How can I assign custom metadata across multiple projects or as defaults for all new projects?
Create a project template containing the metadata you want.
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That only works to start brand new projects. I am interested in copying and pasting, or somehow inserting meta-data into existing projects.
This can be done with both projects open simultaneously. You will find detailed instructions on how to keep project metadata and some settings in parity in the user manual, under Appendix C.1, Copying Settings Between Projects.
And as noted, Templates are the best way to establish standards going forward. They can be easily updated with revisions as you go, too. Details on that are in §5.4.4, Revising Templates.
Templates only effect the state of settings at the moment a project is created from that template. After that, any edits to any of those settings are project specific (aren’t updated across projects that were created from that template or to the project template itself). Templates are a static solution to a dynamic problem and are therefor exactly not the solution I am looking for to the problem I have addressed.
Though I know that your reply is meant not as actual solution and more as always as rhetorical PR support for the product itself, I will explain to those reading. If I add a metadata category to a template project and I call that metadata “Narrative POV” and designate it “Lis” type, and populate the list with “Protagonist”, “Antagonist”, and “Neutral Observer”, and then open two projects from that template. Then if I append that metadata list with “Protagonist Compatriot” and “Antagonist Compatriot”, the projects I have previously created from that template don’t reflect those meta data changes. Same for the projects themselves, changing the metadata within any project created from a template does not in any way update the metadata within the template project from which they were cloned. If I would like changes to propogate to all projects, I am out of luck unless I am willing to manually make changes to the metadata within each of those project and do so exactly and meticulously. Not a solution at all.
There is ZERO reference to copying metadata between projects in the Users Manual (not in the section you referenced or anywhere else) as there is no mechanism in Scrivener to do so.
Perhaps you have an old version of the software and/or the user manual? I pointed you directly to the section that covers it. This answers the first part of your question, and yes, there are mechanisms in Scrivener for doing so.
Templates only effect the state of settings at the moment a project is created from that template.
Precisely, this is how templates work, as a concept that goes beyond Scrivener even. Your question ended with, “…or as defaults for all new projects”. Answer: Project Templates.
Now you are asking about something else entirely though, which is fair, but a bit odd when you frame it as though that had always been your question, and thus answers to your precise question are “PR” that contains no actual answer, since they do not answer your previously unstated question.