Ao3's Filters Are Amazing, Here's How To Use Them Better
In my opinion, ao3 is by far the best website for fanfiction to date. As someone who's been actively participating in fandom spaces since they were 12 (longer if you count the years when I would only watch and read), I've been through my fair share of websites trying to find the best. Without a doubt, ao3's filter system is what makes it the cream of the crop. In ye old fandom days, there was no telling what you'd run into which gave rise to specific terminology that'd go in fic titles. Think lemons. Even then there was always the chance you'd get hit with a surprise. If you think untagged character death is bad, then I need you to understand, there is nothing that will prepare you for the sudden whiplash that comes from reading something soft and fluffy that hard veers into the most violent and raunchy piece of work you've ever set your eyes on.
Fanfiction.net, Wattpad, if you were a special breed you might have used Quotev of DeviantArt. There's a reason a lot of older fans lord ao3 as the king saviors, and that's the tagging system. The problem is, especially for a lot of younger fans, learning how to use that tagging system. So for newbies and old hats alike, consider this a comprehensive guide to hunting for fics on ao3 without accidentally slamming face first into a tag you want nothing to do with!
The Basics Of Tags
While just about everyone has seen the search by works function of ao3, there's actually other search functions ao3 provides if you scroll up to the search tab.
Ao3's most popular search function is obviously works, but bookmarks and people also exist. The most useful to explanation and what we'll be talking about today is the tags.
Going to the tag search function tells us a lot about how tags work on ao3 and how we as users can best utilize them to find what we want. On ao3, there are four major "types" of tags. These are fandom, character, relationship, and freeform. The first three are rather straight forward, and most people know how to use them, however freeform is usually where people struggle. Freeform tags can include anything from specific aus like soulmates to more specific tags like "Winged Character" or "Dragon Hybrid Character".
Tags themselves fall into two major classifications, canonical and non-canonical. Canonical tags are tags popular enough to be actively recognized by the website. The tag "Dragon TommyInnit (Video Blogging RPF)" is a canonical tag because the website recognizes it as an official tag and will pull it up in autocomplete. Non-canonical tags are usually in their current state for one of two reasons. The first is that there just aren't enough fics in the tag for wranglers to canonize it or they haven't had the time to get to the tag yet. The second reason is that the tag may be categorized under a different canonical tag that has the same meaning. For example Tommyinnit is a dragon wouldn't be a canonical tag because it has the same meaning as our already existing canonical tag.
This is also where we start to experience meta tags, parent tags, and subtags.
If you go to the page for the canonical tag "Alternate Universe - Apocalypse" the first thing you'll notice is a lot of tags with the same meaning. Any apocalypse au is going to get filtered under this tag. However, the Apocalypse AU itself belongs to what's known as a meta tag. Meta tags help with organization since a meta tag will usually have a collection of sub tags. Apocalypse doesn't just have the Apocalypse AU as a subtag but it includes other apocalypses like zombie apocalypse or nuclear apocalypses and depending on what you use in your search criteria, fics like these may show up.
The final important aspect of tagging you want to know about are parent tags. In the case of Apocalypse the parent tag would be No Fandom. If you go to specific fandom tags you'll see the parent tags are whatever form of media it originates from like books or video games. Character relationships will often have the tags of both characters separately as a parent tag. This is again to further help with the nesting of ao3 tags so that when you're searching for a fic the results are comprehensive. If you got to the tag faq for ao3 then it provides an example of how tag nesting typically works
All About Search and Filter
Your average ao3 user is going to feel pretty comfortable using the basic search functions.
To start off with you can decide how you want to sort the results. Your average user is going to sort by either updates, kudos, or occasionally bookmarks since they've either exhausted a tag and are looking for new content or are trying to track down the best of the best. However users also have other options such as author, title, date posted, word count, hits, and comments. If you're looking for something specific these options can still be helpful.
