31 flavors and one question

[gwyn]

I was reminded of this wonderful story yesterday, and it seemed like a great chance to make a rec for it in my 31 flavors meme:

All In by destina (Tombstone, 4120 words)
Summary: Wyatt had told himself more than once that what he felt for Doc was friendship, pure and simple. Looking at him there, naked as a jaybird, he stopped pretending either of those conditions was true.

This was a marvelous Doc/Wyatt story where the voices and the language sounded so much like the movie, it feels as though it's a missing scene.

___

Question: how can you get a tag made canonical on AO3? One of the things that makes me insane on that site is the way it overrides your tags, with absolutely no rhyme or reason I can discern. Like, you type in title case (every word with a capital letter), and it just overrides that and makes it all lowercase, because it's not a canonical tag and it just thinks it should do whatever it wants. This infurates me because my job is basically making things consistent and logical in text, and this is inconsistent (sometimes it doesn't override! just apparently when it feels like it!) and illogical and I resent it when I try again and again to get all my tags into the same case, but it won't let me.

I used a tag in Yuletide that has over 150 uses, yet is not, for some reason, a canonical tag, which at least would have allowed me to keep it in the same case. It seems like if something's used that many times, in exactly the same way, it should be canonical, right? So is there a way to make my borderline compulsion actually legit? It seems like support is for problems, and this isn't technically a problem, it's just an irritating issue.

Comments

[pocketmouse]

What's the tag? I haven't wrangled in over a year, but 'no fandom' tags were this general pit of despair, and may actually have a moratorium on being wrangled. But with 150 uses, you should be able to put in a support ticket and request it get canonized. It might not be possible, but it also might bump it up the priority list and make it happen. If it's a tag that belongs with a specific fandom, then a support request will just have them nudge the wrangler (if the fandom has one - if they don't then there's your reason).
I think capitalization was something they either have rules on, then changed their minds when they realized they were US-centric in their construction, or never made rules on because of that issue. I forget. But it's frustrating no matter what - I had to put in a support request to get the capitalization for 'pot' changed from 'PoT' - it had been used by Prince of Tennis fandom before anyone used it to tag for weed.

[gwyn]

Oh wow, okay, it would never have occurred to me that wrangling could be abandoned if it didn't have a fandom. That's so crazy. Yeah, that is definitely frustrating, too--it seems like there's so many other things that need support requests, having to advocate for a tag because no one is around to notice it's had so much use is...wild.

It's a tag I used on my Yuletide story--Soft Boys in Love (or soft boys in love, since it refused to allow me to capitalize). I wouldn't necessarily care about making it canonical if it would just stop overriding my choices for capping--and especially when it does it randomly, with absolutely no consistency about what it forces into lower case.

I felt weird enough when I had to gripe about a tag spelling Volkswagen wrong...but if it won't let me make things consistent and sensible, I guess I'll have to try. I'd rather not though. It makes no sense to me that it was set up this way. (I should add that I'd volunteer to tag wrangle and put my money where my mouth is, but the fact is I can't handle having to see certain kinds of tags and comments.)

[pocketmouse]

IIRC, the problem for the ‘no fandom’ tags was that they connected to a lot of things on the backend that created major slowdowns? They eventually figured out that tags below a certain number of uses were okay to wrangle, but then there was a different issue, and they had to make a rule about who was allowed to wrangle those tags, then something else changed, and who knows what it is now. To say nothing of the fact that there’s literally thousands of tags, and it’s hard for some of them to pick what should be the canonical/preferred term, and what’s different enough that it shouldn’t get synned.
But if the tag isn’t canonical, then I’m not sure why it’d change your capitalization, they’re always big on not changing a user’s input. So maybe put in a support tag to ask about that and throw in a couple examples. That way you’re reporting the issue that bugs you most, and you might find out if there is a logic to how it works, to navigate it in the future. Or they might put it on a bug list, if it is a bug.

[gwyn]

That's really helpful, thank you. I will try--I don't have a lot of hope, it sounds like a pretty significant issue to fix (this has been my number two beef with AO3 since it began, after the fact that titles for first chapters in a chaptered work won't show until you add another chapter)...actually, you know what, it's number one. :-D It's especially noticeable when you use a single-word tag, like for my other story I used Remembering, which is very different from Reminiscing, my only other option and not what I wanted, and of course it changed it to remembering. I suppose most people don't notice or care about these things, but this my actual work, and it makes me nuts, almost at an OCD level of distress.

Thanks so much for the input, I really appreciate it, most of this is opaque to me. I wish I could code!

[destina]

I think that saying the story sounded like a missing scene from the movie is just about the best/highest compliment anyone could possibly give me. Thank you so much for the rec! <3

[sperrywink]

Another intriguing rec! You're going for fandoms I haven't read in before. Thanks!