I've only seriously tag nagged once--Castiel was a rape survivor, and they described some of the abuse, AND had his brother and Dean harangue him for not being ready to get physical with someone else.

I told her she should tag for past rape and continuing emotional abuse of survivors, and I got one out of two. I think she really had no idea what she was writing, though.

(Things like, "tag this with the big bang! More people will see the awesome!" don't count)

Do you guys expect all expect tagged content warnings at this point?

I'm choose not to warn on principle (the principle being that my mental health will always come before a reader's mental health, and I could tl;dr you, but it comes down to the grimly amusing twist that attempting to tag is actually a triggering act for me, and no, I'm neither kidding nor exaggerating, and the uptick in warnings-as-de-facto-requirement is one of the many reasons I don't write as much these days), so you'll probably *not* find me tagging on AO3 stuff in terms of warning beyond maybe a "possibly disturbing material" tag. Maybe.

Got tag/warning nagged once, and added it (though, dude, I think possible dubcon is kind of implied with sex pollen), but only because it was in a ficathon community and I didn't want to find myself in any sort of wank over not doing it. (The story was hella old when I was tag/warning nagged, too.)

And, honestly, I still kind of resent the tag nagging.

I mean, I suspect I'm not the only one out there with the perfect storm of personal history and anxiety issues for whom this is an issue.

I haven't found anything in text triggering, so I don't really have expectations on tagged warnings for myself. If I did have specific triggers, I would probably avoid stories that don't have specific warnings or I'd let a trusted friend read them first. For me, tagged TWs fall under the heading of "good to have, but not required."

I try not to tag to the point of spoiling major plot points, but if there's nastiness afoot I may put in something like "very bad people doing very bad things, tread carefully." I figure people should know their own issues and can read their own maps. But I do appreciate tags for major thematic things, like d/s and omega and the like.

I did tell a writer who had Mary Winchester die of cancer and Dean feel like a crappy son for it that it made me cry like I hadn't since her remission. She didn't tag, but I think she mentioned it in a note.

PMM, do you think there are many writers who can write things that don't trigger them but the act of listing them does? I'd imagine you're a minority, and yes, even though I'm triggered by very little I do think fanfic has evolved into a place of safety-expectation. So I'd do what I can to prevent other people--that rape/continued abuse story was horrible.

PMM, do you think there are many writers who can write things that don't trigger them but the act of listing them does? I'd imagine you're a minority, and yes, even though I'm triggered by very little I do think fanfic has evolved into a place of safety-expectation. So I'd do what I can to prevent other people--that rape/continued abuse story was horrible.

The triggers in the act of listing them aren't the trigger: it's the having to list them part, which is a combination of issues around control/shaming plus my anxiety that I won't get all the things I could possibly get and then will get into trouble for it.

Given that I know from lurking at FFA that a lot of people have similar issues around other developing fannish norms, I may be in the minority, but I expect it's a non-trivial one.

Coincidentally -- maybe not? -- the discussion of trigger warnings in academic situations is all over Twitter today.

I'd also love to see exercises in third party tagging. I'm assuming wranglers only read tags and normalise them, right, Debet?

We get tags from people who bookmark works, as well as from the authors. The only changes we can make are to capitalization and turning e into é, and we rarely do that (only if we're making that tag the canonical and then saying that other tags mean the same thing as it).

Which reminds me--what does "freeform" mean? Sometimes they seem like normal tags, and I'm never sure if it will show up when I do a tag search. Which I do more and more. I'm getting moody as fuck.

Freeform is everything that's not fandom, character, and relationship tags. We're really strict about what gets canonized in those (e.g. Fem!Castiel gets called synonymous to Castiel if it's in the characters section, but can get to be its own canonical in freeforms once it's used enough).

Is the OTW newsletter intrusive? Can anyone sign up?

This is the webpage where they post volunteering opportunities. I get the updates and stuff in my RSS feed, but I don't recall how I set it up.

The only changes we can make are to capitalization and turning e into é, and we rarely do that (only if we're making that tag the canonical and then saying that other tags mean the same thing as it).

Really? So if I only tag something 'Cas fucks Dean's brains out' then Dean/Castiel fans will never see it?

This is the webpage where they post volunteering opportunities.

I'll have a look, thanks.

which is a combination of issues around control/shaming plus my anxiety that I won't get all the things I could possibly get and then will get into trouble for it.

I'm still very interested in the idea that you can write and publish the story, though. Publication seems to be similar in weight. I'm not going to lie--I pity the person who stumbles into untagged deep waters

Really? So if I only tag something 'Cas fucks Dean's brains out' then Dean/Castiel fans will never see it?

I don't wrangle SPN, but if that's the ONLY tag you use, then, yeah, likely not, as it's unlikely to be used enough to be canonized. And, in that case, they're gonna have to look specifically for that tag. However, if you tag:
Fandom: Supernatural, Relationship: Castiel (Supernatural)/Dean Winchester Freeform tag:Cas fucks Dean's brains out
They will.

This, of course, is assuming they use the advanced tag-based search functions (highly recommended)

We get some people who put all their tags in the "characters" section, and there's not really anything we can do with that. On the other hand, we have some users who have figured out not only / vs & (for sexual/romantic relationships vs not), but some of the finicky formatting details we have to keep things reasonably predictable.