Count ALL the tags!

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Published:

2012-10-17 19:43:32 UTC

Tags:

We've made it another year! As part of the OTW October Membership Drive, we thought we'd share some of the stats and growth over the last two years, and a breakdown of the tags on the Archive.

Warning right up front: this post is very graphics-heavy.

Overall tag growth and canonical growth

Overall, our growth has (inevitably) been nothing but up. There has been proportional growth between the number of works and number of unique tags over the last two years. In October 2010, there were 107,430 works on the Archive and 105,750 unique tags; in October 2012, there are 459,655 works and 395,099 unique tags. The number of canonical tags (the ones which come up in the autocomplete and filters), however, scaled up much more slowly: from 55,697 in October 2010 to 140,306 in October 2012. This reflects the fact that the AO3 tagging system is designed to give creators as much freedom as possible in how they tag their works, so while the arrival of a new fandom on the Archive might generate only a few new canonical tags so the fandom name and characters can come up in filters, there might be a whole host of non-canonical synonyms reflecting the different preferences of creators.

a multiple-line graph showing three lines for the number of works, unique tags, and canonical tags over the last two years by month

Ratings

For these next few categories, we don't have a historical comparison.

The greatest number of our works - just over 31% - are tagged "Teen and Up", with "General Audiences" close behind at just under 30%. "Explicit" works make up roughly 18% of the Archive, and "Mature", 16%. Roughly 5% of the works are "Not Rated".

a pie chart showing the percentages of works using each Ratings tag.

Warnings

Unlike Ratings, Warnings are non-exclusive: a work can have multiple warnings. The vast majority of works on the Archive - almost two in three - are tagged "No Archive Warnings Apply". Around a quarter of the works are tagged "Author chose not to use warnings." "Major Character Death" has roughly 18,000 works; "Graphic Depictions of Violence" has 17,000; "Underage" has around 10,000; and "Rape/Non-con" is tagged on just over 8,600 works.

a horizontal bar graph showing the number of works using each Warning tag.

Tags by type, 2011 - 2012

All User-generated Tags

The following two graphs show the month-by-month growth of total unique tags and canonical tags on the Archive, with the vertical bars broken up for each type of tag.

The unique tags have a linear growth from the 105,000 tags on 01 October 2010 until around December 2011, then they start showing a slight upward curve to their increase, to a current total of just under 400,000 unique tags on the Archive. Characters and Relationships are almost as large a percentage of the total tags as Freeforms (aka Additional Tags).

a stacked bar chart showing the increase in unique user-created tags, stacked by type, over the last 24 months.

The canonical tags, on the other hand, are maintaining a roughly linear increase, from 56,000 in October 2010 to today's 140,000. Proportionally, characters comprise the majority of canonicals, followed closely by Relationships. Freeform canonicals are roughly as common as Fandom canonicals. (Reasons for this can be seen in our Freeform Wrangling Guidelines.)

a stacked bar chart showing the increase in canonical user-created tags, stacked by type, over the last 24 months.

Fandoms

Fandoms have had a very consistent growth, with a notable bump in unique tags in May 2012, when many new users imported existing works from other sites. The number of canonical tags roughly follows this increase, but has been slowing down in recent months. 50% of the 14,000 Fandom tags were canonical in October 2011, decreasing slightly to 43% of the 23,000 unique tags in October 2012.

a vertical bar graph showing the increase in unique and canonical fandom tags over the last 12 months.

Characters

We can see a similar pattern with the Character tags - a linear increase in unique tags, and a slowing down of canonical tags. The increases aren't proportional, however: while almost 74% of the 72,000 character tags were canonical in October 2011, only 57% of the 114,000 tags are canonical in October 2012. This may reflect a greater diversity of fannish terminologies being contributed by newer users of the site.

a vertical bar graph showing the increase in unique and canonical character tags over the last 12 months.

Relationships

Relationship tags also show the same linear growth as the other two, with a slight decrease in the number of canonical tags. Due to the ever-climbing number of combinations, these increased more proportionally: in October 2011, canonicals were 47% of the 68,000 relationship tags; in 2012, they're only 44% of the 118,000 tags.

a vertical bar graph showing the increase in unique and canonical relationship tags over the last 12 months.

Additionals

In what should not be a surprise, the majority of growth in unique tags comes from the unique Additional tags (also called Freeform tags). The number of freeforms has increased along an increasing slope from 43,000 last October to 138,000 this October. However, as the vast majority of freeforms entered are not intended for searching and indexing, far fewer have been marked canonical: there were just under 9,000 canonical freeforms in October 2011, and there are only 11,500 canonical freeforms in October 2012, as most freeform wrangling consists of glancing at a list and picking out the ones that would be useful as canonical tags (for example, common terms such as 'Angst').

a vertical bar graph showing the increase in unique and canonical additional tags over the last 12 months.

Last Words

We always enjoy taking a look at stats, and tags are particularly interesting because they often give a snapshot of different fannish communities or traditions. We love the way different communities of users on the Archive take advantage of our unique tag system to tag in all kinds of different ways!

The growth in tags reflects the massive increase in the number of users on the site. If you're enjoying using the AO3 and you'd like to help with our running costs, please consider donating to our parent Organization for Transformative Works. Donations help fund the AO3 and all the OTW's other cool projects!

A note on tag filters

In any post about tags, we know people will want to ask about tag filters. We know that the Archive is much harder to browse without this feature, and we're sorry it's taking us a long time to restore it - the rewrite is a significant piece of work. The good news is that we're so close now we can almost taste it - the new filters are on our Test Archive and if testing goes well they should be rolled out to the main site in a few weeks time. Wish us luck!

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helens78 Wed 17 Oct 2012 08:19PM UTC

GOOD LUCK! *\o/*
Could we get someone to talk just a little bit about any overhead caused by freeform tags, or lack of overhead caused by them? Freeform tags are very controversial (I am personally very much in favor, and thank you guys profusely for letting us have them), and one of the arguments frequently brought to bear against them is that they "clog up the archive", "create more work for the tag wranglers", and "are the real reason we don't have tag filters back." Is any of that true at all? I'd love to hear something official on it!

