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Metatag survey results, part 1: The Tags People Use
I was planning to post a synthesis of the Quick AO3 Metatag Survey results once they hit a nice round number. And, hey, we got to 50!
Going to split this across separate posts, because each batch of answers is refreshingly long. Today: the answers to the first question.
(The AO3 upload of this post is now the definitive version -- any corrections/edits will be made there.)
The Question
“What fandom metatags on AO3 do you personally use? This includes any kind of use — as a writer, a reader, or both. (No need to get detailed about how you use them, just the tag name(s) are fine.)
List as many as you want! If the answer is “none of them”, go ahead and leave the answer blank.”
Process notes
I didn’t ask upfront for the exact canonical format of each tag. Didn’t want people to feel anxious about not being counted because they remembered wrong.
Some respondents typed the canonicals in anyway! (Special thanks to you folks, for going the extra mile.)
Whether or not you did, this roundup has matched all the mentioned metatags to their specific AO3 link. If I wasn’t sure exactly which tag someone meant, there’s a comment about the ambiguity.
Metatags that are very close in the same tree have been grouped together in this post. Feel free to rearrange the groups, and analyze them in whatever way makes most sense to you.
The Numbers: Metatags
24 total mentions of the higher-level Marvel tags: 13 for the film-and-TV Marvel Cinematic Universe, 6 for the most-general metatag Marvel, 4 for Marvel (Comics), and 1 for the individual comicverse Marvel 616
16 mentions of Star Wars tags: 13 for the topmost metatag Star Wars – All Media Types, 2 specifically mentioning Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) – All Media Types, and 1 for Star Wars Legends – All Media Types
13 respondents named Batman in some form: 9 for Batman – All Media Types, 1 for Batman (Comics), and 3 that just said “Batman” (probably meaning the AMT, but possibly the comics)
11 more named Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms. Not quite the top of the list, but it’s up here
11 respondents cited either DCU, or its direct subtag DCU (Comics)
11 more mentioned Star Trek. No abbreviations, no guessing about the format, everyone typed in “Star Trek” exactly.
9 total mentions of the Tolkien metatags to rule them all: 4 for TOLKIEN J. R. R. – Works & Related Fandoms, 3 for The Lord of the Rings – All Media Types, 2 for The Hobbit – All Media Types
5 respondents cited Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, or its direct subtag Doctor Who
Metatags that people brought up 4 times:
- Fullmetal Alchemist – All Media Types
- Les Misérables – All Media Types
- Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms – All Media Types
- Transformers – All Media Types
These were mentioned 3 times:
- Arthurian Mythology & Related Fandoms
- The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms
- A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms
- Spider-Man – All Media Types
These came up 2 times:
- Discworld – Terry Pratchett
- Fate/stay night & Related Fandoms
- Compilation of Final Fantasy VII
- Harry Potter – J. K. Rowling [functionally an AMT for the franchise; its subtags include spinoff movies and video games]
- PIERCE Tamora – Works
- Stargate – All Media Types
- Twilight Series – All Media Types
- X-Men – All Media Types and X-Men (Comicverse) [broader and narrower metatags respectively, 1 use each]
And these were in 1 response each:
- 逆転裁判 | Gyakuten Saiban | Ace Attorney
- Actor RPF
- AUSTEN Jane – Works
- Chronicles of Narnia – All Media Types
- Cthulhu Mythos – Fandom
- Dragon Age – All Media Types
- Dune – All Media Types
- Fairy Tales & Related Fandoms
- Good Omens – Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett [included here because it does have 1 subtag, though it’s not an AMT for the whole franchise]
- Historical RPF
- Jrock
- Justice League – All Media Types
- Life on Mars & Related Fandoms
- LOVECRAFT H. P. – Works
- Master and Commander – All Media Types
- Newsies – All Media Types
- Pocket Monsters | Pokemon – All Media Types
- Pride and Prejudice & Related Fandoms
- SHAKESPEARE William – Works
- Tales of Series (Bandai Namco Video Games)
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – All Media Types
- Video Blogging RPF
- Wiedźmin | The Witcher – All Media Types
The Numbers: Other Tags
Some responses brought up fandom tags that aren’t metatags, but they encompass multiple media types (the types just don’t have their own separately-filterable subtags).
Worth knowing! It indicates that wranglers shouldn’t split any of these unless we still have a metatag joining them:
- 僕のヒーローアカデミア | Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia (Anime & Manga)
- ヒカルの碁 | Hikaru no Go (Anime & Manga)
- One Piece (Anime & Manga)
- The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth – J. R. R. Tolkien [catch-all tag for multiple books]
- Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (Anime & Manga) [this person might also have been trying to say they use the franchise metatag, Yu-Gi-Oh! Series]
Finally, the other non-metatags that came up.
Before anyone tries to write these off as “aha, it’s the infamous Users Who Are Confused About Metatags” — most of them are still pretty obviously relevant.
Two people brought up James Bond – All Media Types as a metatag they used, when it was a metatag. (It was decanonized in the same way that Holmes &RF briefly was, and is currently synned to James Bond (Craig Movies).)
