auroracloud | People, tag your fandoms right.

Crossposts: https://auroracloud.livejournal.com/92902.html

People, tag your fandoms right.

A regular pet peeve: why do people write New Who fic with only New Who characters etc. tagged on AO3, with no sign in the summary or the tags that there are in fact any Classic Who elements present, and then tag it both with Doctor Who (2005) and Doctor Who (1963) (ie. Classic Who)?

There's a reason those fandom tags are separate on the archive. If it's truly a crossover fic for both the new and classic series, by all means tag it with both. But trust me, when I'm looking in the Classic Who fandom tag, it's not because I want to read Ten/Rose or Twelve/Clara. It's really, really NOT.

It's pretty ridiculous that Ten/Rose is actually in the top ten relationship tags for Classic Who. Some of them might be legitimately there, for some crossover reasons, but based on the samples I've seen when I'm just trying to find new Classic Who content, the majority is most likely not.

I know I can filter tags to exclude things I don't want, but I shouldn't have to start my browsing by filtering out stuff that belong in the fandom tag in the first place.

Maybe I'll soon start leaving peeved comments in those fics, except that a) I don't want to increase their hit and comment count, and b) the sort of people who tag in the wrong fandoms probably aren't people I want to get into an argument with. So I'll just continue fuming on my own.

This is where I like the way Teaspoon is organized by era. People don't tend to stick random Twelve/Clara into the Second Doctor or Fifth Doctor categories unless it's really and truly a crossover.

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I think, to be honest, people just get very confused by the whole Doctor Who tag structure on AO3 - what I call 'kitchen sink' tagging is common across the archive, and it's basically people who don't know how to tag. So polite comments might get you somewhere, although some people don't take kindly to anything that's not related to their fic, understandably.

There used to be a lot of how to tag posts going around but everyone's given up.

(The other thing people do is just to tag with 'Doctor Who' which is even worse, because then it doesn't show up in anything beneath the meta-tag, & if people are, say, following a Classic Who feed here, then they won't see the work at all.)

Hmm, while the existence of the "Doctor Who" tag and the "Doctor Who and Related Fandoms" tags does make things more confusing, I always found it clear enough that the 2005 and 1963 tags referred to different eras of the show. Even back when the only thing I knew about Classic Who was that it existed, that this Tom Baker chap seemed to be a big deal, and that it apparently featured characters called Romana and Ace. I guess I didn't think it would be so confusing to others. I always interpreted it as the writers being so attention-hungry they'd put their fic also in tags where it doesn't belong, just like some people on social media will use popular hashtags to get attention to what they're saying. I could be wrong, of course, it was just my immediate assumption because it seemed like a thing that people do. And maybe some people just think they have to tag Classic Who if they as much as mention a name from it somewhere in the text of the fic.

But, I'm wary to post about things like this in comments to a fic, because some people can react really badly to any kind of seemingly negative thing said to them. (Though obviously I'd phrase it more politely than here, and assume good intents.) Also, if I were to do that, I'd probably have to read the fic to make sure I'm correct when I say it doesn't have Classic Who elements in it, and I... really dislike those ships. No offense meant to anyone who likes them, but I don't.

The other thing people do is just to tag with 'Doctor Who' which is even worse, because then it doesn't show up in anything beneath the meta-tag, & if people are, say, following a Classic Who feed here, then they won't see the work at all.

Oh yes, that's very frustrating as well! Gets really confusing when you try to figure out which tags to follow so you actually get the stuff you want to see. My own solution has been to not use any of the upper-level tags, only either the 2005 or 1963 tag.

Yes, some of it is probably that, too, but I think there's a lot of genuine confusion about AO3 tags and people not understanding that they simply don't work the way that tumblr tags too. (One correct tag will get you where you need to be and the linking up is done manually, but people are v used to having to tag every ship six ways to get it in the tag.)

My own solution has been to not use any of the upper-level tags, only either the 2005 or 1963 tag.

That's the right way to do it! (I mean, insofar as there is a right way with AO3. Use all the relevant sub-tags that apply; it'll be in the meta-tags above without you doing anything anyway.)

That's a good point. It's a bit hard for me to notice how people from sites like Tumblr might be confused by tagging systems that I find totally logical, because I'm usually the one getting confused by Tumblr-based tags. I have so much trouble working out the ship names people mean sometimes!

