Nominations guidelines

[pocketmouse]

Here's the breakdown for how nominations to the tagset should work this year. I'll post a link to the tagset tomorrow, please use this post to ask about any questions related to the nominations process or regarding metafandoms. As we approve tags and have questions related to your nominations, I'll start a new post with those questions.

Nominating fandoms:

For Marvel and DC, generally we end up with nominations for the top-level All Media Type tags (which are Marvel and DCU respectively), mid-level metafandoms (eg MCU, DCU (Comics)), and specific fandoms (eg Hawkeye (Comics), The Flash (TV)).

For things like video game series (Final Fantasy, Fire Emblem) and TV shows with rolling continuity (Doctor Who and Torchwood, Buffy and Angel) it’s preferable to nominate on a metafandom. If you’re planning on nominating something like this, feel free to discuss in comments, otherwise we’ll ask for clarification as they come up in nominations. Fandoms with mostly rolling continuity but some bumps (Star Trek as a whole vs AOS, X-Men movies, etc) usually get grouped into multiple metafandoms in the same way as Marvel or DCU, but there’s less need to get as detailed (ie Star Trek and AOS as the only two categories is fine, no need to specify TNG vs DS9).

Nominating fandoms in this way also helps cut down on the need for crossovers. If you’re nominating a relationship that is a crossover, it gets nominated to the fandom Crossover. But if you’re nominating within a metafandom, that’s not an issue (see below for more details).

Generally speaking, if one media format AND the All Media Types format of a fandom are nominated, we’ll select the AMT type, though we will try and ask for clarification if it happens (since directors can make movies very different from the books).



Nominating relationships:

Please make sure it has three characters, and uses the / symbol instead of the & symbol between all characters.

Please always nominate to the highest applicable metafandom. If you do not disambiguate while nominating a relationship, it’ll be placed in the highest applicable metafandom. If you have multiple disambiguations in one relationship, it will be placed in the highest applicable metafandom.

Examples:

James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers/Sam Wilson: gets assigned to Marvel, since it could mean comics or MCU.
James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers/Sam Wilson (MCU): I assume this means one disambiguation for the relationship as a whole, and put it in MCU.
James "Bucky" Barnes(Ultimates)/Steve Rogers (MCU)/Sam Wilson (MCU): there is a comics disambig and a movies disambig so it gets assigned to Marvel, which covers both.

Comments

[lynndyre]

For things that probably shouldn't be AMT- Lord of the Rings and Hobbit ought to be sorted into books and movies, since there are significant differences in characters and universe.

James T. Kirk/Leonard "Bones" McCoy/Spock Prime

[(Anonymous)]

This is showing up under Star Trek, but it probably migrated over from AOS as the TOS version wouldn't need to specify Spock Prime.

[(Anonymous)]

"For things like video game series (Final Fantasy, Fire Emblem) and TV shows with rolling continuity (Doctor Who and Torchwood, Buffy and Angel) it’s preferable to nominate on a metafandom."

No, that's wrong. Those video game series are not rolling fandoms. FFI has nothing to do with FFXV. They have different settings and casts. I'm told that Fire Emblem is similar. I would not want to look through a tag mess that features pairings from all final fantasy games. (FF7, FFX, and FFXIII do have sequels/tie-ins, and that stuff should be nominated together, but it would be chaos otherwise.)

[pocketmouse]

Sorry, the rolling bit is supposed to refer to TV fandoms only, read: 'for (video game fandoms) and (TV fandoms with characteristic X).'

In years past Fire Emblem has been nominated as one metafandom, but yes, there has been some branching off for FF games.

[(Anonymous)]

Most Fire Emblem games have 30-60 characters who are only in that specific Fire Emblem game. While there are a few games in the same setting and continuity, that still leaves six distinct fandoms with very little overlap. Meanwhile, Final Fantasy games have no overlap at all. Please reconsider having them merged.

[pocketmouse]

That was what the nominators elected to do. Go ahead and nominate under the individual fandoms, and we'll see if anyone nominates the metafandom instead and can make the determination then.

[(Anonymous)]

How should V-shape relationships be nominated?

[pocketmouse]

Character A/Character B & Character B/Character C.

Does that work? I don't think I've had this come up in years past, and that way it's one relationship tag, but the V is still clear.

[trobadora]

Until now I thought a nomination for "A/B/C" didn't specify the type of poly relationship, that it was meant to encompass all kinds of poly relationships with these characters. Does that mean we'd have to nominate every potential poly configuration separately? And does that mean the way I've been nominating until now has a single specific interpretation? I'd really like some clarification on that.

[pocketmouse]

I've never had someone specify that they wanted a different way to tag a V. This hasn't come up in years past. I can ask the anon about just posting everything the same and specifying in request notes.

[trobadora]

Thank you!

[pocketmouse]

Or, based on the other comment, would just specifying a V in the request notes work for you?

Mass Effect

[(Anonymous)]

Do we need to use Mass Effect Trilogy or Mass Effect - All Media Types for that video game series? Right now they're both listed in the tagset.

Re: Mass Effect

[pocketmouse]

My preference would be for the AMT tag, but if you nominated either tag, please feel free to jump in.

Re: Mass Effect

[settiai]

Personally, my vote is to combine them all under AMT. The trilogy and Andromeda are both set in the same universe, and there's some definite crossover between the two. (Also, I'm considering nominating some crossover pairings featuring characters from the original trilogy and Andromeda but was waiting to see how the fandom was handled first.)

Hiveswap

[(Anonymous)]

I'd like to nominate a ship that contains one character from Hiveswap and two character from Homestuck. Does Hiveswap count as a separate enough fandom from Homestuck that I should nominate this as a crossover ship, or should I put it under Homestuck? Or under Hiveswap?

Hiveswap is a recent game based on the webcomic Homestuck. It is set in the same universe as Homestuck, and has two shared characters (neither of who I am planning to nominate for the crossover ship). On AO3, Hiveswap is a child tag(?) of Homestuck.

Re: Hiveswap

[pocketmouse]

Nominate it as Homestuck.

Re: Hiveswap

[(Anonymous)]

Got it, thank you!

[reeby10]

Is it ok to nominate character/group? Like the Knights of Ren in Star Wars?

[pocketmouse]

Yup, as long as it's obvious that one of the tags is a group tag. We've got a couple like this already.

[reeby10]

Great, thank you!