Discussion Post: How sign ups will work

[worldbuildingmod]

The opening of sign ups is still several days away, but thanks to some good discussions here and elsewhere, I am considering making a few tweaks to the way they will work compared to what's currently described in the information post. If you have any strong views about the topics below, please discuss them in the comments of this post.

Decisions I am almost certain will not change

• The exchange will run on "OR" matching
  
• Number of fandom slots for requests: 3-10
  
• Number of fandom slots for offers: 4-10
  
• Minimum number of character tags per offer/request: 1*
  
• Minimum number of worldbuilding tags per offer/request: 1
  

*I would very much rather handle the situation of people wanting to request/offer the type of worldbuilding that doesn't have characters using the "No Characters" mechanism than set the minimum number of character tags to 0, as the AO3 matching algorithm would treat that as being matchable to anybody. (As an example of why this helps: if you request zero characters, you could be matched to anyone offering any character nominated. If there is even one character you dislike in the tag set for that fandom, you can't sign up to receive zero characters without a risk of becoming the recipient of someone who has only offered that character.)

Decisions that I'm comfortable with as-is, but open to persuasion on

• Maximum number of character tags per offer/request: 8
  
• Maximum number of worldbuilding tags per offer/request: 8
  

Changes I am considering making

• Allowing repeated fandoms in requests and offers: Currently, the rules say that each fandom slot should be unique. However, relaxing this would enable people to sign up to receive/create different combinations of character and worldbuilding tags for different media, or different combinations of worldbuilding tags with the same characters and media, etc. Where I can see this might be particularly helpful is in allowing people to sign up to request both fic and in-universe meta with different slots, rather than having a very wide range of prompts all in one slot. You would still need to have at least three different fandoms across all your slots for requests, and four for offers. (As an example of what this would mean in practice: if this change were made, it would be valid to sign up to request fic, art and meta separately for three different fandoms, using nine of your ten, and make seven different offers for a single fandom with different combinations of tags, followed by three offers for three distinct other fandoms. Or any other variation that fitted the overall requirements.)
  
• Allowing "Meta" without "No Characters": In the current rules, you are required to include the "No Characters" tag for a fandom if you are signing up to receive/offer meta for it. This was done out of a desire to ensure matchability, but if repeated fandoms are allowed this would be much less of an issue. Someone on FFA gave some good examples of "meta" which would be character-based (e.g. an in-universe organisation's files on a particular character).
  
• The meaning of "No Characters": at the moment, "No Characters" is meant to be a signal that you are happy to receive/create fanworks without any specific characters in, not a limitation that no characters should appear. However, since the exchange will run on OR matching, a stronger meaning of "No Characters" could be used, with people who are happy with receiving/creating either no or some characters indicating that by signing up for other tags in addition to "No Characters". This would leave people who very definitely want "No Characters" type of worldbuilding able to request/offer only that tag. I am nowhere near as strongly convinced of the utility of this change as the other two I am proposing. (In particular, the current meaning is closer to what people are used to zero characters meaning in Yuletide, and I'm not all that convinced there are any people out there who do have a strong preference for zero characters to appear; if you do have such a preference, please speak up!)
  

Nominations Clarifications #5

[worldbuildingmod]

The tag set currently contains 110 fandoms, 749 characters and 608 worldbuilding tags! As of this post, I have dealt with everything that I don't need further input on.

Fandoms with no worldbuilding tags

Unless worldbuilding tags are added before the end of nominations, these will not be approved:

• Dinosaur Train
  
• Labyrinth (1986)
  
• PAW Patrol (also, I think it should be "Mayor Goodway", not "Mayor Goodwin"?)
  

Magical Girl Raising Project

The nominations for this are now valid, thank you, but I have since approved a set of nominations under Magical Girl Raising Project (Anime). Can the still-unapproved nominations also go in with those tags, or are they for the manga?

Worldbuilding tags awaiting approval in approved fandoms

I am still hoping for some clarification on the "Anthonius" and "Paulinus" worldbuilding tags for Eagle of the Ninth, and I will not be approving "Friendships" for MCU as it is somewhat too broad. (The nominator mentioned having changed it but I'm afraid if you did, the change did not make it through to my end; if you tell me what you want it changed to, I can do it.)

Harry Potter

• I rejected "(Book Series)" in favour of "(book series)" because the all-lowercase version was where all the tags were nominated.
  
• I have added "Original" to some nominated character tags, mostly related to food; in the unlikely event that these characters do exist canonically and I've just forgotten about them, please tell me and I will fix it.
  
• Under the Wizarding World tag, I rejected "Politics and Diplomacy" because another nominator had put in "Politics" and "International Diplomacy" as separate tags, which seems to me to be better for fine-grained matching.
  

Rivers of London

No one suggested that "Genius Loci" ought to be distinct from "genii locorum", and repeatedly seeing "Genius Loci" and "Ben Aaronovitch" in close proximity at the top of the list of tags to review was making me want to go and dig out my Benny Summerfield stuff, which would have been counterproductive in helping me get through the tag set, so "Genius Loci" has been rejected.

Final Fantasy IV

For consistency, I changed two character tags (Maenads and The Creator) which had been disambiguated with "(Final Fantasy IV: The After Years)" to just "(Final Fantasy IV)". It seems from Google that they are from the sequel game but for our purposes they definitely count as part of the same fandom (in that they exist in the same fictional universe and thus are affected by the same worldbuilding). If there are compelling reasons I haven't understood to change this back, let me know.

A general note on video game characters

Since I know this came up in May the 4th recently about Exile, I am intensely relaxed about multiple versions of video game player characters existing in the tag set, even if they aren't symmetrical. For example, having all of "Shepard", "Male Shepard", "Paragon Female Shepard", "Paragon Male Shepard", "Renegade Male Shepard" and "Renegade Female Shepard who Spared the Rachni Queen" in Mass Effect would not bother me at all. I will approve anything that looks plausible; it is up to you how many character slots you want to use to get the versions you want.

Nominations Clarifications #6

[worldbuildingmod]

Just a few things:

Middle Earth: I am fandom-adjacent enough to this to know that there are notorious issues on AO3 with characters who have different names in different languages, and it has only just occurred to me that I may be accidentally approving the same characters under different names, since we aren't using the | canonical | tags. If that has happened, let me know (and ideally please suggest a solution).

Star Wars - Movies Only: I allowed in "slicers" even though I think technically they're never called that in the movies themselves, although they're certainly implied to exist. But I'm conscious that if I wasn't in the fandom, I would have waved it through without a second thought, and it seems silly to insist on using a different name for them when one does exist.

Magical Girl Raising Project: I think this is all sorted now, but please check. A few character tags were rejected because they already existed with slightly different disambiguation.

I will be away from the computer (but still online via smartphone when I can) for the next 48 hours or so, and so unlikely to be able to do anything particularly complicated tag-set-wise; please do carry on adding tags to give me plenty to do when I get back to it at the weekend.