i love the idea of tags "passing peer review" when they get appended to a post by a later reblog, but i'm also spiraling thinking about what actual tag peer-review would look like
come with me on this terrible journey
you see a funny post, let's say it's a picture of a bird in a silly pose. you append the tags: "#me when i smoke weed" and hit post
the post is sent to tumblr's Managing Editor for Bird Posts, who is probably an expert in bird posting. the editor reviews your tags to see if they are sufficiently related to Bird Posts to be included on this bird post. if not, your tags are rejected and you will have to apply them to some other post. let's say for the sake of this spiral that the Managing Editor for Bird Posts thinks your tags are funny and a good fit for the Bird Posts community
the Managing Editor for Bird Posts DMs a few other people in the bird posting community to ask them to review your tags. most of them say 'no, i don't have the time, ask somebody else' because they are busy making bird posts. after a month, your tags land in the lap of two or three people (let's say you get two) who have both the time and the inclination to review your post. they are probably grad students. the Managing Editor for Bird Posts says, "you have two weeks to review this post."
the bird posters - your actual peers - review your tags. one of them thinks, "that's pretty funny." they tell the Managing Editor for Bird Posts that your tags should be accepted as-is. the other reviewer - it's always Reviewer #2 - looks at your tags and raises an eyebrow. they have never smoked weed, so they do some research. how do people who have smoked a weed act? do they make a silly pose? how do they talk about smoking weed? this is taking a long time, so they ask for an extension on the review, which the Managing Editor grants. after a month, they send a response back to the Managing Editor for Bird Posts saying, "these tags could be a valuable contribution to the Bird Posting community, however based on a long list of publications which I will include in the references, the authors should reframe the tags into the passive voice and utilize more precise weed-smoking terminology for better cross-disciplinary reach. I recommend to accept these tags with major revisions."
The Managing Editor for Bird Posts looks at these reviews, compiles them, and sends them back to you anonymized. You are given two weeks to incorporate the changes to your tags and resubmit.
You really want to post your funny weed joke, so you do some additional research into proper weed-smoking terminology. You modify your tags to say, "#me when i'm zooted out of my gourd". You write a six-page document explaining exactly how you responded to every one of Reviewer #2's criticisms, being extremely deferential and showing much gratitude for their pointing out all your mistakes. It takes you way more than two weeks to do this, so you have to message the Managing Editor for Bird Posts and humbly ask for an extension. Finally, you resubmit your new, funnier tags and your Response to Reviewers to the editor.
The editor again skims the documents before passing them along to the original reviewers to re-review. Reviewer #1, who had no problems with your original tags, raises their eyebrows at how persnickety Reviewer #2 was being, then once again recommend your tags be posted as-is. Reviewer #2 reads both your response and your new tags in detail. They are mostly mollified. They send back a response to the editor saying, "The new tags are much improved. I have one small additional edit, which is to remove the apostrophe in "i'm" for greater relatability. Otherwise, I recommend acceptance." The Managing Editor for Bird Posts again passes these reviews on to you.
You remove the apostrophe and resubmit a third time. The Managing Editor for Bird Posts accepts your tags. They are then sent off to the proofreading and typesetting department of tumblr, who somehow manage to find something wrong with every single word you've written. You accept all their changes because you're very tired.
Four months after you wrote your tags on the funny bird post, your reblog is posted with the funnier tags that Reviewer #2 pushed you to draft, "#me when im zooted out of my gourd."
Your funny post receives 30 likes and 5 reblogs and then sinks into obscurity forever.
gummygunk
areudirty
dailybridgerton
jacobvanloon
stormborns
izzy806
pixelskylines
germansingergirl