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1. LucyP Wed 17 Oct 2012 08:51PM UTC
  
  Hi there!
  To start from the end - freeform tags are not the reason tag filters aren't back! The reason we had to disable the tag filters is essentially that they were not really scalable for the size of the Archive as it is now. We'd known for a long time that they would need to be rewritten to work for a lot of users (they were one of the first things we coded, so we've learnt a lot since then!), but the jump in user numbers was more sudden that we'd anticipated, which is why we wound up having to yank them altogether while we worked on the new system. That took longer than we hoped because, well, it's complicated code for a big and now very popular site!
  Our tagging system as a whole creates a bit more overhead compared to a completely top-down system of categories along the lines of some other fan archives, naturally; in particular having variant tags which are synonyms of each other makes for a more complicated database system. However, we knew that going in and we felt and feel that it was worth it to give people more freedom in how they tag. Obviously, having user-created tags for fandoms, characters, relationships etc. (as well as 'freeform' tags) also means more work for tag wranglers, but not an insupportable amount (someone on the Tag Wranglers Committee might weigh in to talk more about that issue - I believe they have a post planned sometime in the future which addresses it, in fact).
  The freeform tags don't clog up the Archive - the amount of actual data they represent is fairly negligible in relation to the massive amounts of data we're serving up now!
  We know opinions differ about the different fannish styles in relation to tags, but it would be very difficult to regulate tagging styles without eliminating user-choice altogether, even if we wanted to, and overall, we value the fact the tags do allow people to reflect different fannish traditions.
  Hope this helps!
  Lucy
  AD&T / Communications / Support
  
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2. 1. helens78 Wed 17 Oct 2012 10:56PM UTC
    
    It does! Thank you so much for this. :)
    
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  2. Muffie Thu 01 Nov 2012 10:51PM UTC
    
    Perhaps I've been a student too long, or a sociologist too long, but I don't understand how a utility (indexing for refined searching) and the addition of fan culture (tags that do not index) mix together and should be expected to work cleanly. I understand how this works for writers: they get to express themselves freely. I do not understand how it works for a reader, however. Yes, it does give the reader a sense of how the fic is and how the writer is, but is this not the purpose of the summary? Do people actually click on tags such as "the author is mental"? If I went to the library and sorted through tags as research (I do), these non-indexing tags would hamper my search (google's for-profit indexing, urgh). I would have to know specifically what kind of thing I was looking for, rather than a general idea of what I was looking for, in order to make good use of a tagging system that included significant numbers of non-indexing tags. I would not be able to use a search tag, and then follow search tags that are similar because the chaff would obscure the search. While this is fanfic and not a research project, and AO3 archives fanfic and not research material, the concepts are the same. AO3 is a library.
    I don't think capitalism is the answer to everything, but there must be some cost-benefit analysis to any system. There are three interested parties in this "debate": the site administrators/workers, the writers, and the readers. If the writer's benefit is preferred, then what is the cost to the reader? What is the cost to the site? A balance must be struck, and a significant part of that balance is not the welcoming of all fandom culture, but how people understand the usage of the various parts of the site. How do people understand the way tags are used? If they are to be used to index works on the site, then how do non-index tags impact that usage? Are tags really as multipurpose as some commentors have claimed, do they significantly do more than index works? Do they do more work than the summary, title, and author reputation when it comes to giving a browsing reader a method of choosing which fic to read? Do they get in the way of a browsing reader? For whose benefit do these tags exist? How do tags benefit the writer? The reader? The site? When does "culture" trump "utility"? When does "utility" trump "culture"? Do non-index tags defeat the purpose of having an index-tagging system? At what point will readers quit using the tagging system? Currently, I use the tags, but only to index fic into categories as they aren't that helpful. I use google to make up for the site's indexing and search deficiencies. It's easier to do a site search with my preferred key terms (tags) and then add or subtract terms to find a set of fic than to use AO3's system.
    I do not have statistics on how often people click on non-index tags, which would indicate that these tags are being used as actual tags rather than for a writer's enjoyment. I would be interested to see how these non-index tags are being used in a real way, rather than in the abstract, the "I like them" or "I don't like them" sort of thing.
    On a final note, I'm against non-index tags because I'm anal that way. I'm all for free expression, but I am also for accepting a Thing for its Thingness, rather than trying to reshape it into Another Thing, while expecting it to still function as a Thing; if that makes any sense. Tags are either for indexing or for not-indexing. In a small archive, these are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but at some point, they will be. I've coded enough (OMG-badly) and researched enough to know that at some point, the lack of elegance becomes a problem.
    
    Last Edited Thu 01 Nov 2012 10:53PM UTC
    
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  3. 1. samjohnsson Thu 01 Nov 2012 11:16PM UTC
      
      Hi!
      Thank you for your thoughts regarding the current Tags system. We're always evaluating the system and doing the very cost-benefit analysis you're suggesting. At the moment, we find the balance to still be in their favor, but user input is a large factor in our equations. I don't have click-through statistics at the moment (I'm not sure we generate them), but I will definitely pass on the suggestion that we might want such data.
      Best,
      Sam J.
      AO3 Support / Wrangling
      
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Lydia (lydiabell) Thu 18 Oct 2012 01:28AM UTC

I have a question about the Fandom, Character, and Relationship tags. Is it considered an acceptable use of the tagging system to put things in those fields that aren't real fandoms, characters, or relationships? Like putting "Stargate Atlantis, sexy scientists, awesomeness" in the Fandoms field, for instance. (not a real example. probably.) I've started seeing stuff like this, and it makes me absolutely stabby, but is it also against the rules? (Please say yes.)

Last Edited Thu 18 Oct 2012 01:28AM UTC

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1. LucyP Thu 18 Oct 2012 10:33AM UTC
  
  Hi!
  It's not against the rules, although we prefer that users don't do it. If tags are entered in the wrong field, it generally means that they are marked unwrangleable and therefore don't get linked up with their fellows in the 'right' fields. So, there might be a freeform for 'sexy scientists', and if you click on it you'll get all the other work tagged with that as an additional tag, but you won't get the one with 'sexy scientists' in the fandom field. So, if you encounter a work with this problem, you could politely let the creator know that it probably means their work won't be as findable as it should be. It's up to them whether they mind that or not!
  In general, our Terms of Service are designed so as few things as possible are against the rules, both to give users more freedom and to make it easier for us to manage enforcing the rules we do have. In this particular case, we've spent a lot of time trying to make the posting form as easy to understand as possible, to encourage people to put tags in the right fields. However, tag wranglers have had a lot of debates about whether there are additional things we could or should do to deal with situations like the one you describe. Overall the consensus has been that it's better to stay with the status quo, although as with all our decision we'd review it if the situation changed.
  Sorry to disappoint you!
  Lucy
  AD&T / Communications / Support
  
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2. 1. Lydia (lydiabell) Thu 18 Oct 2012 01:24PM UTC
    
    I am disappointed. I would have thought that "only fandoms go in the Fandom field" would be an uncontroversial standard. You say you prefer that users don't put random nonsense there, but that preference isn't even so much as conveyed to users in the form of a mild suggestion. There's nothing on the submission form telling or even asking people to save their freeform tags for the Additional Tags field.
    Now, I get that this is a minor issue. If I see someone sticking "sexy scientists" and "awesome" in the Fandoms field to be cute, I can hit the Back button because I assume someone who does that isn't writing anything I want to read anyway (just like those people who put "LOL I wrote this high on Mt Dew and Pixie Stix plz r/r!" as their summary). But it's a symptom of the whole AO3 philosophy of minimal and unenforced organizational structure, which has real usability consequences for readers -- who, after all, are Archive users too!
    For instance, I know that a lot of readers have been asking for the ability to filter out crossovers for a long time. It hasn't happened and AFAIK isn't coming anytime soon. Maybe somebody with an insider's perspective can correct me on this, but it would appear to be difficult if not impossible to implement this feature with the current organizational system. The same for the ability to search for only fic, or only vids, or only art. Because the organizational structure is 100% tag-based, unless creators tag their entries "crossover" or "fic" or "vid" or whatever, the Archive has no way of knowing what those entries are, and thus no way to figure out what to present to users who want to filter along those lines. And of course, creators don't have to use those tags and most don't.
    I wish we could see some acknowledgment that the current organizational structure does have drawbacks. Maybe AO3 has made a conscious choice to accept that those limitations will exist because you have a philosophical commitment to your system, and that's your right even if I think it's an unfortunate choice. But they do exist, and people who bring them up aren't just control freaks who don't understand the beauty and freedom of the tagging system, which is how it gets portrayed in all these "Yay, tagging is awesome!" posts. I find those posts alienating because they feel like they're just telling everyone who has a problem, "STFU h8rs".
    
