I don't get it

[gwyn]

So I nominated some fandoms yesterday for Yuletide, and the experience was bizarre, annoying, and really really frustrating and I don't remember this ever happening before, so I need a reality check.

Two fandoms I nominated were TV commercials -- Progressive Insurance, specifically Flo, and Allstate Insurance, again, because I got a Mayhem story last year and I think there should be MOAR Mayhem stories than just one in the archive, you know?

So, like, both of those already exist because Flo and Progressive have been nominated before -- they exist in the tag sets for the fandoms and the characters. But it wouldn't let me use those already existing fandom tags in the autofill -- it kept giving me a ridiculous error message that said someone had already nominated both of them with ____ tags (which were completely different, because whoever nominated them didn't bother to look to see if the tags already came up in the autofill) and that I couldn't nominate them. I had to "be more specific" and basically it took me like 8 tries to find some kind of specific name, that was COMPLETELY different than what this other person did, that would go through. Now, the other more normal fandoms I nominated both went through without a hitch, and they both have previously existed in the database.

I don't understand this at all, and it seems stupid. Now there will be however many other people nominate the same, exisiting fandoms in AO3, all for basically the same fandom, but because someone is careless or doesn't wait long enough for the autofill, we have to keep creating different names for tags, and what if whoever wrangles the tags doesn't realize they a) already exist in AO3 and b) are the same fandom? I thought there was this huge issue with tag bloat, and this seems to be actively creating tag bloat! I don't get it at all, and it was enormously frustrating, especially when the fandoms keep coming up on the autofill over and over again. How does this help?

The other thing that bugs me about it is that I'm afraid they're going to do what they did a couple years ago, where they lumped all TV commercials into a category, and since we were forced to choose 2 characters to offer in a given fandom, those of us who only were knowledgeable about one couldn't really offer the fandom we wanted to, and so those went unoffered (for instance, I talked to a couple people who had wanted to offer Mayhem/Allstate Insurance, but they couldn't just offer him -- they had to offer someone else and none of us felt like we could write the other characters listed, many of whom were from commercials we'd never seen). Last year I mentioned this problem to Elyn, and they had fixed it so that the individual commercials were their own fandoms -- and lo and behold, I got a Mayhem story for Yuletide! Which was awesome in the extreme. I'm afraid they're going to go backwards and push us back into that problem, which will mean many of us won't be able to offer fandoms we'd love to write.

This doesn't make the least bit of sense to me. Why force people to create a bunch of different fandom names for the same fandom just because someone else nominated it under less than correct information?

ETA: OK, the always wonderful arduinna has provided me with an explanation I can at least understand. Thank you, arduinna!

Comments

[arduinna]

I used to be a tag mod for YT, so I can actually answer this! The "please use a distinct term" thing is an AO3 deal; you can't have identical character names in different fandoms without disambiguating them (or without their having been merged behind the scenes already - like, Cordelia Chase can exist in both Buffy and Angel because she's the same character in both, she doesn't need to be disambiguated, so the character in each fandom has been merged into the same character behind the scenes).

But -- this is the confusing bit -- even though the nominations tagset does draw from canonical AO3 tags for suggestions, it isn't actually *part* of the AO3 yet; it's kind of floating on top of it. People can nominate whatever they want, however they want, without actually being connected to the AO3 tag structure yet. (This is to make it possible for the official AO3 tag wranglers to ignore the nominations process, so they don't have to wrangle 12,000 characters in 3,000 fandoms in two weeks flat just so people can sign up.)

So if someone else nominated, say, "Car Insurance Commercials" and put in Flo and Mayhem, you can't use those characters for Progressive Insurance Commercials and Allstate Insurance Commercials, even though technically they're the correct canonical terms; for nomination-tagset purposes, whoever gets there first has dibs on the character names, basically.

But it's not permanent! It'll be fixed in post. *g*

When I was tag modding the last couple of years, what we did was:

* Focus on fandoms we were familiar with as much as possible, so we'd be able to easily catch things like duplicate nominations with different names/spellings

* Adjust people's nominations to match canonical versions already in the archive before approving them (we didn't even need to look that up -- the tag mod interface suggests canonicals if a nominated version is close enough for it to be able to tell)

* Regularly check the approved pile in the tag set to see if there was a duplicate fandom or duplicate characters to what we were checking at the moment

* Reject duplicated fandoms/characters once a correctly spelled/canonical version had been approved.

(There's a *lot* of checking going on in the background during the accept/reject phase -- not just determining the number of complete, English, >1000 word stories in different places, but googling for archives, checking wikis and imdb and official websites for correct spellings, etc.)

Some stuff still slipped past us, which is why a public cleanup also helps.

So this time around, the tag mods will very probably correct any errors and approve the canonical versions, reject any noncanonical versions, and end up with the correct fandoms and characters, with no extras. (IOW, don't panic if your noncanonical suggestion gets rejected - it very probably means that a different version was adjusted and approved instead.)

But just in case something slips through, you should be able to see the tag set at some point and you can look to see if there are multiple or incorrect versions, and drop the mods a note on the public-cleanup post that I suspect they'll be putting up to let them know what the dupes are and which are the correct canonical versions.

And if you're worried about the overarching Commercial fandom being brought back, I'd say drop a comment on the Evidence post explaining why, so they know that this is at least something they should be thinking about, rather than just accepting whatever happens to come up in the random rotation first (could be you; could be the other guy).

[gwyn]

Wow, thank you for this -- it's actually understandable (I admit I find a lot of the Yuletide discussion really difficult to grasp), and I guess kind of makes sense, although it does seem like a lot of extra work for the tag wranglers, especially if it's really obscure shit people are entering in. I never knew ANY of this. It's weird because I can't ever remember seeing this happen in any other year I've done this. So I thought maybe this was some kind of issue with the changes being made.

That's also a really good idea about going to the Evidence post. I never would have thought of that because I can usually find fandoms without having to convince anyone that my fandom should be allowed. Thank you!!!! ♥ you

[arduinna]

Oh, yay, I'm glad it helped! And yeah, this year the rules are leaving me a bit baffled, I admit; it's the thing where people inside the structure understand the structure perfectly, and don't realize how opaque it sounds from outside. Ah well.

But nope, this happens every year; normally it shows up in things like Arthurian fandoms, or various Robin Hood incarnations, or what have you. Anyplace where people may be using the same name for different characters, or may have nominated a fandom under a different name and co-opted the characters without realizing it (like "Disney's Robin Hood" instead of "Robin Hood (Disney 1973)").

Fingers crossed they make it in the way you want!

[belmanoir.livejournal.com]

I had the same problem! Somebody nominated inspector Reid from Ripper Street using a non canonical fandom tag! And while in theory this means he's already nominated so I don't have to, there's no guarantee they won't later change their noms! I was pretty frustrated. I think we will just have to be vigilant that tags are wrangled correctly.

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

Over on my DW account, arduinna explained this and it made some sense. It still seems like it's making a lot of work and tag issues, but I am comforted that it probably won't result in a disaster for my nominations.