#what are metatags

[elibeeline]

Okay so carrd is super difficult to understand how have the 14 year olds on twitter done this

#what is SSL and what is Cloudflare and what does proxying mean in this context #what are metatags #from what im seeing so far its more of like a gentrified linktree #its very not helpful that all the demo's are in like simlish or latin this isnt a language im familier in #its not a good example if i cant understand whats going on near enough straight away #'Magna feugiat aliquam? Amet magna amet etiam tempor consequat orci lorem adipiscing' is a direct copy/paste #which appears to be a sort of 'any questions? reach me here at:' and then theres contact details #this isnt. easy to understand. this feels like when you lie about knowing microsoft excel and you're forced to do logarithms with it #maybe its more clear on desktop? idk there's all these symbols and i dont know what they mean

[zoekrystall]

Oh also everyone be proud of me I stopped drinking much coffee + daily. If then way less than prior and it doesn't happen a lot. I will prob never say no to cups esp when other than standard/simple (aka cappuccino, macchiato, etc. esp w dif flavor) but it's smth when my tolerance significantly lessens and I don't get withdrawal headaches anymore (which was a huge reason I made cups even if no desire bc trust me they're awful). Caffeine does partially work for me but reminding myself that even if it works today it needs time to kick in so once I feel tired is it better to just let sleepiness win helps.

I will nonetheless if circumstances ever allow get one of those fancy machines bc I would love to recreate the stuff you get in shops easily + switch to beans. Plus many also make hot chocolate which is so much tastier than cocoa imo. I hate being limited at home.

#a wild lux appears #Never let me make coffee for multiple people unless you want to have too much bc I do not know what a normal amount is #If someone boasts how much caffeine they can/do consume daily please shake them for me ty #Did that in the past and it's so not a brag please find actual stuff to boast abt #Coffee connoisseur I get I also just love the taste and like to try around and am picky but addiction is v different #Anyways I am getting tired how is it suddenly almost 1:50 what #I need to do stuff before I forget aside from the metatag editing

[ao3org]

Changes to the Bandom Tag on AO3

For years, as early as 2006, there have been discussions about what the term "Bandom" means, and debate among different parts of fandom as to which bands the term includes. You can read about the history of this terminology on Fanlore's Bandom Terminology Debate page.

On the Archive, this lack of consensus has caused inconsistencies in which bands are subtagged to the Bandom fandom tag and which are not. There has also been confusion among users over the terminology, leading to conflicting requests to remove or add particular fandoms as subtags.

To address this issue, wranglers will be changing the structure of the Bandom tag.  All fandoms currently subtagged to Bandom will become stand-alone fandoms, unassociated with the Bandom metatag. The Bandom tag itself will remain a canonical fandom, but wranglers will no longer subtag any Band or Musician fandom to this tag. 

Moving forward, "Bandom" will be strictly a self-defined term -- creators who feel that their works should be classified as "bandom" are welcome to use that fandom tag, in addition to any other band or musician fandom tags that they feel are appropriate. This should allow users to browse only works that the work creator has directly defined as "bandom", as well as reduce confusion in the future about what is or isn't included.

So for example, a work tagged with the fandom "Duran Duran" will no longer automatically appear in the Bandom tag. The work's creator can choose to tag Bandom if they would like their work to appear in that tag.

Thank you for your understanding as we continue to work to create an experience that better meets the needs of our community as a whole.

#ao3 #archive of our own #tag wrangling changes #bandom #rpf fandom

[tossawary]

Metatags and Subtags on AO3

If you're an experienced Archive Of Our Own user, you probably know how these work. They are both super useful and intuitive. Years ago, even after using the site for a while, I still found a clear and direct explanation of parent tags, synonym tags, child tags, metatags, and subtags super helpful for improving the way that I tag my fics and the way that I search for fics (both including and excluding tags).

This is a little long, but I wanted to be thorough laying things out point by point, and include lots of images for visualization purposes. (I have included image descriptions in alt text, but have limited them to the relevant text of the screenshots rather than everything.)

Disclaimer: I am not a tag wrangler and have never been one. If you want the official introduction to tagging by the people who know what they're talking about, then you should visit the Archive's Frequently Asked Questions pages under the "About" menu.

There is an entire section on tags and how to use them. I didn't even screenshot all of it because I'm trying to save space.

Also under the "About" menu are the Wrangling Guidelines. These are written by tag wranglers for tag wranglers, available for anyone to read. The text can appear dense and full of jargon at first glance, but it's thorough, well-written, and very helpful to read through if you want to understand how the Archive volunteers sort tags.

The Wrangling Guidelines contain the official definitions of parent tags, child tags, synonym tags, metatags, child tags, and more. If you are interested in becoming a tag wrangler, the guidelines best explain the kind of work that the Archive's volunteers do.

What I am writing here is a more casual, amateur introduction from one user to another. This is an explanation with visuals included of what metatags and subtags are, how to find the metatags and subtags being used by other users, and how to use metatags and subtags to improve your own tagging and your searches.

You can't use or avoid tags that you don't know about, right? So, how are tags linked together? What is "tag nesting"?

I'm going to assume that you know what a tag is, how to tag a work, and how to search for works using a tag. And that you know about and that there's a difference between Media tags, Fandom tags, Relationship tags, Character tags, and Additional tags.

What are Parent Tags and Child Tags?

(Skip this section if you're only interested in metatags and subtags.)