    Last Edited Thu 18 Oct 2012 01:31PM UTC
    
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  2. 1. AstridV Thu 18 Oct 2012 02:33PM UTC
      
      I agree with that comment.
      
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    2. elz Thu 18 Oct 2012 04:18PM UTC
      
      There are trade-offs, no question. If each work could only have one fandom and users couldn't add their own tags, we'd have a much, much simpler site and my life as a coder would be a lot easier. And you're right, it is a philosophical choice, to encourage user-generated categorization and to treat crossovers as first-class works that are visible in both fandoms. But there are a lot of other upsides to having that wealth of data on the site and to giving users more control over how their works display. You can post content in a new fandom without waiting on someone else's approval; in a fandom with thousands of works, you can still find the ones that include your favorite tropes (and the ones that don't include your least-favorite). There are relationship tags that get more usage and more traffic than nearly all (and sometimes literally all) the fandoms on the site - that's a huge browsing tool, and I'm glad that people who like rarer ships can create the tags for them instead of being at a disadvantage relative to the more popular ones in having to wait for the tag to be created by someone else. Some freeform tags also get quite a lot of traffic: I'm guessing there are fans who like particular kinds of stories enough that they're interested in reading them in any fandom.
      We have users who come from a lot of different backgrounds and who have very different preferences: if you're accustomed to posting on a journal, or your own site, or on Tumblr, then you're used to having unlimited personal control over how you tag things. If you're coming from other archives with highly-structured and limited tagging options, then you're used to the benefits of a simpler system. The more casual/verbose tags on AO3 exist because people add them, because they find them useful or expressive. Our goal has always been to try to capture a balance, as best we're able, to let people use whatever tags describe their works while creating a back-end structure that makes it easier to browse related content. I do realize that no site can be all things to all people, and no system is going to make everyone happy. It's always a work-in-progress to try and find the best solutions and measure the pros and cons of different choices, but I do think that the system we have has positive aspects, and we're always listening to user feedback about ways we can make it better.
      Other notes:
      -I haven't seen a lot of deliberately miscategorized tags, so I don't know if that's something that's cropping up in particular fandoms? My guess would be that if you ignore the "Fandoms:" label on the form, you'll also ignore "Fandoms: (please put other kinds of tags in the appropriate fields!)" But if it's happening a lot, please do let Support know, and we'll do our best to emphasize that more and make it clearer.
      -Crossover filtering wouldn't strictly be impossible for us to implement, but you're right that it would be tricky with the way our system works, and there are a lot of other things on our short-term to-do list. Such as media filtering! We definitely want to offer better options for that and make it easy on people who have existing works tagged with 'art', 'vid', 'podfic', etc.
      I'm sorry that you've been frustrated with using the site, and I hope this is helpful at least in explaining my perspective as one person who helps build and maintain it!
      Elz
      AD&T Committee
      
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    3. 1. Lydia (lydiabell) Thu 18 Oct 2012 04:39PM UTC
        
        "If each work could only have one fandom and users couldn't add their own tags, we'd have a much, much simpler site and my life as a coder would be a lot easier."
        That's actually not in any way what I would advocate, and I wouldn't want to leave the impression that it was. Nor would I advocate making crossovers "second-class" works or having them not appear under both fandoms, and I really don't understand where that's even coming from. Mostly, I think relying solely on user tagging leaves you with inadequate metadata in a number of important ways, and that makes some features that are important to readers much harder to implement. I have no idea how you're going to do media filtering with the current system, and would be interested in hearing more.
        
        Last Edited Thu 18 Oct 2012 04:40PM UTC
        
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      2. samjohnsson Fri 19 Oct 2012 04:54PM UTC
        
        Hi Lydia:
        There are a number of theoretical ways to do the content tagging (text, image, audio, video), once it's started. One possible way is to rely on user input, using a specialized tag type (like those for rating and category) that contains specific production/content types. Another theoretical method would be to have the HTML Sanitizer that runs on the work also look for certain HTML markers and automatically assign the content tags to the work. At this point, all of the options are still under discussion - the development process isn't even at the elimination part of due diligence yet.
        Best,
        Sam J.
        AO3 Support / Wrangling
        
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        salty_catfish Mon 22 Oct 2012 09:56AM UTC
        
        Out of curiosity, are there any plans from the AO3 to provide appropriate submission forms for other media at some point and to host content other than fic?
        
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        samjohnsson Wed 24 Oct 2012 01:05PM UTC
        
        Hi!
        We've been discussing content-specific features for a while now, but we've been trying to refine the interface for text first before branching out into other media. If you have suggestions, please leave them on that news post or send them to Support!
        Best,
        Sam J.
        AO3 Support
        
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        salty_catfish Thu 25 Oct 2012 02:27PM UTC
        
        Thanks a lot for the reply! :) I'd already found that entry, I just wasn't so sure whether there'd been any new developments/prioritizing since 2010.
        
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        samjohnsson Thu 25 Oct 2012 05:20PM UTC
        
        Hi again:
        There'd been casual discussion of it, but the issue was tabled until closer to development.
        Best,
        Sam J.
        AO3 Support
        
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      3. ErinPtah Fri 19 Oct 2012 05:40AM UTC
        
        It used to be possible to see a good selection of nonsense fandoms by looking at what was listed in the No Media category. They don't seem to be displaying right now (can't tell if that's just a fluke, or a long-term glitch, or what), but there are a ton of them.
        
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      4. samjohnsson Fri 19 Oct 2012 04:19PM UTC
        
        Hi, SailorPtah:
        There's currently 811 tags listed under No Media at the moment. The vast majority of those are either an FandomA/FandomB crossover tag or a partial tag due to a creator accidentally using a comma in the tag they entered. As to why they're not visible on the Show Tag page, I'll ask the Coding team, see what's going on. Thanks for bringing this bug to our attention.
        Best,
        Sam J.
        AO3 Support / Wrangling
        
        Last Edited Fri 19 Oct 2012 04:20PM UTC
        
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        ErinPtah Fri 19 Oct 2012 05:32PM UTC
        
        Heh, the inability of wranglers to deal with mistagged crossovers is a whole other rant ^_^;
        Thanks for passing the word on!
        
