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Nominations queries #5

Just a few things this time:

Individual tags

  • WB: The Bastion (Doctrine of Labyrinths) has unfortunately come through in a Character field, not a Relationship field. Would "WB: Bastion (Doctrine of Labyrinths)" without the article be an acceptable alternative?
  • WB: General worldbuilding (Rain) - this is a little too broad! Please nominate something at least slightly more specific.

Incomplete noms

Labyrinth (1986) has joined the list of fandoms in need of character tags. (Many thanks to the nominators who have enabled me to clear several items from that list.)
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Fandoms waiting for default character tags

EDIT 12/1/18: All clear at the moment, but I'm going to leave this post stickied in case more appear over the next few days.
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Nominations queries #4

Nominations close a week today, at 2355 UTC, so there's still plenty of time. (Countdown timer.)

Individual tags in approved fandoms

  • WB: Time Lord University (Doctor Who) - I can't recall any Time Lord characters ever using the word "university" to refer to a phase in their education, except possibly when explaining things by analogy to human characters. I intend to change this to "Time Lord Higher Education" unless the nominator strongly objects.
  • WB: Efforts of Having a Secret Identity (Power Rangers Dino Charge) - is this meant to be "Effects"? Or am I missing something?
  • I have rejected WB: Jedi Agri Corps from Star Wars - Movies Only, as per this post.

Incomplete nominations

The following fandoms are missing either or both of the two "default" character tags that need to be nominated for every fandom, "Any or No Characters (Fandom)" and "Original Character(s) (Fandom)":

  • City of Hunger (Video Game)
  • Mortal Engines Series - Philip Reeve
  • Star Trek: The Original Series
  • Star Trek: Voyager
  • Stargate Atlantis
  • Stargate SG-1
  • Stargate Universe

Skipping over these to deal with other fandoms is currently manageable, but if the number of fandoms on this list increases substantially, it may become difficult to find fandoms which I can approve (when there are large numbers of unapproved fandoms, AO3 shows me a random selection of 30 at a time), and so I may have to start rejecting them. I am very reluctant to do this, as all the other tags nominated for them look fine. If I do end up having to reject these, I will do so in the order that they were first raised as having missing noms on the comm. (The three Stargate fandoms would therefore be the first to go.)

If you want to see these fandoms in the tag set, please ensure that the missing nominations are added; you do not have to be the original nominator to do this.
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Mini nominations update

Eligibility: Following thinking about Call the Midwife, I have decided that fandoms which are only-very-slightly-fictionalised versions of real world events don't really qualify, as any reasonable worldbuilding tags would actually be calls for research about the real world, which would be outside the scope of the exchange on the same reasoning as the ineligibility of RPF. I will update the Rules post later on today to reflect this. (Another example of a fandom which would be affected would be The Crown.)

Disambiguation: I'm now getting back to approving nominations, but I'm currently seeing quite a large number of fandoms on the approvals screen where some or all of the tags lack disambiguations. Please add disambiguations to all character tags (even canonical ones, despite what the instructions on the nomination screen itself say) and worldbuilding tags. I can add them manually as I approve, but it's considerably more time-consuming, so I will generally be prioritising fandoms that do have them. (In particular, I can do a quick pass to approve a few fandoms that only need boxes ticking on my phone at various points throughout the day, whereas opportunities to get on the computer and do more complicated things come less often.)

Missing tags: There are also quite a few fandoms nominated recently which I will not be approving until they have both of the "default" character tags: "Any or No Characters (Fandom)" and "Original Character(s) (Fandom)". There are currently more fandoms than I can see in one go on the approvals screen, so the following list may be incomplete, but in addition to the three Stargate fandoms from last post, fandoms missing one or both tags include Dinotopia - James Gurney, Mortal Engines Series - Philip Reeve, Star Trek: The Original Series and Star Trek: Voyager.
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Nominations queries #3

As of 2030 UTC on Sat 6th Jan, I have approved everything that I am currently able to; some recently-approved tags remain to be associated and I will do that shortly.

There are already over 100 fandoms in the tag set (last year, the final count was 233). A huge thank you to everyone who has been following the nominations guidelines carefully; this really does streamline the work required on my end a great deal, and I am genuinely very grateful for the help.

