Happy birthday to AO3 🎂🎉

WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS

WHO IS USING THIS

AN APP??? THEY HAVE A FUNCTIONING WEBSITE

THE LAST FUNCTIONING WEBSITE

Reminder that ao3 does not have an app. Any apps you see are third party and are making money off of the writers without their consent. They’re also probably harvesting your data. Do not support this garbage.

Yeaaaaaaah

This is your reminder that AO3 does not have an app. Will not have an app. There is no app.

If you see an app? They are doing it without permission.

Stay safe out there.

~ Mod Remi

my dad saw ao3 open on my computer and asked if that was like my writing club and just so you know that's what fanfic writers are now, we're all in the same writing club where we all write about the same media and show each other our little stories and that's kind of cool actually

Happy birthday to AO3 🎂🎉

I just saw a story on AO3 tagged "pet p!ay"

TIK TOK MUST BE STOPPED BEFORE IT DESTROYS LANGUAGE

Ok, unless something's going on I'm not aware of (extremely likely), I gotta point out the term "Pet Play" is significantly older than Tik Tok, or most of its userbase for that matter.

Yeah, I'm not mad about using the term "pet play". That's a perfectly fine term. I'm mad because they didn't use that term: they used "pet p!ay", a censored version

Oh. Oh gawd I missed that. Objection withdrawn, that is objectively terrible.

To anybody who is new to posting on ao3, if you’re using a tag you have to use the correct spelling of that tag. People aren’t going to type in every version of a censored word to hide or look for your content 

For everyone new to tumblr, the same rule applies to tumblr too.

You cannot censor your tags! Censored tags cannot be block or filtered. Censoring tags HARMS your audience, it does not protect them

Hi there! AO3 Tag Wrangler here piping up to say that while this is ABSOLUTELY true on Tumblr (and probably other social media sites as well), on AO3 SPECIFICALLY, if you block the uncensored version, censored tags WILL be blocked.

AO3 has volunteers that look at every tag used and connect them to other tags with the same meaning. Censored tags, tags that are (accidentally) misspelled, tags with the same meaning but different formatting - a real live human being looks at them and connects them. So blocking "pet play" will also block "pet p!ay" on AO3.

WE MADE IT FOLKS!!!

We're back!

However, we may need to do some work to optimize our shiny new Cloudflare setup -- we'll keep you updated on any issues or downtime.

July 11, 2023 - 16:35 UTC

y'know what, ao3 appreciation post cause these people out there doing amazing work for no monetary compensation

literally so many of us love ao3, please show support for these guys <3

July 10, 2023 - (18:00 UTC)

The Archive is experiencing some issues (as many of you have noticed).

It looks like the Archive is under a DDoS attack causing the servers to fall over. Our volunteer sysadmins are working on countermeasures. Please be patient with us, we'll be back!

A DDoS attack is when an attacker attempts to knock a site offline by overwhelming it with requests. Data is not compromised in a DDoS attack, so there is no need to change your password at this time or worry about your works being lost.

A group presenting themselves as a collective of religiously and politically motivated hackers has claimed responsibility for the DDoS attack. This group has attacked other sites before, including those of government organizations and large corporations. However, experts do not believe the group is honest about their motivation, so we urge caution in believing any reasoning this group provides for targeting AO3.

As part of our efforts to help keep the site up, you might find that you get "Retry later" errors more often when searching or filtering works or bookmarks. Don't worry, just go a little slower, or try again in a few minutes! These are temporary measures. Normal use of the site is fine -- you don't have to avoid using AO3 if it's currently up for you.

Our volunteers are continuing to work hard on this issue! We appreciate your patience and support in the meantime.

Date: 22:43 UTC July 10, 2023

I just saw a story on AO3 tagged "pet p!ay"

TIK TOK MUST BE STOPPED BEFORE IT DESTROYS LANGUAGE

Ok, unless something's going on I'm not aware of (extremely likely), I gotta point out the term "Pet Play" is significantly older than Tik Tok, or most of its userbase for that matter.

Yeah, I'm not mad about using the term "pet play". That's a perfectly fine term. I'm mad because they didn't use that term: they used "pet p!ay", a censored version

Oh. Oh gawd I missed that. Objection withdrawn, that is objectively terrible.

To anybody who is new to posting on ao3, if you’re using a tag you have to use the correct spelling of that tag. People aren’t going to type in every version of a censored word to hide or look for your content 

For everyone new to tumblr, the same rule applies to tumblr too.

You cannot censor your tags! Censored tags cannot be block or filtered. Censoring tags HARMS your audience, it does not protect them

Hi there, friendly neighborhood Bard and AO3 Tag Wrangler weighing in.

This is absolutely true OUTSIDE AO3.

This is NOT true ON AO3.

One of the AMAZING things about AO3 is that it has tons of actual, real live, human Volunteers who check EVERY tag a work is tagged with. When we come across a censored tag we connect that to the uncensored tag. So ON AO3 hiding "pet play" will also hide "pet p!ay".

(This also means that you don't have to search for "Dean Winchester/Castiel" separately from "Castiel/Dean Winchester" or if you accidentally tag your fic with "Sherlock Holms" instead of "Sherlock Holmes" it will still come up in searches.)

In short, AO3 is awesome.

Just in case anyone needs to know this:

If you blocked someone on AO3 and they know it and they come and post on anon and guest?

Even if none of the messages were threatening, or swearing at you (the worst was the guest comment they made called us pathetic and yikes), deliberately coming back on guest when blocked is considered a matter of harassment and a violation of ToS.