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      5. Ruuger Mon 22 Oct 2012 11:42AM UTC
        
        I'm a bit late to the discussion, but I want to offer one reason why the archive should openly discourage Tumblr-style tagging, even if it's not banned: because the extraneous tags are a usability/accessibility issue.
        I really like freeform tags, and I use them a lot myself both as a writer and a reader. I recently had eye surgery and as a result, my eyesight is still a bit wobbly at the moment, and one of the main things that's affected is my ability to quickly scan text. As a result, I find it very difficult to read search results with too many freeform tags (and no, hiding freeforms is not an option because they also have info I want to see) where the actual information gets lost in the cutesy tags. I can only imagine the difficulties people with more serious visual/cognitive issues might have.
        So while I understand what you're saying about the archive not being able to be everything for everyone, at the moment it feels like it's only for writers, who can do whatever they want at the expense of the readers. What the archive *could* do is to make a statement kindly asking people to only use the tags for their intended purpose (which is to make the works searchable). It wouldn't take away the problem, but it would a) make it clear that the archive does care about readers as well, and b) set the tone for the posting-culture, and at least make (some) people think about this beyond "haters just hate the tags for no reason".
        (alternatively, you could automatically alphabetize the freeform tags which would discourage certain type of tagging, or at least offer the readers some way to hide all the non-canonical tags while still being able to see canonical freeform tags)
        
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      6. kelcat Mon 22 Oct 2012 05:59PM UTC
        
        One of the things that might help with educating people on what each of the different types of tags should be used for is to make the link to the FAQ more visible. Right now it's at the very bottom of the screen, in small font, slapped in the middle of a bunch of other links that may not be relevent to everyone.
        I know nothing about how difficult coding something like this would be, but putting the FAQ in a more visible place, such as at the *top* of each page and maybe in a larger font could help -- and possibly put the tag wrangling sections into a seperate (or in addition to the existing) FAQ might make get more people to notice it and read it (right now, even on my 19" monitor, I have to scroll down to even see what's at the bottom of the page).
        Just an idea.
        
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        samjohnsson Wed 24 Oct 2012 01:30PM UTC
        
        Hi!
        It's relatively easy to add a link to the header code - the problem is that we're starting to collect links up there like they're shiny things, causing the header to get very cluttered and large on smaller screens. As such, we have to review how they're arranged before adding more. We've also looked at creating subcategories within the FAQ, but that requires reworking much of the FAQ display code and will take some time to complete if we choose to do such. I will pass your thoughts on to the coders, though, asking for these!
        Best,
        Sam J.
        AO3 Support
        
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        briar_pipe Tue 23 Oct 2012 05:39AM UTC
        
        Sorry to hear about the surgery. I hope things get better for you soon!
        As someone who has her font bumped up to ridiculous sizes, I sympathize with trying to read walls of underlined text, but I'd really rather not force-alphabetize tags. I put my freeforms in order of relevence in the story, so that the most strongly present elements appear first and the less strong ones later. Force-reorganizing my tags would mess up my system, which I'm actually trying to make more useful for readers.
        To be honest, if the freeforms get truly out of hand on a work and I haven't seen enough to grab my attention yet, I just move on to something else anyway. I can't spare more than about 30 seconds (if that) to review a work to see if I want to read it, and that includes the summary. On the other hand, sometimes a random freeform or two (usually not twelve) will catch my attention and give me a feel for the tone of the work. Different strokes for different folks, I guess.
        (Full disclosure: I'm a newish wrangler, and I've never used another archive. I've always posted on my own sites or LJ/DW/IJ.)
        
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        samjohnsson Wed 24 Oct 2012 01:32PM UTC
        
        Hi!
        Thanks for your comments on how you use tags -we're always looking for this sort of data so we can make informed decisions regarding the interface. If you have any more comments, let us know via the Wrangling committee or via the Support form!
        Best,
        Sam J.
        
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        samjohnsson Wed 24 Oct 2012 01:19PM UTC
        
        Thank you for bringing this up, Ruuger - the Tags block can get significantly larger when the font size is increased. We are looking into a few ways to allow users to shorten or suppress the display of specific types of Additional tags; one of our front-end coders has added a skin that shortens Additional tagsin search results that have more than (roughly) 17 characters. We'll also look into clearer guidelines on the Tags fields as part of our documentation rework. Best wishes for your eyes to heal! Sam J. AO3 Support
        edit: close the tag, Sam.
        
        Last Edited Wed 24 Oct 2012 01:20PM UTC
        
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        rivkat Thu 25 Oct 2012 02:34AM UTC
        
        That skin is very nice! Would it be possible to promote it in some upcoming news post?
        
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        samjohnsson Thu 25 Oct 2012 02:36AM UTC
        
        Hi, Rivkat!
        I'll make sure to let Comms know. I believe Tags are working on a couple more posts as well, so I'll make sure it gets mentioned.
        Best,
        Sam J.
        AO3 Support / Wrangling
        
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        Max (Guest) Sat 27 Oct 2012 03:08PM UTC
        
        I have a similar problem. I sometimes browse Ao3 with my Kindle over wifi and the most annoying thing its that is displays ALL the tags in the search results, even when the fanfic has hundreds of them, which means a lot of annoying scrolling. (Part of the problem is of course that AO3 is currently not as mobile-optimised as, say, fanfiction.net)
        They should just find a way to only display the important tags. Unfortunately the actual main characters of a fanfic are not highlighted in the tags either, so often you just get a over-long cast lists down to cameos there and when you search for a characters that is not very prominent in fandom it is really frustratingly hard to find fanfics that feature them as leads (fanfiction.net is the other extreme with only 2 characters allowed, but this way you at least find stories for minor characters).
        The same is true for the too many freeform tags you have to slog through, it is an interface issue and A=3 needs to find a way to only display the most important/relevant tags (which could include not displaying freeform tags in search results at all)
        There needs to be some way of removing the clutter from search pages, like manually or automatically (e.g. by counting how often a character appears in the text of the fic) weighting the tags. Or limiting the number of tags. Or optionally hiding freeform tags. Or something. Just anything that alleviates readers having to scroll/scan through myriads of irrelevant tags.
        So I agree with you, excessive freedom of writers must not make the site unusable for readers, because the writers write to be read in the first place.
        
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        samjohnsson Sat 27 Oct 2012 05:26PM UTC
        
        Hi, Max:
        Thanks for letting us know what tools you use to interact with the Archive. It helps us make design decisions in the future, knowing what platforms our users have. We're always looking at how better to display information, and some of your suggestions are familiar. Let me address them in order.
        We do have a feature request to divide the tags fields into Primary and Secondary groups, as well as a request to add code that would provide more information about the tag, so that skins can better target them.
        We do currently have a site skin that logged-in users can select that shortens all Additional Tags to a fixed length on any search results page, as well as a skin that hides the Additional Tags on the search results. Both of these allow all the tags to be visible on the work itself. For a more final option, a logged-in user has the option on their Preferences page to hide all Additional Tags by default.
        Dynamically generating tag relevance from the number of times the tagged character appears in the text, at the moment, would be prohibitively demanding on the servers, and it doesn't address other forms of fanworks. Also, due to caching solutions we've implemented, we don't at the moment have skins available for non-logged-in users, but the code can be easily adapted for Stylish or other browser-based script systems.
        If you have any more thoughts, let us know, either here or via the Support & Feedback form!
        Best,
        Sam J.
        AO3 Support
        
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        Max (Guest) Sun 28 Oct 2012 06:54AM UTC
        