There are two different "parent-child" systems within the Archive. The ones called "parent tags" and "child tags" are used to sort Fandom tags underneath Media tags, as well as Character, Relationship, and Additional tags underneath Fandom tags. The Archive FAQ page shows this nesting structure.

If you visit the tag page for the "The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System" Fandom tag, you will see that its parent tag is the "Books & Literature" Media tag.

This means that the "Scum Villain" fandom (child) shows up under the list of "Books & Literature" fandoms (parent).

It also means that when creating works or bookmarks, when typing tags into the search bar, canonical child tags (Characters, Relationships, Additional tags) of a parent tag (Fandom tag) appear first in the auto-complete options.

Browsing the child tags of the "Scum Villain" Fandom tag (or any Fandom tag) is actually really funny, honestly, because you get to see all the wild and sometimes kind of random things that people tag in their works specific to your fandom.

Synonym Tags (Tags with the same meaning)

On the tag page, you can also see all of the "synonym tags", listed under "tags with the same meaning". If anyone tags their works with these alternate ways of saying "The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System", then those works will still be sorted into the "Scum Villain" Fandom tag, because the tag wranglers have made these different tags synonyms to each other.

Synonym tags will also show up under searches using the canonical tag. Works tagged "Alt Verse" and works tagged "A bit AU" both show up when searching by the "Alternate Universe" tag.

Synonym tags mean that you don't have to know the precise canonical tag for every fandom or trope or alternate universe, because the tag wranglers are there to give you a little boost and add your tag to the right canonical tag if you didn't get it perfectly. I mean, I still think it's important to learn the basics of tagging and try your best not to make their lives harder, but you really, really don't have to stress about things being Perfect.

What are Metatags and Subtags?

The second "parent-child" system within the Archive are "metatags" and "subtags", which do not have to belong to a specific fandom. If you go to the "Alternate Universe" Additional tag page, then you will see that it is parented to "No Fandom".

These are the tag types that we're interested in right now!

Let's say that there are the Additional Tags of "Cookies" and "Baked Goods".

Tag wranglers will make "Cookies" a subtag of "Baked Goods" because cookies are a type of baked good.

"Baked Goods" is therefore now the metatag of "Cookies".

When you search for works using the "Baked Goods" Additional tag, all works tagged with "Cookies" will show up even if they aren't also tagged with "Baked Goods". Searching a tag will show you everything tagged with a subtag of that tag.

They aren't synonyms of each other, but they're related.

If you want to search the "Baked Goods" Additional tag because you want to read works tagged "Cakes" or "Pies" or other baked goods, but you don't want works tagged "Cookies" because you hate cookies, you will have to explicitly exclude that subtag using the search filters.

Here are the metatags and subtags of the "Cookies" Additional tag:

It's like "Food" is the parent, "Dessert & Sweets" is the child, "Baked Goods" is the grandchild, "Cookies" is the great-grandchild, and "Oreos" is the great-great-grandchild. They're all nested under each other.

Searching the "Food" Additional tag gives you the whole family nested here. Plus a whole bunch of other food-related subtags like "Cheeseburgers" and "Ice Cream".

Searching the "Cookies" Additional tag gives you just different types of cookies and no other types of food.

How can I use Metatags and Subtags?

Let's go to the tag cloud under the "Browse" menu. Go to the "Browse" menu and click on "Tags".

This will show you some of the most popular tags used on the Archive. I like to look at the tag cloud sometimes to help myself figure out what tags I should use on a work.

Let's say that I'm writing fanfiction that involves an intimate scene of two characters bathing together. (I was originally going to use a more serious tag as an example like "Abuse" but the screenshots of all the involved tags made me grimace, so let's go with "Bathing/Washing".) I'm going to click on the "Bathing/Washing" Additional tag. It's one of the tiny ones in the tag cloud above.

Click!

I am now being shown every work that has been tagged with "Bathing/Washing" or one of its subtags. I don't care about this right now. I want to see the metatags and subtags. I'm going to click on the underlined tag again at the top of this page, where it says "70,063 Works in Bathing/Washing".

Click!

Yes! Now I'm seeing parent tags (No Fandom) and tags with the same meaning. I'm going to scroll down to subtags.

Wow, there are a lot of sex tags in here, like "Hot Tub Sex" and "Shower Sex"! Unsurprising! But now I know that I can use both the "Bathing/Washing" metatag for what's generally happening and the "Bubble Bath" subtag if that's what specifically happening.

For a more serious tag like "Abuse", the tag page will show me subtags for all the different specific types of abuse that people regularly tag in their works. If I was writing fanfiction for some "Cinderella" fandom, then I might explore the "Abuse" metatag and decide to use the specific subtags "Verbal Abuse" and "Familial Abuse" to warn potential readers.

Maybe someone is able to read about physical abuse, but depictions of verbal abuse trigger them, so they might try to filter out "Verbal Abuse" specifically. And if someone is having a hard day and doesn't want to read about any kind of abuse, then filtering out the big "Abuse" metatag will remove all its subtags from search results including the specific tag of "Verbal Abuse".

You don't have to individually type out "Gaslighting" and "Domestic Violence" and "Dogfighting" one by one into the exclusion filters. They're all subtags of the "Abuse" metatag. Filtering out just one big tag gets rid of all of them.

If you figure out the big "boss" tags (the metatags), then you can make exclusion of tags more efficient. Or you can search across large groupings of loosely related tags more efficiently.

More examples of Metatags and Subtags

Filtering out the "Mental Health Issues" metatag will get rid of any work tagged with its subtags. This includes: "Depression" or "Mental Breakdown" or "Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder".

