Talk:AO3 Tagging System

criticism section

The AO3 Tagging Policy Debate page linked here describes a particular era of tag discussions. I added an intro that provided more historical context for that page, but many discussions have since taken place that don't fit that page. I think they could be added here. Here are some topics off the top of my head:

1. the tag wrangling committee's shift to shortening metatag trees and combining subfandom tags into fewer larger tags
   1. the disappearance of the "All Media Types" metatag on fandoms with multiple adaptations, and how this impacted fandoms like MDZS and Good Omens
2. The committee's reluctance to canonize fandom tags for fandoms like MCYT.
3. Canonizing No Fandom freeforms has been on "pause" since 2014 while the committee works out new rules for canonizing them.[1]
4. Users who overtag and how this makes it harder to find fanworks about less popular ships and characters
5. how AO3 is optimized for shipping and it's harder to find what you want if you're a gen fan.
   1. but I've seen some meta recently suggesting there's increasing use of & tags (correctly)
6. what Choose Not To Warn means and when to use it
7. Fans who are annoyed at other fans misusing tags (not knowing the difference between & and /, using the RPF tag for their FPF fanfic and vice versa, etc.).--aethel (talk) 01:29, 10 May 2023 (UTC)