Upcoming limit on tags per work

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2021-08-24 21:12:26 UTC

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Tags:

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.)

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Mystery0028 Wed 25 Aug 2021 03:24AM UTC

Thank you! Scrolling through the archives and seeing so many tags on a fic is offputting and annoying. It doesnt really want to make me read them.

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Redactive3D Wed 25 Aug 2021 03:42AM UTC

Thank FUCK, god I was so tired of having to scroll through five minutes straight of just ridiculous tags in ONE work

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Jisa_Patryn Wed 25 Aug 2021 03:51AM UTC

A lot of the negative reactions seem to be seem to be anxiety over finding readers, accurately tagging fics, and expressing themselves. I just want to say, as someone who is primarily a reader, that there is precisely one instance where I wish people would tag more, and many, many instances where I wish people would tag less. ("Reader-insert" fics squick me badly, but often "reader" is not usually listed as a character and I have to eliminate Character X/Reader, Character Y/Reader, Character Z/Reader. I may just have to resort to saved searches or other filtering. *shrugs*)
I don't know how other readers search, but I'm always looking for fanfic, and trying new search combinations. Unless I feel like scratching a very particular itch, I like to cast a wide net in whatever fandom I'm reading in. Unless it's a mega-fandom, chances are good that I'll see a fic. Let me be honest: the number of tags is something I consider when I'm thinking about clicking on a story, and more tags do not make that more likely. I love long-fic, but I am not here to read your 50 tags, I'm here to read the fic.
Frankly, I'm not going to read that many tags, and if you're expressing something important there, it's getting lost in the lack of paragraph breaks. Put it in the summary or author's note.
I'm just unspeakably thankful that this will cut down on the "fic" that are actually one-shot collections.

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1. dridri93 Wed 25 Aug 2021 03:59AM UTC
  
  For filtering /Reader fics, I’ve started typing -“/Reader” -“/You” into the Search Bar at the bottom of the filter box. It makes all the fics with tags that have that string go away without hiding eight dozen specific tags. It’s a bit more typing, but when I’m doing a whole-fandom trawl for new fic, it’s a lifesaver. (Doesn’t catch anything tagged as /OFC or /Original Female Character but those can sometimes be third-person and interesting so I let those ride.)
  Edit: it also doesn’t catch anything tagged with like, “x Reader”, so it’s not perfect. But at least in my fandom, it’s worked out. Ymmv, depending on the tagging style and (probably) age of the authors and the tag conventions they’re used to.)
  
  Last Edited Wed 25 Aug 2021 04:02AM UTC
  
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2. 1. Jisa_Patryn Wed 25 Aug 2021 04:20AM UTC
    
    Thanks! That looks like it'll cut a good chunk of it out. I think part of the problem is age of the writers and newness of the style, since there's a fair amount of variation. Original characters don't cause the same visceral reaction, so they're completely fine.
    I got spoiled by smaller/mostly dead fandoms I think.
    
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  2. (Previous comment deleted.)
  3. 1. coaldustcanary Sat 28 Aug 2021 06:48PM UTC
      
      There is no difference between -'"/reader" and -"reader/". The forward slash is ignored in the search. You can just have
      -reader -you -original
      in the search within results box and it will do the same thing, which is to exclude all works with the words "reader" or "you" or "original" anywhere in the title, summary, notes, or tags.
      
      Last Edited Sat 28 Aug 2021 06:48PM UTC
      
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3. stormy1x2 Wed 25 Aug 2021 03:49PM UTC
  
  God THIS. I hate hate HATE readerxcharacter fics and I have to go and manually input reader/this character for each one - this is really prevalent in some of my fandoms like One Piece. I hate having to type in reader/specific character two dozen damn times because I'm not interested in reading about a reader or an OC fucking Ace, Zoro, Kidd or Mihawk etc, etc etc etc..... I wish I could just block the word 'reader' or 'original character' and have that encompass all of them - original male, original female, original male/canon character, original female/canon character....
  ^ just typing it here for examples is frigging annoying.
  