Or searching by the "Mental Health Issues" metatag will show you every work tagged with its subtags, if that's what you want to read about. Further examples of these subtags are "Bipolar Disorder" or "Schizophrenia".

Using the metatag "Alternate Universe - Science Fiction" will return works tagged with "Alternate Universe - Space" alongside works tagged with "Alternate Universe - Steampunk". Here are all the subtags of "Alternate Universe - Science Fiction":

I have used both "Alternate Universe - Science Fiction" and "Alternate Universe - Space Opera" on one work before, even though space opera is a subtag of sci-fi. I wanted to be specific about what kind of sci-fi it was, but I didn't think that everyone would know what a space opera was. I wanted to catch people who were looking specifically for Space Opera AUs as well as those generally browsing the metatag for all sorts of Science Fiction AUs.

A work tagged with "Alternate Universe - Flower Shop" will show up under "Alternate Universe - Retail". Retail AUs are subtags of the "Alternate Universe - Career" metatag. If you want to see your favorite characters working a (probably shitty modern) job, then searching by the metatag of "Alternate Universe - Career" will return to you Coffee Shop AUs, Teaching AUs, Nanny AUs, Journalism AUs, Hospital AUs, and anything else subtagged to that metatag.

The "Alternate Universe - Historical" tag has both "Alternate Universe - Ancient Greece" and "Alternate Universe - Regency" as subtags. Along with many, many more!

Using the metatag "Sexual Content" will bring me all the fics tagged specifically for any kind of sexual content. Excluding the metatag "Sexual Content" will banish every fic tagged with things like "Masturbation", "Blow Jobs", or even "Dirty Talk".

I find it useful to visit the tag cloud for ideas when I feel like there's a tag that my work needs that I'm forgetting. Like, oh, yes! There's "Substance Abuse" in my fic, so I will click on that for ideas on how to be more specific. There's a subtag called "Alcohol Abuse/Alcholism" and a subtag of that subtag called "Excessive Drinking". Perfect! There is excessive drinking in my story. Because I'm trying to use a limited number of tags for this particular fic and the story itself doesn't focus on the substance abuse being depicted, I will choose to only use the tag "Excessive Drinking" knowing that it will still show up under or be filtered out by its two metatags.

If I was writing a story that not only depicted excessive drinking but was specifically about substance abuse and alcoholism as the main subject matter, I might choose to use all three of those tags to underline the fact that this is a key, major element of my story.

Conclusion

Subtags and metatags can be great for conserving tag space. It can be like using five or more tags in just one tag! Your works have hidden tags that you may not have known about!

Using the tag cloud to search for interesting subtags can also be a cool way to find new and really specific works. Clicking on the "Alternate Universe" has taught me about cool AUs that I didn't know other people were writing in other fandoms! (It has also taught me about AUs that kind of weird me out. But that's life! Your kink is not my kink and that's okay.)

Yes, this all depends on whether or not people tag properly.

Yes, this depends on how the tag wranglers have organized things and it's an imperfect system led by its users. Sometimes tags are accidentally organized into the wrong metatag.

But it's pretty incredible that it works as well as it does. A big thank you to all of the Archive volunteers who make it work!

Seriously, go browse the "Alternate Universe" Additional tag page and look at all the subtags. Some of them are really funny. Did you know that there's a "Transmigration into Minecraft" Additional tag subtagged under "Alternate Universe"? I didn't. If I'd thought about it for long enough, based on what I know about the current popularity of Minecraft and Transmigration stories, I probably could have guessed that eventually. But I didn't! So I learned something today about what "the kids" are up to! I hope they're having fun.

#tossawary ao3

[dsudis]

Tagging advice for my siblings in Dreamling

I was talking with some friends today and realized that some of the weirdness in how we tag this pairing is maybe not as widely understood as I thought, so! Let's talk about AO3 tagging and how it works!

The first thing that may not be obvious is how to explore the structure of a given AO3 tag. If you click on the pairing tag of any Dreamling fic, you should get to a page with this at the top:

And what is not obvious but the arrows there are pointing to, is that the name of the tag you're browsing is, itself, a link you can click on to find out more about how that tag works.

If you click on that one, the page for the Dream of the Endless | Morpheus/Hob Gadling tag will show you information in a few categories. Parent tags and Tags with the same meaning can be informative but don't affect searching too much.

Metatags and subtags, however, DO affect searching. If you're looking at the tag page for Dream of the Endless | Morpheus/Hob Gadling, it has one Metatag:

Dream of the Endless/Hob Gadling

This means that, necessarily, every story tagged Dream of the Endless | Morpheus/Hob Gadling also fits under the tag Dream of the Endless/Hob Gadling.

If you explore the character tag Dream of the Endless you can see that it has two subtags: Dream of the Endless | Morpheus and Dream of the Endless | Daniel. That means that those two tags are subsets of Dream of the Endless--and anything that is just tagged Dream of the Endless could in theory be either Morpheus, or Daniel, or both, or some other facet/version of Dream who does not fit into those subsets.

This means that when you search, if you search only for the Dream of the Endless | Morpheus/Hob Gadling tag, you will only find stories with a pairing tag that specifies Morpheus--because as far as the system knows, any story with a Dream/Hob or Dreamling tag that does not specify Morpheus could be featuring a different version of Dream that may not be the one you're searching for. When you search the Dream of the Endless/Hob Gadling tag, you will automatically get EVERY permutation of Dream/Hob in that tag--including anything specifically tagged Daniel!Dream/Hob, and all those tagged with the nonspecific tag, as well as everything tagged Morpheus/Hob.

