Rule of 3
(If you haven't read the Introduction, please do that first. If you don't understand a term in this post, check out the Glossary.)
Tags on AO3 can be divided in several ways. One way is to sort them into tags that are canonized after one use vs. tags that follow the Rule of 3.
These tags can be canonized after one use, whether that's on a work or a bookmark:
- Canonical characters
- Most fandoms
- Relationships that include at least one canonical character
- Freeforms based on specific parts of a canon (episodes, specific movies, books in a series, arcs in a manga, etc.)
- Freeforms that refer to challenges, communities, tumblrs, etc.
Pretty much everything else, including fanon characters and most freeforms, follow the Rule of 3: they need to be used by 3 separate creators on works, not bookmarks, before they're canonized. Variations count, so if there are lots of versions of a tag, there's a good chance it's ready to be canonized.
Why this rule? Canonizing every tag that comes in isn't efficient. A canonical tag, especially one with synonyms and subtags, takes up slightly more system resources than an unfilterable tag. Canonical tags also show up in the drop-down menus, which can fill up and become hard to navigate. So when it comes to tags we're not sure will be popular, we wait until they are.
The exceptions are tags that are expected to be commonly used and already have very standardized formats (as in, we don't need to wait for users to choose a preferred format because we have clear guidelines for those).
(All this talk of 3s reminded me that I should mention something about doing a tag search for numbers: don't bother. The search engine currently pulls all tags with the number in the text... or in the use count. So searching for "3" will get you all the tags with 3 uses, vastly overwhelming the tags that actually include the number 3.)
Freeforms of the day: Rule 63 and Rule 34 ^_^
Originally posted to Dreamwidth. Current replies:
Tags on AO3 can be divided in several ways. One way is to sort them into tags that are canonized after one use vs. tags that follow the Rule of 3.
These tags can be canonized after one use, whether that's on a work or a bookmark:
- Canonical characters
- Most fandoms
- Relationships that include at least one canonical character
- Freeforms based on specific parts of a canon (episodes, specific movies, books in a series, arcs in a manga, etc.)
- Freeforms that refer to challenges, communities, tumblrs, etc.
Pretty much everything else, including fanon characters and most freeforms, follow the Rule of 3: they need to be used by 3 separate creators on works, not bookmarks, before they're canonized. Variations count, so if there are lots of versions of a tag, there's a good chance it's ready to be canonized.
Why this rule? Canonizing every tag that comes in isn't efficient. A canonical tag, especially one with synonyms and subtags, takes up slightly more system resources than an unfilterable tag. Canonical tags also show up in the drop-down menus, which can fill up and become hard to navigate. So when it comes to tags we're not sure will be popular, we wait until they are.
The exceptions are tags that are expected to be commonly used and already have very standardized formats (as in, we don't need to wait for users to choose a preferred format because we have clear guidelines for those).
(All this talk of 3s reminded me that I should mention something about doing a tag search for numbers: don't bother. The search engine currently pulls all tags with the number in the text... or in the use count. So searching for "3" will get you all the tags with 3 uses, vastly overwhelming the tags that actually include the number 3.)
Freeforms of the day: Rule 63 and Rule 34 ^_^
Originally posted to Dreamwidth. Current replies: