Wrangle Tangle

(Glossary)

So we've talked about how the database works and what powers wranglers have. Now let's talk process.

There are a lot of standards for wrangling, most of which are explained in the tagging guidelines. However, those are just the formats for tags themselves. Like all wizards, wranglers also have a structure in which they work.

Everything is organized at the fandom level. Wranglers claim fandoms they're familiar with and take responsibility for organizing them. One wrangler may work with dozens of fandoms, or they may handle just a few. Some wranglers only take on one enormous fandom, or only wrangle the mass bins.

Ah, the mass bins. Like raw magic, tags come pouring in daily. When they do, they appear in the mass bins first. Each type of tag has its own bin, so there are five total: fandoms, relationships, characters, freeforms, and bookmark-only tags. Tags sit in the mass bins until they're assigned to a fandom.

However! Wrangler x-ray vision allows a wrangler to see if there are tags in the bins that are attached to works in that wrangler's fandoms. So if you posted a work with the Clover in the fandom box, I can see if you added any new character, relationship, or freeform tags that aren't already on the archive because I wrangle Clover (at least at the moment).

Wranglers trade fandoms around whenever they feel like it. They also share fandoms when a fandom gets more than about 1000 works. Extremely large or fast-growing fandoms may have 3 or 4 wranglers (or even more in rare cases).

What about tags that don't belong to just one fandom, like Alternate Universe or Jenny? Those go in "No Fandom", which is set up just like a real fandom, just... not.

What about tags attached to original works, like named original characters or made up places or groups that don't come from a pre-existing canon? Those go in another fandom called "Original Work", which, again, acts just like a real fandom but isn't. (By the way, if you're creating an original work, you can use "Original Work" as the fandom.)

Last post in the series coming up: how does all this make Frigga a BAMF?

Freeform of the day: Did Our Duty For Archive And Fandom

(Glossary)

Wrangling has a lot in common with magic: it's confusing from the outside, it has a lot of rules, and you really need to learn it from other wranglers, not just from reading. On the plus side, wranglers rarely violate the laws of nature or cause a backlash that turns someone into a toad.

Rarely.

Anyway, welcome to Wrangling Wizardry. Allow me to walk you through a spell....

First, wrangling works with a database. As far as the database is concerned, all copies of the same tag are exactly the same object, regardless of capitalization. "Feels" and "feels" are the same tag. Also, if there are 140 uses of "Feels", they're all treated as one object. Any changes I make to the database will affect all copies of the tag.

In other words, if I cast a spell on one frog-princess, it affects all frog-princesses, because as far as AO3 is concerned, all frog-princesses are the same. A toad-princess, on the other hand, won't be affected.

Second, the goal of wrangling is not to make everything tidy. It's to make tags as useful as possible for people searching. Untidiness – ambiguous tags, tags in the wrong categories, tags that are inherently unique and will never be used by anyone else – these are all part of the way open-ended tagging works. They're features, not bugs.

Third, tags are wrangled on a fandom-by-fandom basis. Wranglers familiar with a fandom will assign it to themselves and organize the tags in it. If the fandom is very large or very active (usually over 1000 works), the wrangler may ask for co-wranglers to help them.

Next up, the magic powers of a wrangler...

Freeforms of the day: Frogs.