Upcoming limit on tags per work

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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.)

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Tarash Wed 25 Aug 2021 02:03PM UTC

Yeah, 75 tags per fanwork seems very reasonable! If you have more things to share about your work, then the author notes are always there!

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ratbones Wed 25 Aug 2021 02:18PM UTC

Thank you, bless you, kudos! <3

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Account Deleted Wed 25 Aug 2021 02:25PM UTC

I think I'm in the minority in there, but I don't actively dislike one-shot collections. But from what I gathered, they seem to be the root of the problem with their frankly terrifying tag walls. So I'm thinking, couldn't there be a flag that signals that the work is actually a collection of works as to make it easier for people to filter them out? So the rest of the people could continue to tag to their heart's content.
(And before anyone replies "But collection exists already!" I think people would be equally annoyed if they saw a tag spammed with multiple 100/500 words works by the same author. Also, coming from a short-fic appreciatior and used-to-be-writer...it's different, at least for me. Putting a drabble on it's own post means giving it a different importance than say, including it in a chaptered collection. )

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1. YellowMagicalGirl Wed 25 Aug 2021 03:02PM UTC
  
  I'm pretty sure the one-shot collection tag just already exists; it's just that 1) some people don't tag their fics as one-shot collections (despite using every other tag under the sun) and 2) some people don't want to have to filter out one-shot collections (which is lazy, even though I too am guilty of this)
  
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2. 1. Account Deleted Wed 25 Aug 2021 04:58PM UTC
    
    whops, you are right - apparently the one shot collection tag exists...but rarely anybody uses it. Urgh.
    
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3. DarkJediQueen Wed 25 Aug 2021 03:03PM UTC
  
  The main reason I don't like one-shot collections as a single fic versus a series is I have many things that I do exclude when I search, triggers, and things I will not read. If that many one-shots as a single fic has that in story number 8, I exclude the whole story and will never see it.
  It's easy to filter out short fics so if people didn't want to see a whole bunch of under 1k fics in a search, it's easy to add that into the search thing and bookmark the search in the browser.
  But there would still be people who griped about every single aspect of writing. No one agrees on anything
  
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4. Yemi Hikari (Yemi_Hikari) Sat 28 Aug 2021 09:56PM UTC
  
  As someone who writes one-shot collections, the problem actually doesn't lie with the concept of one-shot collections as a whole, but that one-shot collections are being abused as a catch-all for every single one-shot a writer happens to write, which is not actually the purpose of a one-shot collection. They're different from the one-shot collections I create which have a very specific overall theme that ties all of them together as there isn't really anything that is tying them together at all. The former is something readers - if they aren't turned off by the concept of one-shot collections because of the latter - are likely to actually pick up, but the latter - I can't blame people from being turned away from the concept.
  
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5. 1. Nightcandle Sun 29 Aug 2021 01:14PM UTC
    
    The problem actually doesn't lie with the concept of one-shot collections as a whole, but that one-shot collections are being abused as a catch-all for every single one-shot a writer happens to write, which is not actually the purpose of a one-shot collection. They're different from the one-shot collections [...] which have a very specific overall theme that ties all of them together
    Yes!
    I actually like works which are a drabble collection and/or ficlet collection which have a common theme and preferably a common fandom.
    What I don't like are these multi-fandom, everything under the sun collections (for the same reasons that are brought up by other commenters here multiple times already).
    
    Last Edited Sun 29 Aug 2021 01:20PM UTC
    
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  2. 1. Yemi Hikari (Yemi_Hikari) Sun 29 Aug 2021 05:25PM UTC
      
      Part of the problem - and with the way people tag, may lie with people not understanding what a theme is, but I'd actually include the fandom choice as part of the thematic choice the writer is making for the one-shot collection. Making these multi-fandom collections, or any collection for that matter, simply because it's easier not to create a new story means the writer is being lazy, but one-shot collections like tags serve an organizational purpose - hence why people expect a common theme.
      
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  3. Terrie Sun 29 Aug 2021 03:43PM UTC
    
    Agreed. I have two one shot collections, both of which are short and written for events. As long as there is a clear cut thread through all the pieces (same event, same theme, same pairing), and they're not more than a couple dozen "chapters," I think they're fine. It's the "random collection of 157 tumblr prompts" which are an issue.
    
