helkalantto: (Default)
Helka Lantto ([personal profile] helkalantto) wrote in [community profile] otw_news2011-03-14 07:14 pm

A Week in the Life of a Tag Wrangler

Written by Franzeska Dickson

Tag wranglers are our biggest pool of volunteers, with over 100 wranglers around the world working to organise the Archive's 100,000+ tags. The wranglers put in a varying amount of work, each wrangler deciding for themselves how much time they can dedicate to wrangling. We now profile a week in the life of one of our... more dedicated wranglers...

Monday: Look at all those fandoms without wranglers. How is InuYasha still missing a wrangler?! I’d better do some emergency wrangling before it gets any more out of control. That’s funny: these character names aren’t in Japanese order. Or are they? Maybe the original manga uses names in a weird order. I’d better go look at Wikipedia...

5 hours later:

Damnit.

Tuesday: 20 minutes spent making a google docs spreadsheet of all the Japanese names. 5 minutes spent wrangling all the pairing and character tags now that I’ve decided on a standard format. 5 hours spent catching up on all the Tuesday tv shows. (What’s up with that, US networks? Why is everything on Tuesday?!)

Wednesday: Hey, I know that obscure 19thC novel! I don’t remember this character though. Maybe there’s a copy on Project Gutenberg...

Thursday: Robin Hood doesn’t have a wrangler. That should be easy to wrangle... Huh. There’s a megafandom page on the internal wiki.

...

Just how many Robin Hood adaptations are there anyway?! And they all spell the names differently! At least the megafandom team has a spreadsheet.

Friday: Characters and pairings seem pretty well under control, but my fandoms are full of freeform tags. Hey, ‘Bob’ isn’t a character in my fandom. Who’s Bob? I wonder if this is on Fanlore...

Saturday: Dreamwidth’s content search is awesome! I can search for my name, and my new fandom, and that weird word from word a day that I’m pretty sure no one has actually used in any posts. Look, someone posted about tag wrangling. And they have a question. That I know the answer to!

Sunday: This series isn’t even on Wikipedia. Maybe if I google it, I can find something. Hey, a bunch of the characters are listed on the TV Tropes page...

...
...

What do you mean it’s Monday already?!

Mirrored from an original post on the OTW blog.
anatsuno: a scary girl holding a very scary clown ragdoll (children are scary)

[personal profile] anatsuno 2011-03-14 06:39 pm (UTC)(link)
Oh OH, I was curious about this, precisely. good post, thanks :)
azurelunatic: "I've got A.D.D. and magic markers. Oh, the thrills I will have." Pile of uncapped bright markers.  (attention span)

[personal profile] azurelunatic 2011-03-14 10:21 pm (UTC)(link)
Hahaha, that ... sounds a lot like me!
starlady: steampunk snow goggles  (wrangling)

[personal profile] starlady 2011-03-14 10:53 pm (UTC)(link)
Ha, that's exactly it!
hermitsoul: steampunk girl (* tag wrangler: hermitsoul)

[personal profile] hermitsoul 2011-03-15 01:10 am (UTC)(link)
Then there's the 'wow, there's a story about 'x' character - must go read it!' Several hours (and stories) later you realize you still haven't wrangled the original tag.

Tag wrangling - an hour of work, a day of 'research'!