tag users have clicked on and of how readers actually use tags; they're just labelling, like a kid decorating their fic with stickers. It's not deliberately malicious, but it can still be damn irritating? Those are the garden variety Wall-o-Tag offenders, though: the full context of what actually forced AO3 to crack down is the site clogging trolling of STWW, a fic with several thousand tags (and its copycat trolls). It was such obvious abuse of a system that relies on the good faith tagging of authors (and one that affected millions of users at once) that it led to AO3 finally setting up this tag limit before it even introduced a long promised block function.
At the other end of the "bad tagging" spectrum would be under-tagging, which basically functions in a way that "underadvertises" a fic and is detrimental to authors who were hoping to reach a wider audience or worse: "underwarns" for triggering/unwanted content and leads people to click on fics that will upset them.
So what can be done to combat bad tagging/promote better tagging?
Well, ao3commentoftheday has published this little flowchart of questions that I think are a great guide! And I think the better you know your fandom, the easier it will be to judge what you want to be tagging and how. For example: I know to tag background pairings in other tags in GoT fics, because there is so much content that people get annoyed when they find their OTP relegated to the background if you've tagged them in the character tags. TQG in contrast: such a small fandom that people are happy for whatever scraps of a pairing they can get.
Listen to what people are complaining about on your shiptag on tumblr, or on your relevant discord server. Remember you can always add or delete tags - AO3 lets you do both with ease, so if you get complaints or suggestions, take them into consideration.
Any other thoughts, oh f-list?
wheatear has pointed out, there's no such thing as perfect tagging, though I'd argue that being aware of how and why people use tags in your fandom can certainly lead to "better" tagging. And I think the reason that AO3 made this decision is obvious: there's actually such a thing as "bad" tagging. I think the most obvious offenders are like manspreaders on trains - it's not egregiously harmful that they're taking up more space than others, but it can still be a real nuisance (and may present significant obstacles to some, like those using a screen reader, who can't "just keep scrolling" past). And I think a lot of it can be attributed to ignorance? I think most of the people tagging their fics like it's an ingredient label, listing every character, setting and trope that appears, however minutely, are usually newbies to the whole fandom thing. Ditto those uploading every single shortfic they write as "chapters" of a single fic and tagging every iteration of fandoms and characters - I think they're unaware of how much of an annoyance it is to have this massive, mostly irrelevant "description" appearing in whatever tag users have clicked on and of how readers actually use tags; they're just labelling, like a kid decorating their fic with stickers. It's not deliberately malicious, but it can still be damn irritating? Those are the garden variety Wall-o-Tag offenders, though: the full context of what actually forced AO3 to crack down is the site clogging trolling of STWW, a fic with several thousand tags (and its copycat trolls). It was such obvious abuse of a system that relies on the good faith tagging of authors (and one that affected millions of users at once) that it led to AO3 finally setting up this tag limit before it even introduced a long promised block function.
At the other end of the "bad tagging" spectrum would be under-tagging, which basically functions in a way that "underadvertises" a fic and is detrimental to authors who were hoping to reach a wider audience or worse: "underwarns" for triggering/unwanted content and leads people to click on fics that will upset them.
So what can be done to combat bad tagging/promote better tagging?
Well, ao3commentoftheday has published this little flowchart of questions that I think are a great guide! And I think the better you know your fandom, the easier it will be to judge what you want to be tagging and how. For example: I know to tag background pairings in other tags in GoT fics, because there is so much content that people get annoyed when they find their OTP relegated to the background if you've tagged them in the character tags. TQG in contrast: such a small fandom that people are happy for whatever scraps of a pairing they can get.
Listen to what people are complaining about on your shiptag on tumblr, or on your relevant discord server. Remember you can always add or delete tags - AO3 lets you do both with ease, so if you get complaints or suggestions, take them into consideration.
Any other thoughts, oh f-list?