Already approved tags

Tags moving between categories

It is extremely helpful when nominators double check that their character tags are in the "Character" fields and their worldbuilding tags are in the "Relationship" fields before submitting the nomination form, as I have no way at all of seeing on the approval interface which category individual tags have been nominated in. I have just found a very small number of worldbuilding tags that the tag set thinks are "characters". My understanding is that once a tag has been created, even non-canonically, an identical tag can never exist in another category anywhere on AO3, so I have had to make some minor adjustments in moving these into the right category. Hopefully they don't change the meaning, but if there is a problem with any of them please let me know.

  • "WB: A Magician's Apprenticeship (Bartimaeus)" has become "WB: Magical Apprenticeship (Bartimaeus)"
  • "WB: History of the Czech Empire (Bartimaeus)" has become "WB: Czech Empire History (Bartimaeus)"
  • "WB: Holistic identities (Dirk Gently TV 2016)" has become "WB: Holistic identity (Dirk Gently TV 2016)"
  • "WB: Geography and Maps (SSSS)" has become "WB: Geography & Maps (SSSS)"
  • "WB: The Dreamworld (SSSS)" has become "WB: Dreamworld (SSSS)"

Scope of approved fandoms

  • Dragon Age (Video Games) and Dragon Age: Inquisition - I am assuming that the first of these implicitly includes the second, but the second is there as a separate fandom for those who want things based only on that game
  • His Dark Materials - EDITED: by the wishes of all nominators so far, this is just the three books Northern Lights (aka The Golden Compass), The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass. (I had previously been assuming that this was a broad tag including all works in the same unimultiverse. If others do want to nominate such a tag, I would suggest "His Dark Materials & Related Fandoms" or something similar.)
  • MCU - I will be taking this to include all the various TV shows (Netflix and AoS)
  • Star Wars Legends - All Media Types - this is very broad - the entirety of the old EU; I would advise people offering this fandom to be sure they have looked at the requests their offered tags might match to

If these interpretations are not what the nominators intended, please say so!

Still awaiting approval

The lists below explain why the small number of currently outstanding nominations have not yet been approved.

Incomplete nominations

The following fandoms do not have the two default character tags of "Any or No Characters (Fandom)" and "Original Character(s) (Fandom)" nominated. Once these tags are added, they will be approved:
  • Stargate SG-1
  • Stargate Atlantis
  • Stargate Universe

(Anyone with spare slots can add the needed tags if they want to see these fandoms in the tag set, it doesn't have to be the original nominator. This list was significantly longer when I started preparing this post, but several fandoms have been rescued from it by further nominations being made by people who did include the default tags.)

Unclear worldbuilding relevance

It is not clear to me that the tags nominated for the following fandoms are really within the scope of this exchange. After 48 hours have passed from the time of this post, these fandoms will be in danger of being rejected unless more clearly relevant tags are added, or convincing arguments presented for the inclusion of the current ones.

  • Call the Midwife - currently nominated tags: 1950's, 1960's, Families of Choice, Roommates, Secret Relationships - my issue here is that this is too close to discussion of the real world to really count
  • Leverage - currently nominated tags: Alcoholism, Aliases, Dark Past, Polyamory, Team as Family - these seem like character/relationship prompts more than worldbuilding ones

Additionally, there are a handful of other fandoms (iZombie and two Power Rangers fandoms) with a mixture of tags that are clearly worldbuilding and others which are more character/relationship focused. I have approved the characters and the unambiguous worldbuilding tags and left the others undecided for now. These tags will also be in danger of being rejected after 48 hours have passed, unless convincing arguments are provided for their inclusion. Alternatively, the nominator(s) can swap them for other worldbuilding tags if they wish.

Waiting to hear from nominator

  • Star Wars - Movies Only - I am still not clear that "Jedi Agri Corps" is a reasonable worldbuilding tag to extrapolate from the specified canon. If I don't hear anything in the next 48 hours, I will approve the other tags and reject this particular one.

Mod availability

I am travelling tomorrow, so will be only spottily online at best, but I'll be back in action on Monday.
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Nominations queries #2

I was going to try to give it 24 hours between queries posts, but there's enough I want to ask about to be worth doing another one earlier than that.

