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AO3 Tagging for Fake News + Pundit People
The tagging structure at the Archive Of Our Own is very cool in theory, and frustratingly opaque in practice. Especially in the RPF sections. As a wrangler for the fake news tags, I figured I'd post some information.
(Disclaimer: none of this is mandatory or set in stone, because that's not how the AO3 rolls. It's just a rundown of "how things are set up right now.")
If you're already down with the AO3 tag system, you can skip this section. It's included because there's been a lot of confusion around, even on things that I thought were pretty basic (although lots of things seem basic when you're on the inside).
There are four categories of tags we're interested in here: fandom, characters, relationships (including, but not limited to, pairings), and additional tags (for miscellaneous points of interest, like Alternate Universe - Superheroes and Kink - BDSM.)
The founding principle behind these tags is "you can include whateverthehell tags you want, and our crack team of volunteers will work behind the scenes to link them up in meaningful ways." For instance, you can tag one fic with the relationship Jon/"Stephen" and another with "Stephen"/Jon, and the tag wranglers will put them together (syn them -- short for "synchronize") so that clicking on either tag will turn up both fics. This involves making one tag canonical, or the "main" one that the archive recognizes, and then synning the other to it.
Standard format for canonical relationship tags is Full Name/Full Name, alphabetical by surname. (For a non-pairing relationship, Full Name & Full Name.) The canonical tag here is "Stephen Colbert"/Jon Stewart. Tags synned to it include Jon Stewart/ Stephen Colbert FPS and Jon Stewart/"Stephen" Colbert.
(Currently the number of J/"S" fics looks very small. That's because most people tag them as something without any quotation marks, which then gets synned to the Stephen Colbert/Jon Stewart tag.)
Sometimes the tags people use are too vague to sort out. For instance, if someone tags a fic with the character name Stephen, a human reader can probably figure out which Stephen it is -- but the tagging system can't tell. That's where meta tags come in. Stephen is a meta tag for a bunch of other characters, including Stephen Colbert, Stephen Maturin, Stephen Fry, and Stephen Strange. If you search the metatag you'll get all of them. But if you search the sub tags individually, Stephen Colbert won't get fics tagged with Stephen Fry.
Standard format for character tags is Full Name, to avoid just this sort of issue. If a character has no last name, or a really common full name, the character tag may include some canon title -- e.g. Bobby the Stage Manager. Or it may take the format of Name (Fandom) -- e.g. Charlene (Colbert Report).
Typos and other mistakes must be synned as best as the wranglers can figure out. A character tag Jon Stweart would be synned to Jon Stewart, no harm done. A character tag Jon Stewart; Stephen Colbert (where the tagger meant to put in two tags, but typed a semicolon for a comma) can't be synned to anything. And it's against wrangling policy to let authors know when this has happened.
One more note: Even though miscellaneous tags are miscellaneous, some things have been standardized. For instance, the canonical AU tags are all formatted as Alternate Universe - Whatever. So wifeless AU is synned to Alternate Universe - No Spouses.
If any part of this is unclear, or I've left anything out, or you're just curious what the current standard tag is for something, please ask! There's talk of making the tag information pages available to all users, not just wranglers. Until that happens, I'm happy to look things up.
I didn't mention formatting for series tags because that's the whole next section...
Standard format for series tags is all over the place, depending on the format, the related fandoms, whether it's an adaptation, whether there are other fandoms with the same name...and more. This is even harder with RPF, where fandoms spring up around messy and inconsistent groupings.
When it comes to fake news and punditry, lots of writers have put multiple tags on their fics trying to cover them all. It's taken a lot of wrangling (much of it done before I got there, thankfully) to arrange the bird's nest of possibilities into a structure that makes sense, using a combination of synning and meta tags.
Currently every fandom tag is grouped under two over-arching meta tags: Pundit RPF and Fake News. Everything specifically RPF-related is connected to the Pundit RPF tag, while everything specifically TDS/TCR-related is connected to the Fake News tag. (Everything that includes both is connected to Fake News RPF, which is a a sub tag of both of the larger ones.)
