Sexy Times With Wangxian
February 26, 2021 10:59 AM Subscribe
Virtual1979 may have achieved that magical poof simply by promising to keep expanding the number of fandoms they tag their fic into indefinitely, until they get bored or AO3 changes its policies. But if the site’s tagging infrastructure is altered or a blocking or filtering function is added, it will be hard not to see this episode through a cynical lens: That the OTW systematically rejected and bypassed the sustained voices of so many fans, including Black fans and other fans of color, for months — until their needs and desire for a safe space abruptly aligned with other fans’ annoyance and inconvenience.How a million word, 1700 tag story is forcing AO3 to change its policies when anti-racism couldn't.
I confess I stopped reading TFA after it became clear it was Yet Another tale of a technology platform built around the idea of unlimited freedom of expression brought to its knees by clueless users. Because some person will always think their freedom of expression extends to their making it impossible for anyone else to express anything, and will resist/ignore attempts to set them right.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 11:27 AM on February 26, 2021 [13 favorites]
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 11:27 AM on February 26, 2021 [13 favorites]
It's anecdotes like this that underscores for all the scoffing ppl do about the supposed youthfulness of fandom, it's almost always adults who should know better. And I include the ao3 stalwarts. I'll always be pro-ao3 but this back-and-forth about site functionality reminds me too much about our recurring and ongoing conversations about our site here.
And with regards to ao3 and OTW, i confess even though I was there when it came online, i never paid attention to the board member politics though apparently there's been some talk. I mean, it's consequential enough that apparently one strategy with regards to this fic's impact has been setting troll fics as gifts for astolat, known panfandom big name fan (and published author) and
associate of the OTW board, because the last time another user issue cropped up (non-consensual attribution of authorship) it apparently resolved itself once she was made to be bothered by the issue.
Regardlesss, it's a site that's also born of different circumstances and internet era. Other than the charges of racism (which i agree they have even less resources to moderate, but even so using tag warnings have been insufficient as a filtering strategy considering no one will baldfacedly tag their works as racist), there's also a concurrent debate with regards to erotica involving underaged characters (which at least does have a tag a writer can use?) that the response so far has been inadequate and still leans too much into the history of strikethrough as defence instead a good faith attempt to resolve it beyond user-dependent browser extensions.
posted by cendawanita at 11:28 AM on February 26, 2021 [3 favorites]
And with regards to ao3 and OTW, i confess even though I was there when it came online, i never paid attention to the board member politics though apparently there's been some talk. I mean, it's consequential enough that apparently one strategy with regards to this fic's impact has been setting troll fics as gifts for astolat, known panfandom big name fan (and published author) and
associate of the OTW board, because the last time another user issue cropped up (non-consensual attribution of authorship) it apparently resolved itself once she was made to be bothered by the issue.
Regardlesss, it's a site that's also born of different circumstances and internet era. Other than the charges of racism (which i agree they have even less resources to moderate, but even so using tag warnings have been insufficient as a filtering strategy considering no one will baldfacedly tag their works as racist), there's also a concurrent debate with regards to erotica involving underaged characters (which at least does have a tag a writer can use?) that the response so far has been inadequate and still leans too much into the history of strikethrough as defence instead a good faith attempt to resolve it beyond user-dependent browser extensions.
posted by cendawanita at 11:28 AM on February 26, 2021 [3 favorites]
In the case of AO3 it is more like clueless coders, and the clued in ones being constrained by poor architecting. The tag system in general is badly conceived (using free form text fields as your key index and expecting enough volunteer labor to fix the ensuing mess was always a bad idea) and people have told them for ages they need, on a minimal basis, to make the default skin limit the number of tags displayed, even if for ideological reasons they don't want to limit the actual number. There literally already exist skins that limit visible tags in search results, it would be a 5 minute fix, but AO3 is a bureaucratic nightmare and therefore nothing gets fixed unless the handful of powers within the system get personally annoyed.
So people started feeding the system fics that had entire novels (literally) as tags, and gifting them to astolat. And voila, within 24 hours they magically found a months old 'violation' in STWW and it went away.
posted by tavella at 11:36 AM on February 26, 2021 [16 favorites]
So people started feeding the system fics that had entire novels (literally) as tags, and gifting them to astolat. And voila, within 24 hours they magically found a months old 'violation' in STWW and it went away.
posted by tavella at 11:36 AM on February 26, 2021 [16 favorites]
I’ve seen a lot of Tumblr posts over the past year from people complaining about stories on AO3 with a lot of tags, demanding the maximum number of tags be restricted to four or five. “Nobody filters for more than one or two tags!”
Well, bitches, I filter for a LOT of tags. The last search I did had over ten “exclude” filters. It’s especially helpful in one particular fandom where the actual canon has become so sprawling, retconned, and self-contradictory over the decades that the only way to actually enjoy it is to engage with the parts that speak to you and ignore the rest.
I don’t see how having a lot of tags HURTS the people who DON’T filter for them, except maybe making them scroll a bit further between titles? What, your finger hurts that much?
posted by The Underpants Monster at 11:37 AM on February 26, 2021 [11 favorites]
Well, bitches, I filter for a LOT of tags. The last search I did had over ten “exclude” filters. It’s especially helpful in one particular fandom where the actual canon has become so sprawling, retconned, and self-contradictory over the decades that the only way to actually enjoy it is to engage with the parts that speak to you and ignore the rest.
I don’t see how having a lot of tags HURTS the people who DON’T filter for them, except maybe making them scroll a bit further between titles? What, your finger hurts that much?
posted by The Underpants Monster at 11:37 AM on February 26, 2021 [11 favorites]
I feel like this post is a meta-post, like there's a message here about community moderation.
posted by mecran01 at 11:40 AM on February 26, 2021 [6 favorites]
posted by mecran01 at 11:40 AM on February 26, 2021 [6 favorites]
They mention screen readers and accessibility issues in the article being messed up by excessive tags.
posted by Ferreous at 11:40 AM on February 26, 2021 [15 favorites]
posted by Ferreous at 11:40 AM on February 26, 2021 [15 favorites]
And this kinda needs to be read by the other FPP on that your fave is problematic tumblr. I feel like that this is a piece of the same conversation - which also unfortunately is becoming more about the right-wing turn of queer spaces where fandom resides, overlaps and intersects. This is definitely more of a terrain that I'm familiar with because my social fandom areas were never reddit or any of the chans. Tumblr was *the* space for the fanfic-inclined for a long while (and that's after a long transition phase because quite rightly those who cut their teeth on forums and blogging platforms like lj didn't care for the way the branching reblogs fractured fandom cultural spaces - but you could at least continue to write longform texts there). The problem with tumblr of course it's fundamentally a memory hole by design so a lot of the convo is a challenge to track down.
posted by cendawanita at 11:41 AM on February 26, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by cendawanita at 11:41 AM on February 26, 2021 [3 favorites]
a technology platform built around the idea of unlimited freedom of expression
AO3 is not built around the idea of unlimited freedom of expression, though I can understand why you might think so, if you'd only read the article, which, as usual with Romano, is...not good.
posted by praemunire at 11:42 AM on February 26, 2021 [12 favorites]
AO3 is not built around the idea of unlimited freedom of expression, though I can understand why you might think so, if you'd only read the article, which, as usual with Romano, is...not good.
posted by praemunire at 11:42 AM on February 26, 2021 [12 favorites]
Because some person will always think their freedom of expression extends to their making it impossible for anyone else to express anything, and will resist/ignore attempts to set them right.