You can test this by looking at the filters on the Dream of the Endless | Morpheus/Hob Gadling works page--you will see if you look under relationships that there is a smaller number of fics tagged Dream of the Endless/Hob Gadling. However, if you click that box, saying that you only want fics with that tag, and then filter, you will still get the exact same number of fics you originally got in the Dream of the Endless | Morpheus/Hob Gadling tag. Every fic in the more specific tag is treated as if it is also tagged with the Metatag, whether the author added it or not.

This means that the best practice for tagging your work on Ao3 is to use the most specific version of the tag that applies. If your story is Morpheus!Dream/Hob, tag accordingly. People searching the more general tag will automatically find your story, and people searching a more narrow version will only find it if your story applies.

When searching for fic, however, it will be best to browse or search through the more general tag, so that stories that have not been tagged with such precision will still turn up, along with all the ones that are tagged exactly (and then you can use filters to, for instance, exclude stories tagged with a different version of the character/ship, if you choose to).

#ao3 #ao3 tagging #dreamling #the sandman #metadata #tag nerdery #how it all works

[olderthannetfic]

You’ve said that you like character death that is fake or doesn’t stick. What are your favorite tags to browse to find good fic in that genre?

--

AO3 has three filterable tags, all of them under the metatag 'Not Really Character Death'.

[dawnfelagund]

How to Block AI Bots from Scraping Your Website

The Silmarillion Writers' Guild just recently opened its draft AI policy for comment, and one thing people wanted was for us, if possible, to block AI bots from scraping the SWG website. Twelve hours ago, I had no idea if it was possible! But I spent a few hours today researching the subject, and the SWG site is now much more locked down against AI bots than it was this time yesterday.

I know I am not the only person with a website or blog or portfolio online that doesn't want their content being used to train AI. So I thought I'd put together what I learned today in hopes that it might help others.

First, two important points:

I am not an IT professional. I am a middle-school humanities teacher with degrees in psychology, teaching, and humanities. I'm self-taught where building and maintaining websites is concerned. In other words, I'm not an expert but simply passing on what I learned during my research today.

On that note, I can't help with troubleshooting on your own site or project. I wouldn't even have been able to do everything here on my own for the SWG, but thankfully my co-admin Russandol has much more tech knowledge than me and picked up where I got lost.

Step 1: Block AI Bots Using Robots.txt

If you don't even know what this is, start here:

About /robots.txt

How to write and submit a robots.txt file

If you know how to find (or create) the robots.txt file for your website, you're going to add the following lines of code to the file. (Source: DataDome, How ChatGPT & OpenAI Might Use Your Content, Now & in the Future)

User-agent: CCBot Disallow: /

AND

User-agent: ChatGPT-User Disallow: /

Step Two: Add HTTPS Headers/Meta Tags

Unfortunately, not all bots respond to robots.txt. Img2dataset is one that recently gained some notoriety when a site owner posted in its issue queue after the bot brought his site down, asking that the bot be opt-in or at least respect robots.txt. He received a rather rude reply from the img2dataset developer. It's covered in Vice's An AI Scraping Tool Is Overwhelming Websites with Traffic.

Img2dataset requires a header tag to keep it away. (Not surprisingly, this is often a more complicated task than updating a robots.txt file. I don't think that's accidental. This is where I got stuck today in working on my Drupal site.) The header tags are "noai" and "noimageai." These function like the more familiar "noindex" and "nofollow" meta tags. When Russa and I were researching this today, we did not find a lot of information on "noai" or "noimageai," so I suspect they are very new. We used the procedure for adding "noindex" or "nofollow" and swapped in "noai" and "noimageai," and it worked for us.

Header meta tags are the same strategy DeviantArt is using to allow artists to opt out of AI scraping; artist Aimee Cozza has more in What Is DeviantArt's New "noai" and "noimageai" Meta Tag and How to Install It. Aimee's blog also has directions for how to use this strategy on WordPress, SquareSpace, Weebly, and Wix sites.

In my research today, I discovered that some webhosts provide tools for adding this code to your header through a form on the site. Check your host's knowledge base to see if you have that option.

You can also use .htaccess or add the tag directly into the HTML in the <head> section. .htaccess makes sense if you want to use the "noai" and "noimageai" tag across your entire site. The HTML solution makes sense if you want to exclude AI crawlers from specific pages.

Here are some resources on how to do this for "noindex" and "nofollow"; just swap in "noai" and "noimageai":

HubSpot, Using Noindex, Nofollow HTML Metatags: How to Tell Google Not to Index a Page in Search (very comprehensive and covers both the .htaccess and HTML solutions)

Google Search Documentation, Block Search Indexing with noindex (both .htaccess and HTML)

AngryStudio, Add noindex and nofollow to Whole Website Using htaccess

Perficient, How to Implement a NoIndex Tag (HTML)

Finally, all of this is contingent on web scrapers following the rules and etiquette of the web. As we know, many do not. Sprinkled amid the many articles I read today on blocking AI scrapers were articles on how to override blocks when scraping the web.

This will also, I suspect, be something of a game of whack-a-mole. As the img2dataset case illustrates, the previous etiquette around robots.txt was ignored in favor of a more complicated opt-out, one that many site owners either won't be aware of or won't have time/skill to implement. I would not be surprised, as the "noai" and "noimageai" tags gain traction, to see bots demanding that site owners jump through a new, different, higher, and possibly fiery hoop in order to protect the content on their sites from AI scraping. These folks serve to make a lot of money off this, which doesn't inspire me with confidence that withholding our work from their grubby hands will be an endeavor that they make easy for us.

