I spoke with the Tags chairs about this, and we wanted to pass on some comments, so you're aware as to the situation: the code to support piped canonicals is working fairly well; major wrangling changes, on the other hand, are having issues. There are two main concerns right now, both caused by the massive increase in site usage:
The servers' capacity: wrangling can place a lot of strain on the server, as changing a canonical forces a re-index for every work on that tag. Workers (pieces of code that run the tasks) that are tied up in a wrangling process are unavailable to serve users their search results or selected works or downloads. We do have a list of tag changes that need to be done for fandoms, characters, and relationships*, but we're only able to adjust about one tag a day on weekdays and none on weekends. Additionally, a tag that has over 35,000 combined uses on works and bookmarks goes on a list for when we get new higher capacity servers.
The tag drop: we recently found an issue where, depending on server traffic when we "submit" changes, an old canonical fandom will link to a new form, but none of the characters and relationships and freeforms transfer to the new tag. However, they detach from the old tag, so all of these characters and relationships end up free-floating and have to be tracked back down. There is a work-around, but depending on the number of tags in the fandom, it can take anywhere from 15 minutes to 3 hours per fandom to move everything.
We will happily note down the fandom tags that need to be changed, but we want y'all to be aware that the fandoms will have to be added to the list, and will unfortunately not be changed immediately.
Best, Sam J. AO3 Support Chair
* Regarding freeforms: I should note that for capacity reasons, we've a moratorium on wrangling freeforms that don't fit in a specific fandom. If we completely lost the plot and connected two freeforms that shouldn't be connected, let us know; otherwise, freeform changes are going to go on a very much longer list.
no subject
I spoke with the Tags chairs about this, and we wanted to pass on some comments, so you're aware as to the situation: the code to support piped canonicals is working fairly well; major wrangling changes, on the other hand, are having issues. There are two main concerns right now, both caused by the massive increase in site usage:
We do have a list of tag changes that need to be done for fandoms, characters, and relationships*, but we're only able to adjust about one tag a day on weekdays and none on weekends. Additionally, a tag that has over 35,000 combined uses on works and bookmarks goes on a list for when we get new higher capacity servers.
We will happily note down the fandom tags that need to be changed, but we want y'all to be aware that the fandoms will have to be added to the list, and will unfortunately not be changed immediately.
Best,
Sam J.
AO3 Support Chair
* Regarding freeforms: I should note that for capacity reasons, we've a moratorium on wrangling freeforms that don't fit in a specific fandom. If we completely lost the plot and connected two freeforms that shouldn't be connected, let us know; otherwise, freeform changes are going to go on a very much longer list.