Then you missed the interesting part of the article, which is that when users asked for this functionality because of racism, they were attacked for "opposing free speech", but when someone just broke the functionality of the site, then actual consideration to blocking was considered. The argument was the same ("X is rendering AO3 unusable to me"), but when X is bigotry, there's always people ready to excuse it.
posted by NoxAeternum at 11:43 AM on February 26, 2021 [20 favorites]
Then you missed the interesting part of the article, which is that when users asked for this functionality because of racism, they were attacked for "opposing free speech", but when someone just broke the functionality of the site, then actual consideration to blocking was considered. The argument was the same ("X is rendering AO3 unusable to me"), but when X is bigotry, there's always people ready to excuse it.
posted by NoxAeternum at 11:43 AM on February 26, 2021 [20 favorites]
There are actually tags for "racism," "fantastic racism" (racism against alien/fantasy people such as elves, klingons, etc), "racially charged elements" and others. All are canonical tags - meaning if you start typing "racism" into the tag field, these options will pop up for you to tag your fic in. So if you want to write a story that deals with racism or has racist elements, you can tag and warn for it just as you would underaged fic.
The problem, of course, is that bad actors won't necessarily tags things appropriately. Which is sort of a universal problem with social media - as STWWX demonstrates. The problem with ao3 is more a lack of will to moderate and make difficult calls then a lack of the tools to do so.
....unless the code is truly, hellaciously spaghetti'd beyond all saving. Which could well be the case. Ao3 has been in beta basically since it opened ten, eleven years ago? Which is why there's no open membership - which was also a contributing factor to the trolling over tag limits. There are site skins etc that hide excessive tags, but you can only use them if you are a registered user, and many people browsing ao3 are not actually registered because registration isn't open because the site is still in beta and probably always will be. Aja doesn't really get into it here, but pushback from ao3 on changes has always been along the lines of "well, just be a registered user or use this third party extension," which is frankly bollacks and as someone who was in fandom long before ao3 was a gleam in astolat's eye I'm astounded they've been allowed to coast on it so far. If they were a private archive, I wouldn't care - but their whole mission statement is to be a public archive for all of fandom.
(Don't get me started on how narrowly they defined fandom at the start, and yelling involved in getting that lot to consider fandom existed outside of their oldschool western media/HP slash LJ circles. "Feral fans," my aunt fanny.)
posted by a power-tie-wearing she-capitalist at 11:43 AM on February 26, 2021 [4 favorites]
The problem, of course, is that bad actors won't necessarily tags things appropriately. Which is sort of a universal problem with social media - as STWWX demonstrates. The problem with ao3 is more a lack of will to moderate and make difficult calls then a lack of the tools to do so.
....unless the code is truly, hellaciously spaghetti'd beyond all saving. Which could well be the case. Ao3 has been in beta basically since it opened ten, eleven years ago? Which is why there's no open membership - which was also a contributing factor to the trolling over tag limits. There are site skins etc that hide excessive tags, but you can only use them if you are a registered user, and many people browsing ao3 are not actually registered because registration isn't open because the site is still in beta and probably always will be. Aja doesn't really get into it here, but pushback from ao3 on changes has always been along the lines of "well, just be a registered user or use this third party extension," which is frankly bollacks and as someone who was in fandom long before ao3 was a gleam in astolat's eye I'm astounded they've been allowed to coast on it so far. If they were a private archive, I wouldn't care - but their whole mission statement is to be a public archive for all of fandom.
(Don't get me started on how narrowly they defined fandom at the start, and yelling involved in getting that lot to consider fandom existed outside of their oldschool western media/HP slash LJ circles. "Feral fans," my aunt fanny.)
posted by a power-tie-wearing she-capitalist at 11:43 AM on February 26, 2021 [4 favorites]
The problem with tumblr of course it's fundamentally a memory hole by design.
Speaking of which...
posted by MartinWisse at 11:45 AM on February 26, 2021 [9 favorites]
Speaking of which...
posted by MartinWisse at 11:45 AM on February 26, 2021 [9 favorites]
Wow, this was really interesting.
I confess, I'm a big free-speech advocate, but I've never understood the argument against killfiles - letting individual users block individual members of the community or specific topics. In any community, there are just ax-grindy people or people who rub you the wrong way, who may well be valuable members of the community for OTHER folks, but it would just be nice (maybe even make the site tolerable) to get them off of your own personal, individual screen.
Also, it seems like simply limiting the number of visible tags in all default listings should be a really easy measure toward fixing this: only ever show, say, 7 tags per story, with a "Show all tags (1703 tags total)" link so people can see the rest if they want to.
It is, indeed, extremely dismaying that AO3 didn't feel compelled to take action before; but here's hoping they WILL take some action, in a way that will make the site more welcoming to marginalized folks, and everyone.
I loved this:
What’s entirely unsurprising, but always remarkable, is that out of the anger and ire people feel toward virtual1979 and STWW, the fandom community has done what it usually does and turned an ugly situation into something positive.
I've barely ever known anything about AO3, but then brainwane started posting all those fabulous short story links a few months back, and there were several links to AO3 in those threads, and I've just become such a fan.
This was a thought-provoking and ultimately encouraging read. Thank you so much for posting it, MartinWisse!
posted by kristi at 11:48 AM on February 26, 2021 [8 favorites]
I confess, I'm a big free-speech advocate, but I've never understood the argument against killfiles - letting individual users block individual members of the community or specific topics. In any community, there are just ax-grindy people or people who rub you the wrong way, who may well be valuable members of the community for OTHER folks, but it would just be nice (maybe even make the site tolerable) to get them off of your own personal, individual screen.
Also, it seems like simply limiting the number of visible tags in all default listings should be a really easy measure toward fixing this: only ever show, say, 7 tags per story, with a "Show all tags (1703 tags total)" link so people can see the rest if they want to.
It is, indeed, extremely dismaying that AO3 didn't feel compelled to take action before; but here's hoping they WILL take some action, in a way that will make the site more welcoming to marginalized folks, and everyone.
I loved this:
What’s entirely unsurprising, but always remarkable, is that out of the anger and ire people feel toward virtual1979 and STWW, the fandom community has done what it usually does and turned an ugly situation into something positive.
I've barely ever known anything about AO3, but then brainwane started posting all those fabulous short story links a few months back, and there were several links to AO3 in those threads, and I've just become such a fan.
This was a thought-provoking and ultimately encouraging read. Thank you so much for posting it, MartinWisse!
posted by kristi at 11:48 AM on February 26, 2021 [8 favorites]
Then you missed the interesting part of the article, which is that when users asked for this functionality because of racism, they were attacked for "opposing free speech", but when someone just broke the functionality of the site, then actual consideration to blocking was considered.
