To the people in the OTW Tumblr Inbox asking about how the OTW is responding to the American Election.

This is a separate post (and not a response to a specific message) because we all need to see it.

Folks have been asking Support (through the form) as well as the other social media mods, and we have now been given the following to tell you.

<3 Mod Remi

A detailed write-up by our small team of sysadmins to explain various server-related issues which occurred from roughly August 24th to September 26th, 2024.

So I've been tagged by a few people asking me about the All Media Types (AMT) tags on AO3 and what's happening there.

Pause for me to remind everyone that I am, in fact, a single woman with a blog and not the OTW, AO3, or in any way representing volunteers as a whole.

I don't know why the AMT tags are being discontinued, but this is not a new thing. There hasn't been a new AMT tag created in at least 5 years, if not more. [Update since I started writing this: changes to AMT tags have been halted pending further discussion and the changes that were made have been reverted]

I'm not a fan of AMT tags, personally, because I'm one of the fans whose searching and filtering is made harder because my fandom is under one of those giant umbrellas. Yes, I can see the utility of the tag for some people, but for people like me, they cause a lot of frustration. That said, I had no expectation of them being removed. They were an albatross around my neck that I'd just learned to live with, like it or not.

Everyone has different needs when it comes to tagging and searching and filtering, and no solution will work for everyone. Will disassembling the AMT tags improve anything? I have no idea. Everything I've learned about wrangling has been to answer a question on this blog.

I do wish that communication about changes didn't happen in the form of [change happens], [fandom gets alarmed], [my dash catches fire as I'm just walking in the door with some pizza].

I also wish that people would stop encouraging write-in campaigns. Those campaigns are exhausting to be on the receiving side of, and they take time and energy away from fixing the problem because the same people who answer those emails are the ones trying to put out the fire.

I know it doesn't feel like it, but volunteers see your social media posts. They reblog them, comment on them, show them to other volunteers. If you raise an issue and get any kind of traction on your post, you can be pretty confident it's been seen. Volunteers are fans too, and there are enough of them that there are probably at least a few who agree with you.

Communicating with a userbase of several million people isn't easy, but I think that improvements could be made. This is a situation where a heads up and a clear explanation might have made the fires burn less brightly. I'm glad to see that there's a post folks can reference now.

If there was ANY other way of sending feedback, we wouldn't do the write-in campaigns. If anything other than the write-in campaigns had success, we wouldn't do the write-in campaigns. If AO3 doesn't want the write-in campaigns, it needs to respond to some other form of complaints.

People will do what works. You create the world you receive. If you don't want angry write-in campaigns, HAVE SOME OTHER WAY OF GETTING IN CONTACT.

Except there is another way. The options aren't nothing versus write-in campaign. You can also write a single email and wait for a response.

Some people really actually do that! But some people write inflammatory social media posts decrying the end of days and the evilness of AO3 and tell everyone to grab the pitchforks.

Yes, I'm angry. I know the people who are on the receiving end of a lot of hate right now that they really don't deserve, and I have no patience for it.

Both the OTW and AO3 are slow. Famously slow. Annoying, frustratingly, tooth-grindingly slow. So why do people expect a response turnaround like they're DMing their bestie?

When a question about Wrangling comes into Support, Support has to take that question to the Wrangling Committee. The Wrangling Committee needs to read the question, debate the merits of the different possible responses, draft the response, and return it to Support.

Everyone involved in every conversation is volunteering, which means they also have a job or school or a family or a disability or something else that competes for their time - often multiple of those. Anyone involved could be in any time zone in the world. Anyone could be on vacation or experiencing an emergency or just taking the night off.

Write-in campaigns look like they work because you get a response after a week. News flash: it would take that long if it were a single email because that's how slow the responses are.

In no way am I saying "shut up and deal" when I'm asking people to stop it with the write-in campaigns, and you interpreting me in such bad faith is an example of how everyone treats every single fan who volunteers at AO3. It's exhausting and it sucks and I just wish it would stop.

And before anyone even thinks about it, do not send hate to this person. They are frustrated and angry, just like I am, and they're entitled to those feelings. Just like I'm allowed to vent back in response.

