I'm curious if you had that matching problem with the request or offer side?
This may be subjective to my own experience, but I've found that lately exchanges have moved to a 'participant figures out how to be matachable' scheme. The mods expect that you will find who you can be matched to and offer at least the tags that one person has requested, or have your signup deleted. This isn't something I remember seeing much years ago (but granted I haven't participated in as many exchanges until recently). What this means for me personally, especially with fandoms on a smaller side, is that I essentially pick whether I want to write for 2-3 people, and offer the tags they offer. As for requests in these freeform exchanges, I try to give a few "safety" generic ones (e.g. "Soulmates AU") that anyone could match and use as a springing board, and then use tags to indicate the general 'feel' of stories I want more than anything I want specifically. I don't think as a writer I'm able to rigidly stick to a prompt anyway, it always gets away from me, though the basic idea underlies the final story.
I also don't mind going to pinch hits because that means whoever picks up my request likely wants to write it.
IDK if you're already doing something similar, but essentially reducing the field of potential matches for myself this way (to a few people who I could match to write for) significantly reduces the tagset for me. I don't think I even look through the entire tagset anymore (except maybe for the hurtcomfort exchange, for inspiration :D ) because it's too much stuff for me, and stuff I'm not even interested in. Sometimes I'll control+F through the tagset for keywords I might be interested in.
There's an interesting dance now, when you nominate prompts and see if anyone else nominated prompts or relationships for your pairing, and thus that there might be other people willing to "interact" with your signup. It's like a courtship dance, where you request things and see if new signups appear offering things in the same vein.
Right now though, I'm passing on an AU Exchange that's currently going on because even though the tags are interesting I know I won't be matched with anyone I can write for. There's an AU Prompt Fest that's going on (you post your prompt, no guarantee of a fill) that might be fun though.
no subject
This may be subjective to my own experience, but I've found that lately exchanges have moved to a 'participant figures out how to be matachable' scheme. The mods expect that you will find who you can be matched to and offer at least the tags that one person has requested, or have your signup deleted. This isn't something I remember seeing much years ago (but granted I haven't participated in as many exchanges until recently). What this means for me personally, especially with fandoms on a smaller side, is that I essentially pick whether I want to write for 2-3 people, and offer the tags they offer. As for requests in these freeform exchanges, I try to give a few "safety" generic ones (e.g. "Soulmates AU") that anyone could match and use as a springing board, and then use tags to indicate the general 'feel' of stories I want more than anything I want specifically. I don't think as a writer I'm able to rigidly stick to a prompt anyway, it always gets away from me, though the basic idea underlies the final story.
I also don't mind going to pinch hits because that means whoever picks up my request likely wants to write it.
IDK if you're already doing something similar, but essentially reducing the field of potential matches for myself this way (to a few people who I could match to write for) significantly reduces the tagset for me. I don't think I even look through the entire tagset anymore (except maybe for the hurtcomfort exchange, for inspiration :D ) because it's too much stuff for me, and stuff I'm not even interested in. Sometimes I'll control+F through the tagset for keywords I might be interested in.
There's an interesting dance now, when you nominate prompts and see if anyone else nominated prompts or relationships for your pairing, and thus that there might be other people willing to "interact" with your signup. It's like a courtship dance, where you request things and see if new signups appear offering things in the same vein.
Right now though, I'm passing on an AU Exchange that's currently going on because even though the tags are interesting I know I won't be matched with anyone I can write for. There's an AU Prompt Fest that's going on (you post your prompt, no guarantee of a fill) that might be fun though.