That's because, as often happens, Aja is wrong. Blocking was announced a planned feature months ago, indeed partially because of the discussion around racism. What AO3 refused to do was to delete fics; people were coming up with elaborate plans for flagging fics for racism or whatever, which AO3 would then be obligated to delete, and AO3 declined all of that.
posted by tavella at 11:55 AM on February 26, 2021 [24 favorites]
That's because, as often happens, Aja is wrong. Blocking was announced a planned feature months ago, indeed partially because of the discussion around racism. What AO3 refused to do was to delete fics; people were coming up with elaborate plans for flagging fics for racism or whatever, which AO3 would then be obligated to delete, and AO3 declined all of that.
posted by tavella at 11:55 AM on February 26, 2021 [24 favorites]
At times like these, I wish I could simply post a gif of Aja failing to burn a LJ t-shirt.
posted by betweenthebars at 11:55 AM on February 26, 2021 [9 favorites]
posted by betweenthebars at 11:55 AM on February 26, 2021 [9 favorites]
Popping back in to second "Aja is wrong." Aja Romano is what a kind person would call "somewhat overeager" and an unkind person like myself would call an "ignorant sycophant." She's been trying to gain clout for years by "explaining fandom" to the mainstream, always gets its wrong, and is generally more concerned with being seen as high abreast whatever the latest fandom wave is then like, understanding what's happening and providing useful context.
I was mostly just quietly annoyed by her until she did an interview with Andy Blake a.k.a. Thanfiction, a notorious abuser, scam artist, and all around asshole, wherein she took everything he had to say at face value and generally went along with his attempts to display himself as a penitent sinner who simply went too far in his enthusiasm and love for fandom. Anyone who isn't Aja knows this is one of Andy's favorite lines, deployed any time someone publicly warns a new fandom he's getting into about his history. He's not someone who made mistakes. He's an abusive bad actor who deserve ostracization from any community he tries to join. Platforming him and uncritically presenting his lies about the people he abused, allowing him to speak over them as if he had better insight then they did into what he did to them, is not, to me, a forgivable oopsie.
She has never apologized for it.
posted by a power-tie-wearing she-capitalist at 12:05 PM on February 26, 2021 [19 favorites]
I was mostly just quietly annoyed by her until she did an interview with Andy Blake a.k.a. Thanfiction, a notorious abuser, scam artist, and all around asshole, wherein she took everything he had to say at face value and generally went along with his attempts to display himself as a penitent sinner who simply went too far in his enthusiasm and love for fandom. Anyone who isn't Aja knows this is one of Andy's favorite lines, deployed any time someone publicly warns a new fandom he's getting into about his history. He's not someone who made mistakes. He's an abusive bad actor who deserve ostracization from any community he tries to join. Platforming him and uncritically presenting his lies about the people he abused, allowing him to speak over them as if he had better insight then they did into what he did to them, is not, to me, a forgivable oopsie.
She has never apologized for it.
posted by a power-tie-wearing she-capitalist at 12:05 PM on February 26, 2021 [19 favorites]
Also, it seems like simply limiting the number of visible tags in all default listings should be a really easy measure toward fixing this: only ever show, say, 7 tags per story, with a "Show all tags (1703 tags total)" link so people can see the rest if they want to.
That does seem like an ideal compromise.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 12:07 PM on February 26, 2021 [6 favorites]
That does seem like an ideal compromise.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 12:07 PM on February 26, 2021 [6 favorites]
Reading the article confused me, because this honestly seemed like a fairly mundane and minor UI issue rather than some sort of failure of an open forum due to abuse of freedom of expression. I get that AO3 is very highly committed to non-censorship, inclusiveness, and equity of viewpoints. What I don't get is how displaying only, say, the 10 most popular tags for a fic (or some sort of hybrid plan where canonical tags are classified according to content, fandom, warning, setting, etc. and the 10 displayed are by default a mix of the most popular tag for each of those categories) on a search or browse screen would violate those principles. Yes, "most popular" is to some extent inequitable, but it's inequitable among tags, not works, and any work with 10 or fewer tags would display all of them no matter what. Yes, it's hiding material, but so, to be contrarian, is displaying only the name of the work and not the entirety of the work on the search/browse screen; surely to learn more folks are willing to click through? I suppose there's a mild hazard in that a tag which is a complete dealbreaker for someone might not show up on a search, but (a) if it's a dealbreaker they can exclude on it, and (b) when they click through they can see it.
All in all, it's not clear to me how/why this is drama.
posted by jackbishop at 12:15 PM on February 26, 2021 [11 favorites]
All in all, it's not clear to me how/why this is drama.
posted by jackbishop at 12:15 PM on February 26, 2021 [11 favorites]
The way tags are now is not because it would in some nebulous way violate free speech principles to restrict the number of tags, but because the architects considered freeform tagging the best way to capture a folksonomy and did not think it likely that that particular feature would be abused in the way that it has. In other words, I doubt that there is any significant group protesting the idea of changing the way extensive tags on a fic are displayed on principle. The question here is what gets prioritized as a matter of technical implementation in a volunteer archive with perhaps not the optimal decision-making structure and finite technical resources. I am very much in favor of the AO3 prioritizing technical UI changes requested by non-white users to circumvent racist abuse, but, as noted above by tavella, while it took much more pushing than it should have, some of those changes are now part of the archive's technical development roadmap.
posted by praemunire at 12:26 PM on February 26, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by praemunire at 12:26 PM on February 26, 2021 [1 favorite]
A rebuttal, citing tools and methods that already exist for users to manage their experience.
A gentle rebuttal to the rebuttal pointing out that workarounds are workarounds, that they are not universally accessible, and the perception of action or inaction is also important.
posted by danhon at 12:38 PM on February 26, 2021 [2 favorites]
A gentle rebuttal to the rebuttal pointing out that workarounds are workarounds, that they are not universally accessible, and the perception of action or inaction is also important.
posted by danhon at 12:38 PM on February 26, 2021 [2 favorites]
I'm not a logged in member. I just read the fandoms I want by scrolling through pages of character tagged postings. I do this on a tiny phone screen. I haven't encountered this particular story yet (it hasn't as far as I know crossed over into the fandoms I read), but I wouldn't appreciate it.
I swear the stories with the most tags are always some little 175 or 500 word drabble. There are more words in the tags than there are in the stories--or at least it feels that way. There is definitely a place and a purpose for tags, but I really feel that some authors really could cut back on their tagging. Yes, I know I shouldn't complain about freely shared creative work, but I truly wish they would save their creative talents and impulses for the stories themselves and leave the tags for useful, basic information: main characters (not every single person mentioned in passing), AU (if any), serious trigger warnings, etc. The odd "cutesy" tag is fine (and sometimes fun) but more than that is overkill.
Mind you, I find overtagging a pretty good indication that I should just skip the piece as I won't enjoy it.
posted by sardonyx at 12:52 PM on February 26, 2021 [10 favorites]
I swear the stories with the most tags are always some little 175 or 500 word drabble. There are more words in the tags than there are in the stories--or at least it feels that way. There is definitely a place and a purpose for tags, but I really feel that some authors really could cut back on their tagging. Yes, I know I shouldn't complain about freely shared creative work, but I truly wish they would save their creative talents and impulses for the stories themselves and leave the tags for useful, basic information: main characters (not every single person mentioned in passing), AU (if any), serious trigger warnings, etc. The odd "cutesy" tag is fine (and sometimes fun) but more than that is overkill.