#ai and fanworks #blocking ai #ai and art #ai and writing #ai web scraping

[phoenixyfriend]

So apparently "Time Travel" and "Alternate Universe - Time Travel" are not metatags??? Neither falls under the umbrella of the other???? They are not equivalent????????

What?

#ao3 #tagging #metatags #time travel #tag wranglers pls explain??? #ftr I was trying to find itstimeforstarwars's fic

[ao3statistics]

This is self-made. Date: 10.01.2024

@ChoccyMilkForYou I wasn't quite sure what you wanted, so here's some Link for you. :D

I assume no guarantee or liability for the completeness, correctness and accuracy of this chart despite my best efforts.

Includes fanfictions in all languages available, NOT English only. Includes all fandoms on Ao3 connected to DC, Batman etc.

The sibling tags in the chart above are all metatags.

More charts will follow. :)

Want to have a chart for different pairings, headcanons etc. in your favourite fandom? Send me an ask!

#choccymilkforyou #ao3statistics #ao3 #statistics #ao3 fanfic #link loz #loz #legend of zelda #selectively mute link #mute link #link needs a hug #talking link #trans link #link uses sign language #hurt link #link has ptsd

[oakgreenoak]

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to AO3

I’ve noticed lately there’s more and more people out there who come into ArchiveOfOurOwn from somewhere like Wattpad and don’t know how to work it. I’m taking it upon myself to make a sort of user guide to show people that nicely explain all the little fiddly bits. I’m sure plenty have made their own guides, but this one is mine.

I’m going to have headings for different features and screenshots, so I’ll stick it all under a readmore. I’m not going to go SUPER in depth on everything, but I intend on giving a basic rundown on stuff relevant to looking for and filtering fic. So! Onward!

Finding Your Fandom

Let’s start simple- the fandom. If you don’t have an account or don’t have any saved tags, the different categories will show up on the front page. In any case, they’ll appear when you hover over the Fandoms tab in the top right.

All Fandoms pulls up a page that shows each of these categories in their own boxes, with the five most common fandoms in each listed. For our guide, we’re going to be looking for Hitchhiker’s Guide. So, let’s start with books.

This pulls up a page which lists every single fandom in this category organised by first character. Articles like A or The are ignored, so we’ll go to H.

Uh oh! There are two tags here! Why are there two? (You may notice that there are two tags for The Hobbit, too.)

This is because Ao3 fandom tags are nested. The left tag- the one that simply says “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”- is called a metatag. The right one- the one that includes “- Douglas Adams”- is a subtag. Not every fandom has a separate metatag with subtags- they exist for a particular reason, which I’ll come back to in a moment.

For now, let’s click on the metatag.

Here we have our main fandom tag in all its glory. Congratulations, you’ve successfully navigated your way to your first fandom page! It’s from here that we can start to narrow down our search.

There’s a lot of fandoms there and that’s scary. Is there an alternative?

I’m not going to go in depth on the search function in this guide- you can apply pretty much of the information I give you later on to this page as well, and I’ll touch on it towards the end. I’m just going to direct your attention down to the Work Tags section.

As you can see, as long as you know a fandom’s name, you can find it.

Now, let’s go back to that fandom sort page.

Fandom Tags

You’ll notice that the fandom tag at the top of the page is a link. Click on that.

Holy information overload, batman!

This is a tag information page. It tells us that this is a fandom tag under the Books & Literature category, gives us a list of synonyms, a list of subtags, and a list of child tags in 3 categories - Characters, Relationships, and Additional Tags.

On a subtag’s page, in place of the subtags category, it tells us what metatag the given tag is attached to. In a fandom that only has one tag, this category is skipped altogether.

Metatags & Subtags

Remember how I said I would come back to these in a moment? That moment is now. 

 Some pieces of media appear in multiple formats. There are often differences in canon, continuity, or even simply appearance/descriptions between versions. This is where subtags come in- they correspond to different formats.

Conversely, a fandom’s metatag is basically a catch-all. It aggregates every fic tagged with any of the subtags, as well as being taggable in itself.

This is what the subtags look like in our Hitchhiker’s Guide example. If you, for instance, only wanted to read fanfiction based on the 1981 TV show’s continuity, you could click that tag and then click on the filter works link.

If you don’t care which continuity a fic is based on, you can filter works by the metatag. If you want to see fic from some continuities, but not others, this is also possible through the metatag- keep this in mind when we get to filtering.

Child Tags

This category holds all your fandom-specific tags. Fandom metatags and subtags may have different child tags, a tag being attached to one doesn’t necessarily mean it will appear in the other. These tags are also all listed individually; synonyms aren’t grouped together under one tag. This can make them a little difficult to navigate, especially in bigger fandoms. That said, it can be helpful for finding specific tags you may be interested in.

Child tags are grouped in 3 categories, which are also how most tags are categorised sitewide. So, we’ll use this as a segue into talking generally about...

Fic Metadata- Information and You!

Let’s navigate back to the main fandom sort page and find a fanfic. Here’s one, by yours truly:

(In light mode now, because it’s in a private window- you may have noticed I have a browser extension that shows additional stats lmao. Unlike tumblr, however, ao3 is pretty functional even without addons, though they’re worth looking into for some uses.)

There’s a lot going on here, so we’ll break it down piece by piece. Let’s start with the...

