oops

This is so, so important you guys.

!!!

me coming up with a new fic idea

me realising that now i actually have to write it

me rn

Ok that's the one

WHERE IS THE LIE

Just a heads up, AO3 deleted one of my original works because someone reported it for “not being fanwork” despite original work being a “fandom” with over 35k fics.

“Under Section IV. of the Terms of Service, which you agreed to when opening your account, prompt requests, prompt lists, squee posts, notices about meetups, non-fanwork fiction or nonfiction, fic searches, rec lists, letters to other users, reactions to episodes, blog or Tumblr-appropriate posts, and other ephemeral content (i.e. content meant to be temporary), are not allowed to be uploaded on the Archive of Our Own.”

If you have multiple original works on AO3, you very well could be permanently suspended for violating the terms of service.

Be careful.

I have no fucking clue, especially since they hired people to wrangle the tags, meaning that they’re well aware that original work is an option

IS this true? D: AO3 what the heck?

Here’s the email I got, so yeah, it is true

Can everyone reblog this? AO3 has been dealing with a lot of abuse in their invite system, and if they’re cracking down on other areas like original works, this could affect a lot of writers.

Literally why is this the line they draw? I really do not get it. Heads up, though, I guess

FYI

@cynical-harlequin @bright-elen

Anyone else that has original work up on AO3, make sure you have a copy saved I guess?

Wow, this is ridiculous.

Oh shit :C

:| yikers

…Well shit. I just deleted mine, so now there’s only fanfic now.

@batsutousai ….um. wut? (idk if you know about this side of things but for real do you know what’s up with this??? or what the ‘original work’ tag is meant to be used for, if not, well, original work?)

Okay, disclaimer up front: I’m a volunteer tag wrangler, and I have very little to do with ToS violations or what rules they determine should or shouldn’t exist for the archive. If you want to know more about why they don’t allow original works (I assume it’s either legal related – FFN also once allowed original work, before creating FictionPress to host it all, & I have vague memories of it being a legal thing? idk it’s been a long time – or related to the origin story of AO3 and OTW) please do contact Abuse or shoot a note to Support, and they’ll forward your message on to people who would know.

NOW THAT’S DONE.

Tag wrangler hat on: Okay, so, back-end stuff: Tag wranglers sort your character/relationship/other tags into fandoms, based on where they belong. (A little bit so the site moves smoother, a little bit for users’ benefit – once you pick a fandom, the first character/relationship tags that come up are going to be ones for that fandom – a little bit because it makes it easier for us on the back-end.) For most tags, this isn’t too hard. But sometimes we get tags that are too general – tags like Dragons or Alternate Universe or Original Character – and where do you put those tags? Most of them go to No Fandom, but that is a busy place, and you don’t need hundreds of tags of named original characters and their relationships clogging it up. So those go to Original Works which, like No Fandom, is really just a place holder so we can organise tags that don’t fit in a specific fandom.

And, since this also got brought up: The ‘tag wrangler’ watching that fandom is the same place-holder account that watches No Fandom. It’s meant so those fandoms aren’t marked as being unwrangled.

And then, taking my volunteer hat off: While the ToS disallows work that is wholly original, it has nothing against using original characters, original places, or crossing an ‘accepted’ (at a lack for a better word) fandom with something original that you’ve got hosted elsewhere. So, if you were to write a fic with one of those, you could, conceivably use the Original Work tag so readers know up front that there is an original element. (This is especially useful if you’re going the ‘named original characters as tags without using the Original Character(s) tag(s)’ route, as we don’t attach your named original characters to that tag, so readers can still allow or disallow your work from their search with relative ease.)

I’d like to expand upon and clarify some of what B has posted here, as well as correct a couple of things. I am a tag wrangler, but I am not speaking in an official capacity, for reasons that I will explain in a moment. I am not a member of the Abuse team.

The “Original Work” tag is for original works. Since 2010, original works have been allowed on AO3 as long as they are “fannish in nature”. Who defines that? The Abuse team, who basically don’t remove works for being original. I’m serious about that. Don’t bother reporting original fictional/artistic works to the Abuse team. They will simply say that it looks fannish in nature, the person looks like a fan, we’re done here.