Mind you, I find overtagging a pretty good indication that I should just skip the piece as I won't enjoy it.
posted by sardonyx at 12:52 PM on February 26, 2021 [10 favorites]
Jackbishop, the drama exists for three reasons. The first is explained in detail elsethread, and is about the perception* that ao3 was unwilling to move on basic quality of life updates to protect POC/nonwhite-anglo users BUT within 24 hours of astolat being personally and mildly trolled, they were on it.
The second is that a lot of people don't just want ao3 to have better user controls, they want ao3 to renege on their stated value of allowing anyone to post anything, passing no judgement on the quality, merit, or morals of the work. So this issue is coming at a time when there's already a very fraught atmosphere around ao3, the merits of its stated mission, and to what extent that mission is successful or desirable. Some of this discussion is reasonable people disagreeing. Some of it is plain moral panic - erotic fiction about two fictional sixteen year olds fucking might not be your cup of tea, but it's not morally any more wrong then any other kind of drawn, written, or otherwise fictional porn.**
Which leads directly into three: Ao3 is a very unprofessional organization in a very unprofessional subculture, presenting itself as some kind of professional resource. There is an institutional tendency to take criticism of the organization as personal and direct criticism of its members and volunteers. The existence of reason number two provides a useful psychological cover for rejecting valid criticism under the guise of "you just hate ao3 and want to destroy it because it won't let you control it!!!!!" Not helpful.
For those who don't know the history of strikethrough, a brief summary: once upon a time, a lot of HP and western media fandom was on LiveJournal, hosting fic and communities and art on a site they did not own. An outside actor brought these communities to LJ's owners' attention. LJ decided it didn't want to host porn. It exercised its rights as site owner and purged the offending communities, but in a very careless way that caught up a lot of other, uninvolved communities, such as bookclubs who'd read Lolita and support communities for survivors of sexual assault. There's a lot more to unpack, but I'm going on too long as is.
Anyway, fandom's entirely reasonable response was "okay, as long as we don't host on our own sites, we're vulnerable to this kind of deletion." Thus was ao3 born. It was, however, a controversial implementation from the start - mostly because it was the brainchild of two BNFs in a very specific corner of fandom who started speaking for All Fandom without taking into account that they knew, actually, very little about fandom outside their specific circles. The cultural push to make a new "central fandom hub" vs returning to webrings and private forums was very much a product of a few extremely popular authors wanting to do what they thought was best for fandom without necessarily consulting people who didn't already agree with them. I think most MeFites don't need the blanks filled in on why this caused some problems.
But it does mean that Ao3 has a history of feeling itself to be of essential importance to fandom, the Great Saviors of the Fanfic, who lead us from the dark night of strikethrough in the glorious new day. Pushing back against this rather ahistorical view of fandom tends to be poorly received. Even if its a mild request for a basic QoL improvement.
Final note: I neither like nor dislike ao3. I think the idea of having an open archive where people can put their fic as futureproofing against loss of hosting is a great one. I also think their savior complex is profoundly insulting, and as someone who witnessed its founding, I strongly believe it is and remains more of a vanity project then a serious organization dedicated to safeguarding fannish right to expression. I also, frankly, quarrel with the notion of "safeguarding fannish right to expression" - whose expression? of what? Under what terms? And since when was "fandom" a thing you are, not a thing you do? I could go on.
But to sum up: this is a drama because ao3 takes itself too seriously, was founded at a time when fandom was very much feeling itself to be a persecuted minority group for a lot of reasons of which few were particularly valid, tends to over-promise and under-deliver then play the martyr about it, and fandom as a whole is currently a very messy and alarming place - in no small part because the centralization so touted by Ao3 has caused everyone to have to be up in everyone's space, and their poor coding makes it hard to curate your experience but their poor reaction to critique means the coding will never get better. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Thank you to anyone who actually read this far.
*this perception is inaccurate but as the link danhon provides indicates, it matters.
**not touching on the issues of live action porn here because that's not really something fandom does.
posted by a power-tie-wearing she-capitalist at 1:17 PM on February 26, 2021 [29 favorites]
The second is that a lot of people don't just want ao3 to have better user controls, they want ao3 to renege on their stated value of allowing anyone to post anything, passing no judgement on the quality, merit, or morals of the work. So this issue is coming at a time when there's already a very fraught atmosphere around ao3, the merits of its stated mission, and to what extent that mission is successful or desirable. Some of this discussion is reasonable people disagreeing. Some of it is plain moral panic - erotic fiction about two fictional sixteen year olds fucking might not be your cup of tea, but it's not morally any more wrong then any other kind of drawn, written, or otherwise fictional porn.**
Which leads directly into three: Ao3 is a very unprofessional organization in a very unprofessional subculture, presenting itself as some kind of professional resource. There is an institutional tendency to take criticism of the organization as personal and direct criticism of its members and volunteers. The existence of reason number two provides a useful psychological cover for rejecting valid criticism under the guise of "you just hate ao3 and want to destroy it because it won't let you control it!!!!!" Not helpful.
For those who don't know the history of strikethrough, a brief summary: once upon a time, a lot of HP and western media fandom was on LiveJournal, hosting fic and communities and art on a site they did not own. An outside actor brought these communities to LJ's owners' attention. LJ decided it didn't want to host porn. It exercised its rights as site owner and purged the offending communities, but in a very careless way that caught up a lot of other, uninvolved communities, such as bookclubs who'd read Lolita and support communities for survivors of sexual assault. There's a lot more to unpack, but I'm going on too long as is.
Anyway, fandom's entirely reasonable response was "okay, as long as we don't host on our own sites, we're vulnerable to this kind of deletion." Thus was ao3 born. It was, however, a controversial implementation from the start - mostly because it was the brainchild of two BNFs in a very specific corner of fandom who started speaking for All Fandom without taking into account that they knew, actually, very little about fandom outside their specific circles. The cultural push to make a new "central fandom hub" vs returning to webrings and private forums was very much a product of a few extremely popular authors wanting to do what they thought was best for fandom without necessarily consulting people who didn't already agree with them. I think most MeFites don't need the blanks filled in on why this caused some problems.
But it does mean that Ao3 has a history of feeling itself to be of essential importance to fandom, the Great Saviors of the Fanfic, who lead us from the dark night of strikethrough in the glorious new day. Pushing back against this rather ahistorical view of fandom tends to be poorly received. Even if its a mild request for a basic QoL improvement.
Final note: I neither like nor dislike ao3. I think the idea of having an open archive where people can put their fic as futureproofing against loss of hosting is a great one. I also think their savior complex is profoundly insulting, and as someone who witnessed its founding, I strongly believe it is and remains more of a vanity project then a serious organization dedicated to safeguarding fannish right to expression. I also, frankly, quarrel with the notion of "safeguarding fannish right to expression" - whose expression? of what? Under what terms? And since when was "fandom" a thing you are, not a thing you do? I could go on.