Let's see if I can break both of those down. Meta tags are in bold, noncanonical tags are in italics next to the canonical tag they're synned to:
META TAG I: Pundit RPF (Real News RPF, RPF - Punditslash, Punditslash, Fakenews/Pundits RPF)
Sub tag 1: Fake News RPF (Daily Show RPF, Daily Show RPF, The Daily Show (RPF), The Daily Show RPF, The Daily Show (RPS), RPF - Fake News, RPF - The Daily Show, The Daily Show RPS)
Sub tag of that sub tag: Colbert Report RPF (The Colbert Report RPF, The Colbert Report RPS)
Sub tag 2: Pundit RPF (US) (RPF: Punditslash, Anderson Cooper 360, TV News RPF, RPF - Pundits, +punditdom, Punditry, The Rachel Maddow Show RPF, Anderson Cooper 360 RPF, MSNBC RPF, Rachel Maddow Show RPF, Countdown with Keith Olbermann RPF, NBC Night News RPF)
Sub tag 3: Today Show RPF
META TAG II: Fake News (The Daily Show, Fakenews, The Colbert Report, Colbert Report, The Colbert, The Daily Show/The Colbert Report)
Sub tag 1: Fake News RPF (Daily Show RPF, Daily Show RPF, The Daily Show (RPF), The Daily Show RPF, The Daily Show (RPS), RPF - Fake News, RPF - The Daily Show, The Daily Show RPS)
Sub tag of that sub tag: Colbert Report RPF (The Colbert Report RPF, The Colbert Report RPS)
Sub tag 2: Fake News FPF
Sub tag of that sub tag: Colbert Report FPF (The Colbert Report FPF - Fandom)
Sheer elegance in its simplicity.
(A brief explication of the TCR setup: Colbert Report RPF is a sub tag of both Colbert Report [itself synned to Fake News], and of Fake News RPF. If you browse Fake News, you will get everything Colbert Report. If you browse Pundit RPF, you will get Colbert Report RPF, but not Colbert Report FPF or unspecified Colbert Report.)
Okay, let's work through an example. Say you've got a fic that hooks up Rachel, Jon, and Anderson. (Perhaps you have published it in a reputable newspaper, even...but I digress.) The canonical relationship tag (full names, alphabetical order) would be Anderson Cooper/Rachel Maddow/Jon Stewart.
If you want to use as many specific series tags as possible, you could tag that with Anderson Cooper 360, Rachel Maddow Show RPF, and The Daily Show RPF. However, the first two are both synned to the same canonical tag, Pundit RPF (US), meaning a search for either will automatically turn up fics for the other anyway.
If you just want a single series tag that covers everyone, go with the meta tag Pundit RPF. In that case, though, it won't show up in more specific searches: someone trying to browse the Anderson Cooper 360 tag will get everything on the Pundit RPF (US) tag, but not things only tagged with Pundit RPF.
The series tags I would use here are Fake News RPF and Pundit RPF (US). Broad enough to be canonical; narrow enough that they'll still show up in more targeted searches.
Personally, I would avoid the two top-level meta tags altogether, and use whatever is appropriate from the next level of series tags. (For instance: Stephen/Keith gets the same treatment as the previous example. Sam/Charlene gets Fake News RPF and Fake News FPF. Jon/"Stephen"/BriWi gets all three.) Except perhaps to use Fake News when it's ambiguous (say, correspondent pairings, when they're possibly in the in-character 'verse but not definitely).
That's an individual preference, of course, not a mandate -- I hope this doesn't come off as pressuring people to tag things exactly like I would! The only thing I want to push on y'all is understanding, so that, when forming your own preferences, they will be well-informed.
...I'm still not entirely convinced the chart above was clear, so if you're unsure exactly where your fic will show up if you use a certain tag, please ask. Again, I'd be glad to shine some light on what the AO3's current setup is actually doing.
Once more with feeling: all of this is totally optional. These are actions I think would make this fandom's spaces more browseable, and/or that I would find helpful as a wrangler.
(+) Character tags: full names. Relationship tags: full names, in alphabetical order. Series tags: when possible, use ones that are already canonical.
(+) If you have a fic tagged Stephen Colbert (as a character, or in a relationship) that features character!Stephen, change the tag. Making it clear through other tags (e.g. the fandom tag Colbert Report FPF or the miscellaneous tag hey guys this is character!Stephen) will make things clear to readers who have already found the fic, but won't help it show up for anyone who's looking.
(+) Miscellaneous tags: full of wonderful potential. Use them for panfandom tropes (e.g. Kink - Wings), for fandom-specific points of interest (say, if ThreatDown fics ever become a thing), for anything you think might be worth searching out in a story (I'm trying to make femslash idfic happen). Writers in this fandom have so far avoided Tumblr-style ~expressive~ tags, which is fantastic. Keep it up.
(+) Proofread! It doesn't seem like much, but typos can creep into tags like anything else, except that here they run the risk of screwing up readers' ability to find your fic.
(+) Curious about anything at all going on behind the scenes with the tag structure? I am at your disposal. Even if it's not fake-news-related, I can still look stuff up.