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4. 1. another_shingo Sat 28 Aug 2021 02:44AM UTC
    
    Making Reader a character would solve all of this. I really wish it was easier to filter those fics out.
    I wish people would tag POV too. First person, second person, third person. Reading first person stories is similarly uncomfortable to Reader stories for me.
    
    Last Edited Sat 28 Aug 2021 02:48AM UTC
    
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  2. 1. Lielac Mon 30 Aug 2021 05:21PM UTC
      
      Here's the Reader tag.
      
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Speakthroughfingers Wed 25 Aug 2021 03:51AM UTC

I'm concerned the data on the number of tags per fic is skewed by short fics. There are way more short fics than long fics, and long fics typically need more tags. What percentage of fics with over 100K have 75+ tags? What about 200K?
If there is a significant increase from 0.5% when you consider only long fics, I think that should be accounted for.

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1. Aisteach Wed 25 Aug 2021 06:27AM UTC
  
  That 👆 is an excellent point.
  A quick search right before this comment shows 8,068,495 works on the site.
  Only 207,798 are >50,000 words
  Only 69,995 are >100,000 words
  Only 16,809 are >200,000 words
  
  Last Edited Wed 25 Aug 2021 06:28AM UTC
  
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2. 1. Speakthroughfingers Wed 25 Aug 2021 06:48AM UTC
    
    Exactly! Roughly 0.87% of fics are over 100K, if my math is right. It would make a lot of sense for many if not most of those to have close to or over 75 tags, if 0.5% of works have over 75 tags. (Since the trend I've noticed is that long fics have more tags)
    Now, maybe that's not true, but we don't have the data to know either way.
    I think it would be important to consider this when determining the tag limit. Perhaps fics over a certain length could be permitted 100 tags or something. Idk. I just think this is unfair to long fics.
    
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  2. 1. larenoz Wed 25 Aug 2021 07:33AM UTC
      
      As a reader who regularly searches for fics over 100,000 words, I can say most of those fics don’t need more than 75 tags. If they have more than that, it’s probably something I won’t enjoy reading anyway. If a writer can’t curate their tags well, then that can be a hint to a not desirable writing style.
      
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    2. 1. melannen Wed 25 Aug 2021 07:39AM UTC
        
        I think that's true most of the time. When I'm looking for a fic, I want tags that show a character/pairing/etc. that showed up in a significant percentage of a fic. Tagging a character who's there in 5000 words of a 200000 word fic doesn't really do anyone any good, and most of the really long fic would probably do fine cut into a series or with their tags trimmed significantly.
        But some people do tag so that people can filter *out*, and those don't stop being useful even if it's only for a short scene in a long fic. Content warning tags could easily add up to over 75 in a long fic that went dark places.
        
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      2. larenoz Wed 25 Aug 2021 07:47AM UTC
        
        That’s fair. But at a certain point you have to ask how specific and detailed do you need to get? If you’re doing so many taggable things in a fic, go hard on the high level warnings.
        
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        KeroZombie Wed 25 Aug 2021 08:15AM UTC
        
        I totally get where you're coming from, but the high level warnings only cover so many triggers. For example, someone may have no problem with graphic violence, but find references to drowning to be very triggering. It can be helpful to cover specific stressful and traumatic situations to help people filter them out. I'm lucky that I don't have any such triggers, but I know many people do.
        
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        (4 more comments in this thread)
        
        Tarash Wed 25 Aug 2021 02:33PM UTC
        
        "Content warning tags could easily add up to over 75 in a long fic that went dark places."
        I think at that point, you have to do author notes per chapter for additional content warnings - also so that readers know when they can expect a specific thing.
        
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      3. stormy1x2 Wed 25 Aug 2021 03:49PM UTC
        
        ^ Ditto this.
        