        Hi Sam,
        thank you very much for your answer, it's reassuring to know that you guys are listening to feedback, that you are aware of this and that there are feature proposals and skins and even already one option in the preferences that address this issue :).
        I still have about three weeks to finally (FINALLY! Hallelujah! :D ;)) get my invite, but in the meantime I will look at how I can enable the skins via an browser extensions or user style sheet!
        Yeah, I knew I was being silly with the infeasible "compute tag relevancy through text analysis" proposal. I'm sorry, I should just have deleted it :D.
        Thanks for the link to your feedback form, I'll use it if anything else comes up and it is really good to know you listen to (what I hope was for the most part) reasonable feedback.
        BTW, other than the tags thing, browsing AO3 on my kindle works remarkably well! :) Searching by pairings works quite well by going to the about page of a fandom tag (compared to the abysmal search on fanfiction.net's mobile site which is utterly useless, because you can only search by keywords and not filter by characters or genres).
        Even the download of .mobi files works :). (Sometimes I have to try twice, but it always works then if it did not on the first click.)
        One last thing: Can AO3 users register and vote on this trillo platform, or is it just an internal tool where the AO3 staff votes for feature proposals they collected from user feedback? Either way I really like how transparent it makes your whole development process :).
        Cheers
        Max.
        
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        samjohnsson Sun 28 Oct 2012 01:07PM UTC
        
        Hi again, Max!
        No need to apologize for suggestions, or delete them! It would definitely be a useful feature, but it's currently outside our technical scope.
        The .mobi download hiccup is a known issue that we've been working on tracking down. It's good to know it is working on second-click - that gives our coders more information on where it might be failing.
        We transitioned to using the Trello board for feature requests (instead of an internal wiki page) for greater visibility and access. Guest users are able to search through the cards and vote on their cards. For myriad reasons, we have commenting limited - you can always submit a Support ticket to get those added. You can read more on our Documentation Boards at our Internal Tools FAQ!
        Best,
        Sam J.
        AO3 Support
        
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    4. samjohnsson Fri 19 Oct 2012 05:16PM UTC
      
      Hi Lydia:
      As the author of this news post, I wanted to address your last paragraph. I did not intend for this post to come across as "Tagging is Awesome"; I intended a "here's the numbers". That it was open to misinterpretation, I apologize.
      The Tag Wrangling committee is fully aware of the limitations of the current Archive software and organizational system, both from external and internal criticism. We know there are flaws, places where it gets a little ugly (or even flat out breaks down). Many of the wrangling volunteers we have tend toward preferring more organization than less, so those limitations irritate us on a daily basis.
      We do feel that at the current time, the user-generated tagging system best matches the missions of the Archive of Our Own and the Organization of Transformative Works. That said, the site's policies are always under review, and we do consider many forms of feedback when discussing these issues, whether it be signed on an news post, anon on a major community or forum, or indirect through creators' tagging practices.
      Best,
      Sam J.
      AO3 Support / Wrangling
      
      Last Edited Fri 19 Oct 2012 05:17PM UTC
      
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    5. 1. Lydia (lydiabell) Fri 19 Oct 2012 06:53PM UTC
        
        Hi Sam,
        Thank you for your replies, on this comment and the one about media types.
        This particular post came across less "Tagging is Awesome" than some of the others, and it didn't irritate me in itself. It was sloppy of me to imply that it did. Past posts have, and the comments in this one went a bit that way as well.
        I appreciate your comments about there being some flaws with the system and giving a little inside peek into what some of the volunteers think as well.
        There are a lot of things I love about the AO3. I think the posting interface is 1000 times easier to use than the one at ff.net. I love the ability to view a work by chapter or by the whole work, download for mobile devices, subscribe to a story, etc. I feel like both posting and viewing stories work very well! Finding them is the piece that's not in the puzzle yet, IMO. And it does get very frustrating because it's hard to see how it will ever change. When usability butts up against philosophical considerations, usability seems to lose.
        
        Last Edited Fri 19 Oct 2012 07:01PM UTC
        
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      2. samjohnsson Wed 24 Oct 2012 02:27PM UTC
        
        Hi again!
        We do understand that finding works right now is a mess - we're just as frustrated as you. We are all eagerly awaiting the return of the filters, which will also bring improvements to the Work Search page as well. (I've seen them - they are both so much more functional now.) Both of these will help to a large extent, and we are starting to look at other interface changes as well. As you find things where you feel usability has been compromised, we do ask that you send us Feedback so we know that it needs to be addressed!
        Best,
        Sam J.
        AO3 Support
        
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    6. navaan Sat 20 Oct 2012 07:38AM UTC
      
      For instance, I know that a lot of readers have been asking for the ability to filter out crossovers for a long time. It hasn't happened and AFAIK isn't coming anytime soon. Maybe somebody with an insider's perspective can correct me on this, but it would appear to be difficult if not impossible to implement this feature with the current organizational system. The same for the ability to search for only fic, or only vids, or only art. Because the organizational structure is 100% tag-based, unless creators tag their entries "crossover" or "fic" or "vid" or whatever, the Archive has no way of knowing what those entries are, and thus no way to figure out what to present to users who want to filter along those lines. And of course, creators don't have to use those tags and most don't.
      All of this! So much! As a writer it may be nice that I can put all the tags on any story, but as a reader I'm getting more and more annoyed and confused when I try to find what I'm looking for.
      
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onlyforreading Thu 18 Oct 2012 06:44AM UTC

What about overlap? All those mispelt tags, where the character is spelt wrong - why can't these be deleted? Instead, they are 'linked' to the correct tags, which is so stupid.
And I disagree about the usefulness of free form tags - I'm sorry but 'oohh I'm a special snowflake' 'wrote this whilst I was drunk' 'sunshine and moonbeams' 'why are you reading this? no why?' are absolutely no use to me whatsoever in finding a fic.
Additionally, how will this work in the future when the archive expands? Are you expecting to increase your tag wranglers exponentially to keep up with the tags? Is the new filtering system also going to keep the ability we currently have to see ALL stories in a category, or will it cut us down to 1000 again?
Also, is there any plan to make the tags more like delicious in terms of filtering? Ie if I am in the Avengers category browsing, and I click the tag PTSD, I keep making the assumption that that will display all stories tagged both Avengers and PTSD, and always end up horribly disappointed that instead it displays every single story in AO3 with that tag. It makes no sense to me :(

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1. LucyP Thu 18 Oct 2012 10:24AM UTC
  