Queries in approved fandoms

  • Doctor Who - I have approved this but am now doubting myself and want to check I am on the same page as the nominator about the scope; I would take the use of this broad tag as applying to everything ever put out as official Doctor Who in any medium, not just TV. If that isn't what's intended, please speak up and I will adjust it.
  • Exalted - I have approved this but, as above, want to check about the scope. As it is now, I would see this as giving the creator a choice of using either edition, or blending elements from both. If this isn't what the nominator intended, please say what it should be moved to.
  • Star Trek: The Next Generation - I have approved this fandom under the canonical tag, but sadly some of the nominated tags have been swallowed by AO3 between one stage of the approvals process and the next. I am hoping they will eventually reappear, but in case they don't, it would be very helpful if the nominator could provide a link to their nominations page. This would be in the form http://archiveofourown.org/tag_sets/2208/nominations/vwxyz where vwxyz is a string of numbers. Thank you. (This can be completely anonymous - there is no identifying information shown, and only tag set maintainers can access the link.)

Queries in not-yet-approved fandoms

  • Rivers of London - WB: Genius Locai - is this a typo for "Genius Loci", or is the plural intended, in which case I think it should be "Genii Locorum".
  • Star Wars - Movies Only - WB: Jedi Agri Corps - I'm struggling to find any evidence that this is referenced anywhere within the movies. If it isn't, it isn't necessarily something it's reasonable to extrapolate from the information provided within the nominated fandom. Please either provide evidence of at least a mention of it, change the nomination to something else, or re-nominate in a broader fandom tag.
  • Call the Midwife - since this series is based on an autobiography, I think it has the same problems of "worldbuilding" being discussion of the real world that are behind RPF not being eligible. I am willing to be convinced by a good argument, but at the moment I don't see that this is really within the scope of the exchange.

Harry Potter

Based on the nominations people have submitted at this stage, I would like to propose the following split:

  • Harry Potter - Books 1-7 - this would be just the books, with epilogue-compliance left for optional details
  • Harry Potter - Cursed Child - this would be the play, and by implication the books (including the epilogue) as well, since it is a sequel to them
  • Harry Potter - Wizarding World - this would be the most expansive tag, covering everything ever put out about the Potter universe in whatever format
  • Harry Potter - Wizarding World (No Pottermore) - this would be the same as the above, but excluding any information that can only be found on the Pottermore website

I will wait 24 hours and then start approving Harry Potter tags according to this scheme; this will give people time to move their current nominations if they need to. There does not seem to be a great appetite for a Movies Only tag here as far as I can see, but people can create one if they want.

General

  • In some fandoms, some or all of the worldbuilding tags seem to me to be more about character traits or relationship dynamics, rather than worldbuilding in and of itself. I am not convinced that things like "Found Family", "Alcoholism", etc. in modern-day settings without significant fantastical elements are really within the scope of the exchange. I am willing to be convinced on a case-by-case basis, but will not be approving these without the nominator providing some reasoning for why they would lead to requests that would be sufficiently distinctive from the sort of thing that could be requested in the many character- and/or relationship-focused exchanges out there. Without such evidence, these fandoms may have to be rejected. Leverage in particular is currently in danger of falling victim to this.
  • Quite a few fandoms have not yet been approved because they do not have the two "default" Character tags of "Any or No Characters (Fandom)" and "Original Character(s) (Fandom)" nominated. Last year, as the nominations process went on, I did start adding these behind the scenes as extra tags to avoid having to reject fandoms with other valid tags nominated. Sadly, I am not really in a position to do the same this time round, as the AO3 interface is running much more slowly, and so what was previously the work of moments would become very time-consuming if I was doing it for large numbers of fandoms. Please adjust your nominations to include these two characters (if you have used all of your slots, you will have to sacrifice some of your currently chosen characters, sorry).
  • Please note the changes to formatting of tags compared to last year: "No Characters" is now "Any or No Characters", and "Worldbuilding:" is now "WB:". Where these are the only issues, I am fixing them as I go, but if your nominations use the old formats and I haven't got to them yet, it would be extremely helpful if you could change them yourselves.
  • Please disambiguate all nominated tags, even if it means not using the suggested AO3 canonical on the nominations page.
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Nominations queries #1

I am starting to deal with approvals, but the AO3 interface throws up errors if I do more than one or two fandoms at a time, and then I have to wait to see which tags associate themselves and which need doing manually, so it will be much slower going than last year. Apologies.