But to sum up: this is a drama because ao3 takes itself too seriously, was founded at a time when fandom was very much feeling itself to be a persecuted minority group for a lot of reasons of which few were particularly valid, tends to over-promise and under-deliver then play the martyr about it, and fandom as a whole is currently a very messy and alarming place - in no small part because the centralization so touted by Ao3 has caused everyone to have to be up in everyone's space, and their poor coding makes it hard to curate your experience but their poor reaction to critique means the coding will never get better. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Thank you to anyone who actually read this far.
*this perception is inaccurate but as the link danhon provides indicates, it matters.
**not touching on the issues of live action porn here because that's not really something fandom does.
posted by a power-tie-wearing she-capitalist at 1:17 PM on February 26, 2021 [29 favorites]
The problem with tumblr of course it's fundamentally a memory hole by design.
Compared to blogs and forums maybe, but not when compared to other social media sites. Memes have lived on Tumblr for YEARS, on Instagram anything more than 2 days old may as well not exist.
posted by Lanark at 1:38 PM on February 26, 2021 [4 favorites]
Compared to blogs and forums maybe, but not when compared to other social media sites. Memes have lived on Tumblr for YEARS, on Instagram anything more than 2 days old may as well not exist.
posted by Lanark at 1:38 PM on February 26, 2021 [4 favorites]
did not think it likely that that particular feature would be abused in the way that it has
Ah, the footprint of a Great Ideas Person*. Have they ever met actual human beings? Have they ever visited a site (or a physical location, for that matter) where humans gather and see what they do?
Essentially, all tech-hell stems from "why would anyone do that?" as the final answer to obvious potential loci of abuse.
* This person should never have responsibility or authority on any tech project
posted by maxwelton at 1:43 PM on February 26, 2021 [1 favorite]
Ah, the footprint of a Great Ideas Person*. Have they ever met actual human beings? Have they ever visited a site (or a physical location, for that matter) where humans gather and see what they do?
Essentially, all tech-hell stems from "why would anyone do that?" as the final answer to obvious potential loci of abuse.
* This person should never have responsibility or authority on any tech project
posted by maxwelton at 1:43 PM on February 26, 2021 [1 favorite]
Ah, the footprint of a Great Ideas Person*. Have they ever met actual human beings? Have they ever visited a site (or a physical location, for that matter) where humans gather and see what they do?
Well, I have yet to see a site design that managed to anticipate every possible form of abuse while still being usable. The ingenuity of human beings out to cause trouble is just about infinite.
I do find the tone of some of these comments slightly odd. I don't want to get into a digression about what I do and do not agree with in she-capitalist's analysis, but certainly she touches on some important and reasonable issues that people have had with the archive, and there are others. But AO3 is not some disruptive site du jour thrown together by clueless venture-capitalists yelling "free speech" because they're indifferent to externalities and that's the cheapest approach; rather, it's a very popular archive (currently serving anywhere from 35-60 million pages a day) created almost entirely by volunteer work to serve a particular community that successfully addressed other thorny user-culture issues (and there are many, when you're talking about a site that openly hosts [written] porn!) through more than ten years of existence. Having a site feature abused happens constantly to sites run by organizations with infinitely greater resources.
posted by praemunire at 2:00 PM on February 26, 2021 [13 favorites]
Well, I have yet to see a site design that managed to anticipate every possible form of abuse while still being usable. The ingenuity of human beings out to cause trouble is just about infinite.
I do find the tone of some of these comments slightly odd. I don't want to get into a digression about what I do and do not agree with in she-capitalist's analysis, but certainly she touches on some important and reasonable issues that people have had with the archive, and there are others. But AO3 is not some disruptive site du jour thrown together by clueless venture-capitalists yelling "free speech" because they're indifferent to externalities and that's the cheapest approach; rather, it's a very popular archive (currently serving anywhere from 35-60 million pages a day) created almost entirely by volunteer work to serve a particular community that successfully addressed other thorny user-culture issues (and there are many, when you're talking about a site that openly hosts [written] porn!) through more than ten years of existence. Having a site feature abused happens constantly to sites run by organizations with infinitely greater resources.
posted by praemunire at 2:00 PM on February 26, 2021 [13 favorites]
praemunire, it was not my intent to accuse ao3 of venture capitalism or disruption. For starters, it it's a nonprofit organization, so I'm not sure how I would. Please indicate where you believed I did, so that I can clarify.
It is, however, my intent to accuse ao3 of being unresponsive to user needs and somewhat precious about reasonable criticism, as well as to provide a counter-narrative to its version of the history of fandom. The history which ao3 presents is not an inaccurate one. It is simply not a complete one, either.
posted by a power-tie-wearing she-capitalist at 2:20 PM on February 26, 2021 [5 favorites]
It is, however, my intent to accuse ao3 of being unresponsive to user needs and somewhat precious about reasonable criticism, as well as to provide a counter-narrative to its version of the history of fandom. The history which ao3 presents is not an inaccurate one. It is simply not a complete one, either.
posted by a power-tie-wearing she-capitalist at 2:20 PM on February 26, 2021 [5 favorites]
somewhat precious about reasonable criticism, as well as to provide a counter-narrative to its version of the history of fandom
I have a vivid memory of pitching the idea that design and scope needed to come from the grassroots of fandom -- all fannish communities, not just LJ-centric slash fandom, not just the BNFs -- back in whenever. 2006? My arguments were not well-received. I quickly checked out of the project.
That said, I really appreciate the archive, even if I wish some of it worked better for what I want out of it.
... and yeah about Aja. She generally gets somewhere within 3 miles of the true story, but ... ::shrugs::
posted by suelac at 3:44 PM on February 26, 2021 [5 favorites]
I have a vivid memory of pitching the idea that design and scope needed to come from the grassroots of fandom -- all fannish communities, not just LJ-centric slash fandom, not just the BNFs -- back in whenever. 2006? My arguments were not well-received. I quickly checked out of the project.
That said, I really appreciate the archive, even if I wish some of it worked better for what I want out of it.
... and yeah about Aja. She generally gets somewhere within 3 miles of the true story, but ... ::shrugs::
posted by suelac at 3:44 PM on February 26, 2021 [5 favorites]
I wasn't talking about you in that sentence, she-capitalist. Apologies for any misunderstanding. I see some comments here that would be totally legit directed at some new, e.g., Parler-style sites in terms of assumptions made about the thought or lack thereof that went into design, etc., but the AO3 is not such a site and doesn't have that particular dynamic. Its problems, which are real, arise from other sources. No doubt the confusion arises in part from the actual article not being very good, simultaneously too inside-baseball and not enough.
posted by praemunire at 4:33 PM on February 26, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by praemunire at 4:33 PM on February 26, 2021 [1 favorite]
My apologies as well, praemunire.
posted by a power-tie-wearing she-capitalist at 5:06 PM on February 26, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by a power-tie-wearing she-capitalist at 5:06 PM on February 26, 2021 [1 favorite]
Man, I've always haaaated the "tumblr-style" freeform tags, and while I've somehow missed all of this in my corner of AO3 reading (so far, I guess) I find this fascinating and a weird mix of schadenfreude and frustration about how AO3 operates.
posted by TwoStride at 5:20 PM on February 26, 2021
posted by TwoStride at 5:20 PM on February 26, 2021
Alls I wants is for the default site skin to make the tags look like the kudos at the bottom, where it displays the first, say, thirty tags and then “as well as [number] additional tags” that would be a link to a page that is just the complete metadata. Searches would still use the full tag list for results, the metadata of a fic is existing code, results pages would be truncated meaning less load on the servers doing that, screen readers would be less burdened, it’s a form of information limiting already present on the site. Harrumph harrumph harrumph.
posted by Mizu at 5:43 PM on February 26, 2021 [8 favorites]
posted by Mizu at 5:43 PM on February 26, 2021 [8 favorites]
I think at minimum anyone designing social software should be aware of and anticipate the problems outlined in A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy: a group without the means of policing is not the same thing as a group that has no need of policing, people can subvert the intentions of the software without doing anything 'wrong' (as the author of Sexy Times with Wangxian has done - it's a long fic, and all those tags are legitimate), and you can't automate or moderate your way out of solving social software problems.
