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[wranglingadventures]

OTW and AO3 Recruitment!

Tag Wrangling Volunteer &  Tag Wrangling Volunteer (Chinese)

Tag wranglers work within the Archive to ensure that the varied forms of user-generated tags are sorted and filterable, without changing any of the specific tags the users choose, so that the archive users have an easier time finding the type of content they are looking for.

Systems Staff 

Administers the servers that keep the Org running, including the Archive, Fanlore, Journal, Fanhackers, and all its internal services.

Policy & Abuse Committee Staff

The Policy & Abuse Committee is dedicated to helping users and fielding the complaints that come in about content uploaded to the Archive of Our Own. The Policy & Abuse staffer answers and adjudicates these complaints, following the TOS in rendering a decision, notifying all involved parties of the decision, and recording changes to member files as needed. 

Fanlore Staff – Policy & Admin Volunteer 

Fanlore’s Policy & Admin volunteers are responsible for ensuring the smooth running of the Fanlore wiki, working closely with Fanlore gardeners to resolve conflicts and respond to questions and complaints. They help shape Fanlore policies and guidelines, maintain policy-related documentation, and make and communicate decisions about Fanlore policy violations. 

Elections Committee Staff: Public Relations Specialist

Elections staff assist the Elections Chairs in tasks related to OTW Board elections. Public Relations Staff assist in the writing of external and internal posts, as well as committee responses to emails and submissions. They provide guidance to members of other specializations and Elections Chairs on how best to promote election events and announcements.

Elections Communication Specialist

Elections staff assist the Elections Chairs in tasks related to OTW Board elections. Communications Specialists are the lead writers and editors of the committee. They are responsible for the quality of public news posts and large announcements. All elections staff assist in committee-wide activities and basic level tasks in addition to the work in relation to their specialization.

Applications are due Wednesday September 23 at 23:59 UTC. Please note that the OTW can only accept volunteering applications from people aged 16 years and over. Specific roles and committees may have required qualifications that limit participation to people 18 years of age or older.

[wranglingadventures]

Heads up, just in case you're still interested, the next recruitment is this second week of September.

UGH I'm SO upset I've been waiting for an AO3 tag wrangler opening for like a year and I just narrowly missed yet another one, which I just found out about because my instintic told me, too late, to go check for it. It went until today but was filled up early because they had enough applications. Now it's going to be months before they open again, the last one was in January. This is really important for me because for the next years it'll be very hard for me to involve in any IRL community organizing since I'll be moving a lot 😔 Does anyone know how to keep track of these listings without checking on AO3's homepage every single day for the next 6 months? I'll go crazy if I try that.

[wranglingadventures]

Let’s Talk Tumblr-Style Tags

I’ve received multiple questions about “tumblr-style” or “rambling” tags. Let’s talk about those for a minute!

How do you deal with “chatty” tags?

The same way we deal with any other tag! Honestly, the main problem with “chatty” tags is the way they tend to roll several topics into one tag. Any given tag can only be synned (attached) to one “canonical” tag. So if you mention that Harry Potter is both red-haired AND a Ravenclaw in your tag, I can’t attach it to both Red-Haired Harry Potter and Ravenclaw Harry Potter, so it gets attached to neither. I don’t care how long or weird your tags are, as long as they only talk about one topic! I deal with them just fine.

When people talk in the tags as they might in Tumblr tagging, does that make your job more difficult? 

Nope! Long tags are no harder to wrangle than short ones. And if you’re not saying anything of substance, that’s easy for me to handle; it’s not really my problem, frankly. You’re much more likely to be bothering readers, who probably don’t want to read a long ramble of tags to figure out what’s in your works. But it doesn’t make wrangling harder!

I’ve seen people complain about Tumblr-style “rambling” in additional tags, but the ranters have never identified themselves as wranglers. Is there a majority opinion about unwrangleable tags among wranglers (omg “wrangle” doesn’t even look like a word anymore)? How do you handle these tags in your work?

Years and years ago I saw a callout culture post telling everyone to stop using the AO3 tags like their tumblr ones, i.e. using them to have rambles and ‘feels’, and that it was causing the site and staff problems. It was written very rudely but has always stuck with me. Stopping short of the obnoxious, does this mess your guys good work up? Is there anything you wish we knew when we’re tagging a new work?

Personally, I still use some slightly chatty tags on my own works! Continuing the Harry Potter examples, I might tag something like “Harry Potter remains a total disaster” because I know that it can easily be synned to “Human Disaster Harry Potter” while making it clear to my readers that this is an ongoing theme. Again, the frustration with chatty tags among wranglers is mainly about the multiple-topic tags. We want to make your works filterable! Tags about how Harry Potter is a human disaster AND bisexual AND an auror can’t be attached to any of those tags, and so are not filterable. 

The same thing applies to tags that are broken into two. You probably don’t realize it, but wranglers see tags totally divorced from their context! They show up in columns of text, on our end. So if you tag “#Harry Potter is so very gay #and so is Ron” they’ll show up separate from each other…. then “and so is Ron” will not be attached to “Gay Ron Weasley,” which is a pity for anyone looking for him! Each tag needs to have one concept, which means one full concept. All the facts in one place!

We leave these no-concept or multi-concept tags “unfilterable,” which means it’s in the fandom, but not attached to anything. They’re not hard to handle, but they make us sad, because we’d like to make them filterable and can’t. Of course, if you don’t care if your works are filterable, then carry right on, you poetic and noble land-mermaids. 

Chatty tags don’t mess us up. They can be exhausting from the sheer volume sometimes, but that’s okay! I don’t think anyone enjoys wrangling them, but they’re not the end of days for us. I think they’re actually worse from your end as a reader, because it can be hard to sort through a wall of tags to figure out what’s actually useful information, rather than complaining about [being up until 3 am/having writer’s block/hating that one character so so much/etc etc]. 

What wranglers wish taggers knew about Tumblr-style tags:

Here’s the takeaway: it’s fine to be chatty! All I ask is that you please try to keep each tag to one concept, and be aware of how many tags you’re using. Not just for the wrangler’s sake, but for your reader’s. Consider if the information you’re putting in the tags belongs there, for filtering or informational purposes, or if what you’re saying might not be better suited to an Author’s Note at the beginning of the chapter. And if you wouldn’t put it in your AN… why are you putting it in the tags?

- Guest Mod Pepper

(Ask me a question here! | Disclaimer: I speak only for myself; if you need an official AO3 response on an issue, you should contact Support.)

[wranglingadventures]

TIL: tags edition

If you want your Additional Tag to be searchable, filterable, and potentially canonized (added to the dropdown lists), only include one idea per tag.

good: #Sue Smith is asexual #Sue Smith is aromantic #Sue Smith is a lesbian

bad: #Sue is an aro/ace lesbian

Having one idea per tag makes it easy to connect your tags to someone else’s with the same idea. Like, if someone else tags #Sue Smith is ace then that can be connected to #Sue Smith is asexual.

Wranglers can’t connect tags with more than one idea because in fic where #Sue Smith is ace, she might not be aro or gay.  

Also, including a character’s last name or the name of the fandom will help keep your tags specific to your fandom. #Sue is asexual could be Sue Smith, or Sue Jones, or Sue the Giraffe. #Sue Smith is asexual keeps it clear who you’re talking about.

This isn’t just about character descriptions, either. If you warn for multiple triggers in one tag, for example, that tag can’t be attached to any of the canonized ones that people filter for.

Just something I thought I’d share to help make everyone’s Additional Tags a little bit better and a little bit more searchable. I learned a thing! And now you did too ❤