A few queries based on things I can see waiting to be approved:

The Eagle | The Eagle of the Ninth (2011)
  • So far this fandom only has character tags nominated (neither of which are Original ... and Any or No ...). This fandom will not be approved without worldbuilding tags.


MCU
  • WB: Aesir and/or Jotnar biology (MCU) - I'm slightly worried that "Jotnar" might be a fanon term, rather than a canon one. When I google it, all the links are to tumblr, and looking on the MCU wiki doesn't find anything. Can someone deeper into the Asgard side of MCU than I am explain?


X-Men (Movieverse)
  • I am happy to approve this but I want to check that the nominator intends it to mean both the original and alternate timelines considered together. (It is fine if people later nominate the two strands separately.)


In general, it would be very helpful if you could check your nominations follow the nominations guidelines. I will be prioritising fandoms where I can simply approve the nominated tags without having to adjust anything. In particular, some fandoms do not have "Original Character(s) (Fandom)" and "Any or No Characters (Fandom)" nominated yet, and in some fandoms many tags are not disambiguated.

Please also check that you are nominating characters in the Character field and worldbuilding tags in the Relationship field. The approvals screen gives me no direct way of seeing which category a particular tag was nominated under, and if they go through under the wrong category it's a real headache to sort out later.
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Potentially complex fandoms brainstorming post

Some AO3 fandom tags are unfortunately not particularly useful for our purposes, in terms of making the scope of the material to be considered clear.

Tags for one of the prime examples of this have in fact already been nominated, in the shape of Harry Potter.

The canonical "Harry Potter - J.K. Rowling" tag is not, to my way of thinking, clear enough, as there are many sources of information that might be extrapolated from, including:

  • The original seven Harry Potter books
  • The eight films adapted from them
  • Information from the Pottermore website
  • The Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them film
  • The Cursed Child play/script


Last year, we had three categories: "Harry Potter - Books Only", being the first bullet point above and only the first; "Harry Potter - Wizarding World", meaning all possible sources; and also "Harry Potter - Wizarding Schools Around The World", which was based on a specific extra piece which people may or may not still be interested in. It does seem to me that both Fantastic Beasts and Cursed Child have gained much wider currency in fandom since the last round, so it may be worth having a different set of subdivisions.

Please use the comments of this post to discuss how Harry Potter should be split up, and then make/adjust nominations as necessary.

ETA: Thanks for the Harry Potter replies so far. I'm still thinking about the best way to deal with this particular fandom.

(Please note that I have approved "Middle Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien", taking this, as last year, to be construed as broadly as possible - i.e. all Tolkien's various works set in Middle Earth. I am in the process of adjusting these tags so that they can be distinguished from film-based ones if we end up with "Middle Earth - Peter Jackson Movies" as well, as we did last year. I am also open to the idea of more restricted Tolkien tags running alongside the broad Middle Earth one, if people want them.)
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Nominations information

The tag set is now open for nominations (slightly ahead of schedule).

You have 5 fandom slots and for each fandom, 7 character slots and 5 "relationship" slots, used for worldbuilding elements.

Please read the following information carefully before you begin nominating; I would be very grateful if everyone can format their nominations in line with these guidelines, to minimise the amount of clean up I need to do later. I am hoping not to encounter the issues reported by other exchanges recently with the approval and editing interface, but I would rather make things as straightforward as possible on the back-end in case there are problems.

Please ignore the instruction on the nominations page to choose the canonical tag if available. This is hard-coded in the AO3 interface and I cannot change it, but in most cases canonical tags will not be the correct ones for our purposes. (They are more likely to wander than others, for one thing.)

Fandoms

  • Almost all fandoms are eligible, as are Original Works. There are no notability requirements.
  • RPF is not eligible -- see here.
  • Crossovers between different canons are not eligible, unless the crossover took place within canon. In these cases, a separate fandom nomination should be made of the crossed over canons. It may be helpful to contact the mod with evidence of the existence of the crossover if it is not easily google-able.
  • Please nominate fandoms in a way that makes clear the scope of the canon material that is fair game for the creator to draw on. It is fine if this means that fandoms overlap with one another, and if fandoms end up in "Uncategorized Fandoms" because we're using non-AO3-canonical names.
  • Please check already approved tags to see if someone has already nominated the fandom you want with a slightly different naming format.