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  4. 1. Yemi Hikari (Yemi_Hikari) Sun 29 Aug 2021 05:44PM UTC
      
      I actually do have one one-shot collection which is over a hundred chapters, but it was never a "random collection of 157 tumbler prompts". The overall theme for that was asking the question of where the series would go the next week which would result in multiple theoretical pieces for that series. The reason I went for the one-shot collection wasn't for me, the writer, but for my readers and also those looking at the fandom feed who wouldn't be interested in all my theoretical pieces, though after the first one I'd definitely argue for not going for a hundred one-shots and instead of breaking it up into smaller collections of about fifty stories, and not because I've gone over the tag limit AO3 has set - quite the opposite actually.
      
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talkingtothesky Wed 25 Aug 2021 02:34PM UTC

I am heartbroken about this change. Please don't do this.

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Masu_Trout Wed 25 Aug 2021 02:35PM UTC

This is wonderful to hear, thanks so much for this change!

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girlgamer Wed 25 Aug 2021 02:35PM UTC

thanks as always for the hard work

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Kiestan Wed 25 Aug 2021 02:36PM UTC

Oh my gosh, finally! I love you guys at AO3 <3

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hyacincea Wed 25 Aug 2021 02:50PM UTC

Honestly in light of the fact that the most common number of tags is 11 and average is 17, seventy-five feels awfully high as a limit. 60 or 70 tags is still a number that a troll can post? even if genuine that's still so many tags to scroll though for a work... but, i am glad that you guys are responding to this issue. thanks for your hard work.

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1. Hellfang Wed 25 Aug 2021 03:00PM UTC
  
  Most people with long tags are NOT trolling. So so say things like that. Its rude. Also the site should have added a read more section instead of BLOCKING authors from updating because they have 1 tag too many.
  
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2. 1. writeranthea Wed 25 Aug 2021 03:12PM UTC
    
    You won't be blocked, you'll just have to remove some tags if you want to update. It's literally not that dramatic lol. I have 200k+ stories that are good with 30/40 tags, no one needs more than 75 tags on a regular work unless they double/triple tag.
    
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  2. 1. DebraHicks Fri 27 Aug 2021 09:34PM UTC
      
      This.
      
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  3. hyacincea Wed 25 Aug 2021 03:19PM UTC
    
    Yeah, I'm not trying to imply that everyone who adds that many tags is a troll. However there certainly are trolls who have taken advantage of the tagging system; i've had direct experience with this in some of the fandoms i'm in. and from what the thing says you'll be able to update the work just fine, its only if someone goes in and tries to add/alter tags that the system will refuse to accept more than 75. but yeah, from the statistics of the site, that's more than enough for even longfics. hopefully this doesn't come off as rude, but i think its a good thing that maybe its not as far reaching as you might fear! nobody should be blocked from updating their fics.
    
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3. writeranthea Wed 25 Aug 2021 03:13PM UTC
  
  I feel so too, but then again 75 tags are fair enough. It's better than nothing ^^
  
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4. caeciliusinhorto Wed 25 Aug 2021 08:06PM UTC
  
  At what point do we accept that the harm to good-faith users outweighs the benefits in preventing trolling, though? AO3 could completely eliminate using the tags fields to troll by getting rid of them entirely, but presumably anyone who uses AO3 would agree that would be using a sledgehammer to crack a walnut. Unless they did that, though, there will always be some possibility of using freeform tagging for trolling - even if you were only allowed a couple of freeform tags, I can think of ways that trolls could be use them to be obnoxious.
  AO3 have the difficult balancing act of limiting the "post the entire bee-movie script in the tags" kind of trolling, while still allowing good-faith users as much freedom as possible. There's always going to be nitpicking to be done about whether some other number would be better, but 75 doesn't seem like an egregiously awful idea to me - it's certainly a much harder limit on how disruptively a troll could tag than there was before!
  
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5. 1. Lion_owl Sun 29 Aug 2021 05:48PM UTC
    
    👆🏼 @caeciliusinhorto i absolutely agree!
    
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Hellfang Wed 25 Aug 2021 02:50PM UTC

I don't think characters should have counted because new characters are constantly added to the fandom I write for. So am I just to ignore them when they play a HUGE part of the story. If anything this just makes me not want to put warnings and keep the character tag instead. Also don't say "x tag isn't important" whats important to a reader may be different than what is important to the author.

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1. GoldenCityBird Wed 25 Aug 2021 07:54PM UTC
  
  If you're putting in every character in a fandom, and focusing on them roughly equally, try "[FANDOM] Ensemble" as a tag. There are a lot of canonical ensemble tags already, so it's generally accepted. If you focus more on certain characters, you should probably keep them tagged.
  