So I've been tagged by a few people asking me about the All Media Types (AMT) tags on AO3 and what's happening there.

Pause for me to remind everyone that I am, in fact, a single woman with a blog and not the OTW, AO3, or in any way representing volunteers as a whole.

I don't know why the AMT tags are being discontinued, but this is not a new thing. There hasn't been a new AMT tag created in at least 5 years, if not more. [Update since I started writing this: changes to AMT tags have been halted pending further discussion and the changes that were made have been reverted]

I'm not a fan of AMT tags, personally, because I'm one of the fans whose searching and filtering is made harder because my fandom is under one of those giant umbrellas. Yes, I can see the utility of the tag for some people, but for people like me, they cause a lot of frustration. That said, I had no expectation of them being removed. They were an albatross around my neck that I'd just learned to live with, like it or not.

Everyone has different needs when it comes to tagging and searching and filtering, and no solution will work for everyone. Will disassembling the AMT tags improve anything? I have no idea. Everything I've learned about wrangling has been to answer a question on this blog.

I do wish that communication about changes didn't happen in the form of [change happens], [fandom gets alarmed], [my dash catches fire as I'm just walking in the door with some pizza].

I also wish that people would stop encouraging write-in campaigns. Those campaigns are exhausting to be on the receiving side of, and they take time and energy away from fixing the problem because the same people who answer those emails are the ones trying to put out the fire.

I know it doesn't feel like it, but volunteers see your social media posts. They reblog them, comment on them, show them to other volunteers. If you raise an issue and get any kind of traction on your post, you can be pretty confident it's been seen. Volunteers are fans too, and there are enough of them that there are probably at least a few who agree with you.

Communicating with a userbase of several million people isn't easy, but I think that improvements could be made. This is a situation where a heads up and a clear explanation might have made the fires burn less brightly. I'm glad to see that there's a post folks can reference now.

Would anyone who’s had problems with the AMT tags be able to explain the types of problems they can cause? I’ve only seen people talking about the problems removing them can cause and my personal experience with them is basically just that it’s impossible to filter crossovers out while searching for good omens fic.

Okay, so you know how frustrating it is when your blorbo is constantly tagged in fics and then subsequently barely appears in them? Imagine your entire fandom is like that.

You can't just filter out the big umbrella tag because that *also* filters out your own fandom and leaves you with zero results.

So you decide to just look at the ship tag of your OTP.

Well dang. Your OTP are everyone's favourite duo to put in three paragraphs in Chapter 5 but nowhere else and because the fic is in the much bigger fandom, sorting by the usual metrics (kudos, comments, bookmarks, hits) are all useless. The most-seen fics barely contain them.

Filtering doesn't help me remove what I want to get rid of. Sorting doesn't put The Good Shit (tm) at the top. I gave up on both back in 2014 and I've just scrolled through the tags reading summaries ever since. I rarely have anything specific in mind to put in the effort it takes.

A friend reached out with a possible solution and if it works, I'll let folks know. But that's why I, personally, hate AMT tags. I can't speak for anyone else.

Regarding Fandom Trees & AMTs

Tag wrangling is, on the whole, a fluid process. It's meant to be, because the way language is used and the way tags are used change over time. We're the first to admit that we don’t always get it right, and that we do sometimes make mistakes despite our best intentions. This is why wrangling decisions are not set in stone and are reevaluated periodically as circumstances change or as new information becomes available. 

In light of the impact that removing the Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms metatag has had, we have put that metatag back in place. 

When it comes to fandom metatags and fandom trees, there is no 'one size fits all' approach that works for all fandoms. Consequently, we have placed a hold on all structural changes to fandom metatags, All Media Types fandoms (commonly called AMTs), and fandom trees while wranglers discuss the need for additional guidelines and adjustments to our approach regarding these tags going forward. 

This hold will remain in place until tag wranglers have had ample time to fully reevaluate our fandom wrangling guidelines with the aim of making it easier for Archive users to find the content they’re looking for and filter out the content they aren’t. This guideline reevaluation process is something we are actively working on, but it will likely take some time to complete. We will update again once these fandom guideline discussions have come to a close.