Characters

  • Please include "Any or No Characters" and "Original Character(s)" as character tags for any fandom you nominate, unless they are already in the tag set. (Being able to include these is the reason for the two extra character slots compared with the other categories.)
  • "Any or No Characters" replaces last year's "No Characters" and is used in sign ups to express willingness to receive/create works where worldbuilding is the primary focus. (If you choose this tag in your offer, you will be able to DNW the appearance of certain characters in your sign up.)
  • Canon characters, characters implied to exist by canon but not directly depicted, and specific original characters in the setting are all OK.
  • Please disambiguate all nominated tags (including "Any or No Characters" and "Original Character(s)" with the name of the fandom in brackets afterwards, e.g. "Susan Ivanova (Babylon 5)". You may use abbreviations in the disambiguation, so long as they are clear. If you are nominating in an already-approved fandom, please try to use the same disambiguation as the already-approved tags.

Worldbuilding elements

  • Worldbuilding elements are nominated in the "Relationship" field, with the prefix "WB: " (this is a change from last year's "Worldbuilding: "), e.g. "WB: Goblin rebellions (Harry Potter - all media)".
  • Please do not nominate actual relationships in the format A/B or A&B. The name "Relationship" is hard-coded in AO3, but we are using that field for worldbuilding elements.
  • Worldbuilding elements should be things that it would be reasonable for a creator to extrapolate about from existing information in canon. Note that most types of AU are not covered by this, so please do not nominate ideas for mundane, magical realism, etc. AUs as worldbuilding tags. ([community profile] auexchange is probably what you're looking for for this sort of thing.) Canon-divergent AUs that exist within canon (e.g. Star Trek's mirrorverse) are fair game. It is also fine to request canon-divergent AUs in your optional details.
  • Please disambiguate all nominated tags with the name of the fandom in brackets afterwards, as for characters.

Browsing last year's tag set may or may not make some of these points clearer.

Please note that fandoms that are nominated with significant problems (e.g. actual relationships nominated instead of worldbuilding tags) may have to be rejected so that other approvals can proceed. I will give at least 48 hours' notice before doing this so that nominators have a chance to adjust their nominations.

Any questions, do ask, either by commenting here or emailing worldbuildingmod@gmx.com
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Nominations are now closed

There will be a short grace period: if you really were just about to hit Submit, honest, comment on this post within the next fifteen minutes with the details, and I'll add your noms manually. (Please don't rely on email for this, it seems to be having a flaky moment.) Time's up!

After that the only modifications made will be corrections. Please do take one last look in case there's anything I've missed. (I should pick up any missing "No Characters" and "Original Character(s)" tags when I make the spreadsheet later, but if I haven't spotted spelling mistakes and other similar things already, I'm unlikely to suddenly notice them now.)

Fingers crossed for sign ups opening within the next 12-24 hours.
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One hour left to nominate

It's a great tag set already, but there's still just time to squeeze in a few more things.
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A small snag

I have just discovered a bunch of "Worldbuilding: ..." tags which had somehow ended up defined as character tags.

I tried to remove these from the Characters section of the tag set to move to them to Relationships. However, because by this point AO3 already knew about those tags, and that they were very definitely character tags, they have all gained a " - Relationship" modifier to make them unique. This is potentially confusing at best. I am going to be coming up with slight renamings as a workaround, so please don't worry about your tags suddenly seeming to shift around slightly.

Some of these tags were for some flavour of Pokemon, and only disambiguated with "(Pokemon)". I failed to spot that when I was approving them and now they have lost their link to their fandom; I am half-guessing, half-remembering that they were for video games rather than anime but if you spot a slight variant on your tag has ended up in a fandom that wasn't what you intended, please say and I will put it in the right place.

ETA: All done. Please check that I haven't scrambled the intended meanings of your tags too badly. I am happy to make further changes but unfortunately they can't go back to exactly what they were. (NB I finally decided that Anthonius and Paulinus were character tags all along).
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12 hours to go ...

