hello! so awhile back i saw all your very helpful posts about tagging (e.g. x, x, x) and how the system works in regards to wrangling; since then i've been much more relaxed about how i tag, confident that (sooner or later) any tags i've taken 'creative liberties' with will ultimately be wrangled appropriately (i.e. searchable).
but! today i noticed that a fic i posted last year wasn't showing up under the "identity porn" tag for that ship, despite having tagged it "identity porn (emphasis on the 'porn')". i thought that it was okay to include that parenthetical at the end of the canonized "identity porn" tag, since it would ultimately get wrangled appropriately, and become searchable for those seeking "identity porn" -- but alas! apparently that never happened...
so i started checking similar tags i'd gotten playful with, including one on that same fic (posted september of last year, so ostensibly enough time has passed for it to have been wrangled by now?), where i'd added "[would-be]" as a bracketed qualifier before the canonical "consensual non-consent" tag. yet once again, when i perform a search for that tag under that ship, my fic isn't listed :(
it seems that wrangling doesn't work quite like i was led to believe, based on those posts. has something changed lately? or is there some other explanation as to why this is happening? i'm currently going through all my 'creative' tags and checking to see if they show up where i'd expect them to, and the results are discouraging. i guess i might have to re-tag a bunch of stuff, if i want my fics to be searchable under certain canonized tags (?) -- thanks for any input you can provide š
I suspect the issue might be that your tongue-in-cheek parentheticals are actually adding a second meaning to the tag or otherwise changing it to mean something other than the canonical meaning.
For example, identity porn is about secret identities and how complicated that can be for the people who have them (and the people who know them).
By adding (emphasis on the porn) to that tag you added a second meaning, one related to sex. If you separate them into identity porn and (emphasis on the porn) the the first tag will direct to that canonical and the second will either go unwrangled or will redirect to Sexual Content or another sex-related tag.
In order for a tag to be wrangled (attached to a canonical so that it can be sorted and filtered for), it needs to be a clear match for that canonical. if you're finding things that aren't wrangled, I'd recommend separating your single tag into two (or more, as needed) so that you can have the fun you want without removing the sort and filter ability.
Wranglers? Have I got that right? Please correct me if not!