supergreak:sumeriasmith:erindizmo:nightingaletherobber:loud sighinglook kiddos: due to tumblr’s half
supergreak:sumeriasmith:erindizmo:nightingaletherobber:loud sighinglook kiddos: due to tumblr’s half-baked tagging system (where only so many tags count towards actually categorizing a given post), tags on this site have evolved into an acceptable form of dispensing and sharing commentary, but that is not the case on other websites — ESPECIALLY AO3. tags on AO3 are intended to be functional, not conversational, and not only do excessive paragraphs of tags like these look patently ridiculous and sell your work short, they also make life harder for the site’s tag wranglers who volunteer their time to keep the tags organized so people can actually find your fic.in short, knock it off.*raises hand* Tag wrangler here.To be honest, and this isn’t entirely universal (wranglers’ mileage may vary as much as anyone’s), but just saying, I really don’t mind those tags in the least. It takes a couple seconds to shuttle the tags we can’t do anything with off to where we don’t have to deal with them. Especially now that we can move tags in bulk. Definitely not nearly as much time as it takes to handle the tags that can be made canonical or synned to something that is.Really, the tags that make me hit my head on the wall are when people tag things in the wrong category (like putting characters or pairings in the fandom slot). Chatty freeforms are just like… eh. (And I have admittedly used a few of them myself.)Really, it’s just a matter of aesthetics, and everyone draws the line in a different place. I personally don’t mind a handful of them, but start to roll my eyes when they approach a paragraph, but don’t otherwise do much but scroll on.Yes, the chatty ones don’t assist in finding your fic via the filters, so it’s a good idea to at least have a few that can help in that case, but they do provide metadata in another way. I have occasionally decided to read fics because of quirky freeform tags when I wouldn’t necessarily have before. On the other hand, sometimes, as mentioned, they’ll let me know that I might prefer to not read this particular fic. So really, even the conversational tags have their function. ;) It’s up to the individual creator of the work to decide if they want that function to be taking place.I would have to agree with all of that. Honestly, on a time-per-tag basis, unusual pairing smushnames and the like probably are the most time consuming to wrangle. Chatty freeforms that clearly have no distinct meaning and thus will never be synned take almost no time to deal with, for me.tl;dr: chatty freeforms aren’t really useful for searching, but they’re not really harmful either. opinions on the aesthetics of them may vary wildly.I’d rather have a thousand chatty freeforms than a vague smushname or things stuck in the wrong box. -- source link