As of this point, the tag set contains 208 fandoms, 1519 characters and 1270 worldbuilding tags.

I have rejected the few remaining "Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling" tags but have added them manually to Wizarding World.

As we move into the final stages, please consider following the (still entirely optional) guide to getting your nominations approved quickly to help keep things moving overall; many of you are doing so - much appreciated. Also, there will be no further nominations clarification posts; I will be making judgement calls as and when I get to tags. If you are nominating anything you think might be in danger of being rejected, please provide information as you do so by commenting here or via email.

Finally, Divine Cities has recently gained worldbuilding tags, but Dinotopia and Haikyuu!! should now be considered to be in severe danger of not making it into the final tag set.
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Last Day for Nominations

Nominations will close in 24 hours from the time of this post.
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Nominations Clarifications #8

Please don't worry that this post is going up if you still have unapproved noms. There are a number of fandoms still awaiting attention, but they all at least look fairly straightforward. I have to go offline for a while now, so I have deliberately focused on the complicated bits:

Harry Potter

  • Everything that was previously in "Harry Potter (book series)" has been moved to "Harry Potter - Books Only" and "Harry Potter (book series)" removed. Please check that your nominations have survived this process unscathed! If you have incorrectly rejected nominations still outstanding, please get in touch.
  • Very minor, but "No Character" was rejected under Wizarding World because "No Characters" was already in. (Similar things have also happened in a few other fandoms, for what it's worth.)
  • I really can't decide what's the best thing to do with nominations under "Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling". That's a fandom in AO3's "Books and Literature" category, which would argue for the intention being to nominate for the books, but my take on HP fandom in general (which is possibly limited by the bits of it I know, I admit) is that it accepts everything as part of the same universe, so people nominating under this tag might well be meaning that everything is in scope, including Pottermore, the new play, the new film, etc. Anyone with a view as to which way I should jump, please do chime in. Better yet, if you're the original nominator, make your intentions clear by switching your nominations to either "Harry Potter - Books Only" (the limited version) or "Harry Potter - Wizarding World" (the every-napkin-JKR's-ever-scribbled-on version), depending on what you intended.

Gundam

I have accepted the proposed divisions as nominated ("Gundam 00 & Anno Domini Gundam" and "Gundam SEED & Cosmic Era Gundam") because they seem sensible and fit with what the fandom's wiki tells me are essentially completely different timelines, but I am happy to rename them if there are strong arguments for it. These seem to have been sorted into sensible-looking places in the tag set, which to be honest I'm a bit confused by; I'm nowhere near as fandom-adjacent to Gundam as I am to Tolkien, but it has tagging issues visible from space. Have they recently been resolved?

Uncategorized Fandoms

Because of the way we're trying to organise things, many very popular fandoms are ending up in this "category" because we're not using AO3 canonical names for them (most often because the same worldbuilding spans what AO3 would consider multiple fandoms). Unfortunately, these fandoms will be stuck there permanently; putting these bespoke fandom tags into categories is not something I have the ability to do.

A bit more on AUs

The terminology around AUs seems to get more confusing all the time. To clarify:

This exchange is for worldbuilding based on the information available in canon. As such, setting change AUs/fusions/magical realism/etc. (where the main worldbuilding going on is about how the new element(s) involved affect the canon, not exploring the worldbuilding of the canon setting) are out of scope, though popular tropes for them can be nominated in the Original Work category - there's already a lot of soulmate stuff in there, for example - and popular targets for fusions such as His Dark Materials and Pacific Rim are in the tag set in their own rights.

On the other hand, some canons have AUs within them, most often canon-divergent (aka "What if?"/Elseworlds/etc.) but also sometimes other types (e.g. Xena's Uberverse). These are absolutely fine, and indeed can be nominated as their own fandoms if there is sufficient information provided about them to extrapolate worldbuilding from. (Examples already in the tag set include the Star Trek mirrorverse and Marvel Secret Wars Battleworlds.) They can also be nominated as worldbuilding tags (see, e.g. Shadowhunters (TV)).

