so im hearing @astolat is god??? what's your 10 commendments my liege

My best stab! lol

Ummm!!! Is anyone else getting comments like these? I wouldn't have noticed anything off about the comments themselves, but check out those usernames. And then in that context, those comments are very generic.

What's happening? What's even the point of spam like this? Is it worth reporting or would it just create unnecessary work for volunteers?

( @naryrising tagging for likelihood of you being more in the loop)

Yes, it's just spam. What's the point: spammers presumably trying to build up some 'realistic' comment history so they don't immediately get detected as spam, before they start spamming for real. You can simply mark them as spam, that doesn't cause any work for us at all because it's an automated system, and marking them helps better train that system to recognize this type of spam.

Go read an old fic.

There’s such recency bias in fandom. As an author you post something, get a few reactions, and then it goes off into the bin. As a reader you check the tags, see what’s new, and move on. But a lot of old stuff is really good. It’s just sitting there, gathering dust, waiting for someone to take a peek.

So go on. Treat yourself.

Read an old fic.

I’d argue there’s a bias against like… middle-aged fics in particular. A lot of people sort by kudos or bookmarks, but that’s going to be strongly biased toward older fics, which have had more time to accumulate them. Then there’s people that sort by date and read the newest. But there’s so much good material in that middle area.

A friend taught me her trick for smaller fandoms, which is to sort by kudos and use the published date filters to go through the fandom in 6-month increments. Within a 6-month time span, you’re not really going to get the kudos-over-time bias. Basically, you end up reading the best fics of each 6-month period until you start hitting fics below your quality threshold, wherever that is. You’ll find so much good material that way that would never have crossed your line of sight otherwise.

This is a clever idea, and I’m reblogging it so I remember to do it.

DC version of AO3 is called Tales of Our Own??

WHY DC MAKING ALTERNATIVE VERSION OF AO3

*waves arms in the air wildly*. It took ten years to write, but here it is finally both in print and in a free to read, expanded, online edition with vids and art included!  Read it here: https://t.co/KU1fjBjLGG!! 

MegOP Week on AO3

The fic collection has been made and will be revealed on the first day of MegOP Week (July 5th) to start accepting submissions. There will also be another post linking to it and explaining how to submit your work to the collection.

Please be aware that the AO3 collection will be moderated for reasons specified in the FAQ below.

The following rules will also be posted in the FAQ/Rules section of the collection on AO3:

Keep reading

I finished the Rough Cut for my Archive Of Our Own ad for my Branding Class Assignment! And just in time for OTW's annual donation drive, too~

So I just found out that there are more people making works on AO3 with a million tags on them in protest to AO3 not removing that one fic (you know the one). I would just like to state my own personal opinion about that right up front: if you’re trolling AO3, no matter your reason for doing so, you’re the asshole.

I know we all call it AO3, but the a stands for Archive. It’s a site built on the premise that fanworks deserve to exist and shouldn’t be taken down, unless the author is making that decision for themselves. 

This means that there are lots of works on AO3 that I think suck. There are works that are poorly written or boring or morally reprehensible. And guess what? All of that is protected because it’s not about a single work, it’s about fanworks in general and all of us having a place we can rely on to have our backs. 

The whole point of AO3 is not deleting works just because someone complains about them. The work needs to violate the Terms of Service and if it doesn’t, then it shouldn’t be removed. The rules that protect me protect those other works too. 

The volunteers at AO3 take the site’s goals and premise very seriously. They aren’t going to make snap judgements about a work, not even a work with a million tags. They also aren’t going to make snap judgements about implementing a limit on tags when there hasn’t been one before. 

They need to talk things out and discuss the short and long term ramifications. They need to talk about where to draw the line, and how can they explain why they decided to draw the line there? Will this decision affect works that already exist on the Archive? What do we do about them? Those authors posted before this new rule came into being, so you can’t punish them for a rule that didn’t exist at the time. 

Creating more works with the same issue just means that volunteer tag wranglers have even more work to do. Mass reporting a work that has already been reported just means that Policy & Abuse volunteers have even more work to do. If you fill up their lives with nonsense tags or repeat reports, you know what they can’t do? The thing that everyone (including them) wants them to be doing. 

People who volunteer for AO3 also read on AO3. They are as annoyed about these works as you are. But making more work for them to do isn’t the answer. Being patient is. It’s going to take time for them to make decisions about things like tag limits. It’s going to take time for them to code the limit into the site. It’s going to take time for them to test the code and make sure it doesn’t break anything. And in the meantime:

Filter out the author and bookmark your filter in your browser so you don’t have to enter it every time.

Add the work-blocking code to your site skin so you never need to see that work again, as long as you’re logged in.

There are tools you can use to avoid the things you don’t want to see. Creating a bigger problem isn’t the solution. It’s just a dick move.

Obviously not speaking officially, but:

I’ve got at least half a dozen channels and group messages lighting up, vying for my attention, as a direct result of all this trolling-slash-point-making. What hasn’t been lighting up, however, is the thread where we were already discussing the questions @ao3commentoftheday mentioned.

But the fact that it’s not getting any attention right now might be for the best. Do you really want a decision that will shape the future of tagging on the Archive made by a bunch of extremely annoyed and overwhelmed people who are desperate to make a situation stop? That doesn’t seem like it will end with the best outcome.

Ever since AO3 is blocked in China I have been wanting to translate more work into my native language. (X-Men and Sherlock) Smut was how I formed my sexual identity (and I think a healthy one too) and I would like to bring that to others as well. 

My newest finished work is Reparatio from @astolat, a story about Harry getting out of an emotional pit, dragging Draco with him. It is witty and dynamic. Here’s a humble book cover to show my gratitude.

