Metatag survey results, part 3: The combined tags people want

Previously, in responses to the Quick AO3 Metatag Survey.: the results for question 1, and the results for question 2.

Now it’s a trilogy, because here’s a writeup of question 3!

(The AO3 upload of this post is now the definitive version -- any corrections/edits will be made there.)

The Question

Do you have any fandoms on AO3 that only have separate tags, that you wish were just combined into one tag?

(Example: some users who read fic for “呪術廻戦 | Jujutsu Kaisen (Anime)” and “呪術廻戦 | Jujutsu Kaisen (Manga)” have said that they would prefer one combined “呪術廻戦 | Jujutsu Kaisen (Anime & Manga)” tag. This would mean that all the works appear together, and can’t be filtered on separately, similar to “Naruto (Anime & Manga)“.)

As always, list as many or as few as you want!

The People Who Said No

The survey says upfront that you can leave any answer blank — but for this question, 8 people took the time to write variations of “No/None”, making it the most popular response!

Several people elaborated on their answer. Excerpted comments:

• “I understand why this kind of tag combining is suggested, but I personally am opposed.”
• “None, I see no reason to not have separate tags if an All Media Types tag also exists. The only cases this is a problem is when there isn’t an appropriate umbrella tag to allow similar versions to be visible together.”
• “No, never. A metatag with child tags for each adaptation/fandom would be my preferred way to handle this situation.”

The General “Anime & Manga” Requests

The second-most-popular response (3 respondents each) was a tie between JJK and “a general statement about anime fandoms.”

All 3 of these elaborated on their answers. Excerpted comments:

• “probably any anime that’s an adaption of a manga or LN and that’s come out in the last five years”
• “Basically any anime & manga fandom where the difference between different versions is negligible”
• “Basically every single big JPN media mix franchise. […] it makes finding stuff way harder, makes it basically impossible to filter out crossovers, and I don’t understand why these aren’t mixed- they’re very straight adaptations!”

The Specific Fandom Requests

Nearly all the specific fandoms were about canons that tell close adaptations of the same story:

3 requests to merge Jujutsu Kaisen (anime, manga)

2 requests to merge SPY x FAMILY (anime, manga)

1 request each to merge:

• Bocchi the Rock (anime, manga)
• Chainsaw Man (anime, manga)
• Demon Slayer (anime, manga)
• Given (anime, manga)
• Monogatari (manga, anime, light novels)
• The S-Classes That I Raised (webtoon, webnovel)
• Toilet-Bound Hanako-Kun (anime, manga)
• Tokyo Revengers (anime, manga, live-action film, spinoff manga)

And 1 request for “Arrowverse. Or I’d take a metatag for it, at least.” This was the only response that refers to a shared universe for several canons that tell different intersecting stories. Gonna take a wild guess here: what they really want is a metatag. (Most fandom tags that say “Arrowverse” seem to be synned to the Arrow TV series.)

(I’ve left out 1 final request because it involved merging freeform tags, not fandom tags.)

Process thoughts

In the interest of keeping the survey short, there are a lot of questions I didn’t ask…including “what already-existing multimedia-combo fandom tags on AO3 do you personally use?”

Kinda wish I had put that in, now! It’s definitely worth investigating in the future.

Some of them got mentioned anyway. Several people answered the the “what metatags do you use?” question with combo tags, mostly “Anime & Manga” ones (BNHA, Hikaru no Go, One Piece, and Yu-Gi-Oh). More came up in response to question 4 (writeup TBD). And, anecdotally, whenever this discussion goes around social media, I see people mentioning specific “Anime & Manga” tags they use, expressing the fear that AO3 will split them up. If I had asked about it directly, there’s no telling how many more would’ve been named.

On the flip side — combo tags also got a notable amount of pushback. Some responses pointed out existing combo tags they want to be split into separate tags, or currently-separate fandom tags that they actively don’t want to see merged. Two specific fandoms in the “please make a combo tag for this” (JJK and Demon Slayer) also came up in the “please make a metatag for this” results! So it’s not a clear-cut case of “here’s the one policy AO3 users overwhelmingly prefer.”

(The response to AMTs was way more one-sided. I don’t think a single person pointed out an existing All Media Types metatag and said “I wish this would get synned to the most popular subtag.”)

One thing I really want to highlight, though:

Even when users felt strongly about not combining the fandom tags for different versions of a canon, they want those versions linked with a metatag instead.

“Separate fandom tags for different versions, no metatag at all” is the worst of both worlds. Nobody likes that.