Creating canon-divergent AUs in your fanworks for this exchange is absolutely fine, so long as your recipient hasn't DNW-ed them; I can easily imagine how this would be an interesting way to explore worldbuilding ideas. However, please don't use "what if?" type ideas for canon-divergent AUs as worldbuilding tags, unless that AU exists within the canon.

I hope that all makes sense but please do ask for further clarification if desired.

#FindTheGirlsOnTheNegatives

... And following on from that, given the nature of the "canon" here, I have in fact erred on the side of allowing in worldbuilding tags for this that could be construed as exactly the sort of AU I'm disallowing elsewhere (specifically: "fairy tale setting", "mermaids" and "underwater aliens"). If you're unhappy with any or all of those, please feel free to argue against them in the comments and if I'm convinced I'll take them back out again (and if they all go, the fandom will too); the one I'm least certain about is "fairy tale setting", for what it's worth.

General cleanup

Thanks for all the useful feedback so far. Please continue to keep an eye out for any issues in the tag set, such as duplicated or near-duplicated tags, dodgy-looking worldbuilding tags, fandoms which are missing "No Characters" and "Original Character(s)", or fandoms where your nominations have mysteriously disappeared.

Also, with the close of nominations imminent, please consider this a last call for responses to all previous clarification requests. Once we're into the final day of nominations (about 11 hours from now), I will start making my own judgement calls about whether or not to accept or reject the tags I'm currently uncertain about.
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Moddy's come to warn Harry Potter

In light of the continuing problems with nominations to "Harry Potter (book series)" being incorrectly automatically rejected*, I have manually added a new fandom to the tag set called "Harry Potter - Books Only" which you can nominate to instead. I will eventually move over all existing "Harry Potter (book series)" nominations into this new category, but please make new ones in the new category (or use it to resubmit your incorrectly rejected ones). Apologies for the inconvenience.

Also on Harry Potter, please try to avoid using the canonical "Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling" fandom tag as I am finding it difficult to interpret how wide a range of source material this is intended to encompass. (I can see several contradictory arguments; anyone who wants to discuss it in comments should feel free to ask as it may well help me clarify my thinking.) Any nominations still under the canonical tag when nominations close will probably end up in the broadest possible category ("Harry Potter - Wizarding World"), but I haven't yet decided for certain.

*This problem is entirely my fault for dealing with inconsistent capitalisation in a kludgey way early on in the nominations period. Sorry again.
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Update: no non-canonical AUs please

Complete setting change AUs/fusions/etc. are implicitly outside the scope of this exchange as the worldbuilding for them tends to go significantly beyond the idea of "extrapolating from canon" that the exchange is meant to be focused on. Those sorts of fanworks are very popular for good reason; they're just not what this exchange is for. Canonical AUs are fine, of course, as discussed earlier. (While we're here, may I recommend that those interested in AUs of all kinds take a look at [community profile] auexchange if they don't already know about it?)

However, it has come to my attention that I have approved worldbuilding tags in at least one fandom (Haikyuu!!) that do fall into this category. This is my bad; I did insufficient due diligence because this was one of the fandoms that had relationship tags instead of worldbuilding, and I was pleased to see that they had changed. These tags have now been removed. This leaves Haikyuu!! in the anomalous position of being an approved fandom with no worldbuilding tags. I will leave it in the tag set for now, but unless some valid tags are added, it will be removed at the close of nominations.

Another fandom in a similar situation was Bravely Default, which has a nearly identical set of worldbuilding tags to the out-of-scope ones submitted for Haikyuu!! I cannot find evidence for any of them being canon-based except for "Magic System", but please point me in the direction of the evidence I have missed, if I have, and I will reinstate the tags.

Please keep me informed of any other similar situations; I don't know every fandom by a long stretch, and I am generally assuming good faith on the part of nominators.

Also, I think I can now say that there is definitely a glitch affecting nominations for "Harry Potter (book series)" in particular, as described in the previous post. If you nominate tags and they appear to be rejected instantly, please send me a link to your nominations page to get it straightened out.

Nominations close in a little under 48 hours. Have fun!
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Nominations Clarifications #7

Any unexplained rejections are accidental!

I have rejected very few tags throughout the nominations process so far, and any that I have rejected, I have explained the reasoning for in a post like this one.

