I thought splitting up Original Works was good! I think it made things easier to read in both the tagset and in requests. As far as discussion of the genres/subtags, would opening up discussion next year prior to nominations perhaps be helpful, so that people could coordinate...or perhaps it would be more hassle for you than it would save, I don't know.
I think of "Any [Type of Character]" tags as being more similar to "Original [Specific Type of] Character" tags than to anything involving groups. They both involve only one character who fulfills a specific role but with the author's choice as to the exact character. (For example, say, Any Hogwarts Professor or Original Hogwarts Professor.) I am fully in favor of "Any [Type of Character]" tags being allowed if you want to allow them.
Group tags, on the other hand, I would really really prefer that we not include. I feel like the need to have to make multiple characters fit into one's story—and in the case of / tags, to include relationship elements as well—can only distract the author from a focus on worldbuilding, since now they have so many other things that they must include.
Just a few stats to show how much Worldbuilding as an exchange is much less ship-oriented than most other exchanges. This is the percentage of works in the gen category, as a percentage of the works posted. Including, for comparison, two other recent exchanges that also match on characters, not groups (though Yuletide's AND matching makes it a less apt comparison): Worldbuilding 2020 - 87/100 (87%) Worldbuilding 2019 - 70/88 (79.5%) Worldbuilding 2018 - 59/72 (81.9%) Worldbuilding 2017 - 60/75 (80%) Yuletide 2019 - 837/2077 (40.3%) Trick or Treat 2019 - 387/738 (52.4%)
Sure, some Worldbuilding fics will have shippy content (the lovely gift I got this year did), but I think that having the option to match on ships (and then to have to worry about whether one has included enough shippy content, etc.) could be detrimental. And even gen groupings (if you wanted to consider them separately from ships, which sounds like more trouble than it's worth to enforce) still give less flexibility to the author since they're then required to make multiple characters all have a role in their worldbuilding, though I don't think they're as big an issue as ships.
As far as the tagset: I don't personally refer to the spreadsheet so I can't comment on that. I'm open to an Eternal Tagset; my main concern would be that over the years the different permutations/subsets of some of the bigger fandoms (Harry Potter, Star Wars, etc.) might get unwieldy when only being added to and never pared down or restarted. I think it would be entirely appropriate for you to state that you will reject incorrect nominations after 48 hours and then to do so. I personally would strongly prefer if you didn't do Yuletide style no-approvals-until-noms-are-closed, and I will point out that I at least—and I suspect I'm not the only one—find it easier to come up with worldbuilding tags when I'm able to see examples of all the other ones in the tagset.
But of course, you should do whatever you need to do to make your workload manageable...and thanks so much for all of the work you put in every year! This continues to be one of my very favorite exchanges. :-)
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I thought splitting up Original Works was good! I think it made things easier to read in both the tagset and in requests. As far as discussion of the genres/subtags, would opening up discussion next year prior to nominations perhaps be helpful, so that people could coordinate...or perhaps it would be more hassle for you than it would save, I don't know.
I think of "Any [Type of Character]" tags as being more similar to "Original [Specific Type of] Character" tags than to anything involving groups. They both involve only one character who fulfills a specific role but with the author's choice as to the exact character. (For example, say, Any Hogwarts Professor or Original Hogwarts Professor.) I am fully in favor of "Any [Type of Character]" tags being allowed if you want to allow them.
Group tags, on the other hand, I would really really prefer that we not include. I feel like the need to have to make multiple characters fit into one's story—and in the case of / tags, to include relationship elements as well—can only distract the author from a focus on worldbuilding, since now they have so many other things that they must include.
Just a few stats to show how much Worldbuilding as an exchange is much less ship-oriented than most other exchanges. This is the percentage of works in the gen category, as a percentage of the works posted. Including, for comparison, two other recent exchanges that also match on characters, not groups (though Yuletide's AND matching makes it a less apt comparison):
Worldbuilding 2020 - 87/100 (87%)
Worldbuilding 2019 - 70/88 (79.5%)
Worldbuilding 2018 - 59/72 (81.9%)
Worldbuilding 2017 - 60/75 (80%)
Yuletide 2019 - 837/2077 (40.3%)
Trick or Treat 2019 - 387/738 (52.4%)
Sure, some Worldbuilding fics will have shippy content (the lovely gift I got this year did), but I think that having the option to match on ships (and then to have to worry about whether one has included enough shippy content, etc.) could be detrimental. And even gen groupings (if you wanted to consider them separately from ships, which sounds like more trouble than it's worth to enforce) still give less flexibility to the author since they're then required to make multiple characters all have a role in their worldbuilding, though I don't think they're as big an issue as ships.
As far as the tagset: I don't personally refer to the spreadsheet so I can't comment on that. I'm open to an Eternal Tagset; my main concern would be that over the years the different permutations/subsets of some of the bigger fandoms (Harry Potter, Star Wars, etc.) might get unwieldy when only being added to and never pared down or restarted. I think it would be entirely appropriate for you to state that you will reject incorrect nominations after 48 hours and then to do so. I personally would strongly prefer if you didn't do Yuletide style no-approvals-until-noms-are-closed, and I will point out that I at least—and I suspect I'm not the only one—find it easier to come up with worldbuilding tags when I'm able to see examples of all the other ones in the tagset.
But of course, you should do whatever you need to do to make your workload manageable...and thanks so much for all of the work you put in every year! This continues to be one of my very favorite exchanges. :-)