Tags

Tags are used to give certain information about a fic which helps in filtering fics in or out of a search. There are three variable categories of tag and a fourth which are archive-wide. I’ve boxed each above in different colours, for reference.

The first tag you’ll see, in bold and here boxed in red, is the Archive Warnings. These are special tags which work slightly different than the others and are standardised across the entire archive. These tags are meant to tell whether or not a work has extreme/sensitive content. There are six archive warning tags:

Graphic Depictions of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Noncon, and Underage are meant to serve as content warnings for extreme or sensitive elements.

No Archive Warnings Apply is for fic which do not have any of the above listed content.

Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings may or may not contain one or more of those warnings. This is not the same as No Archive Warnings Apply. Clicking on a fic with this tag is essentially doing so at your own risk.

Now, onto the variable tags. These are the same 3 categories as mentioned above under Child Tags, as this is where you’ll find many of your fandom-specific tags. While every fic has an archive warning tag- even if it’s to say there are no archive warnings- not every fic has all or even any of these tags.

First, Relationships, outlined here in blue and highlighted by the archive in grey. These tell the prospective reader what character relationships are present in a fic. If there's a / between the characters’ names, that means that it is a romantic pairing. If there is instead a &, then it’s a platonic pairing. Not every relationship tag is restricted to two characters; it’s entirely possible for three or more characters to be listed in a single relationship, especially for OT3s or important friend groups.

Second are our Characters, in green. These are generally meant to list important characters in the fic, but some people list every character that makes a slight appearance, so YMMV.

Finally we have Additional Tags, or Freeform Tags, in purple. These house whatever other pertinent information a fic might have. This is where people tag for AUs, continuity, contextual info, theme, tone, genre, etc. Again however, how much is accounted for in a given fic’s tags may vary from work to work and author to author.

All of these tags are sortable, just like fandom tags. If you click on any of these, you will be taken to a list of works with that tag. This is especially useful if you find a particular character or pairing you like- rather than sift through the entire fandom tag, you can sort by only that specific thing. You can also take a look at, say, every fic in every fandom that has a given Freeform tag like pre-relationship. If, y’know, that’s something you wanted to do for some reason.

Symbols

Now, onto these little boxes up here.

This, at a glance, tells you a good chunk of information about a fic. In this case it’s telling you the fic is rated Teen, features an M/M pairing, requires no archive warnings, and is a complete work.

Clicking on any of these symbols on Ao3 itself gives you a visual rundown of each symbol’s meaning...and as such, there’s no real purpose in rehashing the specific symbols here. Here’s instead a rundown of each category and what they mean:

Top left: This is the rating, either G, T, M, E, or Unrated. The rating works roughly like ratings do for film, in that it gives an idea of what audience a given work’s content is suitable for. General Audiences is for works that don’t contain potentially inappropriate themes. Teen and up fic may contain references to adult content or themes, but don’t contain anything very detailed. Mature fic contain adult themes or situations which are described in story, or which are heavily lead up to before a fade. Explicit is generally reserved for fic which contain explicit sexual content or (more rarely) extreme violence or gore. Finally, Unrated fic may contain any or no mature content; you click these at your own risk.

Top right: This tells you whether or not a fic is primarily ship-focused and, if so, what the orientation is. There are separate labels for M/M, F/M, and F/F ships, as well as Multi for fic which have multiple pairings or a ship with multiple partners and Other for ships which don’t fit into any of the previous categories. There is also a Gen label for fic that either have no ships or which have background ships that aren’t the focus. Unlike the Relationship tags, these are exclusively used for romantic pairings.

Bottom Left: This tells you whether or not a work has a major archive warning, or if the creator chose not to use archive warnings. Those three are the only ones you’ll see on the archive at large, but when you’re looking at someone’s bookmarks, you may instead see a blue globe here- that means that it’s a bookmarked external work hosted elsewhere, and may or may not have applicable warnings.

Bottom Right: Tells you whether a work is complete or not with a green check or a red X respectively. There’s apparently a possible variable in which the work’s status is unknown and this box is blank, which I presume is another bookmarks-only thing.

Other Information

Up top, you can see the title and author of a fic as well as any fandoms. If they gifted the work to someone, you also see their username. If a fic is cowritten by multiple authors, you’ll see their usernames separated by a comma. If it was written by a user with a Pseud (basically a way keeping different works separate under one account), you’ll see the Pseud (with the username next to it in parentheses). And finally, if a fic was orphaned (that is, removed from an author’s account but not deleted) the username will display as orphan_account, sometimes with pseud still attached.

To the far righthand side of the top of the box is the fic’s date posted.

On the bottom we have more information. Directly below the tags is the fic’s summary, meant to be a sort of hook to draw readers in. Below that is the statistics- information about language, fic length, chapter total, and number of comments, kudos, bookmarks, and hits.

There’s some clickables down here. Clicking on comments or kudos puts you at the bottom of the fic’s page to see those and clicking on the bookmarks show you everyone who publicly bookmarked it. On multichapter fics, the most recently updated chapter is also a clickable number- it skips you directly to that page in the fic. 

As for the chapter numbers themselves- the first number is the most recently updated chapter, while the second number is the expected final chapter. A oneshot displays as 1/1; a multichapter fic which has 9 chapters posted so far and the author expects there to be 12, it will display as 9/12. Many unfinished multichaps have a ? for the second number, which generally means the author isn’t sure yet how many chapters it will be.

Some fic will also have a little additional thing between the summary and statistics, which I’ll borrow someone else’s fic for.

