AO3 News

Upcoming limit on tags per work

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Published:
2021-08-24 21:12:26 UTC
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In the coming days, we'll be rolling out a code change that limits the total number of fandom, character, relationship, and additional tags that can be added to a work. This limit of 75 tags will apply to both new and existing works, but no tags will be automatically removed from existing works.

Why place a limit on tags?

Having a limit on tags will:

  • help keep work blurbs to a reasonable length, improving the experience of navigating work listings, and
  • encourage creators to tag for the most important elements of their works, improving the quality of search results.

Why 75 tags?

We looked at all the works on the Archive and determined that:

  • the average number of tags per work is 17,
  • the most common number of tags per work is 11, and
  • less than 0.5% of works have more than 75 tags.

A limit of 75 total fandom, character, relationship, and additional tags per work will provide the vast majority of creators with enough space to describe the content of their works while also keeping work blurbs to a manageable size.

Why don't ratings, categories, and warnings count toward the limit?

Ratings, categories, and warnings already have limits of their own. A work can only have one rating, and the number of categories and warnings a work can have is limited by the number of options provided on the posting form.

What should I do if I notice someone's work has more than 75 total fandom, character, relationship, and additional tags?

Nothing! Works that exceed the tag limit do not violate the Terms of Service and should not be reported to the Policy & Abuse team or the Support team.

What happens to previously posted works with more than 75 total fandom, character, relationship, and additional tags?

Nothing! The work will keep all of its tags.

However, if the work creator wants to edit the work or add a chapter, they will have to remove some of their fandom, character, relationship, and/or additional tags before they can save their changes. (An error message will tell the creator exactly how many tags must be removed.)