Still, it's so confusing when people tag the fandoms wrong - because Classic Who is such a smaller fandom that when a non-negligible percentage of the Ten/Rose and Twelve/Clara writers tag their works in the Classic Who fandom, it clutters the fandom a lot and makes it so much harder to find any of the stuff I'm looking for. Of course I can filter, but it's frustrating when I first have to filter out the stuff that doesn't belong there in the first place. Maybe at some point I will make it my mission to point this out politely and nicely to people...

Yay, I'm glad I've been using the fandom tags correctly! It seemed the most logical like that. I've noticed that they do automatically end up under the meta-tag above, since often in exchanges some people will use the "Doctor Who" tag so it shows up in the fandoms as well, but also contains works that have only been tagged under the 2005 or 1963 tags.

Oh, it's annoying! Even more so when everyone keeps sticking them in the wrong fields and using both / and & because they think they're alternative ways of saying the same thing. /o\

But I can see why users who are only used to tumblr might get confused and not know that it works very differently elsewhere - so many social media sites do operate on hashtags and with very little moderation (like on Teaspoon) or the wranglers on AO3.

since often in exchanges some people will use the "Doctor Who" tag so it shows up in the fandoms as well, but also contains works that have only been tagged under the 2005 or 1963 tags.

Yes, it's quite handy when people do that in exchanges! You can just click on the one tag to see all the goodies.

But, yes, this is the tag structure for Doctor Who, which is why it works like that (you're just gradually filtering down with each sub-tag, barring people who Don't Know How To Tag (a popular tag on AO3 with many variants, lol), via the tag landing page. (I do love tag landing pages!)

ETA: How Do I Tag aka a cry for help from many confused users of AO3. :-D

Edited 2019-03-24 12:25 (UTC)

I'm not familiar enough with tumblr to be certain, but this seems very plausible. In my main fandom, the Tolkienverse, it's very easy to spot which writer is coming from tumblr and tagging accordingly (and not very helpfully) versus those coming from other platforms and archives, and it can be rather confusing even to find fic or find out what kind of fic this is. At least for us, it's easier insofar as seeing people doing the tumblr tagging are most likely to write movie fandom.
Apart from hopefully tagging sensibly, I'm using something some people do in those archives where tags aren't available, which is writing a kind of header in the chapter notes and stating there what source was used, or if it's a mix, which often happens (for example, I write mainly book canon, but sometimes use some visual influences from the movies).
But having it done in the way you're describing it for Doctor Who would seriously annoy me, too.

Yes, it's frustrating but it's also clearly not instinctive to people who are used to tags being used across social media rather than specifically for cataloguing and finding things.

I've never read Classic Who fic without looking for specific characters, so I hadn't noticed, but ugh, I can imagine how frustrating that must be. Though I have to admit I've mostly just tagged my DW fic with "Doctor Who" - I figured because both the Classic Who and the New Who tag encompassed a lot of different eras, everyone was looking for pairings or characters anyway ...

(My current fandom has a similar mistagging problem, with novel vs. TV. The TV version is an adaptation, but a very different one with completely different worldbuilding and different characterisation, and people tag everything with the TV tag anyway, whether it applies or not. *sighs*)

I don't mind using both the & and / if the fic is clearly exploring both the shippy and gen/friendship aspects of the characters' relationships. But yeah, sometimes people just put in both when they only mean one. I often ship characters who have a strong friendship in canon, and sometimes I actually just want to read about that friendship, and then it's hard to find fics that are actually about that when people tag both just in case!

ETA: How Do I Tag aka a cry for help from many confused users of AO3. :-D

Haha, that's a lot of confusion and consternation! :-D To be fair, I also find it hard to choose the right additional tags to describe my fics beyond the fandom, characters and relationships. Thinking up enticing and accurate tags is hard! But I try to be careful about the more clear-cut tag categories, like is this actually in this fandom.

Yes, the trouble is, either you have fairly moderated tags and categories, but you can't add to them (or not easily, without asking the mods), or you have AO3 where you can add them all yourself, but so can everyone else and do it Wrong and Annoyingly.

There was once, for reasons, a "The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom" tag. People used it, even though it was basically tagging your work "help I don't know whether this is an American Movie/comic book thing or British cult spy thing featuring Emma Peel goddess". (It's been tidied up now, but that is people and tagging for you.)

oh god welcome to cdrama. In the Guardian fandom, people seem to tag both the novel and the drama, just to ostensibly get more readers.

But of course the opposite happens: they annoy both novel and drama fans equally.

So sorry this is happening in a fandom where people actually speak the language and *should know better*.