This is a collection, and it’s basically a way of grouping separate stories together. Some people collect their stories together by theme, some by fandom, some by au, and some collections group together fic with their prequel/sequel fic.

That’s a lot of information! And now that we know how to get all this info, how do we use it to find fic we want?

Sort And Filter, Filter And Sort

By now you’ve probably noticed this giant column over on the righthand side of the screen. What is it?

This is the filter column, and it will be your new best friend. You have 6 sets of options, with 3 of those having multiple sub-option sets. Let’s go from top to bottom.

Sort by determines how fic will be ordered in your results. Ao3 doesn’t have an algorithm in the modern sense; by default, it shows you fic in order of most recently updated. You can also order fic in alphabetical order (by author or by title), by date originally posted, or from highest to lowest word count, hits, kudos, comments, or bookmarks.

If you’re new to a fandom, or there’s a lot of fic and you don’t know where to start, it’s generally agreed that sorting by kudos is the most helpful. That pulls the most popular fic up to the top. (I’ve also heard it said that sorting by hits is more helpful if you’re looking for fic of a saucier nature, because while people may be inclined to read it, the semi-public nature of kudos makes logged-in users hesitant to leave them on those kinds of fic.)

Include is for stuff your fic MUST include. As such, you can only pick one rating if any for Include, since fics can of course only be one rating at a time.

Ratings is for fic audience rating, Warnings is for archive warnings, Categories is for romantic pairing types (eg M/M, F/F, multi etc), Fandoms is of course for fandom tags present and the last 3 are for each of the 3 varieties of tag.

For each of the last four categories it gives you the 10 most popular tags in that section as a convenient clickable option. If there are any tags you don’t see there, you can type them into the little search bar where it says “Other tags to include”.

Exclude is, naturally, exactly the same as Include save for the fact that it serves the opposite function. You can also Exclude multiple ratings.

More Options lets you specify things a bit.

With Crossovers, you can not only choose whether or not you want to see crossovers, but also if you would like to only see crossovers. If crossovers aren’t your thing, don’t worry about accidentally filtering out fic tagged with multiple meta/subtags of the same fandom; those don’t count as crossovers. Completed works let you choose whether you want to see all fic, only completed works, or only works in progress. Both of these are toggled on all fic by default.

Word Count and Date Updated both have “from” and “to” fields. Specifying word count is good if you, say, don’t like fic under 1k in length but don’t have time to read a 500k chonker, or would like to read anything under 500 words, or above 150k. Meanwhile, the Date Updated to/from fields pull up a calendar for you to select specific dates.

And finally, there’s these last two. Search within results is a basic text field, as opposed to the other fields which autofill tags. This is helpful if you’re looking for something but don’t know the tag, or if you’re looking for a particular author or bit of text in the metadata at large. Language is likely self explanatory.

So how do you use this?

It’s simple: include tags you like, exclude tags you don’t, and set whatever parameters you like.

Let’s say that I want to find a Hitchhiker’s fic with these attributes- it’s tagged with No Archive Warnings Apply, isn’t tagged in Alternate Universe, can exist in any continuity except the film, and isn’t a crossover. I also want it to be in English and have the word “tea” somewhere. What does this look like?

Pre sort...

Post sort!

That really narrows it down!

Okay, but what if I want a specific ship or character?

There’s two ways to do this. You can either filter to include that character/ship in your search, or you can use their tag and filter from there. So say I want to find fic that feature Arthur Dent...

and I can filter from there.

What if the tag I want to filter isn’t on the lists it gives me?

That’s what those “other tags” bars are for. Say I just really want to find fics which feature Scrabble:

I can then sort and filter and we find our niche fic.

Now that you know this information, you’re pretty much set on finding anything you like. There’s still other ways of finding fic, of course, but in all the time I’ve been using ao3 I’ve yet to need anything more than this. Here’s a short look, however.

Up here you can Browse. Clicking on Works, Bookmarks, and Collections shows you EVERYTHING in each of those categories across the entire site, ordered by most recently updated. Tags shows you a word cloud with the most common fic tags, any of which you can click on to be taken to its sort page.

Search takes you to an advanced search page. The way this is laid out is basically the same as the filter sidebar, albeit with more typing in bars rather than clicking. There are some options the filter bar has that this one doesn’t, some that are slightly different between versions, and some that are unique to search (such as a Single Chapter checkbox if you want exclusively oneshots.)

And, as mentioned previously, this is a good way to find a fandom tag if the fandoms page is too daunting.

You can also search for particular users (by name or fandom), search user bookmarks, and search for specific tags.

Most of the tags search is fairly self explanatory, but it also has this bit:

All this means is whether or not a given tag you want is standard wordage. Canonical tags are common tags which can be filtered for, non-canonical tags are stuff people have tagged their work as and can’t be filtered as-is. There are many non-canonical tags which mean the same thing as a canonical tag (ie “canon divergent” to “Alternate Universe- Canon Divergence”) and will therefore show up in that tag’s filter as well.

As for bookmarks... to go into those would require an entirely separate post, as there’s a lot you can do with them.

That said, you should now have the skills you need to search for whatever fic you like using Ao3′s tagging and filtering system. Go forth and fic!