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2. Lady_Douji Thu 26 Aug 2021 03:28AM UTC
  
  Character tags aren't like the ending credits of a movie or tv show where everyone with a speaking part or did anything need to be included. So if a new character is added to the canon whether or not you add them to the tags depends on if you add them to the fic and how much focus you give to them.
  
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3. Beatrice_Otter Thu 26 Aug 2021 10:34AM UTC
  
  One possibility is to tag for the major warnings and then say "additional warnings in endnote" and put the rest of the warnings--or elaboration of warnings--in the endnote. Which, for fine-grained discussion of triggers, is actually often more useful than just putting it in the tags.
  
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4. Tayefeth Fri 27 Aug 2021 07:00PM UTC
  
  Why would you need to add a character to a current story just because they show up in canon? Finish your story, start a new work that includes the new character, and don't tag characters who only have a single line in a 10k story...
  
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saiditallbefore Wed 25 Aug 2021 02:50PM UTC

Thanks so much for this update!
Personally, I'm hoping this helps a little with the problem of finding fic about minor characters on the archive- a lot of people tag every single character who appears or speaks, but if I'm searching for fic about, say, Zorii Bliss, I want her to actually be featured in thr fic and not just be a background extra!

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1. KeroZombie Wed 25 Aug 2021 03:19PM UTC
  
  I have mixed feelings about the 75 tag limit, but as a fan of a minor character (Peni Parker) in a big fandom (Spider-Man), I would LOVE to be able to filter for fics where she actually features heavily, rather than just appears for one sentence. I imagine the change will help with that (I hope)!
  
  Last Edited Wed 25 Aug 2021 03:20PM UTC
  
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2. Ariana Deralte (ArianaDeralte) Wed 25 Aug 2021 08:12PM UTC
  
  See, I'm the opposite. Maybe because I'm a fan of characters who are tagged in like 3 or 30 fics total on this site, I'm happy just to see my fave appear, and count myself lucky if I discover they're a main. This is going to limit me finding obscure canon characters in fics. One of my faves will go from 38 tags to 5:(
  
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3. 1. saiditallbefore Wed 25 Aug 2021 08:23PM UTC
    
    I would rather have 5 fics actually about my fave than 38 where they deliver one line but don't do anything else.
    
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  2. 1. Ariana Deralte (ArianaDeralte) Wed 25 Aug 2021 08:26PM UTC
      
      I mean, sure a few of those only have them deliver a few lines, but the rest are in between or else the author wouldn't have tagged them. I'd rather have 30 fics where they're an actual character, and 8 where they're just mentioned and have one line, then five only where they are the main character. Why would you want less fic with your fave?
      
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    2. 1. saiditallbefore Wed 25 Aug 2021 08:53PM UTC
        
        I don't think we're going to agree on this, but just so you know where I'm coming from:
        If I want to read a fic about Zorii, I want it to be about Zorii. I want it to be about her doing things and having a character arc. I don't want it to be about Poe getting to do cool stuff while Zorii appears every couple of scenes.
        I don't want less fic of my faves; I want more fic that is tagged appropriately so I can find it more easily.
        People I know sometimes call this the "Bruce Banner problem"-- secondary or tertiary characters get tagged whenever they appear (like Bruce Banner in MCU fics), and it becomes impossible to find fic in which they actually do things and where the fic is actually about them. If your fic is about Steve/Tony and Bruce is just an ensemble character, then tagging Bruce just disappoints people!
        If people only tag for characters who have meaningful plot or character arcs in their fic (and the longer the fic, the more meaningful those arcs have to be), then this cuts down on the number of fics for some characters quantitatively, but it increases the quality.
        
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      2. Ariana Deralte (ArianaDeralte) Wed 25 Aug 2021 10:11PM UTC
        
        See, I wouldn't ever consider Bruce Banner to be an obscure character. And if the fic is about Steve/Tony, but Bruce is still there as a character and Tony's friend, why wouldn't you want to be reading that (unless you like, hate Steve/Tony, which fair)? You really only want to read fic about your fave character where they're the main character and would rather read no fic if they're not? I think because I read super obscure characters, I'm just happy that they appear while you want them to be the main focus of the fic and no one else. That works when it's not actually that obscure of a character, but when it's really obscure, I'm just happy they're there.
        We're just going to have to agree to disagree since we're looking for different things.
        
