The Life of a Wrangler

[melannen]

The AO3's Tag Wranglers are recruiting again! If you're a regular AO3 user, tag wrangling is a nifty way to give back, and once you're through training it can be as much or as little work as you need it to be. And I promise you're pretty insulated from what goes on up the tree in the leadership...

There's some nifty stuff on the wranglers needed list this time - you know you want to be the new wrangler for Young Wizards or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or Rick and Morty or Elfquest.

Anyway, I bring that up because last month, as a favor to a fan who was doing a study on social tagging systems (don't worry they had their ethical stuff all in line), I spent two weeks keeping a daily diary of my wrangling, and I thought y'all might be interested in a glimpse into the daily life of a tag wrangler.

IMPORTANT NOTE: This is a glimpse into how I wrangle, every wrangler has a different workflow, do not use this to judge the team as a whole, I am a BOWQ at this point, there are many fresh-faced less cynical wranglers doing very very good work.



Day 8

At some point before work: Check my mailing list email. The only thing that needs more looking at is a staff list email from chairs about recruitment, which requires logging into the OTW wiki to see what they're actually talking about. After logging into the wiki and reading the details, decide I don't actually have anything useful to say.

2:36 PM, at work, on the desk
Really need some Habitica points, time to knock off my wrangling chores.
First, log in to Yahoo mail to check tag comments, since I've sort of been neglecting them in favor of mailing lists.

(I also spent ~1 hour last night and this morning reading stuff about the OTW board elections, not sure if that counts as wrangling-related work or not.)

Get distracted reading some all-staff emails from Communications about publicity stuff.

No longer distracted. Find about five tag comments in the past week or so that may require action. First one was already fixed by a co-wrangler, yay. Next one did not actually require action, just tricked my "please reply" keyword search into thinking it did, yay.

The next one is a comment on a minor character tag in Arthurian Mythology - one of the many, many fandoms that steals from Arthurian mythology is now using a character with this name, so we now have to figure out how to organize the tags. The Arthurian tags are all a total mess because we got about 1/4 of the way through putting them in order, then decided to wait until the rest of the mythology fandoms caught up, then all that got put on indefinite hold while more urgent things were done, and since Arthurian is unlikely to go nuclear these days I just kind of triage as requested.

A tag search reveals that there's actually a couple other canonicals possibly referencing the character that have no organization whatsoever, so I attempt to do a minimal fix to that specific mess and reply to the comment again.

And finally, another megafandom that everybody else borrows from - Sherlock Holmes. One of the BBC Sherlock wranglers is asking for advice on naming a canonical tag for fics where several different Holmses from several different versions of canon meet. None of the myriad other wranglers involved have replied yet, so I am left to be the one to break the silence.

I do a quick tag search to see if there are any other canonicals for this concept in other megafandoms yet, although I'm sure Sherlock fandom already did their due diligence. And check the guidelines just in case there's something helpful there. I end up leaving a longish comment with my best thoughts on avoiding something that's going to lead to concept creep.

And that should take care of the lingering tag comments. I head over to British Politics to try to solve the mystery from yesterday of House MD appearing on British Politics tags. Then I discover that the Rupert Murdoch/The Devil tag has disappeared since yesterday so at least I don't have to deal with that. \o/

I refer back to yesterday's diary because I have forgotten which tag it was that had the mystery problem.

Ah yes. Piggate.

I still have no idea why it would have added House MD fandom - there are no signs of that fandom involved in any of the tags but it's not showing now - so I'm going to chalk it up to a Mystery of the Wrangulator and call it handled. I leave the David Cameron/Dead Pig relationship tags unwrangled I don't care if it's canon.

There's a reply to my Arthurian comment already, that seems to be handled, good.

I give in and read the Piggate/Star Trek crossover fic, because wow, that's a thing that exists.

This leaves nothing on my unwrangled bins except a few things I'm hoping cowranglers will deal with, some Chinese translations I'm waiting on, and about 400 les mis freeform tags that I don't have the energy for at this point.

I check the list emails one more time. It takes three tries to type my gmail password correctly. All I have is two more copies of the all-staff email I already had on my other account, because they are as confused about my emails as I am.

5:55 : sign into chat because why not, I'm not getting anything else done. Not much going on in chat today. Sign out at 7:30 with nothing being said.

Evening, after work: Decide I have something to say in the staff list recruitment discussion after all, write email, ticky habitica, go to bed.


Day 9
Today was a weird and meetings-filled day at work in which I got nothing done, followed by coming home and getting nothing done, so other than check my email (not much happening) I haven't done any wrangling. It's 11:08 pm and I am going to Wrangle A Tag just to not break my streak.

