Thanks very much for your patience while we resolved the issues relating to "Any" requests/offers.
The solution we have come up with is to add a special Relationship tag - "Any Eligible Relationship or Character" - to the tag set which is
not associated with any fandom. This means that it can be requested and/or offered for any fandom in the tag set. We have tested on a small dummy exchange and by leaving it unassociated people are able to match on their bucket offers and requests as well. If you are making a bucket offer or request, please ensure that you only include the "Any Eligible Relationship or Character" tag in the Relationship field.
Please note that the new tag will
not appear in the drop down menu, so must be copied and pasted or typed exactly as it appears here:
Any Eligible Relationship or Character
We will take various steps to ensure that this ends up working as intended at the matching stage. Please do not use the "Any Relationship" tickbox in the request section of the form as this will complicate matching. (Unfortunately, we can no more turn this off at this stage than we can turn it on for offers.)
Please note that, as with the use of the "Any Relationship" tickbox previously, this tag does not mean that works can be created for relationships or characters that would otherwise be ineligible (i.e. where the AO3 tag contains 10+ complete works in English from 5+ creators).
We will edit the sign up instructions and various other relevant places to explain how this will work for this round. (Please note that this is a temporary fix and we intend to return to the normal way of working for future rounds.)