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        Lady_Douji Thu 26 Aug 2021 04:46AM UTC
        
        When I am a fan of a character I want to read a fic about that character. Not a fic where the character shows up for a scene or two.
        Since Bruce Banner was the example given think about Iron Man 3. The movie all about Iron Man/Tony Stark and his issues, narrative arc and character development. Bruce Banner shows up in the end credits bonus scene as a fun extra, he has not role during the main story of the film and shows up for less than 5 minutes. Should the marketers have advertised the movie as containing Bruce Banner/Hulk because he does technically appear in the film? Even though doing so would have given a false indication of the contents of the film(implying that Iron Man would be teaming up with the Hulk in his solo film) which is very much not what happens. Would you expect fans of Bruce Banner|Hulk to be happy with that advertisement if all they got was the bonus stinger scene?
        
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        Ariana Deralte (ArianaDeralte) Thu 26 Aug 2021 05:12AM UTC
        
        If Bruce Banner had never shown up on screen in the MCU before, yeah, I'd expect them to be happy. That's pretty much what all MCU stinger scenes which introduce new characters are going for. It's the same way Captain Rex fans are super happy he showed up in one ep of the Bad Batch (Star Wars) after appearing in the trailer. Do fans want a whole show or even an ep focusing on him? Sure, but most fans are just happy to see him on screen even if he's not a main character. By your logic, they should not be interested in watching it because he only shows up 'in a scene or two'. I'm sure there are fans who are like that, but most, like me, are just happy to see their fave any way they can get them.
        
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        Lady_Douji Thu 26 Aug 2021 05:45AM UTC
        
        Captain Rex showing up and playing a critical role in one ep of the Bad Batch is a very different beast than a character showing up as basically an easter egg bonus. Fans can be happy to see a character in a small scene provided they have also been provided a lot more with that character, and they actually get what's been advertised. The trailer promised Rex showing up and playing a role in the episode, and that's what fans got.
        If the trailers for Iron Man 3 had shown Bruce Banner(indicating more of a team up rather than a primary focus on Tony) and all fans got was that end credits scene Bruce Banner fans would be disappointed considering that they didn't get what was advertised. Compared to how the Hulk|Bruce were included in the trailers for Thor Ragnarok and the fact that yes Bruce did play into the plot/narrative of the entire
        Whether you want to admit it or not, the majority of people look at tags as advertisement for what will be focused on in the fic. They're the opening credits of the story. Not the end credits. If you tag a character as if they're a main, or at best secondary character when all they have amounts to a cameo, fans of that character will end up disappointed
        You're basically saying fans of less popular characters should be happy with whatever tiny crumbs writers throw their way, and show be happy to wade through pages of fic about other characters just to see their fave say one or two lines. No thank you. My time is precious and I don't have enough of it to going digging for scraps of my fave thanks to fic writers over tagging and essentially spamming tags to get more views.
        
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        Ariana Deralte (ArianaDeralte) Thu 26 Aug 2021 06:03AM UTC
        
        I mean, you're acting as if Bruce Banner has never been in another MCU film. Just cause he only showed up in the stinger of that one movie, doesn't mean he was somehow shafted and if I was a die hard Bruce Banner fan, I'd have been happy to watch the movie to see him even if I was disappointed he wasn't in it more. Saying Bruce Banner is in the film is correct. You're acting as if doing that is the same as lying that he's one of the main characters. The trailer promised Rex would show up, nothing about how much of a role he would play in the show and I saw a lot of hope by fans that he'd be a main character.
        You are disappointed when a character you like isn't the main character. I get that. But I am just happy to have my fave show up (and so are plenty of others... you don't have to be, but I, and many others, are). I want people to tag my obscure faves more. I am disappointed when they have 0 or very few lines, but if you filter for other things like quality, you rarely encounter fics like that. The fic authors aren't wasting your time, and many are genuinely tagging for both main and secondary characters like I am. And I'm not putting up an obscure canon character's name to get views; I'm doing it because I want the other few fans of that character to be able to find a fic with them in it.
        
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        Lady_Douji Thu 26 Aug 2021 07:44AM UTC
        
        And you're acting as if Bruce Banner appearing in the end credit scene of Iron Man 3 is somehow equivalent to his appearance in Thor Ragnarok. I really doubt even the most die-hard fans of Bruce Banner would make that claim or say they were equally happy to see him in both instances.
        If I see a character tagged I want them to play a significant role even if they're not the main character. They should show up for more than a few lines of dialogue as nothing more than a cameo. And that's been my experience more often than not when I see my fave minor/secondary character listed in a wall of tags post. A lot of focus on whoever the author has as their main character/plot focus, my fave in a few random scenes where virtually any other character could have been used interchangeably, because of how inconsequential that character actually is to the overall plot.
        