1 person each cited these:
- The Avengers (Marvel) – All Media Types [previously a metatag, currently synned to The Avengers (Marvel Movies)]
- Bandom [previously a metatag; this one’s a special case, see the official update post on Tumblr]
- The Eagle | The Eagle of the Ninth (2011) [a subtag of The Eagle | The Eagle of the Ninth – All Media Types; the submitter might have just meant the AMT]
- Men’s Hockey RPF [might be a reference to the fact that more generic tags, like Hockey RPF, are synned to this]
- Moon Knight (TV 2022) [might be a reference to the fact that non-media-specific tags, like Marvel Moon Knight, are synned to this]
- Original Work [catch-all tag for a wide range of unrelated works]
Extra Thoughts
There’s a space at the end of the survey for more general Metatag Thoughts…but the responses were totally open, so some people threw in extra comments here.
A few that stuck out to me:
Multiple respondents said their list of “tags they use” wasn’t comprehensive. There wasn’t any kind of site tracking here, people were just going off their memories, so there were several variations of “probably other fandoms too that I’m not remembering.”
Three people brought up anime/manga fandoms as a blanket category, e.g. citing “any manga and anime fandoms that exist” as metatags they use. Overall disappointment with the splitting-up of Japanese (and Chinese) fandom tags will be a recurring theme, here.
Two people pointed out they use metatags differently when writing vs. reading. Although they tag their own fic with specific adaptations, they prefer to read from the fandom’s general metatag.
One person said “in general none exist for the fandoms I write for, or read fic from. If they did exist, I would use them.”
When tag wranglers do get our fandoms organized into metatag trees…people use them. People are happy to have them. The fact that we’ve put together this many useful connections is great!
And it is genuinely depressing that, at the same time, we’re still failing some users this hard.
no subject
"11 more mentioned Star Trek. No abbreviations, no guessing about the format, everyone typed in “Star Trek” exactly."
This made me laugh fhskgfdhg. I was going to be one of those people, but I forgot to respond whoops. Thanks for putting this all together!
no subject
no subject
It just...wasn't enough. I would bet they all got the standard "we got rid of the metatag because it was confusing" responses. Even if Bond fans complained about that on social media, the fandom wasn't big enough for the news to spread very far.
Unlike with the collective Holmes fandom, which is HUGE -- and full of people with Very Strong Opinions about Sherlock (TV) specifically.
So it wasn't until the Holmes synning happened that AO3 got enough complaints to hit the tipping point of "whoa, okay, these aren't just a picky minority of complainers, they might actually be the majority view of the fandom."
(Sidenote, I asked internally if Tag Wrangling could get an overview of "which fandom metatags people have complained about" from Support. The response is still in the "maybe, we'll see" stage. Which is part of why I figured I'd run a public survey in the meantime.)
no subject
I'm working with another tag wrangler on a different issue right now, and what they've told me is that a track record of complaints on the issue *does* seem to be helping push our case... but only because they called in favors with more senior tag wranglers to look at support ticket history and compile evidence of complaints being made across a long time period! There seems to be a lot of "who you know, not what you know" that matters when it comes to tag wrangling internal mechanisms.
no subject
That's not something I have personal experience with, but I don't find it surprising or unbelievable. If the standard processes for doing something are so locked-up that they're not even moving, then yeah, the only people getting anything done will be the ones who figure out how to get some non-standard leverage.
BNHA explanation
As the person who submitted BNHA (or one of them at least), I am aware that it's not a metatag, but I use the tag a lot and thought it was relevant to the discussion.
1. I do worry that the tag will get split up into un-linked "BNHA (Anime)" and "BNHA (Manga)" tags like JJK or Spy x Family; though I'm less worried now the manga has ended.
2. Additionally, I don't know if anyone actually wants tags for these, but there are spinoff materials in other mediums -- the stage plays, the mobile games, the movies. I don't support AO3's general policy of splitting things up merely based on media type (see my many complaints about JJK fandom's handling) and I don't know how similar/in continuity these various spinoff properties are. Maybe they've already been considered by tag wranglers who are more familiar with the details than me, and decided to be similar enough to keep in the same tag! But it's something I would research if I were in charge of managing AO3 tags for this fandom.
3. Vigilantes -- a spinoff manga that could merit its own subtag the same reason Fruits Basket fandom would like a "Fruits Basket:Another" tag -- mostly focuses on a new cast of characters. (Did you see the Furuba person made a search filter with 16 character tags in OR statements to filter Another works?! Sure would be nice if the tag wranglers could use their tools to help with that....) I have seen a few people say they would like a Vigilantes tag, but it was a while ago.
I don't think any of these are major concerns for the fandom. Aside from Vigilantes, I haven't seen anyone asking for these tags. And since I don't want the current tag to get the Monogatari treatment I will *definitely* not be sending in support tickets about it. But on a survey about metatags and fandom groupings that I use, it came to mind.
Re: BNHA explanation
Thanks for all the thoughts. It's really enlightening to see breakdowns of how many different issues can be important to a specific fandom tree. (And sad to know some users are explicitly thinking "I won't write to AO3 about this because I'm afraid wranglers will make it worse.")
Re: BNHA explanation
Anyways, in case I didn't already say it clearly -- thank you for running the survey! The collected response are giving me a lot to think about <3