Though I have to admit I've mostly just tagged my DW fic with "Doctor Who" - I figured because both the Classic Who and the New Who tag encompassed a lot of different eras, everyone was looking for pairings or characters anyway ...

Hmm, but if you only tag it with "Doctor Who" then it doesn't show up for people who are looking through either of the actual fandom tags (ie. Doctor Who (1963) or Doctor Who (2005)). I usually go to the fandom first before I start searching for characters or relationships, so fics tagged only with the Doctor Who tag don't show up for me at all, until I look at the writer's profile for some other reason and notice the Doctor Who fics they've got. Something to take into consideration...

I only search New Who fics by filtering by characters or relationships, because it's such a huge fandom I'd never get anywhere if I didn't. But Classic Who is more modest-sized. While I have a few relationships I particularly look for (and I've favorited those tags so I just click on them from the front page), there are actually quite a few characters I enjoy reading, and especially, I like so much gen fic in that fandom as well, with a whole variety of different character combinations, and some gen fic doesn't even get tagged with the relationship tag, just the characters. So I like to browse through the fandom tag every now and then to see fic that I haven't got around to searching for - well, I would like to if it wasn't ingested with Ten/Rose and Twelve/Clara. Even just in the Second Doctor era I'd have so many different ways I'd need to search, because I love the Doctor and all the five companions of that era plus some of the guest characters, and even when I ship some characters I also like gen with them, and you can see how it grows quickly from there.

That sounds frustrating! I think that happens often with big adaptation fandoms. My friend who's into Hamilton but also historical fic about the era has a similar problem, it's hard to tell what's musical-based and what's just plain historical, and often people add the historical tags even into fics clearly just about the musical versions of the characters.

Oof I never realized how big of a problem this could be. Most of the fanfic I read/come across have only one canon source (aside from Twilight where the books and movies have barely any difference)

But yeah I assume people would think so long as they used classic who elements (daleks, weeping angels, the master, ect) then they could get away with tagging both. Or they just want more views. Hard to tell.

TAGGING IS HARD D:

I can't remember how I *used* to use the tags, but I think I've always tended to use (2005) for things that are solely Nu Who and (1963) for things that are solely old. A joke or two doesn't count, though. For me the difficult one is what to tag Doctor/Master, because sometimes the (2005) stuff relies on/gets into (1963) stuff even if it's set in the Nu Who days and doesn't feature the older regenerations. Some of my Twelve/Missy uses both tags because they felt like the stories that were based on them being old old old old friends who have known each other forever.

A thing that really bugs me about AO3 tagging is when a character (or ship) gets tagged and then they're barely mentioned in the story. Like it's Ten/Rose but there's one line about Martha so she's tagged as a character and NO.

AO3 does have very nice functions nowadays for filtering out things you don't want, so it's not an insurmountable problem, just an annoying one that makes the browsing more difficult and so makes it more likely that I'll just hit my few most common relationship tags. But in the fandoms with adaptations (like Lord of the Rings) it must make things very confusing when you're looking for one version of the source material only. The Doctor Who issue seems to be with people not realizing those are meant to be two separate fandoms and therefore you should tag both only if it really is about both.

The Weeping Angels aren't a Classic Who villain, btw, Moffat invented them and Blink was their first appearance. :-)

Tagging is!

I've always tended to use (2005) for things that are solely Nu Who and (1963) for things that are solely old. A joke or two doesn't count, though.

*nods* That's how I try to do it, too, and how I prefer it in fics I read! Makes it clear and easy, as clear and easy as things can ever be in the world of Doctor Who and fanfic archives.

With Doctor/Master stories I totally get the line being hard to draw! Even if it's just the New Who versions of the characters, you can still dig a lot into stuff that happened in the Classic Who canon as well. If I see the characters are the Doctor and the Master, I don't tend to blink at both fandoms being included in the tags, because often it makes sense.

A bit similarly, I have trouble drawing the line when I'm writing something about Jack Harkness taking place in the Torchwood years, but interacting only with Doctor Who characters (okay, Martha being a character in both makes things even more complicated!). Sometimes the Torchwood elements may still feature into the plot or the character interactions or just what's going on in Jack's head (if I'm in his head), so in that sense I'm bringing in the Torchwood Jack, not just the Jack we see in the Doctor Who episodes he's in, and I may be using the Torchwood canon as much as the Doctor Who canon to write it. But if I tag Torchwood as well, it can also feel like I'm needlessly tagging the Torchwood fandom, since no other actual Torchwood characters than Jack appear in the story. Well, I haven't written Torchwood era stuff lately, so that's one problem less. ;-)

or you have AO3 where you can add them all yourself, but so can everyone else and do it Wrong and Annoyingly.