I do also note that there is nothing, except network effects and the inherent complexity of running a website, that's stopping fandoms dissatisfied with AO3 specifically from finding other homes for themselves. These are pretty big conditions, as it happens.
posted by Merus at 6:09 PM on February 26, 2021 [1 favorite]
I do also note that there is nothing, except network effects and the inherent complexity of running a website, that's stopping fandoms dissatisfied with AO3 specifically from finding other homes for themselves. These are pretty big conditions, as it happens.
posted by Merus at 6:09 PM on February 26, 2021 [1 favorite]
I hope they do something to limit the tags, because I've already noticed a couple of people have been "inspired" to trollishly list hundreds of tags to make the point that they want to force AO3 to limit tags. I felt (maybe too much) frustration at that, but look: it's one thing to occasionally have to scroll past a slightly overlong group of tags. It's something else to have to scroll an extra page, every day, just because some jerk is trying to make a point and thinks regular AO3 channels take too long. I've also noticed a lot of fic searches happening lately, and you know what? I have never felt such intense "GET OFF MY LAWN" energy as I did when I noticed people actually responding helpfully to the fic searchers. Were these people raised in a barn?!
posted by grandiloquiet at 6:35 PM on February 26, 2021
posted by grandiloquiet at 6:35 PM on February 26, 2021
Yeah I don't get why Mizu's approach discussed a couple comments above isn't the completely obvious solution to this? Why is this even controversial? This is a display bug, and not a hard one to fix. I'm confused.
posted by potrzebie at 7:56 PM on February 26, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by potrzebie at 7:56 PM on February 26, 2021 [2 favorites]
Like, I totally get conflating this dust-up with the entirely valid complaints about racism and other content policing concerns that have been brought up for years. It just that AO3 has always been extremely clear about its content policy. There has always been really heinous stuff with no warnings or bad tagging. It’s never been, or tried to be, a social media site. There is no blog platform tied in. I do think that bigotry should be one of the bolded content warnings, and I do think that socially the big names behind ao3 could do a lot more to foster off-site discussions about these kinds of grey areas. But the sexy times fic, although it has very squicky content sprinkled paradoxically among cardboard cutout fluff, is more a case of users pushing the technical limitations of a site than any of that. Virtualbutt Edgelord McDisinterestedson is just another in a long line of people using ao3 incorrectly. If fixing things so the site functions as intended and doesn’t prevent content from being accessed means we also get a bigotry warning or bnfs confronting their racism problem, cool. But the framing of the linked article almost feel like they picked the two most spicy fandom topics currently going and smushed them together for clicks.
posted by Mizu at 8:40 PM on February 26, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by Mizu at 8:40 PM on February 26, 2021 [1 favorite]
Moderating for functionality-breaking content is easier than moderating for semantic content. This has been true on every network, and not just the ones that are self-righteous about free speech. Telephone companies can kick you off if your signal is harming the network or other communications; that can't kill your line because they don't like what you're saying (including if what you're saying is, "competitor, I'd like to switch my number over to you.").
posted by pykrete jungle at 8:59 PM on February 26, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by pykrete jungle at 8:59 PM on February 26, 2021 [3 favorites]
AO3 presents itself to authors as an extremely tolerant repository for all forms of fanwork, with a focus on authorial freedom and control over their work, including the metadata elements associated with that work (tags, ratings, etc.)
AO3 also presents itself to readers as an extremely tolerant repository for all forms of fanwork, with a focus on how these works have tagging and metadata that allow you to curate your experience and find fanworks that fit your preferences - if you don't want to see a certain theme, concept, character, trope, just filter it out!
The problem I've found is that AO3 gives authors the freedom to tag as they want, but doesn't extend that same freedom to readers to curate that experience, because the reader experience is dependent on the tags that authors choose to provide.
And this ends up falling apart in cases like Sexy Times for Wangxian, where the way the author utilizes the Archive doesn't mesh with the way the reader uses the archive. Virtual1979 has the right to tag their fic the way they see fit by Archive policy, and I don't think there's any way to limit that on the author's side, because how do you objectively adjudicate something like 'does this fic contain whump?'
You can't make an author choose tags they don't want, you can't stop an author from choosing the tags they do want.
So, what's a reader supposed to do when the author's concept of how tags are used - whether that be 'abusive' or simply differently-intentioned than the reader - to give them the means to curate their experience like they're supposed to?
If the reader is having trouble using an author's tags to filter out the works that they don't want to read... then the only option the reader has is to go 'if I can't filter by tag, I'll filter by author/work'.
And the thing is, AO3 has made that incredibly hard to access via the site itself. There's no options in the search interface for 'exclude this work/author' from the results.
Currently, the only way to exclude an author via the present setup is to go to 'search within results' and use '-creators: username' to filter on results.
This functionality isn't documented in the help on the search interface. The section of the FAQ that deals with searching and browsing the Archive doesn't document this in any way.
As far as I can tell, the only place this is documented on the Archive is in a 2018 AO3 News post about hidden search operators.
This is honestly, core functionality, especially given what I've laid out above.
And I think the lack of that functionality is contributing to a lot of the anger I'm seeing.
Readers are being told 'curate your experience, filter on tags!' and they're finding out that tag searches don't help them, the site doesn't afford them the capability to filter out a user who isn't contributing to their experience, and even when they do find out about that capability, it's not persistent - it has to be entered in every time you click on a tag to do a new search, and that's honestly not a great user experience, especially with how fatiguing/futile it can feel - 'oh no, I clicked on a ship Sexy Times for Wangxian uses, time to scroll past it to filter it out'.
posted by mikurski at 10:54 PM on February 26, 2021 [8 favorites]
AO3 also presents itself to readers as an extremely tolerant repository for all forms of fanwork, with a focus on how these works have tagging and metadata that allow you to curate your experience and find fanworks that fit your preferences - if you don't want to see a certain theme, concept, character, trope, just filter it out!
The problem I've found is that AO3 gives authors the freedom to tag as they want, but doesn't extend that same freedom to readers to curate that experience, because the reader experience is dependent on the tags that authors choose to provide.
And this ends up falling apart in cases like Sexy Times for Wangxian, where the way the author utilizes the Archive doesn't mesh with the way the reader uses the archive. Virtual1979 has the right to tag their fic the way they see fit by Archive policy, and I don't think there's any way to limit that on the author's side, because how do you objectively adjudicate something like 'does this fic contain whump?'