It is the one unwrangled character tag in the les mis movie bin. It gets synned to "ensemble". Everything else looked too hard for tackling today.

Day 10:
10:00 PM: So what we have learned today is that if you break my routine I get nothing done. &pt;_< (Or that I'm coming down with a cold. Also possible.) Anyway there's three new freeforms in UK politics; two easy syn (to Snark and Overwoking) and an unfilterable with several first names that could go to NF or the fandom, so might as well keep it.

Nothing much going on in the email. Luckily, since I don't have the energy for it anyway.

Day 11

3:23 PM Still feel like about fifty miles of hard road, but at work and back to regular schedule. Also: wrangling staff meeting day today. hurrah.

Logging in to chat in order to put in an appearance before I have to log off right before the meeting, drive home, and then be late to the meeting.

While I'm waiting I'm tackling the buildup of Les Mis unwrangled freeforms, because they tend to have a lot of relatively mindless busywork, which is just what I need right now. LM has (at least) 12 subfandoms, of which 4 regularly get tags, plus a ton of tags that land just in the metatag. I usually tackle them in reverse size order, since most of the ones in the smaller subfandoms are also in at least one of the others, so I'm starting with the musical, which has 45 from the last month.

First step is finding the tags that will be going to the unfilterable bin, and mass-wrangling them there. LM has a lot or unique character names, so there's usually a lot of those. If there's some that might be a canonical but I'm not sure I just toss 'em in anyway, I'll clean out the unfilterable bin. Someday.

Then I pull out ones that are definitely Sarlacc-bait, to go to No Fandom Unfilterable and be slowly digested for a thousand years, and that brings it down under 20, which includes: tags that could maybe syn to something, crossover tags, and tags where I need to investigate to figure out what they mean.

The only ones that end up synning are "brief mentions of past Suicide Attempt" to "implied/reference suicide", "morally gray area" to "moral ambiguity" and "grantaire survives the barricade" to"Aternate Universe - Grantaire Survives".

A couple more go to the Sarlacc pit, a couple to Les Mis unfilterables after all ("Student Activist Enjolras" - one the one hand we probably have enough variants for a canonical, on the other hand THAT'S CANON, so forget it; and "Trans Courfeyrac" - we definitely have enough variants, but a lot of them are much more specific variants, and care is needed with synning on those.)

"Kinda marvel-y" goes to Marvel, with all joy. "eponine is definitely Edna mode" gets shared with Incredibles fandom. (wonder if they're both on the same fic, but don't care enough to check.) I leave comments so the other wranglers know they're there.

With the help of Google, and checking the other tags on the fic, I discover "Chloe Agnew" is probably a reference to the Irish folksinger whose lyrics are being used. I leave a note so other people will know, and send it to the Sarlacc pit, since she doesn't have an RPF fandom.

"green river ordinance" is another band, apparently. Darn, I though it was going to be a bit of cool social justice history like keeps turning up in LM tags. ...atually, wikipedia says the band is named for a type of local law which is frequently challenged in the courts, which means I can go ahead and send it to the Sarlacc for ambiguity, since you can't tell from the tag if it's the band or the political issues, whoo

"Walking in the air" is another song title and ambiguous to boot, given the number of google results. To the sarlaac with you.

Next we have two tags referencing specific Broadway stagings, which go to the Musical fandom instead of the main metatag like all the others did.

Then there's "vaguely Luxe-inspired AU". I have no idea what "luxe" means here, and Google isn't helping, so I use tag search to see if there's a fandom for it. And there is! Alas it's unwrangled so I can't make that wrangler figure it if that's what the tagger meant. Next step: ask chat. They recommend just dropping it in the fandom and not worrying about it, which is what I was leaning toward, so off it goes.

Now I have a set of four tags referencing "Youth Leading" which I am just enough of a Christian to know that it's probably a Christian thing, and not enough of a Christian to know if I can get away with synning them to the equivalent "camp counselor" tags. Ask chat.

Chat quickly proclaims their lack of any Evangelical bona fides. Darnit.

Google isn't helpful because it's too hard to sort the subculture usage from other stuff.

We get distracted talking about the tag "Castiel Looses his virginity" and discussing that time when Castiel loosed his angelic virginity and they had to track it down before it destroyed the town in its confusion.

Not helping me understand evangelical Christianity. I send the tags to NF. Probably not synnable anyway.

That leaves "Summer Songs" - which I decide is also probably both too vague and too specific to syn anywhere - and a tag in Chinese, to be dealt with later.

They have illustrated Castiel's rampant virginity by photoshopping a unicorn horn onto an Alot. I got do a tag search on "alot" just to see what new tag alots have been created lately.