...and that just might be everything! (For now. /dramaticsquirrel.gif)
Now, seriously, ask me things. I'm dying to share, here.
(Disclaimer: none of this is mandatory or set in stone, because that's not how the AO3 rolls. It's just a rundown of "how things are set up right now.")
How Tagging Even Works Anyway
If you're already down with the AO3 tag system, you can skip this section. It's included because there's been a lot of confusion around, even on things that I thought were pretty basic (although lots of things seem basic when you're on the inside).
There are four categories of tags we're interested in here: fandom, characters, relationships (including, but not limited to, pairings), and additional tags (for miscellaneous points of interest, like Alternate Universe - Superheroes and Kink - BDSM.)
The founding principle behind these tags is "you can include whateverthehell tags you want, and our crack team of volunteers will work behind the scenes to link them up in meaningful ways." For instance, you can tag one fic with the relationship Jon/"Stephen" and another with "Stephen"/Jon, and the tag wranglers will put them together (syn them -- short for "synchronize") so that clicking on either tag will turn up both fics. This involves making one tag canonical, or the "main" one that the archive recognizes, and then synning the other to it.
Standard format for canonical relationship tags is Full Name/Full Name, alphabetical by surname. (For a non-pairing relationship, Full Name & Full Name.) The canonical tag here is "Stephen Colbert"/Jon Stewart. Tags synned to it include Jon Stewart/ Stephen Colbert FPS and Jon Stewart/"Stephen" Colbert.
(Currently the number of J/"S" fics looks very small. That's because most people tag them as something without any quotation marks, which then gets synned to the Stephen Colbert/Jon Stewart tag.)
Sometimes the tags people use are too vague to sort out. For instance, if someone tags a fic with the character name Stephen, a human reader can probably figure out which Stephen it is -- but the tagging system can't tell. That's where meta tags come in. Stephen is a meta tag for a bunch of other characters, including Stephen Colbert, Stephen Maturin, Stephen Fry, and Stephen Strange. If you search the metatag you'll get all of them. But if you search the sub tags individually, Stephen Colbert won't get fics tagged with Stephen Fry.
Standard format for character tags is Full Name, to avoid just this sort of issue. If a character has no last name, or a really common full name, the character tag may include some canon title -- e.g. Bobby the Stage Manager. Or it may take the format of Name (Fandom) -- e.g. Charlene (Colbert Report).
Typos and other mistakes must be synned as best as the wranglers can figure out. A character tag Jon Stweart would be synned to Jon Stewart, no harm done. A character tag Jon Stewart; Stephen Colbert (where the tagger meant to put in two tags, but typed a semicolon for a comma) can't be synned to anything. And it's against wrangling policy to let authors know when this has happened.
One more note: Even though miscellaneous tags are miscellaneous, some things have been standardized. For instance, the canonical AU tags are all formatted as Alternate Universe - Whatever. So wifeless AU is synned to Alternate Universe - No Spouses.
If any part of this is unclear, or I've left anything out, or you're just curious what the current standard tag is for something, please ask! There's talk of making the tag information pages available to all users, not just wranglers. Until that happens, I'm happy to look things up.
I didn't mention formatting for series tags because that's the whole next section...
When A Fandom Meets A Fandom Coming Through The Rye...
Standard format for series tags is all over the place, depending on the format, the related fandoms, whether it's an adaptation, whether there are other fandoms with the same name...and more. This is even harder with RPF, where fandoms spring up around messy and inconsistent groupings.
When it comes to fake news and punditry, lots of writers have put multiple tags on their fics trying to cover them all. It's taken a lot of wrangling (much of it done before I got there, thankfully) to arrange the bird's nest of possibilities into a structure that makes sense, using a combination of synning and meta tags.
Currently every fandom tag is grouped under two over-arching meta tags: Pundit RPF and Fake News. Everything specifically RPF-related is connected to the Pundit RPF tag, while everything specifically TDS/TCR-related is connected to the Fake News tag. (Everything that includes both is connected to Fake News RPF, which is a a sub tag of both of the larger ones.)