You can't make an author choose tags they don't want, you can't stop an author from choosing the tags they do want.
So, what's a reader supposed to do when the author's concept of how tags are used - whether that be 'abusive' or simply differently-intentioned than the reader - to give them the means to curate their experience like they're supposed to?
If the reader is having trouble using an author's tags to filter out the works that they don't want to read... then the only option the reader has is to go 'if I can't filter by tag, I'll filter by author/work'.
And the thing is, AO3 has made that incredibly hard to access via the site itself. There's no options in the search interface for 'exclude this work/author' from the results.
Currently, the only way to exclude an author via the present setup is to go to 'search within results' and use '-creators: username' to filter on results.
This functionality isn't documented in the help on the search interface. The section of the FAQ that deals with searching and browsing the Archive doesn't document this in any way.
As far as I can tell, the only place this is documented on the Archive is in a 2018 AO3 News post about hidden search operators.
This is honestly, core functionality, especially given what I've laid out above.
And I think the lack of that functionality is contributing to a lot of the anger I'm seeing.
Readers are being told 'curate your experience, filter on tags!' and they're finding out that tag searches don't help them, the site doesn't afford them the capability to filter out a user who isn't contributing to their experience, and even when they do find out about that capability, it's not persistent - it has to be entered in every time you click on a tag to do a new search, and that's honestly not a great user experience, especially with how fatiguing/futile it can feel - 'oh no, I clicked on a ship Sexy Times for Wangxian uses, time to scroll past it to filter it out'.
posted by mikurski at 10:54 PM on February 26, 2021 [8 favorites]
I'm a big proponent of not attempting to fix a sociological problem with a technological solution. It's interesting to see an example of what is in some aspects the reverse. If the site had implemented the obvious from the start, i.e., use ellipses where appropriate, then the STWW issue would never have come up, and would not have been conflated with the actual sociological issues the site appears to be confronted with.
posted by labberdasher at 2:46 AM on February 27, 2021
posted by labberdasher at 2:46 AM on February 27, 2021
As said above, there are two issues, the number of tags and the content of tags.
The fanfic in question is litterally over 10 novels long, if you assume each novel is 100k words. It's huge. Yes having a bit less than 200 tags per book is still high, but it's not unreasonable especially when sexual content is something that people are expected to tag in great detail. Having 1,700 tags to explain novels of content makes sense. But that breaks people's experiences for reasons, and most people break fics up into different smaller works than stuffing all of them into a single work. Most people aren't prolific enough writers to manage to post ten novels of content in their lifetime, but some people can and here we are. But, now that this is a thing AO3 can respond in ways that helps with the user experience in terms of showing tags. Hopefully.
The other issue is tagging for bigotry and racism, and the discussion around having a essential category for it. This I'm totally for, but it runs into the issue that all media has which is people are not good at recognizing and/or admitting their own racism. This leads to many public discussions even about professional media. This leads to sites that rate content and provide content warnings outside of what rating systems provide . I don't know that this is a solvable problem, to get people to tag their woks correctly. I do think that AO3 could contribute to creating space and a culture in which rasicm is expected to be tagged. I do think it should be a primary tagging option with the other boxes . I want fannish spaces to be welcoming to everyone. I definately don't want to read fics that are distressing to me.
In addition, I also think blocking users and their content should be something that is able to be done.
posted by AlexiaSky at 3:05 AM on February 27, 2021 [3 favorites]
The fanfic in question is litterally over 10 novels long, if you assume each novel is 100k words. It's huge. Yes having a bit less than 200 tags per book is still high, but it's not unreasonable especially when sexual content is something that people are expected to tag in great detail. Having 1,700 tags to explain novels of content makes sense. But that breaks people's experiences for reasons, and most people break fics up into different smaller works than stuffing all of them into a single work. Most people aren't prolific enough writers to manage to post ten novels of content in their lifetime, but some people can and here we are. But, now that this is a thing AO3 can respond in ways that helps with the user experience in terms of showing tags. Hopefully.
The other issue is tagging for bigotry and racism, and the discussion around having a essential category for it. This I'm totally for, but it runs into the issue that all media has which is people are not good at recognizing and/or admitting their own racism. This leads to many public discussions even about professional media. This leads to sites that rate content and provide content warnings outside of what rating systems provide . I don't know that this is a solvable problem, to get people to tag their woks correctly. I do think that AO3 could contribute to creating space and a culture in which rasicm is expected to be tagged. I do think it should be a primary tagging option with the other boxes . I want fannish spaces to be welcoming to everyone. I definately don't want to read fics that are distressing to me.
In addition, I also think blocking users and their content should be something that is able to be done.
posted by AlexiaSky at 3:05 AM on February 27, 2021 [3 favorites]
I've always haaaated the "tumblr-style" freeform tags
A little known nuance of Tumblr tags is that while you can add as many tags as you like to each post and use any of them to navigate your archive, only the first 5 are indexed and used for search or shown to other users.
That removes the possibility of spamming everyone with a huge number of tags.
posted by Lanark at 6:26 AM on February 27, 2021 [3 favorites]
A little known nuance of Tumblr tags is that while you can add as many tags as you like to each post and use any of them to navigate your archive, only the first 5 are indexed and used for search or shown to other users.
That removes the possibility of spamming everyone with a huge number of tags.
posted by Lanark at 6:26 AM on February 27, 2021 [3 favorites]
In addition, I also think blocking users and their content should be something that is able to be done.
This. I'm in a small fandom where there is a persistent homophobic troll who harasses me and my friends with comments that are very thinly disguised as feedback to the fics we wrote, and as "fic" that he writes for the fandom. One of my friends spent months trying to get Ao3 to take action, and she couldn't get them to recognize it as harassment.
I could moderate comments to my fic, but that seems like a ridiculous extra amount of work when the troll is the only person who has ever caused problems. So I wait a few weeks and quietly delete his comments. Blocking him and his fic would make that fandom experience 100% better, which I know because I've blocked him from commenting on other forums. (He sent me vaguely threatening email after that, but he did it under a different pseud so I see no point in bringing it up with Ao3).
I have zero faith that the Ao3 team can oppose racism in any meaningful way. If you don't want to do a damn thing about the racists on your site, at least give people the means to block racists by themselves.
posted by creepygirl at 1:31 PM on February 27, 2021 [6 favorites]
This. I'm in a small fandom where there is a persistent homophobic troll who harasses me and my friends with comments that are very thinly disguised as feedback to the fics we wrote, and as "fic" that he writes for the fandom. One of my friends spent months trying to get Ao3 to take action, and she couldn't get them to recognize it as harassment.
I could moderate comments to my fic, but that seems like a ridiculous extra amount of work when the troll is the only person who has ever caused problems. So I wait a few weeks and quietly delete his comments. Blocking him and his fic would make that fandom experience 100% better, which I know because I've blocked him from commenting on other forums. (He sent me vaguely threatening email after that, but he did it under a different pseud so I see no point in bringing it up with Ao3).
