Wrangle Tangle

(Glossary)

Are you the type of person who wants to make sure they get ALL THE WORKS, or would you rather make sure the only works you find are the ones you want, even if you miss a few?

AO3 accommodates both styles by using metatags.

If you prefer ALL THE WORKS, filter by (or click on) the highest level metatag possible. If you prefer to only see specific types of works, even if you'll miss some that might be interesting to you, filter by more specific subtags. You choose!

If you're browsing the filters right now and you see a specific tag, there's a possibility that that tag has more general metatags or more specific subtags. How to find out? You need to get to that tag's landing page.

Landing pages are accessed one of three ways:

1. Click on a tag. You'll be taken to the Works page for that tag. Now click on the tag's name at the top of the page (where it says "# works in TAG NAME"). You're there!

2. Use the tag search to find tags of interest. Click on the tag. You're there!

3. If you're pretty sure a tag exists but don't want to go searching for it, in the URL bar type http://archiveofourown.org/tags/TAG NAME, replacing TAG NAME with your tag. Press Enter. You're there!

(If your tag has a "/" in it, type "*s*" in place of the "/". For "&", type "*a*". For "?", type "*q*". For a period (full stop, you might call it), type "*d*".)

Having trouble getting to a landing page? Or any other questions about metatags?

Freeform of the day: Meta Poetry (the other kind of meta :D)

(Glossary)

If you want to make sure your work on AO3 is found by as many people as possible, you may actually want to tag as specifically as possible. Sound counter-intuitive? It's not - it's just the magic of metatags.

A metatag is like a grocery store. You can just put your milk on a random shelf somewhere, sure, but wouldn't you be more likely to sell it if you put it in the refrigerated section with the other milk? That's what a subtag does.

Not all potential subtags are canonical yet. That's like a product that's not on the shelf. But if the product is available (filterable), then it's on that shelf whether folks decide to visit every aisle or just the milk section. Either way, you get visitors! (Of course, you don't get visitors who were only hanging out in the produce section, but they weren't looking for milk anyway.)

Why not just put your milk anywhere in the store and let users figure it out from there? Well sure, you can do that. And some visitors do like to wander ALL THE AISLES and will find it. However, other visitors get cranky if they can't find what they want right away. These folks tend to have favorite sections (favorite subtags) that they visit regularly. Often, they won't even look at the rest of the store to see what else is there. This is why the store is organized into sections in the first place.

So if you're using a very broad category like 'Space', you might miss out on folks who just want 'Space Pirates', even if your work is all about how the characters go on the run from the law in their tiny bucket of bolts and end up joining a rag-tag crew of pirates living in an asteroid belt. (This exists, right?)

Similarly, if you just tag your work 'Jane', you'll miss many of the folks who only want Rizzoli & Isles's Jane Rizzoli, or Homestuck's Jane Crocker, or Dark is Rising's Jane Drew, or Marvel's Jane Foster (Marvel) (who has (Marvel) after her name because there's another Jane Foster in Sadler's Wells).

The good news? First, users who're interested in ALL THE WORKS can use the metatag to skim through everything, since Space Pirates do appear in the Space category, they just share it with Spaceships and Space Whales and everything else Space-like. Second, you can change tags after you post, if you find a tag that you like better. The "Edit Tags" button is my BFF.

Next up, how to find the metatag structure!

Tags of the day: Food, Space, and Jane.