AO3 Fandom Metatag Removal Controversy

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Event
Event:	AO3 Fandom Metatag Removal Controversy AO3 "All Media Types" Tag Controversy "AO3's policy on All Media Types tags is a disaster for anime fandom"
Participants:
Date(s):	August and September 2024
Type:	AO3 policy change and fan response
Fandom:	AO3 panfandom
URL:
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In August and September 2024, controversy broke out about AO3 Tag Wranglers implementation of their policy deprecating meta tags such as "All Media Types" or "& Related Fandoms" tags. In particular, the removal of "Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms" and synning with "Sherlock (TV)" sparked a massive and increasing wave of protests, until the Tag Wranglers reversed that change and made a public announcement of a moratorium on the policy. Most affected fandoms (such as the Monogatari Series and Hannibal) remain split up.

Background

AO3 Metatags

In 2010, the AO3's code was updated to enable parent/child relationships between tags. Parent tags are called "metatags", and their children are called "subtags". On the backend, tag wranglers can add any canonical tag to another canonical tag in the same category as a metatag or subtag: for example, the "Additional Tag" Dinosaurs has the subtag Velociraptors, also an Additional Tag. When an AO3 user clicks on a tag that has subtags, the works page shows all works tagged with either that tag or any of its subtags: for example, the Dinosaurs tag also shows results from works tagged with Velociraptors. The 2010 metatag feature announcement framed metags as a solution specifically for complicated fandoms like "RPF fandoms and fandoms with a shared universe / in different media".

Metatags can also be subtags of another tag, with the result that some "tag trees" can have many levels. Some coding inefficiencies resulted in "deep tag trees" causing serious server load issues in 2013, which in turn led to the tag wrangling committee imposing a moratorium on canonizing No Fandom Freeforms and instituting other internal wrangling policy changes. These changes were not always communicated to users.

Fandom Metatag Policy Changes?

As of 2017, the public-facing AO3 Tag Wrangling Guidelines for fandom tag formatting included a few standard generic suffixes for disambiguation purposes. These suffixes appeared in fandom metatags:

• All Media Types - "fandoms that span different series or media, but all titles are under the same name." Example: Star Wars - All Media Types, parent to various Star Wars films, television series, comics, and tie-in novels.
• & Related Fandoms - "fandoms that are clearly related (either set in the same universe, or based on the same source), but don’t all share the same name". Example: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, parent to Doctor Who and spinoff series like Torchwood, etc.
• Ambiguous Fandom - "fandom tags that have been used with multiple unrelated series". Example: The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom, parent to The Avengers (Marvel comic book superheroes) and The Avengers (British 1960s spy-fi series).

This guideline was updated on 30 August 2022 to indicate that all three were considered "legacy" formats and would no longer be created. However, the change was never officially announced(??), and appears to have been implemented in stages starting several years before.

At first (when??), tag wranglers stopped making "All Media Types" and "& Related Fandom" metatags for new fandoms being added to the archive, but left existing fandom tag trees in place. By January 2022 they were removing existing metatags, that is, decanonizing the metatag and synning it to one of its former subtags. The general rule was to syn the old metatag to the most popular subtag; this rule was based on an assumption that works tagged with the metatag itself were generally tagged in error and were actually more appropriate for one of the subtags.

• The moratorium on new metatags (no official announcement??? todo: research)
  • MDZS/The Untamed, Jujutsu Kaisen, *many* anime and manga fandoms complained about the lack of meta tags making it impossible to either search for or filter out crossovers in their fandoms.
  • Transformers AMT tag still exists, but wranglers seem to have stopped linking new Transformers fandom tags to it
    • This doesn't seem to be true, Transformers One (2024) has been canonised, and the tag has been wrangled under the Transformers - All Media Types tag.
• In early 2024?? (or earlier?? EDIT: found one de-canonized in 2022) Tag Wranglers started deprecating existing "All Media Types" meta tags
  • "Dungeons & Dragons - All Media Types" got de-canonized and synned to "Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game)" sometime between January 2022 and August 2022
  • No, the Marvel Cinematic Universe hasn't been changed. it's had "Marvel" as a metatag and has all the MCU movies & tv shows as subtags this whole time: July 2022, April 2024, September 2024. However there was a tag "The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types" that was a canonized metatag for "The Avengers (Marvel Movies)". Huh, just the movies? Oh, it used to contain the comics until 2021 (see below). Yeah, once you're unlinked "Avengers (Comics)" from "The Avengers (Marver) - All Media Types" then yeah this AMT is entirely redundant to "The Avengers (Marvel Movies)" and I fully support getting rid of it. Anyways it was decanonized sometime between March 2023 and July 2023. Is this what people were talking about on Reddit (or maybe tumblr?) when they said the Avengers comics & shows got split up at some point???
  • tbh it's weird to me that right now today on 11 September 2023 there's a metatag for Avengers (Marvel Movies) that doesn't include any of the TV shows. I guess they made the call that none of the TV shows were closely enough related to the movie to be worth grouping together?? I don't know Marvel well enough to really contest that, I suppose.
  • but damn, Marvel fandom tags are pretty confusing on ao3. Much respect to the wrangler who have to manage it, even if some of the confusion they probably brought on themselves.
  • AHA! Finally found Avengers (Comics) subtag of "The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types" in June 2019, that subtag relationship was removed by Janaury 2021, although as noted above the AMT remained canonized until (some point between March and July) 2023.
  • "James Bond - All Media Types" was decanonized and synned to "James Bond ()" sometime between May 2021 and January 2022
  • "Warcraft - All Media Types" was decanonized and synned to "World of Warcraft" sometime between December 2022 and September 2024
  • Hannibal Lecter Series - All Media Types got synned to "Hannibal (TV) sometime between August 2022 and present.
  • Fruits Basket (deprecated a while ago actually) -- May 2024 tumblr post about it, ^{Archived version}
  • "The Martian - All Media Types" de-canonized and synned to "The Martian (2015)" sometime between March 2023 and September 2024
  • In early 2024, following complaints of the tag being misnamed, the Monogatari Series tag was split into three separate tags. However, as the series tag had previously been "Bakemonogatari" (referring to the first installment in the series), and was then renamed after the manga which adapts that material, it was not until months later that the split was discovered. As of August 2024, the Monogatari tag is broken up into three tags: the aforementioned manga tag, which was renamed from the previous series tag, and thus most works in the tag are tagged as such; "Monogatari Series (Shaft Animation Studio Anime 2009)" and "Monogatari Series - Nisio Isin (Light Novels)". There is no series tag for these, leaving most fics left in the Bakemonogatari tag, while the two Monogatari Series tags are seeing more use as they are the actual name of the series; this has left the fandom divided ever since this change.