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        Yemi Hikari (Yemi_Hikari) Sat 28 Aug 2021 10:03PM UTC
        
        ^ This.
        There are quite a few character tags - ship tags as well - where I have to scroll past a lot of stories just to get to stories where said character actually plays a significant role, but there are some additional tags that are fandom specific which play such a background role such as a character living where I feel cheated because it's not a main plot device in the story.
        
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      3. Beatrice_Otter Thu 26 Aug 2021 10:39AM UTC
        
        As someone who's been a fan of Sam Wilson since way back: there are a TON of Steve/Bucky fics in which he is tagged and gets, like, one line. Or appears in one scene in a 100k epic. Before Falcon and the Winter Soldier, there were times when I'd click on the Sam Wilson tag and of the 20 fics on the first page, 19 of them would be "mentioned and have a line" and one would have them as an actual character, and I'd have to sift through five pages like that to find one fic where they were one of the main characters in an ensemble fic.
        
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      4. another_shingo Sat 28 Aug 2021 03:19AM UTC
        
        This, this, this. I greatly enjoy family stories about Sheriff Stilinski & Stiles Stilinski, and want to read about the two of them trying to navigate adolescence, and parenthood, and the supernatural, but that relationship tag is added to nearly every story Stiles is in.
        
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Rusakko Wed 25 Aug 2021 02:55PM UTC

Thank you for this update! Looking forward to seeing fewer walls of tags and less irrelevant tagging. <3

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GhostlyVoid Wed 25 Aug 2021 03:02PM UTC

this is amazing! :))))

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Snickfic Wed 25 Aug 2021 03:06PM UTC

I'm really glad to see this change! I think this is going to make it a lot easier for me to find content I want to read that actually contains the things I'm looking for. Thanks, AO3!

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Kreiri Wed 25 Aug 2021 03:19PM UTC

And so AO3 was forced to implement tag limits, and there was much rejoicing. Yay! I hope this will also alleviate a bit what I call "the Bruce Banner syndrome", aka Sir-Not-Present-In-His-Tag: when people tag every character mentioned in the fic, even when that character isn't actually there.

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1. stormy1x2 Wed 25 Aug 2021 04:13PM UTC
  
  AMEN. I will never understand what prevents people from using the 'ensemble' tag and then adding extra characters. Like, in the OP fandom, if you tag it as strawhat ensemble, you don't need 10 additional tags listing every character of the Strawhat crew when there are 10 members of it. You could tag 'ensemble' and then add characters like Carrot or Pedro who travel with them but aren't members of the crew. There. Three tags, not thirteen.
  
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Kaenith Wed 25 Aug 2021 03:21PM UTC
On the one hand: yay! No more troll fics! (Or at least not this particular kind of troll fic)
But I'll admit I do have a few concerns. As a writer I'm not too worried - none of my current fics are close to the limit, and even once I start to post some of my longer fics, I'm familiar enough with the site to use subtags etc efficiently.
Although I do wonder how this will effect smaller fandoms where the subtags aren't canonized yet? Like I know from Good Omens that "Asexual Aziraphale/Crowley" links to all of "Asexual relationship" and "Asexual Aziraphale" and "Asexual Crowley" -- but if I tag something from my much smaller fandoms as "Asexual Vio/Shadow" (a tag that as far as I'm aware has not been canonized yet) how long before it shows up in the "Asexual relationship" parent tag? (Love you, tag wranglers, you make this site function 💖 )
That said, as a reader I'm concerned about those who may now under-tag for a variety of reasons:
- because having a limit makes them nervous and they over-compensate
- because they're working on a longfic and trying to "save space" for later
- because they're writing a longfic with a lot of characters and relationships and relevant additional tags that genuinely doesn't fit within 75 total tags
- because they over-tagged early on and simply stopped when they got to the limit, rather than looking back and pruning redundancies to make room for relevant new tags
- Etc etc
The excess of searchable information is one of the things that really makes AO3 so useful to me as a reader, and it would be a loss to me if people started cutting out tags like "(character) needs a hug" or "(sexuality) (character name)" or "BAMF (character name)" -- all of which I've specifically searched for in the past.
Not to mention specific trigger warnings that lots of people want to be able to filter out from their searches! While it's certainly possible to put the trigger warnings in chapter notes, and I appreciate authors who do, sometimes even just reading the summary of a fic is enough to make your day a little bit less pleasant, and it's nice to be able to keep certain things from showing up at all.
Personally I would have preferred a slightly higher limit - 100 or so, maybe - but I also see people in this thread saying they wish the limit were 50 (or even lower!) So I suppose you can't please everyone ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Last Edited Wed 25 Aug 2021 03:39PM UTC

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1. YellowMagicalGirl Wed 25 Aug 2021 03:50PM UTC
  
  Honestly, this is one of my frustrations - people keep saying "just use the already canon tags, you're probably overtagging and using too many tags that mean the same thing", but that only works if you're writing for popular fandoms/characters/headcanons where those tags do get canonized.
  