I have zero faith that the Ao3 team can oppose racism in any meaningful way. If you don't want to do a damn thing about the racists on your site, at least give people the means to block racists by themselves.
posted by creepygirl at 1:31 PM on February 27, 2021 [6 favorites]
The fanfic in question is litterally over 10 novels long, if you assume each novel is 100k words. It's huge. Yes having a bit less than 200 tags per book is still high, but it's not unreasonable especially when sexual content is something that people are expected to tag in great detail. Having 1,700 tags to explain novels of content makes sense.
My longest work to date is 225,916 words by AO3's count. It's got 99 tags, and I got a couple of comments that _that_ was too many. It broke down something like this:
* 14 character tags
* 8 genre/pairing tags
* 24 chapters, with three or four tags for each one reflecting events therein.
Chapters ranged from around 7k to a one-time high of 16k words (which I did have the heart to flag as a "special double-sized chapter"). So it wasn't a case of gratuitous tag-spamming; it was giving my readers three hints as to what to expect from each succeeding chapter. But they added up, and did so quickly. There was no sexual content (Our Heroes in it are 14-15), but if it did, or if it had a larger cast, that could've expanded the tag list even further.
That said, in more recent works, I've been trying to cut back -- two, one, or even no tags per chapter after a certain point.
posted by delfin at 2:12 PM on February 27, 2021
My longest work to date is 225,916 words by AO3's count. It's got 99 tags, and I got a couple of comments that _that_ was too many. It broke down something like this:
* 14 character tags
* 8 genre/pairing tags
* 24 chapters, with three or four tags for each one reflecting events therein.
Chapters ranged from around 7k to a one-time high of 16k words (which I did have the heart to flag as a "special double-sized chapter"). So it wasn't a case of gratuitous tag-spamming; it was giving my readers three hints as to what to expect from each succeeding chapter. But they added up, and did so quickly. There was no sexual content (Our Heroes in it are 14-15), but if it did, or if it had a larger cast, that could've expanded the tag list even further.
That said, in more recent works, I've been trying to cut back -- two, one, or even no tags per chapter after a certain point.
posted by delfin at 2:12 PM on February 27, 2021
My understanding of Sexy Times With Wangxian is that it's not one single narrative: it's a compilation, an anthology of one-shots, which helps contribute to why it's the length it is.
The Archive lists over a thousand works that are over 700k words long; there's a work in a fandom I participate in that's over 1.5 million words, and it's one story, not a compilation. Longer works is a thing in fandom.
I think a big issue here is to look at when the tags used are relevant.
With works that are compilations of one-shots, each chapter is a short story, a separate narrative. If these were individual works, tagging what is in them would be appropriate as the tags represent what's contained in that specific work. When you have a compilation, the tags become less relevant - the things that are tagged in one chapter might not apply to the stories in other chapters, and this becomes a factor where someone might be looking for [X], but it's only relevant to one story in the compilation.
This is also true for longer single-narrative works, which can have arcs and thematic shifts: a character that was significant for part of the beginning of the story might not be there for the middle or end. If George Lucas had done the entire Star Wars Original Trilogy as one single fanwork, tagging it with the character [Obi-Wan Kenobi] is less informative because he's really only there for that first part of the narrative.
And yes, one answer to this is 'split up your story into arcs and use a series to connect them together'... but that functionality already exists. Authors are presumably aware of the ability to serialize works and prefer to do it this way, whether it's because of how they compose or conceptualize their work, how the Archive provides affordances for these larger works, or simply because larger works are attractive to a reader or author.
With the level of creative freedom the Archive is in favor of, I don't believe there's a way to control authors and force them to split their work up like that, so we use the best alternative available: metadata.
In this case, I think metadata takes two forms.
First, tagging should allow more granularity and specificity: allow authors to tag not just for the work as a whole, but for individual chapters within the work as well. This allows more accurate representation of where concepts and themes occur within a story, and these chapter tags can be aggregated, letting you know 'hey, [character] is only in one out of twenty chapters, so it might not be the character-focused fic you were looking for.'
For compilations, this also lets the reader drill down and find the individual chapters that have the stories they're interested in.
It's also useful for the portions of the culture that use tags to inform and warn of content - knowing a work 'has noncon' is helpful for those who absolutely don't engage with noncon, but there are also people who take a more nuanced approach - knowing that noncon happens in only a few chapters, and it's these three chapters in specific? Clicking 'next chapter' and getting a note at the top that goes 'here are the tags the author has for this chapter' and getting to go 'hm, am I really up for reading about this right now?' There's value in that.
Second, either the site or the culture should think about how to present tags that aren't just about things within the work, but about the work itself - if something is a short story collection, authors should be encouraged to tag it that way.
posted by mikurski at 5:04 PM on February 27, 2021
The Archive lists over a thousand works that are over 700k words long; there's a work in a fandom I participate in that's over 1.5 million words, and it's one story, not a compilation. Longer works is a thing in fandom.
I think a big issue here is to look at when the tags used are relevant.
With works that are compilations of one-shots, each chapter is a short story, a separate narrative. If these were individual works, tagging what is in them would be appropriate as the tags represent what's contained in that specific work. When you have a compilation, the tags become less relevant - the things that are tagged in one chapter might not apply to the stories in other chapters, and this becomes a factor where someone might be looking for [X], but it's only relevant to one story in the compilation.
This is also true for longer single-narrative works, which can have arcs and thematic shifts: a character that was significant for part of the beginning of the story might not be there for the middle or end. If George Lucas had done the entire Star Wars Original Trilogy as one single fanwork, tagging it with the character [Obi-Wan Kenobi] is less informative because he's really only there for that first part of the narrative.
And yes, one answer to this is 'split up your story into arcs and use a series to connect them together'... but that functionality already exists. Authors are presumably aware of the ability to serialize works and prefer to do it this way, whether it's because of how they compose or conceptualize their work, how the Archive provides affordances for these larger works, or simply because larger works are attractive to a reader or author.
With the level of creative freedom the Archive is in favor of, I don't believe there's a way to control authors and force them to split their work up like that, so we use the best alternative available: metadata.
In this case, I think metadata takes two forms.
First, tagging should allow more granularity and specificity: allow authors to tag not just for the work as a whole, but for individual chapters within the work as well. This allows more accurate representation of where concepts and themes occur within a story, and these chapter tags can be aggregated, letting you know 'hey, [character] is only in one out of twenty chapters, so it might not be the character-focused fic you were looking for.'
For compilations, this also lets the reader drill down and find the individual chapters that have the stories they're interested in.
It's also useful for the portions of the culture that use tags to inform and warn of content - knowing a work 'has noncon' is helpful for those who absolutely don't engage with noncon, but there are also people who take a more nuanced approach - knowing that noncon happens in only a few chapters, and it's these three chapters in specific? Clicking 'next chapter' and getting a note at the top that goes 'here are the tags the author has for this chapter' and getting to go 'hm, am I really up for reading about this right now?' There's value in that.
Second, either the site or the culture should think about how to present tags that aren't just about things within the work, but about the work itself - if something is a short story collection, authors should be encouraged to tag it that way.
posted by mikurski at 5:04 PM on February 27, 2021
« Older “For some, this might be old hat, and -for others-... | All happy online communities are alike . . . Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
posted by clew at 11:21 AM on February 26, 2021 [1 favorite]