A person asked: I’m curious about Meta works, and what does or does not constitute ephemeral, especially in the context of breaking down a work as one watches to comment on how things were done. Would such a thing be allowed? Not necessarily just like screaming over things, but like a clear longform “at this point in this episode, I liked this move from them, I didn’t like this choice and this is what I might have preferred” type of thing, if that makes sense?
“Ephemeral content” is our catch-all term for live reactions, announcement/update posts, journal entries, etc that contain limited analytical or interpretive content and are largely meant to share or capture someone's experiences, impressions, or feelings in the moment. These are all definitely part of the overall fandom experience (just look at all the posts on this blog or elsewhere on Tumblr), but AO3 focuses on hosting fannish stories, art, and analysis.
Whether "breaking down a work" would count as "meta" really depends on how someone goes about it. If it's mostly a summary of canon/real-life events or if the majority of what you added is your impression of the source material and what happened, we'd probably call that a live reaction and say it isn't allowed. There definitely needs to be a good amount of analysis or interpretation beyond just a person's feelings or impressions about the material. If you're familiar with YouTube, something like "CinemaSins" would likely be classified as ephemeral. If it's more like a video essay ("Nerdwriter1" or "every frame a painting"), it's more likely to be considered meta, and allowed.
Oh! Also, people have to be wary of quoting too much of the source material. Our TOS only allows short quotes. Even if someone had detailed analysis or such, including a huge amount of a copyrighted source (such as an episode transcript) would still break our TOS, typically some part of our copyright infringement policies.
— guest mod tealight
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Disclaimer: I’m speaking for myself and not behalf of AO3 or PAC. I can only answer general questions. I cannot tell you if a specific work or user is breaking the rules. If you want to file a report or otherwise need an official PAC response, you can find PAC’s contact form by clicking on the “Policy Questions & Abuse Reports” link on any AO3 page.