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.)

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.

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.

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.

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. (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

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

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.

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.

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 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!

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.