If you read Chinese, or want to see H/D banter in square characters, come check out 恢复如初

Toss a Coin to Your Archive!

the Organization for Transformative Works is an incredibly groundbreaking repository for creators, and the constant scrutiny it undergoes because ignorant children don’t understand that things cost money to maintain, and that their opinions do not represent everyone’s, is infuriating.  so infuriating, in fact, that i decided to rage-create. so there.

this was fun as shit to sing, ngl.

special thanks to Green Noize for providing the excellent instrumental track, and the only one i found that was actually fully faithful to Jaskier’s original. also thanks to alias for the inspiration to write these lyrics, and to my dear friend FilkAeris for instilling in me a fierce appreciation for filks in the first place.

parody lyrics by me.  “Toss a Coin to Your Witcher”  composed by Sonya Belousova and Giona Ostinelli, and sung by Joey Batey for the Netflix series The Witcher. which is awesome and you should definitely watch it if you like gritty medieval fantasy.  and boobs. and swearing. and hot guys wearing leather. and bards. definitely bards. 

and since we know bard is a combat class, this is my stand, and the hill i am prepared to die on.

👊 LONG LIVE THE ARCHIVE 👊  NO CENSORSHIP 👊

SUPPORT THE ARCHIVE OF OUR OWN!  MAKING PRISSY IDIOTS ANGRY IS JUST A HAPPY BYPRODUCT! 

hahaha this is so amazing <3 

A New History of Fandom Purges

On November 24th, 2018, I posted a list of major deletions of sites or of content on sites that stripped fandom of its history. A bunch of pro-shipper blogs had just been deleted, and people were nervous. I suppose I was thinking “All this has happened before…”

On December 3rd, 2018, Tumblr’s Department of Irony announced the NSFW ban. Thanks for providing this salutary lesson to The Youth and a billion reblogs to me, I guess.

Today, we have AO3 for writing. Audio, images, and video are in as much danger as ever, yet fans attack AO3 every donation drive. For those of you who forget our past…

HERE IS WHAT HISTORY HAS TAUGHT US!

This is only a small taste of the many times that:

It’s not always malicious. It’s not always about us. But we lose every time.

Some of these purges hit everyone. Many of them hit m/m content specifically or female gaze-y material in general. This is why antis are dead wrong. This is why anti-fujoshi policies end up being anti-m/m policies. This is why we need clear labeling, not content restrictions.

This is why we need AO3.

And it’s why we need a solution for audio, visuals, and video too.

You can read the post here for more info, but I wanted to just add a bit about what this entails from my POV, on the Support team.  Somewhere between ¼ to 1/3 of all our tickets last month were in Chinese (somewhere upwards of 300 out of 1200 or so), almost all from users just setting up their accounts or trying to find out how to get an invitation.  A lot of the tickets are what I’d characterize as “intro” tickets - they say hi, list favourite fandoms or pairings, or provide samples of fic they’ve written. Although this isn’t necessary on AO3, this is not uncommon in Chinese fandom sites that you have to prove your credentials to get in (in fact it wasn’t uncommon in English-language fandom sites 15-20 years ago).  We respond to all of these tickets, even the ones that just say hi.  We check whether the user has managed to receive their invite or get their account sent up, and if they haven’t, we help them do so.  This means taking every single ticket through our Chinese translation team twice, once so we make sure we understand the initial ticket, and then again to translate our reply. 

This is a challenging process, although we’ve found ways to streamline it and can normally get a reply out pretty quickly (like within a few days).  We do it because this is part of why AO3 exists in the first place - to provide a safe haven where users can post their works without worrying about censorship or sudden crackdowns on certain kinds of content.  We do it because this is important, and helping these users get their accounts and be able to share their works safely is why we’re here.  We hope that we’ll be able to help as many of them as possible.  

There have been a few (thankfully few, that I’ve seen) complaints about these new AO3 users not always knowing how things work - what language to tag with, or what fandom tags to use, for instance.  To this I would say:

1. Have patience and be considerate.  They are coming to a new site that they aren’t familiar with, and using it in a language they may not be expert in, and it might take a while to learn the ropes.  You can filter out works tagged in Chinese if you don’t want to see them.  Or just scroll past.  

2. You can report works tagged with the wrong language or the wrong fandom to our Policy and Abuse team using the link at the bottom of any page.  This will not cause the authors to “get in trouble” (a concern I’ve heard before, as people are reluctant to report for these reasons).  It means the Policy and Abuse team will contact them to ask them to change the language/fandom tag, and if the creator doesn’t, they can edit it directly. 

If you remember Strikethrough or the FF.net porn ban or similar purges, please keep them in mind and consider that these users are going through something similar or potentially worse.  This is why AO3 exists.  We are doing our best to try and help make the transition smooth.  

now that ao3 as a whole is a hugo nominee and has reminded us all that it is an incredibly well-designed, excellently maintained project with an archival system that is the envy of many librarians etc, it is a great time to remember that:

if you can’t donate, spreading the word, congratulating ao3 on the nomination, and thanking the ao3 volunteers for their hard work would also be lovely!!

I saw this post by @astropixie about how it’d be nice to review fics on AO3 as you read. A little while back, because I was so in awe of the Clexa fic writers, I made this userscript (can install on Firefox by using Greasemonkey and on Chrome, ETA: Opera, and Safari by using Tampermonkey) so that I could do just that. It doesn’t have the wattpad or soundcloud functionality, it’s just a little thing added on to a page, not something supported by the site itself, but it’s better than nothing. 

The userscript is available here: http://pastebin.com/vYBCYWu4

ETA: FFN version: http://pastebin.com/addj3Xtm

Tampermonkey tutorial

ETA: User Tampermonkey on Firefox too

Oh, neat!