#honestly my greatest wish as a tag wrangler is that people realize they don't have to use the canonicals

[nigenaide]

So @ao3commentoftheday has recently starting doing a thing called Ask A Tag Wrangler, which I'd recommend checking out if you're interested in knowing more about how tagging or tag wrangling works on AO3!

However. I am also a tag wrangler. And the thing about tag wranglers is we actually disagree with each other pretty regularly. So this post about Tumblr-style tagging on AO3 has some great information, but there are several parts I disagree with.

(General disclaimer that I am speaking only for myself, not for AO3 or for tag wranglers as a whole. I'm sure someone else will disagree with me too :P)

Specifically, I really want to pull out this brief aside from the post and underline it a few times and draw rainbows on it:

Of course, if you don't care if your works are filterable, then carry right on, you poetic and noble land-mermaids.

The main thing to note about chatty Tumblr-style tags on AO3 is that they often don't play nice with the filtering system. As Pepper says, they frequently contain multiple concepts or aren't clear exactly what they're referring to, which can make it difficult for wranglers to attach them to existing canonical tags. So if your goal is for your tags to be easily attached to canonicals so people can use them in the filters, then yes, chatty tags are often not good for that.

On the other hand? There's no reason your tags have to be filterable. It is completely fine to post a fanfic with tags that are useless for filtering. Wranglers get sad about it because we enjoy attaching tags to each other, but the tags are for fanfic readers and writers, not to make wranglers happy! So you should tag in whatever way is comfortable and fun for you.

It's important to remember that people use AO3 in different ways. Not everyone cares if other people can find their fic -- maybe they just want to post it so they have a nicely-formatted backup copy in case their computer dies. Maybe they just want to show their fic to their friends on Discord, and they like how AO3 looks better than Google Docs. Maybe they prefer a different fanfic site, but that one doesn't allow smut, so they post the smut sections on AO3 and link to them from the other site. Maybe they actually would like people to find their fic, but "proper" tagging stresses them out, so they only tag for fandom/character/relationship and then just babble in the additional tags. All of these are perfectly valid uses of the site!

Also, plenty of people browsing fic don't even use the fandom-specific canonicals like "Gay Ron Weasley" to find what they want. I don't, myself -- I usually just go to the fandom or relationship tag I want and look through everything manually. So for me, the way your tags read on your fic is actually more important than how filterable they are. Fics that have neat filterable canonical tags are nice because they're easy to skim over to see what the fic is about, but chatty tags can provide the same information while also giving me more of a peek into the author's head. I've absolutely clicked on fics just because the tags were funny.

So, with all of that in mind, some specific things with Pepper's post that I disagree with:

Chatty tags don't necessarily bother readers; plenty of readers enjoy them, in the same way people enjoy reading Tumblr tags. I think what bothers people is more often the number of tags, not how they're formatted. I'd much rather see 10 chatty tags than 50 canonical ones, honestly. Lots of tags take up a lot of space on the screen (especially if I'm on my phone) and are harder to skim.

I strongly disagree with the idea that wranglers don't enjoy wrangling chatty tags. They're usually the most entertaining to read through, first of all, and a lot of us enjoy sharing the funny or weird tags with each other when we come across them. They're also usually pretty easy to wrangle because they tend to have multiple concepts that can't be attached to anything. So it's easy to go through a bunch of them quickly while listening to music or watching videos, which can be a relaxing way to spend an hour or two. Personally I enjoy wrangling them, certainly a lot more than other kinds of tags.

Your tags don't need to be filterable or informative. It is perfectly valid to use AO3 tags as a "whisperspace" a la Tumblr if you'd prefer. So if you want to write tags about what song inspired you while you were writing, or how you were bit by a plot bunny at 3am and had to write the whole fic immediately, go for it. Maybe some people would prefer to put that kind of the thing in the author's notes, but you don't have to. Go wild.

Honestly? As a wrangler, my advice to AO3 users is that you shouldn't worry about what wranglers find annoying to deal with :P Plenty of tags can be annoying to deal with on our end, just because of how the wrangling system is set up or because we like dealing with certain kinds of tags more than others. But that doesn't mean there's anything wrong with someone using those tags. The whole point of the tag wrangling system is that users can tag however they want, and wranglers will deal with it. It's what we signed up for!

What you should worry about is what you're trying to accomplish with your tags. If you ask wranglers for advice, we tend to focus on how to make your tags easily filterable within the technical constraints of the tagging system, because we know a lot about that. And if that's what you want, Pepper's post has some great advice! (And if you want more advice of that sort, you should go over there and ask questions!) But a lot of posts with wrangler advice act like your ultimate goal should be to make your tags nice and filterable, and that doesn’t have to be true. If that stresses you out or goes against your tag aesthetic or just isn't helpful for you, you don’t have to do it. You also don't need to treat every tag the same way -- you can have some that are useful for filtering and some that are just babbling. Or you can have tags that look like babbling but are actually useful for filtering, like Pepper's "Harry Potter remains a total disaster" example.

BASICALLY what I'm saying is: There is a reason AO3 is set up so you can write whatever you want in the tag fields, instead of just picking options from a list. It's because we want you to write whatever you want. So please don't stress out too much about tagging things Properly™ or making things difficult for tag wranglers.

#ao3 #tag wrangling #honestly my greatest wish as a tag wrangler is that people realize they don't have to use the canonicals #sometimes you just need to tell the tag dropdown to go screw itself #it's not the boss of you