  Hi there,
  The question of misspelt tags is a slightly tricky one, but simply allowing users' tags to stand rather than making judgements over what was an intended variant (for example, where opinions about how to transliterate non-Roman scripts differ) is a more lightweight way of administering those. It also makes things more findable - if I mistag my fic as 'Jhon Sheppard' I still want people to find it when they're looking for works featuring John Sheppard.
  The use of the freeform tags varies widely depending on fannish culture and preferences. We think this is a feature, not a bug; while 'wrote this while I was drunk' may not be useful to you when you're finding a work, it may be useful in giving other users information about that work. In addition, having freeform tags also makes it possible for users to use specific terminology which might be useful for browsing purposes, for example, episode names, without having to rely on us to enter those options for them.
  Since the more humorous / less browsing-focused tags are unlikely to be made canonical, they won't appear in the filters (when those return) or the autocomplete, so they don't actually inhibit browsing. (If you find freeform tags generally un-useful, you can opt not to see them at all by enabling the 'Hide freeform tags' preference as a logged-in user.)
  As the Archive expands, we'll expand the pool of tag wranglers, yes; our Tag Wrangling Committee are better placed to talk about how they envisage that working but I know that they don't currently have any concerns about how the workload is evolving.
  The new tag filters will not restore the 1000 work limit, no - that was a side effect of the way the old system worked and the redesign removes the necessity for it.
  There aren't currently any plans to make the tags more like Delicious. The new filters will make it a lot easier to achieve the same effect as you're describing; it's unlikely we'll introduce a Delicious-style system in the future, although it's not something that's been discussed in depth so I can't say right now whether it would be techincally feasible. We'll add it to our list of feature requests so it can be discussed in the future.
  Thanks.
  Lucy
  AD&T / Communications / Support
  
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perdiccas Thu 18 Oct 2012 08:10AM UTC

Are there any plans in the future to let users wrangle their own tags? I'd love it if I could tell the archive upfront that when I say "knives and forks" it's okay to make that a synonym of "cutlery" (to use a completely made up and silly example) rather than having to hope the tag wranglers spot it and make the connection, or having to email through support. It seems like it would take some pressure off the tag wranglers, especially in smaller fandoms that might not have an official wrangler.

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1. LucyP Thu 18 Oct 2012 10:36AM UTC
  
  Hi there!
  This is something we've discussed in the past; we have introduced tag sets for specific circumstances where user input on how tags should be wrangled is particularly relevant. However, we haven't been able to come up with a good design that didn't have a lot of overhead; in particular, we don't want to add anything to our 'post new' form, which is already not as streamlined as we'd like. If someone comes up with a great and implementable design, we would definitely consider it, but so far it's proved not to be feasible.
  Thanks!
  Lucy
  AD&T / Communications / Support
  
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aurilly Fri 19 Oct 2012 04:09PM UTC

Speaking of crossovers... I don't know if/how this can be addressed, but the recent explosion of Marvel fandom has made things really difficult for people like me who LOVE crossovers. I used to go through the crossover tag periodically to see if there was anything for a fandom I knew. But now there are so many people writing straight-up Avengers fic who are labeling their works as crossovers that it's incredibly difficult to find actual crossovers. For example, a story set post-Avengers movie isn't really a crossover with Captain America. I get that Avengers movie canon built off canon from Captain America, but since Avengers assumes all that info anyway it's not a crossover the way a Doctor Who/Avengers story is a crossover. I know it's important to encourage people to use whatever tags they want, but this is another instance of this making the actual tags pretty useless in terms of being able to use them to find things. I don't advocate making crossovers a separate or secondary section the way ff.net does but overall the archive might benefit from a few more public guidelines about these kind of umbrella fandoms, as it's a tricky and subjective issue.
Also, separate issue, are there any discussion about how to deal with canon limitations between versions of a fandom? For example, for stuff like Game of Thrones, it would be awesome if there was a way for show-only readers to be able to look for fic without fear of spoilers from summaries written by book people. Right now, book readers are tagging their fic with the Game of Thrones (TV) tag even though it includes stuff from later books. So unless someone specifically writes "through A Dance With Dragons" in the summary, there's no way for a show-only person to know not to click on it.

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1. samjohnsson Fri 19 Oct 2012 06:53PM UTC
  
  Hi, aurilly:
  Part of the issue you're seeing is that there are fannish creators who consider "The Avengers (2012)" as a Marvel-written crossover between the individual comic movie titles. As such, they choose to tag with the "Crossover" tag - this happens in other fandoms as well. Plus, there are creators who view their tags as a form of advertising, as a way to reach users who might not normally read in the work's main fandom. Without policing the content of each work on the Archive (which we have neither the fanpower nor the desire to do), we don't really have a way to verify that the tags are accurate to the work. If we do decide to create a clearer way to mark crossovers besides just the current Additional tag, we'll be sure to provide better documentation!
  There haven't been many discussions prior to this regarding the second issue. We do encourage creators to use (and create if necessary) episode-specific and book-specific tags, though I am not sure if "Game of Thrones" has tags for most eps. Some fans view "Game of Thrones" and "A Song of Ice and Fire" as the same fandom, and as the TV series seems to be cleaving to the text of the book series, don't see a need to tag for spoilers. As we permit creator-decided tagging as per the Terms of Service, we don't have a way to mandate specific tag usages. The best suggestion we can offer is to leave a polite comment on spoiling works to ask the creator to adjust their tags.
  Best,
  Sam J.
  AO3 Support / Wrangling
  
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2. 1. navaan Sat 20 Oct 2012 08:27AM UTC
    
    I understand that the archive has in no way the people power to police how content and tags relate to each other on all individual works - and I don't think you should either. But I kind of feel the way fandom tags are used at the moment is mostly expression of how confusing tags are without at least some lose guidlines. (And I'm not talking about additional tags, because I can totally ignore that wall of text and move on if it's there, but more about fandom tags and how they are used or the few additional tags that tell me something is a different medium than fanfic or is a crossover.)
    I'm glad the Archive exists and people put so much work into it. I'm glad there is so much freedom for writers to present their work. It think it's great your working on making processes behind the scenes more visible and explaining how wrangling works and how tags actually display information for readers. Basically that's all you can do at the moment. I'm just affraid ith more and more users it will get more and more complicated to find anything in the long run - and maybe that's okay too from a "preserving fanworks" perspective. I don't know. The Archive is pretty young still and we'll see how these things actually go, I guess.
    
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  2. 1. samjohnsson Wed 24 Oct 2012 01:43PM UTC
      
      Hi!
      We are working on improving our site documentation, including help texts. I'll pass your thoughts on to the committees involved for more clear guidelines on the Tags boxes.
      We do appreciate your patience and encouragement with us while we're still in beta. We've been trying to figure out what works best to balance between many competing goals, so we're always looking for feedback from both readers and creators. If you have more thoughts, you can always let us know via the Support & Feedback form!
      Best,
      Sam J.
      AO3 Support
      
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3. Lydia (lydiabell) Fri 19 Oct 2012 06:55PM UTC
  
  I like this point. It's not just people who prefer not to read crossovers (or at least aren't looking for them at any given time) who want the ability to filter for them. It's not an agenda to make crossovers second-class. It's sort of like content labels -- some people use them to find stories, some people use them to avoid stories. Except if the label isn't provided or even asked for, it can't be used.
  
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4. navaan Sat 20 Oct 2012 08:02AM UTC
  
  But now there are so many people writing straight-up Avengers fic who are labeling their works as crossovers that it's incredibly difficult to find actual crossovers. For example, a story set post-Avengers movie isn't really a crossover with Captain America. I get that Avengers movie canon built off canon from Captain America, but since Avengers assumes all that info anyway it's not a crossover the way a Doctor Who/Avengers story is a crossover.
  I totally hear you on this. Because it's a probablem in the other direction, too. If I'm looking for comics based Marvel-fic half or more than half turns out to be Avengers and Movie!verse fic that someone tagged (comics) for different minor reasons. That way it gets harder and harder to actually find what I want to read there.
  Many people also seem to think they have to use all the remotly appropriate fandom tags to make their story searchable and since the "Ambigious fandom" tag for Avengers is out there (I expect it was for cases where it wasn't clear which Avengers fandom was meant, any Marvel incarnation or the UK TV series) many people use that in addition to all the other tags. I don't think it's helpful for readers like me.
  