#ao3 stuff #archive of our own #jay chirps #mostly im making this so i can link it to people instead of attempting to explain filters aand metatags over discord lmao

[ofmd-alsaurus]

Hi, podficcer here. I appreciate the shoutout to our type of fanworks! In my experience, I don't really browse the Podfic Welcome tag that much as it's so sparsely used - however, if people have a permission statement on their profile and have not yet added themselves to fpslist.org (a database of Fandom Permission Statements) they should! Many podficcers use a browser plugin that highlights people's usernames in green on AO3 (or hides works altogether that don't have permission if we toggle that option) and it's much easier for us to find things to podfic!

If you're a new podficcer, I'd recommend *not* gifting podfic to an author without first asking if they're okay with that first. If you use the "inspired by" function when you upload, the author will (1) get an email informing them of the podfic (2) it'll show up in their "related works" tab on their dashboard, and (3) they'll then be able to link the podfic to their work if they choose, where it will show up at the end in the "works inspired by this one" section AO3 adds automatically.

PS: you can also use the Podfic tag, though Podfic & Podficced Works is cool too :)

(this is the post that anon is referring to)

Thank you so much for the information!!!

I use the Podfic Welcome tag on my fics and have had four (4!!!!) of my works recorded that way. And it's always the most welcome surprise. I appreciate what y'all do so much!! I will definitely add myself to that database.

And to clarify, I use the Podfic & Podficced Works tag to find podfics because it's a metatag which will include anything tagged Podfic in the results, along with other subtags like Podfic Available and Podfic Linked. :) (I always add the Podfic Available tag to my fics that have been recorded, and I know other authors do the same, so I want those works in my results when searching for podfics, in case I'm sorting by date posted, kudos, etc)

#anon #podfics #fandom #ao3

[atthebell]

so with tag wrangling, what are the requirements for what i Think is called a subtag to get formed? specifically asking bc me and some friends have an smp and we've been writing fics about it, and we have abt 12 or 13 fics tagged and posted rn, but they all get grouped into the video blogging rpf tag. what would we have to do in order to get a subtag?

that would be a fandom tag, not a subtag, and it wouldn't get a canonical regardless, as fics written about one's own work are considered original work typically. here is the wrangling guideline from ao3 about this exact issue.

and in regard to the tagging terminology mix-up, subtags refer to things that are subtagged to metatags, as in "domestic fluff" is a subtag of "fluff" which is a metatag.

#asks #anons

[mona-liar]

Either tumblr is implementing metatags in some way (I doubt it) or they're beginning to implement an algorithm to feed search results bc it showed me posts for dancing and artistic gymnastics which did not have "figure" or "skating" in them (text or tags) which was my og search term and I've never had this issue before. But I what I do not doubt is that somewhere in a search engine backend somehow and algorithm was made to decide that both dancing and artistic gymnastics might be interesting to people who are also interested in figure skating.

Tumblr I'm watching you

#I've already bookmarked the feedback form you WILL hear from me

[horsegamesins]

New intro yey

Allu/Axxu│ 20 │ any pronouns

Asperger's syndrome & SNHL

Welcome internet people. I am a horse game nerd, what else is there to say?

(I am so bad at introductions gahh)

I like horses, used to ride every week until the beginning of 2023, and I wanna eventually become a saddler (or whatever you call someone who makes horse tack). My other interests include music, video games, and anime.

I have 4 sso accounts across 3 regions. My main is at level 23, and I have been playing since 2020. you can find me on: Carrot Cove: Alexis Lowpeak Spring Star: Phoenix Winding Night Sprinkles: Eden Serpentgarden

Sometimes I make hobbyhorses and fursuits.

I also do furry art, if you wish to follow my work you can find me on Twitter & Bluesky as @Axxstripes, but be aware that both of them contain NSFW material.

Tag guide: All horse games get tagged as themselves, e.g. #Star Stable Online #Tales of Rein Ravine #Ranch of Rivershine and so on, nothing fancy

#nonhorsegame - everything that isn't horse games #horseposting - horse pictures #tismposting - autism brr #personal - anything about me & my life #metatag - anything about this blog

#sso spoilers - sso story bits, horses, events, etc. that sse has released. #sso leaks - unreleased sso stuff from non-official sources

#Al's ssocs - my sso characters #Al's sso ponies - my in-game sso horses #my art - self explanatory #others art - ditto #pin - stuff I wanna come back to (but probably wont)

#personal #metatag #pinned post

[custer-mp3]

anyway reminder that “dead dove: do not eat” is a metatag, it’s a tag referring to the other tags--i.e. YES THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT IT SAYS ON THE TIN, I DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU EXPECT, THE TAGS ARE NOT HERE FOR SHOW. it’s a tag about the tags. 

mfs out here like “dove only lightly wounded & then nursed back to health” “the dove lives” “dove injured but not killed” “dove half-cooked” to refer to “problematicness” of the content in fics when DDDNE is a metatag like.....are you saying your tags are half-serious? your tags are correct but then become incorrect? your tags are outright deceitful?

“no it’s just not HARD NC-17 badwrong Major Archive Warning content” then leave the poor bird out of it mctaylee

#same goes for DDDNE -IN ABSENCE OF OTHER TAGS- #WHAT tag are we supposed to take seriously you didnt PUT ANY

[olderthannetfic]

For the person who wants to exclude media types using AO3 filtering: this won't do 100% of what you want, but putting -"[media type]" in the search within results field on the filter panel will remove every fandom that has the [media type] as part of its canonical fandom title. So putting -"video game*" will remove any fandom whose canonical includes (Video Game) or (Video Games), which is a big chunk of video game fandoms.

--

That's true. This will work better for some media types than others, but it might help.

A few subtypes have metatags too. Kpop has one. I think tokusatsu does.