Moving on you have the include and exclude. They have the exact same options nested under them and they're pretty much what they say on the tin. Anything you select under include and ao3 will specific find you those fics and only those fics. Anything you select under exclude and ao3 won't show you any of those fics. So as long as they're properly tagged you find exactly what you want without getting near anything you do. Ratings, Warnings, Categories, Fandoms, Characters, and Relationships are once again pretty self explanatory and are what they say on the tin. Ao3 organizes the options under these categories by most popular, so for ratings you'll see them in order of how many fics fall under that category and for things like relationships you'll see a top ten list of the most popular relationship tags.
Additional Tags are your freeform tags. Again, ao3 will present you with an option of what the top ten are. Now, this might not be all of the fics you want to include or exclude. For example, certain aus aren't going to be in the top ten, so they won't show up. This is where the other bar comes into play. If you begin typing into the other section than ao3 will provide you with canonical tags it thinks are related to what you're typing in. If you start typing in soulmates then it'll suggest the canonical tag for soulmates.
Now we reach what I personally consider to be the advanced options. While they for the most part are what they say on the tin, these are the tags that you're going to end up most familiar with when it comes to narrowing your search outside of freeform tags. If you're lookin for a lost fic? Search within results is going to be your best friend.
Sometimes you lose fics because they aren't tagged correctly or you don't remember all of the details about them. Search within results is your one stop shop, consider it the web browser of ao3.
Search with results will pull up any matching results within your filter that match the key word, be it something in the tags, notes, or summary of the fic. The only thing it doesn't search is the full fic itself. You can refine your search even farther by using the special characters.
Ao3's tagging system is extensive. But it relies on users and wranglers to help maintaining it, which is where we get to user responsibility.
Author Responsibility
Now, we can debate ethics for hours, but at the end of the day an author only has two responsibilities. Those are: tag extensively, and don't post anything against ToS. That's it. Ao3 is special because authors are allowed to write whatever they want as long as it remains within the boundaries of ToS. Of course, certain fandoms may have unofficial rules, but the other responsibilities the author has is to making sure they aren't breaking Ao3's official rules and that whatever content they might be producing is tagged as thoroughly as possible.
For all the authors out there who might struggle with tagging, keep this guide in mind. You can search for canonical tags and if nothing is fitting with what you want to create, you can always make a new tag. Wranglers are our friends, our best friends. You just make your tags as comprehensive as possible and they'll connect all the little strings to make sure non-canonical tags are falling under the proper canonical ones.
If you want to make it easier on yourself and them, go ahead and check out the Wrangling Guidelines. It goes into a lot more detail on the formatting of tags and how all the pieces fit together. Whether you're looking to be wrangler or not, knowing these guidelines can be helpful in tagging you fics. Remember that a better tagged will tend to get more kudos, hits, and bookmarks than a poorly tagged fic. Ao3 doesn't have an algorithm, the attention a fic gets is entirely dependent on whether it's showing up or not when people search out certain tags.
Reader Responsibility
Just like authors are responsible for tagging their works, readers are responsible for using those tags. Do not consume anything you don't want to consume. Use the filters that have been provided to you. If you think a certain tag is problematic then it is your responsible to filter it out and ignore it. Don't interact with it, just pretend it's not there.
In the old days of fandom, we had a saying. Don't like, don't read. In some ways that phrase has kind of become a meme for bad or questionable fics, but when you think about it there's a lot of validity in the thought process. If you don't like a piece of content just don't engage with it. There are better uses of your time. If you consume something that you didn't like, but it's properly tagged, then that is on you and not the author. If you especially hate specific tags then a lot of browsers have plugins you can download to make sure they don't show up anymore.
That's the major responsibility of the reader, but we also have a responsibility to just generally be polite. Readers are not entitled to free content. Authors don't owe you anything and they never will even if you comment on every chapter. Remember that there are human beings on the other side of the screen. They can see your comments. They can see your bookmarks. Especially be mindful with your bookmarks, because unlike a comment, an author can't delete those.