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    3. Alyndra Wed 25 Aug 2021 08:09AM UTC
      
      This comment made me curious, so I ran a quick sample test. I sorted the tag Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings by word count, and then counted how many of the top hundred fics had over 75 tags. The answer was 17. Wordcounts ranged from 900k to 6 million.
      If this sample is representative, it means 17% of ultralong works will be affected by the new limit. It's markedly different from the .5% sitewide figure, but not a majority or even close. I could see how it could be nice to have 100 tags to work with in a few cases, but I also get why AO3 decided 75 was a reasonable place to set the limit. It's a lot of tags to read without paragraph breaks!
      
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    4. 1. Terrie Wed 25 Aug 2021 11:49AM UTC
        
        I took a look at your search. Several of those are the ridiculous drabble collections with dozens (or even thousands in one case!) of chapters. Of the others, many include redundant or contradictory tags (one has sexual content, explicit sexual content and implied sexual content), chatty tags, or warnings that would be better suited the author's note and/or summary.
        I use ao3 savior and cap tags at 50, and the majority of those super long fics still show up. At a certain point, authors are just trolling for readers by adding more tags. (Uh, trolling as in the fishing method, not as in the internet behavior).
        
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      2. Ahatmadeofcheese Thu 26 Aug 2021 01:41AM UTC
        
        Please do not stab me for being a grammar Nazi, but it’s ‘trawling’, and not ‘trolling’. They sound really similar and get mixed up a lot, but one is being a dick on the internet and one is for fishing.
        
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        Pestilent_Orange Thu 26 Aug 2021 03:16AM UTC
        
        I regret to inform you that trolling is a for-real fishing technique (and is distinct from trawling): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolling_(fishing)
        
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        (4 more comments in this thread)
3. melannen Wed 25 Aug 2021 07:35AM UTC
  
  I was interested by some of the questions people are bringing up here so I looked at the March 2021 data dump that has all kind of work data in it. My computer crashes if I try to spreadsheet the whole file, but looking at the most recent 1,000,000 works in the dump, about 5% of works over 40.000 words are over the 75 tag limit. If I limit it to 100,000+ words, it's more like 7%. However some fraction of those are going to be the ficlet collections and deliberately abusive works that this limit is intended to curb, and I can't derive that from the data dump very easily.
  And this does include warning/rating/category tags, since it's not easy to separate those in the data dump, so if you took those out it would probably drop some, but it probably still be over 5% for 100000 word fics.
  (If anyone has a particular stat for tag numbers on a particular subset of works in the March data dump they want me to try to get them, I can play more tomorrow after work, or you can download it and try yourself: https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/18804 )
  
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4. copacet Sat 28 Aug 2021 12:56AM UTC
  
  Some analytics on this from a user on Twitter:
  The percentage of fics with over 75 tags does increase with fic length (12% of fics with 500k+ words are affected), but the majority of total fics with 75+ tags are under 25k words.
  https://twitter.com/regretsonmain/status/1431031862529568771
  
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DiscoPierrot Wed 25 Aug 2021 03:59AM UTC

Cool, then we should see a reduction in those "catch all" taggers.

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Warden_Click Wed 25 Aug 2021 04:01AM UTC

After having to brave past STwW while looking through one tag, I whole-heartedly welcome this limit

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LadyAncalagon Wed 25 Aug 2021 04:01AM UTC

Thank you for your hard work!!!!!!!!!

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tall_wolf_of_tarth Wed 25 Aug 2021 04:04AM UTC

Thank you!!!

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YellowMagicalGirl Wed 25 Aug 2021 04:18AM UTC

On one hand I would prefer if the 75-tag rule was only applied to additional tags (I tag very generously for my whump fics, multichaps, and especially my multichapter whump fics), perhaps with separate limits for fandoms/characters/relationships. On the other hand, I am very thankful that this might cut down on the 10+ fandom drabble collections that tag every relationship between people who look at each other and every person that breathes.

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ohgodmyeyes Wed 25 Aug 2021 04:19AM UTC

THANK YOU

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blue_bayou Wed 25 Aug 2021 04:20AM UTC

An excellent change, thank you!

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Swirlpuffy Wed 25 Aug 2021 04:26AM UTC

75 seems like it would be a good balance between people who like extensive tagging and also people who don't want to see tag walls. Thanks for adding this!

