AO3 and You: Meta Tags, fandoms, and All Media Types

[beatrice_otter]

On AO3, when a fandom has multiple different media/divisions within it, there is always a meta tag that encompasses all of the possible aspects of the fandom. Sometimes it's simply the broadest name of the fandom. Sometimes (especially if the fandom is older, or the relationships of fandoms within it are complicated) it will be "[Fandom Name] - All Media Types." Sometimes, if the canon has multiple different names, it will be "[Fandom Name] & Related Fandoms."

Meta tags are a thing the archive does as a way of grouping similar tags. So, for example, if Spock is a character tag, it will be a meta tag for every variation of "Spock"--girl!Spock, genderbent Spock, Spock Prime, and every other variation of the Spock character anyone has ever tagged on the archive will be wrangled such that Spock is the meta tag. Which means that if you click on the Spock tag you will get fics tagged with every type of Spock there ever has been whether or not the "Spock" specific tag is used. If it's just tagged "genderbent Spock" and not "Spock" the work will still show up in the Spock tag. If you click on the genderbent Spock tag, you will get only works tagged with that specific tag, but clicking on the general Spock tag will bring up canon Spock and genderbent Spock and every other Spock anyone's ever tagged.

The same is true of fandoms. If you tag something as only "Star Trek: The Next Generation" it will appear on the works page for both the TNG tag and the general Star Trek tag. If you tag something as only Batman: Under the Red Hood, it will show up on the works page for the Under the Red Hood tag and the Batman - all media types tag. It doesn't hurt anything to add the meta tag, I hasten to add, it's just not adding to the discoverability of your fic.

But from the perspective of the reader, if you like all the different media types and canon divisions, and want to read fic from them, it helps to be able to identify what the meta tag for the fandom is, so you can find all the fic. Here's how!

First, if there's an "all media types" or "& related fandoms" tag, that's easy, that's probably it. (The actual meta tag may be something else, as "all media types" used to be the default but they've changed that, but if so "all media types" will be synned to the actual meta tag, which means they are actually the same tag for all practical purposes and "all media types" will still function as the meta tag.)

But if there isn't one of those, a little tag exploration may be required.

• Go to a work in a subfandom, and click on the fandom tag. That will take you to the works page, where it will say "1-20 of [size of fandom] Works in [Sub-Fandom Name]".
• The name of the fandom will be a link. Click on that link, and it will take you to the page for the tag, where it lists alllllll the tags that are connected to it in SOME way or another. If there is a meta tag, there will be a special section labelled "Metatags" and any metatags that fandom belongs to will be listed there.
• Click on the applicable meta tag, and it will take you to the tag page for that tag.
• Up at the right-hand corner is a button marked "works" which will take you to the works page of all works tagged with that meta tag or any of its subfandoms. (If there are one or two fandoms in that meta tag you're not interested in, you can filter it out using the filter bar on the right.

Comments

[senmut]

One reason I started adding the AMT for my star wars wasn't for discoverability to others but so I could easily grab ALL that fandom. And I plan to go in on my other split fandoms and get them handled that way too. Sadly, this is going to involve a lot of tag cleaning on my part, if the smaller fandoms I did this for is anything to go by.

(I have several tags that were formatted before general consensus were reached and/or the format changed. I like them all to be neat and contained.)

[beatrice_otter]

Have fun! I mean that literally, I sometimes enjoy that sort of organizational task.

[senmut]

Me too. I just hope I don't mess up something (again).

Apparently my last round of fixing tags, I accidentally made all my Harry Potter and my Indiana Jones fics singular fandoms... and a lot of them were either crossovers or in drabble collections. So I got to fix that last weekend.

[alexseanchai]

there isn't one for both AtLA and Korra, though. "Avatar: the Last Airbender & Related Fandoms" might encompass the live-action when no one wants it to, admittedly, but there simply isn't a single tag that covers both TV series in canonverse, never mind any ancillary material.

[superborb]

There are lots of fandoms like this -- MDZS/CQL is the one that I've the most complaints about bc by not having the meta fandom people will just tag all the versions of the canon, which makes filtering + searching impossible. When people complained though, it seemed there were rumors that AO3 was moving away from making these meta fandoms, so that's why they didn't make one? No idea how true the rumors were.

[domarzione]

How ao3 tag wrangles is a legit point of reference within librarianship on several levels (folksonomy versus controlled vocabulary, how ao3 creates their own "see also" and other cross-reference tags, etc.) and, as a metadata librarian, there are really times when I wish I could create standard terms from what's essentially public acclamation (e.g., "government documents" is not a standard genre term despite everyone trying to use it as one) the way, say, ao3 standardized "Thor is not an idiot" after enough repetition and uses cross-references to cover individual variants.

That said, as an author and especially as a reader I wish more people understood the tags as well as you do.

[beatrice_otter]

Thank you!