4:55 Staff are starting to trickle in to chat for the meeting, and work is starting to get busy for closing, so I close the wrangling page and settle in to just socialize in chat until I have to leave.

5:15 home. meeting has started without me. Try to get into wranglechat, internet not cooperating

5:25, give up, get into chat on my phone instead

6:30 : meeting over, off to get dinner, only volunteered for one thing and didn't get scolded for any of the things I've volunteered for and then not done, yay

6:45 wrangle a few stray tags while hanging out with staff post meeting: "marius is marius" syns to "pontmercying" from a ouat crossover, a few strays that appeared in the bin I cleaned this afternoon go to the sarlacc pit, I go to bed.

Comments

[justice_turtle]

Gods damn it, I would love to help wrangle "TOLKIEN J.R.R. - Works & Related Fandoms", that sounds like a lot of fun for my peculiar brain, but I don't know that I can come up with three other fandoms from the lists that I'd... feel familiar enough with, to work in. How much canon knowledge/love would you say somebody needs to wrangle tags for a given fandom? (I'm probably overestimating, since I'm a beta reader by nature and I get very... conscientious, about what fandoms I'm willing to beta in, but -- like, take Nancy Drew. I used to know the yellow-spine editions backwards and forwards twenty years ago, but there are whole iterations of the franchise I've never even heard of.)

[melannen]

I wouldn't suggest joining just for that one, actually. That's an umbrella fandom, and all the fandoms under it have wranglers - so there's already people assigned to LotR and Silmarillion and Hobbit and all the other subsets. If you take the umbrella fandom you'd mostly be doing what I was doing with the Sherlock Holmes and Arthurian tags above - occasionally coordinating with the other wranglers on the strange and tough stuff, and trying to lead them to consensus. It can be interesting work but it's not the smoothest entry point for someone starting out. It does look like you'd be working with experienced co-wranglers on that one, but it will not involve sweeping in and putting everything in order the way most of the other fandoms on the list will.

As for the others - generally you don't need a huge amount of canon knowledge to wrangle a fandom, but the more the better? It's also, tbh, just as important to know the fandom as it is to know canon - if you know canon inside and outside but will have no clue what the latest weird trope-y thing is that people are writing, you'd be just as lost.

The reason they ask people to list at least four is that it really helps if you're very polyfannish, because a lot of times even larger fandoms don't get a lot of new tags day-to-day, so it's hard to get enough experience to get comfortable if you're struggling to find fandoms you can wrangle. (Also there will be fifty other new wranglers coming in, and if you only have one fandom you really want, someone else might get dibs, and then you'd be stuck.) So you don't need a huge amount of expertise, but if you're having trouble finding four from those lists that you'd be genuinely excited about, it might be tough getting started.

[justice_turtle]

I'm coming up with lots of the tiny little Yuletide-ish fandoms (Adventures of Robin Hood 1938, Gilligan's Island, Hobbes and Bacon -- I mean, dude, HOBBES AND BACON needs a wrangler! :D), but having trouble in the over-100-works or over-40-works range. I've got The Monkees and the Tolkien umbrella fandom there, then I'm kinda scraping to make up four.

Umbrella fandom is exactly what I'm excited about with the Tolkien one, though, honestly. Fiddly things like "Haleth son of Hama from the PJ Two Towers is a totally different character from Haleth founder of the House of Haleth in the Silmarillion". (May already be solved or, less likely given the bonkers nerdosity of JRRT fandom, have never come up. I haven't checked, that's just the first likely example that came to mind.)

But yeah, knowing the fandom is where I fall short on the busier ones - like, I could probably wrangle Nancy Drew or Monster High character/ship tags easily enough, but I don't actually keep up with those fandoms, so I'd be lost when it comes to esoteric tags like their equivalents of YAHF (Buffyverse's "Yet Another Halloween Fanfic"), and I don't want to... clog up those fandoms, get in the way of somebody who'd be genuinely excited to wrangle all the weird tropes that crop up.

*pulls hair thinkily* Goddammit, I'd really like to wrangle a lot of these teeny tiny ones, but... blargle. I mean, those really are a one-and-done thing -- they get written for Yuletide one year, and never again. And yet, it'd be nice to get in and file the buggers, check 'em off the list, seeing as I actually have the knowledge about them. Be on hand in case anybody ever wrote 'em again. :-) But I really don't know many fandoms that'd be steady wrangling work but are small enough not to have a quota of wranglers already. :S

Sorry, I'm just thinking out loud here.

