When Is It Genre? Complicating the Categorization of Fan-Generated Metadata

Abstract

Fanfiction is a prolific field with millions of works freely available to fans. Tags enable the identification and discovery of works, such as by labeling the work’s shared source material, its genres, and key features of its plot. Categorizations of fan-tags find a mix of descriptive and communicative functions. We test an existing tag taxonomy against a distinct collection of fanworks, finding it useful to identify the needs of the community to negotiate commonalities and divergences in their works. We propose two further subtypes to communicative functions for fan-tags and explore the related function of labeling works by genre, plot, and warning.