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2. amberquartz Wed 25 Aug 2021 04:06PM UTC
  
  to answer one of your questions (how long it takes for a tag to be canonized and have the metatags added), for a tag to be canonized it needs to be used by 3 different authors (the exception being megafandoms, which may have a minimum of 5, 10, etc.)
  when the tag is canonized wranglers should also add on relevant metatags. If you find a canonical tag that is missing a metatag you think should be there, or there's a tag that has met the 3 author minimum, you can contact ao3 support, and they can get the info to wranglers!
  
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3. 1. Kaenith Thu 26 Aug 2021 01:57AM UTC
    
    That's good to know! And it certainly makes sense in terms of of respecting the Wranglers' time and energy.
    Unfortunately, in this case, it does kind of privilege those writing popular tropes in popular fandoms, because they're more likely to have canonized tags (essentially "two-or-more for the price of one," if used correctly).
    
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4. Ariana Deralte (ArianaDeralte) Wed 25 Aug 2021 08:20PM UTC
  
  I feel the same and think it should be higher or make exceptions for longer fic (which is already in the minority on this site). I think this is going to make people delete tags I use to search for specific things (bamf character name is also one I use a lot), and I do have a very long fic which is already over the tag limit not because I'm stuffing it full of miscellaneous stuff, but because I'm insane enough to be writing a fix it fic for the entire Star Wars universe, which requires in universe specific warnings in addition to general warnings, tagging a lot of obscure canon characters who play prominent roles in my fic, and lots of tagging of all the identities which appear (ace, poly, trans, non-binary, aro all should get their own tags so people can search and filter by them and not lose nuance by me putting them all under lgbtqa).
  
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5. 1. Kaenith Thu 26 Aug 2021 02:42AM UTC
    
    Yeah! I feel like a lot of people in this discussion seem to be assuming that "authors want more tags (to get their work seen); readers want fewer tags (to be easier to process)" so I kind of wanted to share my perspective, as a reader who wants lots of tags (as long as they're genuinely relevant.)
    I really like being able to construct searches that are almost venn diagrams of "give me these several things I like all in the same fic." It's something I can do on AO3 that I can't do many other places, and I've often wished a similar feature existed for libraries/bookstores. Sometimes I'll even read fic for fandoms I'm not familiar with, if it hits the right overlap of story elements I'm looking for at a given time!
    I just don't want to miss out on fics I would have like OR accidentally trip over un-tagged-for squicks!
    (Good luck with your fix-it, by the way! That sounds very ambitious!)
    
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  2. 1. Ariana Deralte (ArianaDeralte) Thu 26 Aug 2021 05:13AM UTC
      
      Very good point! I'm sure some readers really do want the least amount of tags, but I, like you, am always running lots of venn diagram searches with several exclude and include tags to get fics I'm interested in. If people stop tagging those things out of fear of hitting a tag limit, it will make it much harder for me to find fic, and I'm sure I will find a bunch of fic that turns out to have stuff in it I get triggered by.
      (Thank you! It started out as a 10 chapter crack fic... it now has 70 chaptersXD)
      
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  3. SLWalker Sat 28 Aug 2021 05:02PM UTC
    
    You and I are in the same boat. Star Wars fandom does not exactly lend itself to brevity. LOL! And when you write a 325K+, a 'cameo' tag means a completely different thing from a 5K story; ie, the character does play an important major role for more than one chapter, but isn't in it for enough chapters to consider them a main character.
    
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  4. 1. Ariana Deralte (ArianaDeralte) Sat 28 Aug 2021 05:22PM UTC
      
      Exactly! I've been calling them secondary characters myself. They aren't mains, but they do play important roles, and I'd hate for fans of Tera Sinube or Yaddle to miss a fic where they play an important role, but aren't as prominent as the main characters. I really wish Ao3 separated out characters tags actually so you could label main vs secondary. That would solve this issue for the people who only want to read fics where their faves are the mains because they could sort by that. I always try to list mains first, but on this particular fic, it has grown well past novel length and some of the mains started out as secondaries.
      