Controversy

Over the years, users in various fandoms complained when they noticed the new policy affecting their fandom tags, but awareness of the policy change remained localized until...

August 2024

Tag wranglers removed the "Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms" meta tag and synned it to "Sherlock (TV)" in August 2024, most likely on August 21-22. Within a few days, mass outcry against the loss of the tag and the policy change spread on Reddit and Tumblr. Holmes fans were incensed, but it also prompted many fans in larger fandoms with many different canon installments to speak out about how this policy change had already affected them or might soon make it harder for them to use AO3. On September 4, 2024 AO3 restored "Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms" metatag and on September 5th they make an official announcement on tumblr about reverting the SH&RF tag, and that further AMT deprecation would be put on hold pending further policy discussions.

^THIS WILL GET SPLIT UP INTO DIFFERENT SECTIONS AND ADD QUOTES FOR FAN RESPONSES BECAUSE THERE'S A LOT

Regarding Fandom Trees & AMTs

Official AO3 Response posted to tumblr on 5 September 2024.

Aftermath

As of 6 September 2024:

• "Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms" restored
• "Hannibal - All Media Types" NOT restored
• "James Bond - All Media Types" NOT restored
• "Warcraft - All Media Types" NOT https://old.reddit.com/r/AO3/comments/1f9q5fm/ao3_officially_reverses_the_all_media_tags_removal/llnppcu/
• avengers situation unchanged since april
• Monogatari situation remains unchanged; see above.
• "Fruits Basket" [yes this was the old catchall tag] situation unchanged

Links

Meta

not organized by date

• Fruitsbasket links (mostly from May 2024):
  • https://cinderella-ish.tumblr.com/post/755137294234763264/so-i-went-ahead-and-looked-at-the-media-tags-in
• Bakemonogatari links:
  • https://studentofetherium.tumblr.com/post/760257410040561664/oh-god-do-not-tell-them-tht-each-book-has-its-own
  • https://www.reddit.com/r/FanFiction/comments/1f55wt2/ao3s_policy_on_all_media_types_tags_is_a_disaster/
• actually that second one is a good discussion of the impact on animanga fandom across the board
• LermisV4:
  • https://www.tumblr.com/lermisv4/760685394090196992/already-sent-a-whole-essay-on-this-to-support This is a Transformers based complaint
  • https:// www.tumblr.com/lermisv4/760682071389782016/its-not-just-the-holmes-fandom-the-conversation this is a Sherlock based one
  • https://old.reddit.com/r/AO3/comments/1f8q40p/ao3_has_started_removing_all_media_types_tags/

Other Reddit threads:

• https://www.reddit.com/r/AO3/comments/1f8w01c/comment/llj39l6/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=usertext&utm_name=AO3&utm_content=t1_llqtsgm

Surveys:

• • https://old.reddit.com/r/AO3/comments/1f90cqn/ao3_all_media_types_tag_removal_survey/ -- survey by thebestsigne to try and collect together responses to the change
  • https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSezOV2gKxTEeWvB7TFLtJxLfe-3Wi2EDTGNj8dtw7hh6n8BVQ/viewform -- another server by ErinPtah asking about what specific metatags people use/don't like/would like
• https://old.reddit.com/r/AO3/comments/1f9q5fm/ao3_officially_reverses_the_all_media_tags_removal/ -- reddit thread in response to the AO3 Tumblr announcement that they were pausing all changes to metatags & reversing the SH&RF metatag deprecation.

Other discussions:

• https://erinptah.dreamwidth.org/2024/09/05/related-fandoms.html -- explainer
• https://aethel.dreamwidth.org/439364.html -- link round up
• https://www.tumblr.com/ao3commentoftheday/760830712339415040/except-there-is-another-way-the-options-arent?source=share -- ao3commentoftheday claims "There hasn't been a new AMT tag created in at least 5 years, if not more." but doesn't provide a source. Also criticises/pushes back against the write in campaigns

See Also

• AO3 Original Works and Self-Pub Wrangling Debacle
• Organizing Gundam: Internal Consistency vs. User Experience