[melannen]

Yeah, those tiny fandoms are super-fun but they get basically zero new tags - I wrangle Calvin & Hobbes and I probably get 6 new tags a year and at least half of them are on crossovers and not actually related to C&H. Once you're trained and know how to feed the Sarlacc and control the unicorn-squid and go bin-diving and stuff they don't really care if all you wrangle is dozens of those but you can't really get comfortable with wrangling from them. (I know this from experience, they didn't have these rules when I joined so I just claimed tiny fandoms and it took years before I actually figured out what I was supposed to be doing.)

But don't let that scare you away! With the Nancy Drew-sized fandoms, they don't usually have the level of activity that gets you stuff like YAHF, but you do need to know stuff like "Most active fans are into the Supermysteries which is why people ship her with Frank instead of Ned or George" and you need to know where to look to find the active fandom if stuff does suddenly happen.

But general fandom experience counts for a lot there, in terms of knowing where to look and what sort of stuff goes on! And there are often huge megafandoms that don't go on the recruitment lists but are always looking for people to join the team - they just aren't great to learn on either. And you really do need to know the fandoms for those.

Anyway if you still think you'd like to, you can always turn in your application and then see what happens. Just... don't do it with the plan of getting to wrangle Certain Particular Fandoms.

[synecdochic]

Please tell me I will not sign up to be a tag wrangler just so that I can meet eligibility for running for Board next year and taking over the world. :D

[melannen]

You will not sign up as a tag wrangler just to meet Board eligibility! Anyway it wouldn't work - Board eligibility requires being Staff, and most Tag Wranglers don't count as Staff. That's the downside of base-level TW volunteers being mostly insulated from the crap that rains from above. You would have to be a tag wrangler for at least a term, then join TW Staff the next time Staff has vacancies, then stay on TW Staff and deal with the BS from there long enough to qualify for Board. (I've been TW Staff long enough to qualify but I know better than to run....)

If you want to take over the Board, much more efficient to just sign up for I&O or Comms which are also recruiting and you are probably more than qualified for and which count as Staff immediately. :P

(...unless of course you annoy the Board and they retroactively decide that they don't count, not that they would ever do that. <_<)

[synecdochic]

OF COURSE THEY WOULD NEVER

Anyway, that's good to know. (Mind you, I&O and Comms are apparently some of the more dysfunctional committees, so I'd have to take them over first just to be able to tolerate working there for a year, so on the whole I think I'll pass.)

Also, can I just say, the whole concept of volunteer/staff/whatever is just so fucking fucked oh my god this org is such a shitshow omg.

[melannen]

Well, several of the people running this year are people who used that strategy (take over and fix a dysfunctional committee, then run for Board.) I suppose it's an apprenticeship of sorts.... and hey, fixing the committees would get you a head start on fixing the Org....

[synecdochic]

I have so many better things to do with my life, omg.

[sylvaine]

I mean, you run a whole other website, I think you've probably got plenty of things to do. :P (Though we would all be very grateful to you if you fixed the OTW - or even some small parts of it....)

[synecdochic]

I honestly don't think I could without massive buy-in from several other parts of the org, the ability to say "no, this is bullshit and you need to stop doing it now", and the ability to fire people, honestly. From outside, the flaws I see are systemic and can't be fixed without a massive overhaul.

[melannen]

I mean, yes. You also have many better things to do with your life than serve on the Board of Directors, I promise you.

[sophia_sol]

This was really interesting to read, thanks for sharing!

[melannen]

Glad it is interesting people!

[rushthatspeaks]

This is very interesting!

Also, wow, you're doing about as much work on this daily as I do daily editing a pro SF mag.

[melannen]

*headscratch* Good to know I now have the time management skills for that, then. :D Does it pay better than tag wrangling?

[rushthatspeaks]

Heh. It doesn't pay at all, so the same, I'd say.

[melannen]

Sadly, I thought that might be the case.

I guess we are doing slightly similar work to editing a magazine, if a magazine accepted all the slush as a matter of principle...

[rushthatspeaks]

... dear lord, the Lovecraftian nightmare you just dangled in front of my eyes...

As a senior editor, I usually don't have to read the worst of the slush, because we have first readers who weed things out for us, but even so I have a mental folder of Personal Slush Nightmares long enough to sustain an approximately hour-long comedic rant with hand gestures, which occasionally gets people to buy me hard liquor.

I'd say it's probably difficult to do anything that horrific in just the story tags, except that I have faith in human ingenuity.

[catpella]

Wow, thanks for this peek into wrangling. I've always thought it would be fun, but I don't know anything in the videogames or books list that's over the 40+ limit so I can claim them. I see several things in both lists under the 40-count. Most of the stuff I love is tiny-small to small-medium fandoms which already have wranglers or are otherwise not on list.

[melannen]

Maybe someday something will come up, or we'll doing another fully-open recruitment!