ao3org:

Changes to the Bandom Tag on AO3

For years, as early as 2006, there have been discussions about what the term “Bandom” means, and debate among different parts of fandom as to which bands the term includes. You can read about the history of this terminology on Fanlore’s Bandom Terminology Debate page.

On the Archive, this lack of consensus has caused inconsistencies in which bands are subtagged to the Bandom fandom tag and which are not. There has also been confusion among users over the terminology, leading to conflicting requests to remove or add particular fandoms as subtags.

To address this issue, wranglers will be changing the structure of the Bandom tag.  All fandoms currently subtagged to Bandom will become stand-alone fandoms, unassociated with the Bandom metatag. The Bandom tag itself will remain a canonical fandom, but wranglers will no longer subtag any Band or Musician fandom to this tag. 

Moving forward, “Bandom” will be strictly a self-defined term – creators who feel that their works should be classified as “bandom” are welcome to use that fandom tag, in addition to any other band or musician fandom tags that they feel are appropriate. This should allow users to browse only works that the work creator has directly defined as “bandom”, as well as reduce confusion in the future about what is or isn’t included.

So for example, a work tagged with the fandom “Duran Duran” will no longer automatically appear in the Bandom tag. The work’s creator can choose to tag Bandom if they would like their work to appear in that tag.

Thank you for your understanding as we continue to work to create an experience that better meets the needs of our community as a whole.