Let's see if I can break both of those down. Meta tags are in bold, noncanonical tags are in italics next to the canonical tag they're synned to:
META TAG I: Pundit RPF (Real News RPF, RPF - Punditslash, Punditslash, Fakenews/Pundits RPF)
Sub tag 1: Fake News RPF (Daily Show RPF, Daily Show RPF, The Daily Show (RPF), The Daily Show RPF, The Daily Show (RPS), RPF - Fake News, RPF - The Daily Show, The Daily Show RPS)
Sub tag of that sub tag: Colbert Report RPF (The Colbert Report RPF, The Colbert Report RPS)
Sub tag 2: Pundit RPF (US) (RPF: Punditslash, Anderson Cooper 360, TV News RPF, RPF - Pundits, +punditdom, Punditry, The Rachel Maddow Show RPF, Anderson Cooper 360 RPF, MSNBC RPF, Rachel Maddow Show RPF, Countdown with Keith Olbermann RPF, NBC Night News RPF)
Sub tag 3: Today Show RPF
META TAG II: Fake News (The Daily Show, Fakenews, The Colbert Report, Colbert Report, The Colbert, The Daily Show/The Colbert Report)
Sub tag 1: Fake News RPF (Daily Show RPF, Daily Show RPF, The Daily Show (RPF), The Daily Show RPF, The Daily Show (RPS), RPF - Fake News, RPF - The Daily Show, The Daily Show RPS)
Sub tag of that sub tag: Colbert Report RPF (The Colbert Report RPF, The Colbert Report RPS)
Sub tag 2: Fake News FPF
Sub tag of that sub tag: Colbert Report FPF (The Colbert Report FPF - Fandom)
Sheer elegance in its simplicity.
(A brief explication of the TCR setup: Colbert Report RPF is a sub tag of both Colbert Report [itself synned to Fake News], and of Fake News RPF. If you browse Fake News, you will get everything Colbert Report. If you browse Pundit RPF, you will get Colbert Report RPF, but not Colbert Report FPF or unspecified Colbert Report.)
Okay, let's work through an example. Say you've got a fic that hooks up Rachel, Jon, and Anderson. (Perhaps you have published it in a reputable newspaper, even...but I digress.) The canonical relationship tag (full names, alphabetical order) would be Anderson Cooper/Rachel Maddow/Jon Stewart.
If you want to use as many specific series tags as possible, you could tag that with Anderson Cooper 360, Rachel Maddow Show RPF, and The Daily Show RPF. However, the first two are both synned to the same canonical tag, Pundit RPF (US), meaning a search for either will automatically turn up fics for the other anyway.
If you just want a single series tag that covers everyone, go with the meta tag Pundit RPF. In that case, though, it won't show up in more specific searches: someone trying to browse the Anderson Cooper 360 tag will get everything on the Pundit RPF (US) tag, but not things only tagged with Pundit RPF.
The series tags I would use here are Fake News RPF and Pundit RPF (US). Broad enough to be canonical; narrow enough that they'll still show up in more targeted searches.
Personally, I would avoid the two top-level meta tags altogether, and use whatever is appropriate from the next level of series tags. (For instance: Stephen/Keith gets the same treatment as the previous example. Sam/Charlene gets Fake News RPF and Fake News FPF. Jon/"Stephen"/BriWi gets all three.) Except perhaps to use Fake News when it's ambiguous (say, correspondent pairings, when they're possibly in the in-character 'verse but not definitely).
That's an individual preference, of course, not a mandate -- I hope this doesn't come off as pressuring people to tag things exactly like I would! The only thing I want to push on y'all is understanding, so that, when forming your own preferences, they will be well-informed.
...I'm still not entirely convinced the chart above was clear, so if you're unsure exactly where your fic will show up if you use a certain tag, please ask. Again, I'd be glad to shine some light on what the AO3's current setup is actually doing.
Tagging To Make The Fandom More Manageable
Once more with feeling: all of this is totally optional. These are actions I think would make this fandom's spaces more browseable, and/or that I would find helpful as a wrangler.
(+) Character tags: full names. Relationship tags: full names, in alphabetical order. Series tags: when possible, use ones that are already canonical.
(+) If you have a fic tagged Stephen Colbert (as a character, or in a relationship) that features character!Stephen, change the tag. Making it clear through other tags (e.g. the fandom tag Colbert Report FPF or the miscellaneous tag hey guys this is character!Stephen) will make things clear to readers who have already found the fic, but won't help it show up for anyone who's looking.
(+) Miscellaneous tags: full of wonderful potential. Use them for panfandom tropes (e.g. Kink - Wings), for fandom-specific points of interest (say, if ThreatDown fics ever become a thing), for anything you think might be worth searching out in a story (I'm trying to make femslash idfic happen). Writers in this fandom have so far avoided Tumblr-style ~expressive~ tags, which is fantastic. Keep it up.
(+) Proofread! It doesn't seem like much, but typos can creep into tags like anything else, except that here they run the risk of screwing up readers' ability to find your fic.
(+) Curious about anything at all going on behind the scenes with the tag structure? I am at your disposal. Even if it's not fake-news-related, I can still look stuff up.
...and that just might be everything! (For now. /dramaticsquirrel.gif)