I know we don’t like to bother Abuse on AO3 because they are so busy and deal with so much bullshit, but if this happens to you, absolutely file a complaint. It took about a week for this all to get processed, if you are curious about their current time.

We had to submit links to the comment threads so they could see what was going on, so resist the urge to delete the comment threads even if they’re terrible just in case you block and they come back. (We did delete one of the threads by accident however, and were able to use the official ao3 email I kept as proof of that thread.) We also informed the person they were being blocked, and their final guest comment did fess up to being the user we blocked. That said it was pretty obvious from the beginning that it was the same person due to the writing style and content of the comments.

You will likely still have a case even if you don’t have the “you are being blocked” comment or a comment that admits to being the same person, it might just take longer to process than our report did. Ao3 abuse team has our backs.

This user supports AO3

This user is anti-censorship

This user believes in “don’t like, don’t read”

This user believes in “ship and let ship”

This user believes that fiction tastes and preferences do not dictate moral character

Happy birthday to AO3 🎂🎉

Yknow what while I’m here I know we as a website agreed to oppress the business majors but all the bullshit that comes around every April over ao3’s business practices makes me think we should’ve kept at least one to explain to people how nonprofits, despite their name, still need money to function and do not in fact run on rainbows and dreams alone

Woo! It’s a good thing y’all didnt oppress accounting majors because we understand this stuff better than business majors. (We were around before capitalism and we’re already set up for after capitalism.)

First things first - I dont regularly use or donate to AO3 but I have made an account to see what the fuss was about. Fanfiction just isnt my thing but I see why people like it.

AO3 is a 501©(3) organization. What that means - No Profit for owners or investors. What that does NOT mean - no cash at year end or not paying employees a livable wage/salary. If you’re contrivance with a non-profit is that they allow their employees to survive under capitalism, then you need to rethink your priorities.

That being said, AO3 has no employees. All work is volunteer based. ABSOLUTELY ZERO people are making money from this site. (Outside of contractors and professionals who are vendors and not affiliated with AO3.)

I’m going to break down the 2019 Audited Financials because that’s the most recent. And compare them to the budget and notes:

The auditor’s opinion is “unmodified.” That means these are as accurate as they get.

Their assets: $1.3M in cash. $197k in the value of the servers. (That’s the price they bought the servers minus depreciation. Depreciation is a tool we use to slowly devalue fixed assets over time. Without it, companies would recognize huge losses at year end when they sell old assets. That’s not reliable information when you’re trying to analyze the financials.) Why would a non-profit need a million dollars in cash? Partly to fund the next year’s work - it looks like they’re trying to bring on new servers which can cost upwards of $400k each time. They also have a history of protecting fans from people like Anne Rice who wants to sue them into debt and oblivion. We’ll talk about the legal stuff later. But in the case they would lose an expensive case, they need funds on hand to pay that out.

Revenues - this is the money in. They received $733k in donations and the like. Their expenses are about 37% of these. Which tells me, they are focused on managing their cash balance, and doing well. Again. No organization would survive if they had no cash at year end.

You might see the “In-Kind Revenue” and not know what that means. $190k is a big amount. But if you look at their expense statement on page (4) you’ll see “In-Kind Expenses” for the same $190k. In-kind means services in kind of cash. Or services instead of cash. So they had $190k of pro-bono (donated) legal work in 2019. They mention it in the budget and later in the audit footnotes. There are other “professional fees” for about $28k. That’s also legal/audit work but they had to pay cash for. It wasn’t donated.

Cash expenses:

Server fees = $79k (these are higher than 2018 because they installed a new server.)

Transaction fees = $27k (these are charges from your banks/credit cards/paypal to process donations. They are roughly 3% of donations which is about correct.)

Contractor fees = $15k (the budget noted they paid for a security test - this is actually a pretty low cost for something like this.)

Supplies = $14k (I couldn’t find notes on this but it’s similar to 2018, so it’s probably just normal business things.)

Postage = $12k (This is high compared to 2018, but I hazard a guess it’s related to sending out promotional items for donations.)

Advertising = $10k (looks like a new cost this year, but is related to fundraising efforts. And might be related to those promo items.)

Other non-cash expenses:

In-kind = $190k (those donated lawyer fees we talked about earlier.)

Depreciation = $74k (again this is an accounting process that every company with fixed assets does.)

The cash flows statement just confirms which expenses were and weren’t cash. And it shows us that they have $1.3M available for the next year. Glancing at the 2020 budget they planned on spending a third of that to upgrade servers. And they have another $400k budgeted for 2021. Honestly to me, the cash looks low considering some years (2018 in particular,) their legal work was valued at half a million. There is a risk that they would have to pay that amount out of pocket the same year they plan to bring on a new server upgrade.

So all in all, if you want to donate to AO3, this looks like a reliable organization to donate to. There is no evidence in the financials that they don’t deserve the donations. (And if you do donate, remember it is a tax credit!) I also don’t see any verifiable reasons not to donate. If you have other places you would rather place your donation, that’s fine! Do that! But there doesn’t seem to be a reason to campaign against their fundraising efforts.

Literally my sanity.

Been hearing this is a problem again. Don’t be a dick in bookmarks, folks. And yes while I made this image, I’m giving free reign. Take it. Spread it far and wide. Because I’m hearing that some readers don’t know that their bookmarks are visible. Editing for clarity, since it’s hit 14k notes and I’m tired of repeating myself:

It’s worth noting that if you mark a bookmark as PRIVATE. None of this can be seen.

So if you want to make a lack luster note or criticize something… just mark the bookmark private.