For those of you wondering what the heck happened behind the scenes at AO3 that Wonder Woman (2017) got synned to DC Cinematic Universe over the weekend and then restored, here's what AO3 Support replied to my complaint about it:
Sounds like a very easy mistake to make, but I do wish they'd mentioned somewhere what was going on as people were panicking about it.
Hi there,
Thanks for your question about these tags. We passed your concerns along to the Tag Wrangling team and here is their response:
"Regarding the Wonder Woman (2017) fandom tag, it has been returned to its past form. We’re very sorry for the disruption.
The change was caused by a miscommunication. Due to server issues, wrangling staff are responsible for renaming all fandom tags and any tags over 5,000 uses. This helps prevent server downtime and bugs that stop the filters from updating and hide works from users. Wranglers request fandom and large tag changes via a list, then wrangling staff change the tags during slow times, when few users are online and server loads are low.
Last week, there was a miscommunication about a fandom tag. A request was made for the “DC Extended Universe” to be renamed to the more correct “DC Cinematic Universe”. Wrangling staff did this as requested. That part went fine.
Normally, requests for changes to metatag levels are reviewed by wrangling staff to make sure they meet guidelines. However, simply renaming a tag to be more accurate does not usually require review. Since the first half of the request was a simple name change, no review was done on the request as a whole, even though the second half contained a metatag change.
Due to the unusual nature of the miscommunication and time zone issues, it took some time to figure out what happened. Once we did, wrangling staff checked to make sure no other existing requests were likely to cause similar issues. Since large fandoms can’t be wrangled on the weekends without risking server overload, wranglers began returning the tags to their former state on Monday, February 26.
The fandom tags have been restored to their basic state. It will take some time to finish moving characters and relationships into them. We’re very sorry for the disruption for users. Now that we’ve identified the cause of this issue, we are implementing new procedures to prevent any repeats."
Please feel free to contact Support again if you have any further questions.
Best,
Thanks for your question about these tags. We passed your concerns along to the Tag Wrangling team and here is their response:
"Regarding the Wonder Woman (2017) fandom tag, it has been returned to its past form. We’re very sorry for the disruption.
The change was caused by a miscommunication. Due to server issues, wrangling staff are responsible for renaming all fandom tags and any tags over 5,000 uses. This helps prevent server downtime and bugs that stop the filters from updating and hide works from users. Wranglers request fandom and large tag changes via a list, then wrangling staff change the tags during slow times, when few users are online and server loads are low.
Last week, there was a miscommunication about a fandom tag. A request was made for the “DC Extended Universe” to be renamed to the more correct “DC Cinematic Universe”. Wrangling staff did this as requested. That part went fine.
Normally, requests for changes to metatag levels are reviewed by wrangling staff to make sure they meet guidelines. However, simply renaming a tag to be more accurate does not usually require review. Since the first half of the request was a simple name change, no review was done on the request as a whole, even though the second half contained a metatag change.
Due to the unusual nature of the miscommunication and time zone issues, it took some time to figure out what happened. Once we did, wrangling staff checked to make sure no other existing requests were likely to cause similar issues. Since large fandoms can’t be wrangled on the weekends without risking server overload, wranglers began returning the tags to their former state on Monday, February 26.
The fandom tags have been restored to their basic state. It will take some time to finish moving characters and relationships into them. We’re very sorry for the disruption for users. Now that we’ve identified the cause of this issue, we are implementing new procedures to prevent any repeats."
Please feel free to contact Support again if you have any further questions.
Best,
Sounds like a very easy mistake to make, but I do wish they'd mentioned somewhere what was going on as people were panicking about it.