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5. 1. aurilly Sun 21 Oct 2012 03:46AM UTC
    
    Exactly! My point wasn't about crossovers in particular. They're just one of many examples of this one overall issue of search results sometimes being confusing or too numerous because works have so many (somewhat misleading) tags. It wasn't really a problem before when there weren't that many stories in general, but I can see it becoming harder and harder to slog through results as the archive grows and as we get more of these new giant fandoms.
    
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  2. samjohnsson Wed 24 Oct 2012 01:52PM UTC
    
    Hi, navaan:
    I fully understand you, here. I both read and wrangle Marvel Avengers movie fandoms, and I've noted that authors are often tagging for comics if they draw on extended backstory from one of the print or animated lines. In fact, the "The Avengers (2012)" tag was in continual use a full six months before the movie came out, and many of those works drew on print and animated canons. And yes, the "- Ambiguous Fandom" disambiguation is for the very reason you surmise: prior to the announcement of the movie, there was very little cross-use of "The Avengers" for the Marvel fandom.
    I'll pass your thoughts for clearer guidelines on to the documentation team!
    Best,
    Sam J.
    AO3 Support / Wrangling
    
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facetofcathy Sat 20 Oct 2012 06:45PM UTC

The thing that stands out for me in this post is the, "Around a quarter of the works are tagged "Author chose not to use warnings."."
What this vividly illustrates is how user interface (UI) design influences user behaviour. As many of you know, when you post a work choose not to warn is the default pre-selected tag. If you select another tag, even the seemingly contradictory no warnings apply tag, the choose not to warn tag is not deselected, the author must do this manually. Many don't. They either don't notice or they forget. In my experience tagging for newsletters, I would say new users of the archive are particularly likely to make this mistake. Those new users are not easily inferring how to get desired outcomes out of the UI.
The meaning of the tag itself is also degraded if people use it unintentionally. I don't trust it when I see it. It would be very interesting to know how many of that 25% of all works are tagged with choose not to warn and another warning tag. It might provide insight into how much that tag is applied without the author's intent to use it and therefore how much it's meaning has been eroded.
From this example we can see that the UI is not neutral, and site culture or fandom cultures are therefore not the only influence on user behaviour or experience. And so the choices made in UI design will and do influence user behaviour. As someone once said, "If you chose and action, you chose the consequences of the action."
Some UI designers like to refer to a form element--like the posting form for example--as a conversation between the site and the user, and I think that's an illuminating metaphor. Users are not speaking in isolation when they chose tags, they are answering back to the site's questions. And I don't think anyone would argue that how you ask a question influences the answers you get.
In the comments of this post, I see many users talking about trends in the way others have conversed with the site and how they are experiencing difficulty following the resulting conversation in meaningful ways. The response to these comments seems to show that those users are thought to be asking for the site to police users' behaviour, to set narrow rules and to stifle the author's freedoms of expression, but I don't think that's what everyone, perhaps even anyone, is asking for.
I think they're asking for the site, for the AO3 designers, to ask better questions. With better questions, the authors answering them and the readers coming along later to read the whole conversation can equally enjoy a better experience on the site. I expect resentment of the more extreme freeform tags would diminish if the base tags had more utility.
As someone once said, "If you desire an outcome, you have to be prepared to make the choices that will lead to it."
So if the AO3 wants users who are searching, browsing and reading to have an enjoyable and rewarding experience using the site, some choices may need to be revisited.

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1. salty_catfish Mon 22 Oct 2012 09:03AM UTC
  
  I want to award this comment the 'most sensible comment' award.
  
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2. briar_pipe Tue 23 Oct 2012 06:08AM UTC
  
  This is why I love your brain.
  I'll raise it with staff, but I think having clearer instructions and links to documentation on the posting form could also make a difference. For example, clicking on the question mark beside "Fandom" currently returns this: "The name(s) of the fandom(s) to which your work belongs. Full names, rather than abbreviations, are preferred. You may list multiple fandoms, separated by commas (for example, if your work is a crossover)."
  By simplifying the language and adding a request not to use the space for characters, relationships, or portmanteaus of fandom names, the parameters could be much clearer for new users, who are the ones most likely to hit that question mark in the first place.
  
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3. 1. samjohnsson Wed 24 Oct 2012 02:02PM UTC
    
    Hi again!
    Thank you for the text suggestion - I'll make sure to pass it on to the Documentation workgroup, as well as a suggestion to link to our Wrangling guidelines. If you have any other thoughts, let us know!
    Best,
    Sam J.
    AO3 Support
    
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4. samjohnsson Wed 24 Oct 2012 01:59PM UTC
  
  Hi!
  Thank you for bringing this up - I've made an issue for it in our bug tracker. There's already been discussion about revising that section of the Post form to use a mix of radials and checkboxes, as well as a discussion of the overall look and interaction of the entire Post New page. If you have more detailed thoughts, as always, we want to hear them!
  Best,
  Sam J.
  AO3 Support
  
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Clairshadows Sun 21 Oct 2012 05:53AM UTC

Thumbs up. I don't quite know how you can look at this task without wanting a nice strong drink, however I for one will be thrilled when it's back up and running, it was one of my favourite features.

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Mebs (Guest) Sun 21 Oct 2012 09:25AM UTC

Hi,
Any chance that the raw data is available somewhere? I was very excited to see you start to visualize your data - I'm a data visualizer and I was considering doing a few projects about AOW to get insight about trending fics. Seems like the only option I have now to get your data is to build crawlers (which I really don't want to do, considering your uptime history).
Ideally, I would love to be able to access an AOW api - if you're looking for inspiration, reddit has done this in a very non-obtrusive way (see http://www.reddit.com/.json).
Anything available or future plans for supporting apis?
Thanks you guys are awesome!

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1. LucyP Mon 22 Oct 2012 10:20AM UTC
  
  Hi!
  We hope to launch an api eventually, but that's very much a plan for in the future, just because at the moment the code is still shifting enough to make it a bit difficult (also, we just have a lot of things in the queue). Right now, it's actually not super-easy for us to pull the data on things like tags ourselves. If you'll drop a message to support, though, then we can probably give you at least the data we used for this post.
  Going forward, if you were interested in volunteering with us we'd be pretty interested in some more data-visualisation type posts (albeit with the caveats that not all the data is necessarily easy to gather). Again, if that's something that might interest you, let us know via support and we can find the right person to chat with about it.
  Thanks!
  Lucy
  AD&T / Communications / Support
  
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2. 1. theaeblackthorn Thu 08 Nov 2012 04:33PM UTC
    