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    2. 1. SLWalker Sat 28 Aug 2021 05:31PM UTC
        
        I really wish Ao3 separated out characters tags actually so you could label main vs secondary. OMG, that would be brilliant. It would solve so many issues, too. Like the number of people who tag Maul and just kill him in a paragraph! LOL! As it stands, we're all kind of shooting in the dark and hoping to hit the mark. And the crazy number of people who've never written more than 10K in their lives and think the site oughta just be tailored to them is kinda weird and sad. Like-- my dudes, I live here, too.
        
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6. curious_cat Thu 26 Aug 2021 01:30AM UTC
  
  what I hope will happen is that authors with ongoing longfics will be encouraged (forced) to think critically about their tags the way the presumably do about their writing, rather than just giving up in the face of the limit, with the ultimate result being more streamlined tags that better serve readers and authors both.
  Having sorted all fics on the archive by wordcount descending and taken a look at highly-tagged works, I get the sense that some people (certainly not everybody who tags over the limit, but some) were in the habit of slapping up every tag they could think of that might be relevant, without really considering that tags are the first thing the reader sees and having a clear and concise set of tags is critically important - as much or more than the opening sentence of the fic.
  
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7. 1. Kaenith Thu 26 Aug 2021 02:36AM UTC
    
    That is certainly the hope, but it doesn't sit right with me to force people (who weren't acting in bad faith) to write their tags in a way someone else has decided is "better." This isn't English class, this is a hobby done for fun, out of love.
    There absolutely will be at least a few people who just throw their hands up in frustration or become too intimidated to try. (But or course, with the way things currently stand, there are people throwing their hands up in frustration or becoming intimidated by their list of search results, so, no perfect answer either way!)
    I think it might also be a matter of: do you consider the tags to be something read by humans, or something read by computers? Because to me at least, the tags are first and foremost something for the computer to read - I input my search, telling the computer which tags I want to see and which tags I don't want to see, and it gives me a list. I then read the fic summaries, and then I skim the tags if I'm not yet convinced or if I have concerns about triggers. Working in this way, I do very much want fics to be thoroughly (but accurately!) tagged, because I want my results to be as accurate as possible. A "concise" set of tags, optimized to a human reader, might leave off something important - either something I'm interested in and searching for or something I'm squicked by and trying to avoid.
    But if you think of tags primarily as something for humans to read, an extension of the summary almost, I can definitely see where even 75 might seem an excessive amount of information to parse for each fic.
    Speaking only for myself, personally, the recently-added ability to block specific fics or users is my ideal way to combat troll fics or giant multi-fandom oneshot collections. I feel like I have a lot of control over that: I get to decide for myself if a given fic is a nuisance to me or not, and my decision doesn't affect anyone but me. THAT SAID, I'm aware that what works best for me may not be ideal for everyone else - just like a site-wide limit on tags may be ideal for some other people, even if it isn't for me. At the end of the day, there is no perfect solution that pleases everybody, and I'm not about to stomp my foot and demand that everyone else do things my way just because I want them to!
    
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  2. 1. victoriousscarf Thu 26 Aug 2021 02:45AM UTC
      
      "That is certainly the hope, but it doesn't sit right with me to force people (who weren't acting in bad faith) to write their tags in a way someone else has decided is "better." This isn't English class, this is a hobby done for fun, out of love."
      Thank you, exactly
      
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    2. curious_cat Thu 26 Aug 2021 03:10AM UTC
      
      that's a good point about this being a hobby and not English class - the writing and presentation don't need to meet any sort of standard beyond what's in the TOS to be posted here, you're absolutely right. I was wrong to imply that in my earlier response.
      But I also think that, given that way most authors use tags, tagging more doesn't mean tagging better in most cases, even from the perspective of using them as a search tool.
      All too often people use character tags on a fic where that character plays a minor background role, and as a reader looking for fic about said character I find that unnecessary clutter that I must sift through in order to find what I actually want. So my hope is that a general tag limit will reduce that problem, although I guess time will tell.
      
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    3. 1. Kaenith Thu 26 Aug 2021 04:00AM UTC
        
        Haha I can certainly understand that! Sometimes it's just like "ctrl + F (character name)" ... ^^;;
        
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    4. DragonSoulDreams Thu 26 Aug 2021 07:55PM UTC
      
