The Situation again, I'm afraid

[regshoe]

I have submitted the following request to AO3 Support:

I’d like to request a change to the fandom tag ‘David Balfour Series - Robert Louis Stevenson’, which describes Stevenson’s books Kidnapped and Catriona.

Kidnapped is much more widely known than Catriona, its sequel. The books were not originally, and aren’t generally, published under the title ‘David Balfour Series’; that title doesn’t appear anywhere on most copies of Kidnapped, and most fans of Kidnapped will be unaware of it and won’t think to go looking for fanworks under this tag. As a creator for this fandom I’m concerned that this will make it harder for people to find my works!

As the fandom is almost entirely focussed on Kidnapped alone (17 out of 18 existing fanworks are tagged ‘Kidnapped - Robert Louis Stevenson’ or similar, one with ‘David Balfour Series - Robert Louis Stevenson’, and none with any version of Catriona), would you consider changing the canonical tag back to ‘Kidnapped - Robert Louis Stevenson’, as it was until recently? If this is not possible, would you consider changing it to ‘Kidnapped | David Balfour Series - Robert Louis Stevenson’, so that the more widely-recognised title that fans are likely to search for is present in the canonical tag, and so that it’s alphabetised under that more well-known title?

Many thanks,
Regshoe

If anyone else would like to send them a similar request, I'd appreciate it; I suppose getting multiple requests about the same issue might incrementally increase our chances of being listened to. I feel rather glum about writing it out so nicely and logically—goodness knows it was a lengthy, carefully-thought-out argument that the wranglers managed to reduce to 'so you asked for the tags to be piped, and definitely didn't explicitly ask for any hypothetical, non-ideal compromise-solution piping to be done in the more useful order' in the case of FotH—but I don't really know what else I can do.

Some relevant information that's recently come to light: In my opinion what FotH really ought to have is a metatag for 'The Jacobite Trilogy', with canonical tags for Flight of the Heron and the other two books made subtags of it. It appears that one reason this hasn't been done is because there is currently a policy of not creating new fandom metatags, even in cases far more unarguable than this one (for obscure reasons that may have something to do with server load, or maybe not?). In that case, and assuming that simply having a single 'Flight of the Heron' canonical is not an option (that would be the next best thing, IMO, but it seems they're not likely to accept it), the best we can hope for is probably to get the piped titles put the other way round, so that at least it's alphabetised under F—and I can't bring myself to request that as though it were what I want. So I'm not doing anything more about FotH for now. I don't know.

And if by any strange chance the wranglers for Flight of the Heron and/or Kidnapped are actually reading this and are willing to listen to me as a fellow fan—look. I don't bear you any personal ill will; I know these sorts of categorising decisions are complicated, there are good arguments on all sides in the general case and sometimes rules have to be applied in particular ways in order to maintain consistency. But—aside from the arguments that it misrepresents the actually existing fandoms and prevents creators from having our works categorised accurately, which I realise are points of opinion that you may not agree with—this is making it harder for new fans to find our fandoms, and our works thus less accessible. I really do appreciate the work you lot do volunteering for AO3, and I'm sure you agree that that's not what AO3 is supposed to be about!

Right, that's all! I don't actually want this stuff to be my main mission in fandom (obviously my main mission in fandom should be tracking down and photographing every house D. K. Broster ever lived in, a far more worthy endeavour about which I hope to have some more updates for you in due course), and I've got some fun nerdy stuff about Flight of the Heron to post right now to take the taste out of my mouth—wait a minute...

Comments

[feroxargentea]

*crossing fingers*

(This whole argument is taking me back 25-30 years or so to the days of Usenet, long before AO3 was born or thought of, when I had to try and persuade the blokes who controlled the addition of new UK newsgroups that it would be a good idea to do what suited the *users* instead of the taxonomists who weren't actually using the result. I think, to be honest, they were so surprised to see a girl that they just went blank and let me have the group I wanted where I wanted it. But that won't work with AO3!)

[regshoe]

Thank you!

Huh, well, I'm glad you got your group there :D One would think that a website called the Archive of Our Own would be more in favour of doing things in a way that works for actual users, and yet.

[hyarrowen]

Thank-you for trying. I've had so little luck, ie no response *at all* with my two attempts for FotH that I've simply given up, I fear. Maybe if the Kidnapped fans join in as well..?

[regshoe]

♥

We can but hope! It sounds like they have a pretty awful backlog of support requests, and I do think it's that rather than any malice that leads to these things just being ignored.

[luzula]

Well done! <3 I hope they listen...

[regshoe]

Thank you <3