Thank you for your patience and understanding.

(From time to time, ao3org posts announcements of recent or upcoming wrangling changes on behalf of the Tag Wrangling Committee.)

Hey @ao3commentoftheday and anybody else who might know, is there a way to use different fonts in the body of a work on AO3 (and how much HTML do you have to know to make it work)?

You can, and you don't need to know any HTML to do it.

Use this AO3 public work skin. It's called Basic Formatting, and it has more than enough CSS to give you the font changes you're looking for, as well as a bunch of other things.

A work skin changes the appearance of your work on the Archive to everyone who accesses that work. This is different from a site skin, which changes the look of the site for the user who has that skin applied to their account.

You can add a work skin to your AO3 work in the same form where you enter the title and the tags and the text of the fic. Right below where you select your language, there's a spot for you to add a work skin. The three public ones provided by AO3 are already in that drop down. If you ever create a work skin of your own (or copy someone else's code) it'll be listed there too with whatever title you give it.

Once you've added the work skin to your work, you'll need to apply it onto the text that you want to modify. If you want it to modify the whole thing, that's just as easy as having it modify a single line. The steps are the same, it's all down to how many times you use them.

Adding in a cut because this got long

I updated the instructions under the cut to show how to modify text inside of a paragraph. Sorry for the confusion!

Hey @ao3commentoftheday and anybody else who might know, is there a way to use different fonts in the body of a work on AO3 (and how much HTML do you have to know to make it work)?

You can, and you don't need to know any HTML to do it.

Use this AO3 public work skin. It's called Basic Formatting, and it has more than enough CSS to give you the font changes you're looking for, as well as a bunch of other things.

A work skin changes the appearance of your work on the Archive to everyone who accesses that work. This is different from a site skin, which changes the look of the site for the user who has that skin applied to their account.

You can add a work skin to your AO3 work in the same form where you enter the title and the tags and the text of the fic. Right below where you select your language, there's a spot for you to add a work skin. The three public ones provided by AO3 are already in that drop down. If you ever create a work skin of your own (or copy someone else's code) it'll be listed there too with whatever title you give it.

Once you've added the work skin to your work, you'll need to apply it onto the text that you want to modify. If you want it to modify the whole thing, that's just as easy as having it modify a single line. The steps are the same, it's all down to how many times you use them.

Adding in a cut because this got long

Okay actually followup question, how do I do it within a paragraph? I tried using the <div class="font-style"> and </div> commands within the paragraph in the HTML editor, and AO3 automatically added paragraph breaks at each change of font when I tried to preview it.

Hmm. I thought that would work. I might need to poke at that for a minute (unless someone beats me to it) XD

Hey @ao3commentoftheday and anybody else who might know, is there a way to use different fonts in the body of a work on AO3 (and how much HTML do you have to know to make it work)?

You can, and you don't need to know any HTML to do it.

Use this AO3 public work skin. It's called Basic Formatting, and it has more than enough CSS to give you the font changes you're looking for, as well as a bunch of other things.

A work skin changes the appearance of your work on the Archive to everyone who accesses that work. This is different from a site skin, which changes the look of the site for the user who has that skin applied to their account.

You can add a work skin to your AO3 work in the same form where you enter the title and the tags and the text of the fic. Right below where you select your language, there's a spot for you to add a work skin. The three public ones provided by AO3 are already in that drop down. If you ever create a work skin of your own (or copy someone else's code) it'll be listed there too with whatever title you give it.

Once you've added the work skin to your work, you'll need to apply it onto the text that you want to modify. If you want it to modify the whole thing, that's just as easy as having it modify a single line. The steps are the same, it's all down to how many times you use them.

Adding in a cut because this got long

Other Archives

May or may not be the time to remind people that there are four other archives out there running on otw-archive!

SquidgeWorld Archive <- ALL FANDOMS!

superlove <- Guru young person self-hosts PINK otw-a on a Macbook.