People! People always ruin things!

a "The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom" tag

Oh dear, that is precious!

:0
For some reason because they’d be so easily done with 60s effects I just assumed they were old....
Interesting!!

Ooh, yeah, I can see it being a problem with Torchwood! SJA too, because does the Doctor appearing count as a crossover fic when he was in Sarah Jane's show twice anyway?

Haha, I realized when brushing my teeth (somehow that's a very fertile time for thoughts) that it's a pity they hadn't thought of them in the 1960s, because they would have been so perfect for the early years - really scary and easily done with the 60s effects! After all, some of the special effects back pretty much looked just like that only with less fluid editing. What an opportunity missed! Moffat ought to have figured out a way to time travel back there.

Yeah, I can totally see that being a problem!

I'll remember that should I ever write another DW fic, it's valuable input. I think I've been guilty of doing that before.

Ha, I don't want to read Ten/Rose full-stop! ^_^ I truly despise it. Give me Twelve/Clara anytime. I can understand why the tagging would cause trouble if people aren't doing it properly.

Yes, please do, it makes the fandoms less confusing to navigate! Also, unnecessarily tagging the fic with the Classic Who tag as well may discourage readers who aren't familiar with the classic series and believe it's needed for the fic; it would for me, at least.

I don't want to read either Ten/Rose or Twelve/Clara, personally. Ten/Rose I'm just sick of since it's everywhere, especially since the show itself couldn't stop going on about them even after she'd left. But, well, I don't want to get into shipping fights or offend you, so I'm trying not come across too harsh... But I have to admit that Twelve/Clara is a major squick for me, because the age difference of the actors is just way too much for me. (This has nothing to do with how well I can handle the age difference between the characters in cases of Doctor/companion ships, which I have a few. It's a very emotional and instinctive reaction that happens before I can even start to rationalize.) Plus, it just doesn't work for me character-wise either; I love Twelve and I generally like Clara, but I don't much like them together, to be honest. Their personalities and interactions really don't work for me in a shipping sense. Plus, I have the similar problem as I have with Ten/Rose, that the show itself started getting waaaaaayyy too obsessed with their relationship being The Specialest Ever.

Er, sorry, went off on a tangent. But I didn't want to just say "Actually I hate Twelve/Clara!" and leave it there, I wanted to explain a bit where my feelings come from. I don't mind people shipping things I don't, I just don't want to see it where it's not supposed to be in the first place. :-)

Absolutely no offence taken! ^_^ Honestly, I think shipping wars are a waste of time and energy; sure, Character A could be with Character B, but they could just as easily be with Character C and I think people can be loathe to admit that. I love Johnlock in the Sherlock fandom, for all the poor writing and awful characterisation of the relationship in Series 3 and 4, but Sherlock/Molly is just as plausible, as is Lestrade/Molly, or Lestrade/Mycroft (which I read for fun, mostly). The wonderful thing with Doctor Who is that there are so many characters, ergo many ships - especially when we bring Jack Harkness into the picture! ;) Hooray for variety, say I!

I totally agree with you on Ten/Rose; it's like, dude, please stop now. They were just so heavily pushed and it's like; what about those of us who don't ship them? What about those of us who are here for the adventure and the humour and don't particularly enjoy having this revoltingly-chirpy couple shoved down our throats? I was actually really into Ten/Martha for a while there; I preferred her and Donna over Rose by a mile.

And yeah, I also get what you're saying about Twelve/Clara; the truth is, it surprised me. I just fell in love with Twelve and I guess my way of looking at it was that the Doctor's already hundreds of years old when we meet him and he's already been around the block once or twice with a companion or two. In particular, the whole Ten/Rose thing; he was 900+ at the time and she was, what, 19? And it just seemed acceptable because he had a young face, you know? But I actually genuinely like those two together; I worked in a place where all my colleagues really hated Clara and I actually thought Twelve brought out the best in her - I liked them as a pair. You know that feeling of 'shippiness' when you watch a new episode of something? I got it from them. And it doesn't even have to be purely romantic; there was a bond there, a deep one. I actually liked them better together than apart!

Again, please don't worry about offending me; I love to meet people of different views! That's what fandom is all about. ^_^

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People, tag your fandoms right.

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