So @ao3commentoftheday has recently starting doing a thing called Ask A Tag Wrangler, which Iād recommend checking out if youāre 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 AO3Ā 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. Iām 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 donāt 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 donāt play nice with the filtering system. As Pepper says, they frequently contain multiple concepts or arenāt clear exactly what theyāre 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? Thereās 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.
Itās important to remember that people use AO3 in different ways. Not everyone cares if other people can find their fic ā 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 doesnāt 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 āproperā 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 donāt even use the fandom-specific canonicals like āGay Ron Weasleyā to find what they want. I donāt, myself ā 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 theyāre 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 authorās head. Iāve absolutely clicked on fics just because the tags were funny.
So, with all of that in mind, some specific things with Pepperās post that I disagree with:
Chatty tags donāt 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 theyāre formatted. Iād 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 Iām on my phone) and are harder to skim.
I strongly disagree with the idea that wranglers donāt enjoy wrangling chatty tags. Theyāre 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. Theyāre also usually pretty easy to wrangle because they tend to have multiple concepts that canāt be attached to anything. So itās 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 donāt need to be filterable or informative. It is perfectly valid to use AO3 tags as a āwhisperspaceā a la Tumblr if youād 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 authorās notes, but you donāt have to. Go wild.
Honestly? As a wrangler, my advice to AO3 users is that you shouldnāt 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 doesnāt mean thereās 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. Itās what we signed up for!
What you should worry about is what youāre 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 thatās what you want, Pepperās 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 doesnāt have to be true. If that stresses you out or goes against your tag aesthetic or just isnāt helpful for you, you donāt have to do it. You also donāt need to treat every tag the same way ā 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 Pepperās āHarry Potter remains a total disasterā example.
BASICALLY what Iām 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. Itās because we want you to write whatever you want. So please donāt stress out too much about tagging things Properlyā¢ or making things difficult for tag wranglers.