However, I have occasionally been hitting 500 errors and similar on AO3 while approving nominations, and it's always possible that I've just straight-up made hideous, hideous mistakes. (Confession time: I was only one click away from clearing all nominations from the tag set earlier today.) It has come to my attention that at least one nominator has had worldbuilding tags rejected that I certainly did not intend to reject; this is hopefully now fixed.

If you think the same might have happened to you, or tags you nominated have disappeared entirely, please comment on this post or email me at worldbuildingmod@gmx.com - if you can provide a link to your nominations page on AO3, that would really help. This would be in the format http://archiveofourown.org/tag_sets/1613/nominations/vwxyz where vwxyz is a string of numbers.

Fandoms with no worldbuilding tags

As you've hopefully seen, these have been moved to their own post here. Thanks to those who've already nominated worldbuilding tags for some fandoms and helped me remove them from the list. (If fandoms disappear from that list but have not yet appeared in the tag set, it's because there are other issues like disambiguation that I need a bit more time to sort out. But I'm taking them off that list as soon as I see worldbuilding tags appear.)

Fandom-specific questions

  • Captive Prince - "Worldbuilding: What Will the Neighbours Think?" - I'm a bit unclear on how this is a worldbuilding tag. Is it "neighbours" in the sense of next-door countries?
  • Dragon Age - there are some new nominations for All Media Types. The tag set already has Dragon Age (Video Games). Could the nominator confirm that they deliberately intend to create a broader category, or would they rather I folded their noms into the game category? (If I don't hear anything, I will assume that it is meant to be separate.)
  • Eagle of the Ninth - I'm still unsure about "Anthonius" and "Paulinus" as worldbuilding tags. If they're there mostly because the nominator ran out of character slots, I can create extra character tags if need be. In this particular instance, I will probably err on the side of allowing them in as-is if I don't hear anything, but some clarification would be appreciated.
  • Hunger Games - "Victor" is nominated as a character tag. Is this in the sense of "Original Victor" of a games we didn't see, or is there a character called Victor I'm unaware of?
  • Labyrinth - "The effect of humans on Labyrinth and the Goblin King" and "Effects of humans [...]" were both nominated; I went with "Effects".
  • Steven Universe - I moved the apostrophe in "Worldbuilding: Gem's Influence on Earth" to "Gems' Influence". If there's any reason why this was the wrong thing to do, let me know and I'll change it back.

Current progress

The tag set is currently at 166 fandoms, 1182 characters and 980 worldbuilding tags.

I am very keen to open sign ups as soon as possible after nominations close, and as such I am keen to avoid a prolonged tag set clean up phase. Please keep an eye on things as nominations continue, and if you spot any problems, let me know.

Finally, thanks for all the enthusiasm already on display!
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Can you help rescue these fandoms?

Haikyuu!! is in the tag set, but currently has no valid worldbuilding tags. If it does not have any when nominations close, it will be removed from the tag set. (The explanation for this anomalous state of affairs is here.)

All other fandoms that were previously listed here have been rescued! \o

ETA: Sadly no worldbuilding tags were added and Haikyuu!! has now been removed from the tag set.
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Please nominate tags to go with fandoms!

Some fandoms that look extremely relevant to this exchange's interests (including Antler Guy and Journey to Mars posters) have appeared on my approvals screen, but without any subtags nominated. I know this is the traditional way to make worldbuilding-focused nominations in other exchanges, but since this entire exchange is focused on that, I'm hoping to be able to go into more detail.

For all fandoms, please nominate at least two character fields:

  • No Characters (Name of Fandom)
  • Original Character(s) (Name of Fandom)


And at least one "Relationship" field:

  • Worldbuilding: A worldbuilding tag of your choice (Name of Fandom)

"(Name of Fandom)" can be abbreviated if the name is long (e.g. I disambiguated all the Series of Unfortunate Events tags with "(ASoUE)").

I am in general happy to add the No Characters and Original Character(s) tags for fandoms that don't have them, but fandoms with no worldbuilding tags will be rejected at close of nominations, unless they happen to be ones I know well enough to think of my own ones.

PS I will get to all nominations over time, but for people who are keen to have them approved quickly (i.e. when I'm on my smartphone, not the computer) I will be replying to this post shortly with a comment containing an (entirely optional) guide to how you can help that happen by making my life easy.