Pet peeve about Fic and tags AO3

[askye]

I have a few but new one is people not using the tag Alternate Universe when they are writing an AU.

And Alternate Universe is a tag that can be excluded but only if people tag their fic that way.

I found stories that only mention that it's an AU in the author's notes --not the tags, not the description , etc.

Also if something is tagged "Coffehouse AU" then I have to exclude that tag and there are a lot of AU styles to have to exclude.

Which gets me torn about -why do people use so many tags on their fics, like it's tumblr or instagram tags and then also WHY aren't people using enough tags damnit!

Comments

[squidgiepdx]

SAME! I've been where you are! There are some fandoms that I just don't want to read AU in (Merlin being one of them). I remember starting one, thinking it was a "Immortal Merlin is working in an office" but no - Arthur and other characters were there. Just tag it! But then there are folks that will "get cutesy" with tags to be funny, and completely miss some.

As a side note, when I brought up my AO3 clone archive, I had 30+ legacy AU tags to deal with, and I struggled with what to do. Tags like "AU High School" and "AU Sentinel/Guide". In the end, I kept 5 of them as standalone (Sentinel/Guide, Magic, Were Animals, Fantasy, and Children) and then made the other 25+ subordinate children of the regular AU tag. It was a hard decision, because maybe you want to read that coffeeshop sometimes - and maybe you want to read a Sentinel/Guide fic, so they shouldn't be lumped together.

And now that I've revisited the tags again, I'm waffling all over again. :)

[askye]

even though I don't like over tagging I thnk having both an Alternate universe tag and a AU High school tag (or AU Coffee House) is helpful because they can be used to filter different ways.

It's the excessive things like tagging every character who is vaguely mentioned in the story or tags like "I don't even" or "maybe this will be ok" "I'm not sure" "where do I get this from?" is just.. ugh