Ah yes, my favorite character-related wrangling issue! (Incidentally, the same question comes up for characters with canonical multiple personalities, reincarnations, possession, or secret identities of any sort.)
It comes down to what tags users choose and how the fandom treats the characters. If all users tag with only "Anne", we'll generally leave it alone. If some users tag with "Anne" and some with "Beth", we might use a piped canonical, or we might subtag "Beth" to "Anne" (if Anne is the primary identity), or we might leave them separate if the fandom treats them that way. If at least one user tags with "Anne/Beth" or "Beth (Anne)" or anything else that indicates they're the same character, we'd generally turn that tag into a piped canonical "Anne | Beth", and subtag "Anne" and "Beth" to that, so users can search for them separately or together.
However, different fandoms have different rules. In Marvel, for example, we work very hard to avoid piping superhero names, which are traded around like baseball cards, and instead use street names almost exclusively. (An exception is Hulk who, as a separate personality, is subtagged to Bruce Banner.) On the other hand, Sailor Moon wranglers piped all of their Sailor Scout canonicals with "Street Name | Sailor Name" and synned both separate versions to those piped canonicals. This could be considered a spoiler in at least a few cases, but it saves them the hassle of wrangling two sets of names for most of the main characters.
As for spoilers in general, I don't think we try to avoid those in tags, since we really can't. Once tags exist on the archive, whether they're canonical or not, they can show up in searches and on works. You can, however, tag your own work with "Spoilers" in the freeforms to allow readers to exclude your work and avoid spoiling themselves.
Long story short: tag how you want to tag, and your fandom's wrangler will figure it out. If you don't like the way they handled it, or if you're worried about spoilers, you can drop a note to Support and ask them to pass it along. They like being helpful. ^_^
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2013-02-01 06:40 am (UTC)It comes down to what tags users choose and how the fandom treats the characters. If all users tag with only "Anne", we'll generally leave it alone. If some users tag with "Anne" and some with "Beth", we might use a piped canonical, or we might subtag "Beth" to "Anne" (if Anne is the primary identity), or we might leave them separate if the fandom treats them that way. If at least one user tags with "Anne/Beth" or "Beth (Anne)" or anything else that indicates they're the same character, we'd generally turn that tag into a piped canonical "Anne | Beth", and subtag "Anne" and "Beth" to that, so users can search for them separately or together.
However, different fandoms have different rules. In Marvel, for example, we work very hard to avoid piping superhero names, which are traded around like baseball cards, and instead use street names almost exclusively. (An exception is Hulk who, as a separate personality, is subtagged to Bruce Banner.) On the other hand, Sailor Moon wranglers piped all of their Sailor Scout canonicals with "Street Name | Sailor Name" and synned both separate versions to those piped canonicals. This could be considered a spoiler in at least a few cases, but it saves them the hassle of wrangling two sets of names for most of the main characters.
As for spoilers in general, I don't think we try to avoid those in tags, since we really can't. Once tags exist on the archive, whether they're canonical or not, they can show up in searches and on works. You can, however, tag your own work with "Spoilers" in the freeforms to allow readers to exclude your work and avoid spoiling themselves.
Long story short: tag how you want to tag, and your fandom's wrangler will figure it out. If you don't like the way they handled it, or if you're worried about spoilers, you can drop a note to Support and ask them to pass it along. They like being helpful. ^_^