Unfortunately, the team can’t come out and say that publicly in this case because they have a confidentiality clause that prevents them from publicly talking about any case reported to them. This basically gives carte-blanche to users to give whatever they see as their side of the story with no refutation or presentation of the rest of the facts of the case. No one from the Abuse team can speak back to a user’s statement, because no one is allowed to.

This is actually good - privacy is good! Users should have it! But it also means that some users have the ability to take that position of power and use it to their own ends. It’s very common for me to see complaints on Tumblr about how a decision was made that wasn’t fair, etc., even when I know which work was reported because a fellow wrangler reported it, and I know the user isn’t telling the whole story or is framing it in a way to attract sympathy. (Of course, I also can’t speak about these situations in an official capacity, because this area is the Abuse team’s purview, and they have a policy of not responding to these kinds of posts because they literally can’t talk about the case in any way. Catch-22s are so much fun! Not.)

I know it’s not great when only one side of a discussion is allowed to actually talk and present their point of view. Most of us naturally want to hear both sides before making up our minds, and that’s reasonable. So when one side is silenced, what can we do? In this case, we can look at the evidence outside this post - the evidence of the archive itself.

The Original Works tag has over 35,000 works going back to the year 2009 as of this writing, along with over 2500 fandom synonyms. The vast majority of those works are not crossovers with works based on existing canons. Either the Abuse team is really backlogged and the Tag Wrangling team has somehow forgotten to ever talk to them about whether to report these works, or Abuse doesn’t delete original works and Tag Wrangling doesn’t report them. (If you’re wondering, the second one is the truth.)

Things that are actually not allowed on AO3, a small sampling, in no particular order: * Commercial spam (this week’s headache, please keep reporting them) * Plagiarism (we take a dim view; please don’t just do a name-replace in someone else’s text, because that’s also plagiarism) * Prompts (use a prompt challenge, please!) * Essays about non-fannish things (we get people posting textbooks, for some reason? also that school essay about sharks doesn’t go here, wrong place) * Blog posts or diary entries or updates about how your life is going and why you can’t keep writing your works (suggest putting these in your profile and linking to them at the end of all your WIPs) (edited)

That’s an incomplete list, but it’s roughly the most common non-fanwork stuff I see my fellow tag wranglers report, roughly in order of how frequently I see them being reported. To my knowledge, no wranglers report original fic/art/etc., because Abuse doesn’t delete them, and because we have legit way more important things to do. Like dealing with spam.

So while I can’t speak about the specific case here, I can say that the conclusions are not true. AO3 is not deleting original works. If you post one of those things on my bullet list, you might get a polite email like the one the user indicated they received, explaining that the thing you’ve posted isn’t a work. But that email isn’t sent out to the writers of original fics because Abuse doesn’t remove those for just being original.

Conclusion: Yes, you can post original fic/art to AO3. You know - fannishly, archive-ishly appropriate stuff. Not textbooks or prompt lists.

What are we defining as “fannish” though? That’s the part I’m confused about.

Are you a fan who fandoms? Is your work fiction/art/not one of the things I mentioned in the bullet points above? Did you remember not to link to your patreon or amazon kindle page? Congratulations, nobody cares if you post original works to AO3.

35,000 works. I can’t speak for the Abuse team, but if they were going to enforce some kind of limitation on original works, they’d have a backlog the size of a small mid-western town to deal with. You’re absolutely right that there’s no good bright-line test for fannishness, which is why nobody’s trying to enforce one.

The spam, though. That can diaf.

Thank you for posting this, @wrangletangle. Folks, when you do see a post on Tumblr which is raging at the Abuse team for being Big Bad Meanies and taking down someone’s work, just remember that the Abuse team’s confidentiality policy means they can’t respond to any posts of this kind. So you aren’t getting their side of the story. And that they usually have very, very good reasons for what they do.

read this post by tiredestlesbian for the full story. op’s deleted original fic was writing status updates and blog posts. tag wranglers noticed and reported it to abuse, so the story was deleted. when stories are deleted a copy is sent to the user so they have it. op was butthurt so they deliberately misled people to start drama. as wrangletangle says above original fic IS allowed

i’m so tired of people trying to talk shit about the ao3

Hey uh, this post is really long, but it also explains what’s really been going on.

NOTE:

PLEASE read the entire thing to the end if you’re going to read this post or even if you regularly use Ao3. Or even if you don’t!

Don’t spread falsities about Our Dear Archive, please and thanks.

Be careful my loves