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A_MX Wed 25 Aug 2021 04:27AM UTC

You can not be serious. Just no.

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InfinityMidnight Wed 25 Aug 2021 04:29AM UTC

Finally I can scroll through the fics without half my screen taken for a single 300 word fanfic. Pretty sure the tags were longer than the fic…

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1. thegreatandpowerfultoaster Wed 25 Aug 2021 04:35AM UTC
  
  To be fair, that has to be majorly uncommon! But my eyes hurt just thinking about it
  
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2. CouldntBeDamned Wed 25 Aug 2021 07:35AM UTC
  
  This! Oh my gosh massive walls of tags for 1 or 2 chapters that are 200-400 words each is so damn annoying.
  
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3. 1. stormy1x2 Wed 25 Aug 2021 03:51PM UTC
    
    AMEN.
    
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4. stormy1x2 Wed 25 Aug 2021 03:53PM UTC
  
  I regularly see people post in one of my fandoms people with tags ABSOLUTELY longer than the fic itself and they are ONE SHOTS. I do not need to see 100+ tags for a 100 word drabble, especially when you PRE-TAG shit - like, stuff you're warning/teasing me with not even in the fic itself. And said 'fic' hasn't been updated in 2-3+years......
  
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5. Damson Mon 30 Aug 2021 11:53AM UTC
  
  Yep, the drabbles with more wordcount in the tags than the work itself hurt my soul.
  
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thegreatandpowerfultoaster Wed 25 Aug 2021 04:32AM UTC

Farewell, those lovely compilations of funny tags that I see on Tumblr occasionally! I shall miss you.

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VoreDrake Wed 25 Aug 2021 04:36AM UTC

Eh... it seems that for 0.5% of everyone using more than 75 tags... it's just an exercise in futility.
To a point, how an author prepares their work, and tags it, is part of the work. Let's say that somebody wrote a work I've managed to correctly have every single tag on AO3. I'm willing to scroll through a very of those tags, just to be impressed by it.
Don't do something that's not necessary, it'll only hurt the smallest minority.

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1. Elf (Elf_Herself) Wed 25 Aug 2021 05:17AM UTC
  
  It's not .5% of everyone, it's .5% of the fics - some of which are completed, and won't be updated, so they won't be affected by the change.
  And yes, how the author displays & tags the work is part of it, but sometimes, what the author wants is going to clash with other people's usability.
  
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2. LittleMousling Mon 30 Aug 2021 05:26PM UTC
  
  The difficulty is that the .5% of works that do this impact much closer to 100% of users--we all have to deal with their excessive tagging when it comes up in searches and while browsing.
  
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Abalisk Wed 25 Aug 2021 04:48AM UTC

Beautiful work AO3 mods, thank you so much for this!

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mowoshhe (34_mishhe) Wed 25 Aug 2021 05:05AM UTC

honestly if the code allows to just shorten the tags under a “see more” that would solve the browsing problem when stumbling across that [redacted] fic

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1. Elf (Elf_Herself) Wed 25 Aug 2021 05:15AM UTC
  
  We have tools for those, but they don't work for everyone, depending on their browser etc. settings.
  Shortening long tag list skin: https://archiveofourown.org/skins/3756
  How to: Block fanfics/tags/users & Hide too-long tag fields
  
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2. 1. mowoshhe (34_mishhe) Wed 25 Aug 2021 05:18AM UTC
    
    OH WOW this is a wonderful resource! I wish I had seen this sooner, thank you so much for enlightening me!!!
    
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3. timepiece Wed 25 Aug 2021 11:52AM UTC
  
  There already is a checkbox under your Preferences for Hide Additional Tags. It hides all the freeform tags (not fandoms, characters or ships) until you click the link.
  
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Asdeadascanbe Wed 25 Aug 2021 05:23AM UTC

Wonderful work ! Thank you for the hard work and concise explanation ♡

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bioplast_hero Wed 25 Aug 2021 05:24AM UTC

Wonderful update, I want to kudos this! ❤️✨

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