Ad Astra <- Fifteen year strong single fandom Star Trek fanfiction archive! Fantastic community! (Also, I founded it. XD)

Comic Fanfiction Authors Archive <- Newest and most GAY RAINBOW otw-archive deployment ever! For comic books and comic adjacent fandoms! (Also, I founded it! XD)

Please, people, consider starting an archive! Decentralize fandom! Not only will this take some pressure off of AO3 for being the only non-pit of voles site, but when AO3 goes down, you'll have other options!

A couple of our servers have gotten a bit overwhelmed, so we're taking some down time to give them a chance to catch up. We'll be back as soon as possible!

2024-09-02 11:30 UTC

There should be a fanfic writing game called the showrunners challenge where someone writes a story and partway through someone else can play things like "actor leaves after 4000 more words" or "topic now too politically sensitive due to unforeseen world events" or "lost rights to that reference"

I need this to be a real game right the hell now

I do not have the energy do do a full layout right now b/c it is kickstarter season and I am under water, but here's a prototype that can be solo-played (you can also have a friend just pick from the lists if you want that pvp feeling.)

Showrunner's Challenge By Runawaymarbles (also sorta by sprintingowl)

Begin writing a fanfic. It is a feature length television program being watched every week by thousands. There is no plan. The industry is in shambles. The writer's room is barely hanging on.

At the end of each chapter, roll a d12.

1 Everything at once. Roll twice, use both. If you get this again, keep rolling. Your only way out is to stop getting 1s. 2 Product placement! The next chapter must center (and subtly promote the features of) a product belonging to the most recent brand you've seen. 3 Fan favorite. Your most recently mentioned character (or named object) is now beloved by the audience. You must give it a bigger part in the story, a special destiny, or an important new romance or friendship. If you get this twice for the same character or object, the adoration cools and you must go back to treating the character or object normally. 4 Executive meddling. You must change to a different genre. You cannot go back to a genre until you have changed genres three times since then. 5 Audiences are craving more coziness. The next chapter must be completely low stakes and set you at ease. 6 Audiences are craving more suspense. The next chapter must take place entirely in a single location, ideally just a single room, and build tension with every exchange of dialog. 7 Audiences are craving more action. The next chapter needs to involve at least one extended fight scene, and the weapons must be the last three objects mentioned. 8 Audiences are craving more romance. The next chapter needs to involve a deep, sappy confession of either love or admiration between two characters that have not previously been romantically involved. 9 Go to the most recent line in your fic that references a brand. Due to ongoing legal action, that brand cannot be mentioned again, but you score 1 audience point every time you allude to it in a way that paints it in a negative light. 10 The two most recently mentioned characters' actors have, IRL, gone through a VERY messy divorce or friend breakup. You cannot put them in the same scene, but they must both remain relevant parts of the show. If you get this with the same two characters again, they reconcile. 11 The most recent negative event (stabbing, poisoning, banishment to jupiter) is now the center of a very real IRL news story. You must immediately pivot away from all plotlines involving it and, if possible, also find away to apologize for even thinking to include it without breaking character. 12 The most recently mentioned character's actor has decided to leave the show. You must write them out in the next chapter. If you are brave, also roll a d12. 1--6, they were well loved and their sendoff must be as flowery as possible. 7--12, they were despised by the cast and crew. Mulch them.

You win if you can complete the fic in a state of relative coherency.

Alternate Game Mode: TV Digest Version

Don't write full chapters, just summaries of what happens in each chapter.

Alternate Game Mode: Realism Edition

Start your fanfic with your own telling of the first episode of an existing show, then proceed from there.

Polyship Week 2024 - Daily Prompts

[ID: Poster for Polyship Week 24, taking place 17–24 November, listing the prompts for each day. /end ID]

The prompts for #PolyshipWeek24 are here! As with last year, the final prompt of each day links to an image — feel free to use the phrase or the image itself for inspiration, and please credit the original creator if you remix their work.

Day One

Day Two

Day Three

Day Four

Day Five

Day Six

Day Seven

Event Guidelines

Need even more inspo? You can view the entire list of suggested prompts here.

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