      "Because to me at least, the tags are first and foremost something for the computer to read"
      "But if you think of tags primarily as something for humans to read, an extension of the summary almost, I can definitely see where even 75 might seem an excessive amount of information to parse for each fic."
      The source of the problem is that they need to be both, and in order to be both they need to either be added in good faith by everyone, or there needs to be a limit. I know there are fics that are tagged in good faith with lots of tags (glances at Ariana Deralte), but I think there does need to be a limit. Among other things, a lot of the authors complaining about this limit have the same character tagged a half-dozen times in their tags. Some of them do that with multiple characters, so they have 20 tags spent just on three characters being present. This doesn't help anyone, it doesn't help searching (with the meta-tag system, any of those half-dozen tags for a single character is going to show up in searches for any of them.) and it just inflates the blurb on the page.
      Sure, you and I can just skip the tags and look at the summary, but someone using a screen reader can't. If there's 400 words worth of tags, that might take a couple minutes for a screen reader program to get through, especially since they're all links too. And 400 words is still easily reachable with 75 tags (7500 total character limit)
      
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    5. 1. Kaenith Fri 27 Aug 2021 02:33PM UTC
        
        Oh I absolutely agree that there needs to be some kind of limit, to prevent the kind of Bee-Movie-script trolling that prompted this in the first place. I wish the limit were a tad bit higher, but I also don't want to give the wrong impression: 75 tags is workable and not the end of the world.
        In the same way we can't bank on everyone acting in good faith, we also can't really bank on everyone intuitively understanding how subtags work. And while it's true that there are sometimes (even often!) redundancies, it's not exactly a science: what may be "unnecessary clutter tags" to one person might be a tag others are actually searching or filtering by! ("[character] needs a hug" my beloved.)
        It's a conflicting needs issue, really: you are absolutely right that long tags cause problems for screen readers, and that is something I'm very glad to see addressed in some way. But at the same time, as you point out, 75 tags is still quite enough space to be troublesome for them. A really low limit, low enough to really ensure things are easy on screen readers (and that's a subjective amount, since different people will have different tolerance levels) would 100% cause problems for people trying to filter out triggers or trying to find particular kinds of stories.
        There already exists a built-in feature to hide all additional tags: maybe a better solution for screen readers would be a refinement of that, allowing for hiding tags after (x) number. Or even adding a search function to filter by number of tags. But both of those sound more coding-intensive than the current solution, so they have their downsides in terms of the amount of volunteer time and energy they'd take to implement.
        Essentially, there is no perfect answer that pleases everyone. 75 tags is not my preference, but it's a compromise I think I can live with.
        The only thing about this that really upsets me are the people I've seen saying that anyone who can't figure out subtags or who thinks they need more than [insert small number of tags here] is either a) an idiot, b) malicious, or c) a malicious idiot.
        That's just mean.
        
        Last Edited Fri 27 Aug 2021 02:36PM UTC
        
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    6. Tayefeth Fri 27 Aug 2021 07:06PM UTC
      
      How do you get the search results to show you the summaries without the wall o tags? At least on mobile, they're always together.
      
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    7. 1. Kaenith Fri 27 Aug 2021 07:47PM UTC
        
        It's one of the preferences you can set!
        https://archiveofourown.org/users/[your name here]/preferences
        It's under the "Display" heading. You can choose "hide warnings" and/or "hide additional tags." The tags will then be hidden by default - you'll have the option to click a "read more" to see them. As far as I can tell, this also works for mobile (at least, it does on my phone).
        
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      2. Tayefeth Fri 27 Aug 2021 08:16PM UTC
        
        Thank you. When I go a-searching, I need to see the tags to narrow my search and then I want to see the summaries to decide which to actually click on, so it looks like I'll need to bookmark my preferences page...
        
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        Kaenith Fri 27 Aug 2021 08:55PM UTC
        
        No problem!
        You can still use the "filter" sidebar to narrow your search by tags, even if you're currently hiding them from view, and you can just click the "show additional tags" button to read the tags on a given work - no need to go into preferences to keep turning it on and off (unless you want to, that works too!). It's a pretty useful feature.
        
        Last Edited Fri 27 Aug 2021 09:03PM UTC
        
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floatingmangocake Wed 25 Aug 2021 03:21PM UTC

20-40 (more 20 than 40, or even less honestly) would have been much better honestly, 75 is still a damned boatload.

Last Edited Wed 25 Aug 2021 03:24PM UTC

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shinykari (meinterrupted) Wed 25 Aug 2021 03:25PM UTC

Thank you!!! If anything, 75 is still too many tags for any single work, in my opinion, but I'll take it.

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GlitteryV Wed 25 Aug 2021 03:58PM UTC

Adding my THANK YOU FOR THE 75 TAG LIMIT!! Considering the average is way below that, 75 does feel a smidgen excessive, but understandable.

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ARealPip Wed 25 Aug 2021 03:59PM UTC

Genius!!!! Thank you for this!!!

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aethel Wed 25 Aug 2021 04:11PM UTC

thank you!

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