Tag wrangling liveblog (Madoka Magica: 10 characters, 10 relationships, 21 freeforms)

Saw some people curious about how AO3 tag wrangling works — as in, not the high-level policy decisions, just the basic everyday functions. So I decided to write some of it down.

Quick background: I’ve been a tag wrangling volunteer for the past 10 years. Never any other kind of AO3/OTW volunteer, and never in a staff/admin role; I’m an introvert, I’m not in this to manage people, just to sort things.

I wrangle a handful of medium-sized fandoms with steady activity, a bunch of small fandoms with irregular activity, and maybe a hundred fandoms at the “this was created for a Yuletide fic and has never used again” level. (The last chunk is more “babysitting” than “wrangling.”)

None of my fandoms are big enough to need multiple wranglers, so I can’t speak to what co-wrangling is like. Just the solo process.

For this post I’ll walk through the process of wrangling Madoka Magica. It’s moderately active; there aren’t new tags every day, but there are definitely new ones every week.

( As I type this, there are 10 unwrangled characters, 10 unwrangled relationships, and 21 unwrangled freeforms )