    Hi,
    With the launch of the new filtering system, showing the top 10 tags for each of the sections, I became intrigued about the way a lot of this information would sit together and I'd love to have a go at visualising it with something like Processing.js. Checking to see if you offered any APIs/dumps of raw information led me to this post and I wondered if it would at all be possibly to have a copy of the information you used to create this post?
    Ideally I'd like to start by looking at the crossovers between fandoms to see how they interact, but I'm really itching to see what visualisations I can do with the data.
    So, yes, any raw data would be absolutely amazing!
    Cheers!
    sas x
    ETA: Misread, submitting a support request to see if I can get it :)
    
    Last Edited Thu 08 Nov 2012 04:38PM UTC
    
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  2. 1. samjohnsson Thu 08 Nov 2012 04:40PM UTC
      
      Hi, sas!
      Beat me to it - I was about to say that if you contact us through Support, we'll see what we can get you.
      Best,
      Sam J.
      AO3 Support
      
      Last Edited Thu 08 Nov 2012 04:42PM UTC
      
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    2. 1. theaeblackthorn Thu 08 Nov 2012 04:44PM UTC
        
        Hi Sam,
        I was so excited to see the offer I misread the post a little, support request submitted. Looking forward to seeing what data you guys can give me :)
        Cheers,
        sas
        
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Topaz_Eyes Sun 21 Oct 2012 05:29PM UTC

The good news is that we're so close now we can almost taste it - the new filters are on our Test Archive and if testing goes well they should be rolled out to the main site in a few weeks time.
Will the new filters be able to withstand another sudden jump in users and activity, as what happens during Yuletide? (It's not just registered users who use the site.) Frankly, the Archive can't risk another site-wide crash during one of the busiest times of the year. As much as I would love to see the new filters rolled out ASAP, I'd rather wait until after Yuletide to see them implemented.

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1. LucyP Mon 22 Oct 2012 03:00PM UTC
  
  Hi!
  Part of the testing we're doing right now is simple load testing, to help us evaluate that. However, the increase in Yuletide-related users relative to the number of overall users is much, much smaller than in recent years. On the busiest holiday day last year we had 1,066,216 pageviews; on our busiest day in the last WEEK we had 3.2 million pageviews (and that was a very average week). So, we're routinely handling 200% more traffic on a busy day in an ordinary week than we were during the peak time last Yuletide, which means that if it attracts roughly the same amount of attention that will be a much less dramatic jump in activity.
  It can be hard for us to predict how user activity is going to change - we definitely weren't expecting the exponential growth which took place in the first half of this year - so we can't say definitely that we're not going to hit another period of rapid increase. However, it seems reasonably likely that Yuletide is going to become less and less significant in terms of its impact on the site every year that we grow.
  If we think that the filters will cause performance problems, we won't roll them out. If they do cause unexpected issues, we've designed them so we can easily turn them off. However, we've tried to build them such that they'll still be able to function as the site grows over the several years to come. So, Yuletide shouldn't be a problem *crosses all available fingers and hopes not to jinx us*.
  Thanks!
  Lucy
  AD&T / Communications / Support
  
  Last Edited Mon 22 Oct 2012 03:02PM UTC
  
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KaibaSlaveGirl34 Mon 22 Oct 2012 09:21PM UTC

I wish you the best of luck on the tags, and I can't wait to see them back in action as well, especially with the filters too. :)

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LucyP Tue 23 Oct 2012 08:52AM UTC

Hi to everyone who's been contributing to this thread!
We've been trying to respond to specific questions, but we might not get to every comment. We are, though, following the comments and thinking about your feedback - the AO3 is a work in progress and it's really valuable to hear all the different ideas.
Thanks!
Lucy
AD&T / Communications / Support

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anachronism Tue 23 Oct 2012 06:30PM UTC

I'll be excited to see the tag filter come back. The system was so easy to use, it's one of the reasons I decided to sign up for a membership on this site.
I just wanted to put in my two cents and say that I enjoy the freeform tags as well. I think it allows authors to offer their readers a little more information about their story up-front without putting unnecessary things into the summary. They're also very fun.
I have a question unrelated to tags though, (I hope that's okay) : On what sounds like a very long list of things you guys want to add/improve for this site, is private messaging on that list?

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1. hl (hele) Tue 23 Oct 2012 07:36PM UTC
  
  Hi,
  Yes, it's on the list of requested features! We maintain that list using a tool called Trello, where each feature suggestion is a “card”.
  The particular “card” about Private Messaging is: https://trello.com/c/dQWTlvzl . The feature has been approved for development, but I'm afraid there's no timeframe for its implementation yet.
  You can read more about Trello in the Internal Tools section of our FAQ (http://archiveofourown.org/archive_faqs/30).
  hele
  AO3 Support
  
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2. raspberry (Guest) Tue 23 Oct 2012 10:13PM UTC
  
  But isn't the author's notes field a really excellent way to provide additional info for the fic without cluttering up the summary? I really like that feature and don't see why that kind of info has to go into the tags at all.
  
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3. 1. anachronism Tue 23 Oct 2012 10:20PM UTC
    
    I see your point. I do feel that the longer comments should go into the A/N field. But I also think that a brief, at a glance comment is okay too, as long as it doesn't take up half of my search result page. I like the A/N feature as well. It's not something you get on most other sites.
    
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  2. dizmo Wed 24 Oct 2012 09:43AM UTC
    
    Well, it depends on the tag, in my opinion. Some of the more idiosyncratic freeforms do say something about the fic that might intrigue someone scrolling down the list, that would either induce them to look at the fic or let them know that they might want to skip this one for whatever reason (I know a lot of otherwise-silly tags have drawn me in to reading something I wouldn't have otherwise), and author's notes don't show up while scrolling through the fic list. It's tags and summary. It's just a matter of scale. I'll roll my eyes a bit if the tags take up a paragraph and a half worth of space, but I really do tend to like it when there's a few scattered in. But I wouldn't really want an official level being set, either. I figure I can scroll. XD
    
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  3. 1. samjohnsson Wed 24 Oct 2012 02:18PM UTC
      
      Hi!
      Thanks for your feedback. We're always looking for feedback as to how both readers and creators interact with the site. If you have any more thoughts, let us know here or via the Support and Feedback form.
      Best,
      Sam J.
      AO3 Support
      
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  4. samjohnsson Wed 24 Oct 2012 02:13PM UTC
    
    Hi!
    One reason some users use the Summary (or even the Additional Tags) for this extended information is that the Notes fields don't appear in Searches, Subscriptions, or ATOM feeds. As well, some users are coming from archives and locations that don't have the field and aren't sure what it's for. I'll let the Docs workgroup know that it might need some guidelines and suggestions for use!
    Best,
    Sam J.
    AO3 Support
    
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kelcat Wed 24 Oct 2012 04:21PM UTC

That definitely makes sense; thanks for being so open to feedback!

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GrannySmithBlankets Thu 22 Nov 2012 06:45AM UTC

Which is the best way to correct basic tags - such a work marked English but is in another language? Do we contact you and/or the author? Thanks!

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1. samjohnsson Thu 22 Nov 2012 01:07PM UTC
  
  Hi!
  As per the Terms of Service, we cannot directly change the tags on a work. Our best suggestion is to contact the author via a comment on the work itself, or if they've left an email on their profile.
  Best,
  Sam J.
  AO3 Support / Wrangling
  
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AO3 News

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Overall tag growth and canonical growth

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