#ao3 psa

[cryptidpandas]

hey yall, it might NOT be the best idea right now to be constantly refreshing Ao3 or trying to open it every few minutes

the staff will let us know when things are working again, and until then, the site is gonna go in and out. Whenever it comes back up, everyone's flooding back there and it goes down again

So, maybe just try to leave it alone for a lil while? Let the volunteers do their work without the extra traffic ❤️

[chemicalarospec]

Ao3 and AI

They made a short blog post here and I dearly hope you read it, but the most important thing is:

1. Most AIs are trained off one dataset, the Common Crawl dataset.

2. Common Crawl can be be blocked in two lines of code.

3. Ao3 implemented that code in December 2022.

4. Fics that were already scraped will remain scraped and there's nothing we can do about it, but any fics posted after they put in that code will not be used to train AI unless the AI-makers make a new data-scraper.

5. Ao3 has also put code in place to slow down scrapers and they check their traffic for signs of abuse.

In short, you do not need to set your fic to members-only to stop it from being part of the Common Crawl dataset, though it will add another layer of protection for other scrapers if you feel really strongly about it. Please note that the blog post says locking your fic "will not block every potential scraper."

[thai-drama-ao3-stats]

Thai Drama Stats Special Edition:

The Great Archive Lockdown 🔒

Hi folks! In case you weren't aware, there are various scraping bots that trawl through AO3 and use the data for AI training, content mill sites, or other vaguely nefarious purposes. One site, "Fanfic Books", is essentially creating an unauthorized mirror of AO3. Here are some posts about it.

To combat this, many users have recently chosen to "Archive Lock" their fics.

What is Archive Locking?

An archive locked work, or "restricted" work, is only visible to users who are logged into AO3. This prevents anonymous users (and bots that aren't using login credentials) from reading your fic or finding your fic in searches. This doesn't block all scraping bots, but it should keep most of them out.

What does this have to do with fandom stats?

The AO3 scraping I do doesn't use login credentials, so I can't count archive locked fics. That's totally fine! I am in no way telling you to stop archive locking! Lock or unlock to your hearts content!

It does, however, mean that the data I pulled from my Thai Drama AO3 Trends Dashboard this week (July 1 - July 7, 2024) are looking especially strange.

Holy moly! We actually have negative growth. More fics were locked than posted, which is why the Net New is negative. I'd estimate that about 1% of all previously public Thai Drama fics were archive locked this week.

This matches trends on all of AO3. This week, the total number of publicly available fics actually decreased by 0.7% -- and that's including all the new fics being posted!

When did this happen?

The timing for both Thai Drama fandom and all of AO3 is pretty consistent.

For Thai Drama fandom, most of the locking happened on Friday, July 5, but there was also some locking on Sunday.

When we look at all of AO3, it seems like most of the mass-locking happened on July 5th as well, with additional locking happening all throughout the weekend.

Which Thai Drama fandoms were most affected?

When we look at sheer numbers, KinnPorsche, of course, has a lot of newly-locked fics. 3 Will Be Free, My Engineer, and Dark Blue Kiss were locked down a lot as well.

When we look at the top fandoms by negative growth, The Player saw almost all of its fics vanish overnight. 3 Will Be Free was cut neatly in half.

This data is cool I guess, but... so what?

If these numbers are accurate, it represents another sudden and massive shift towards archive locking on AO3.

According to @star-grazing's stats about archive locking in December 2022, the total number of archive locked works on AO3 increased by 70% in just a couple weeks after a reddit post went viral about AI bots scraping AO3 for machine learning material.

Those stats show that in December 2022, 5.79% of AO3 fics were archive locked. When I checked the numbers again today, 9.37% of all works were archive locked.

Using rough estimates, from the last few days of AO3 data, I'd say that the total number of archive locked works increased by 8% since last Thursday (7/4). And trends seem to indicate that the great lockdown is still going!

Anyway...

Thanks for sticking with me! This is a really fun time to be collecting AO3 stats :) If you have more questions, feel free to reach out. I also put some more details under the cut! Thanks y'all!

Are we sure it was archive locking, and not some other data issue?

Er, good question. It's my best guess, and I've tried to rule out other potentially culprits. The AO3 Fandom Trend Analysis Dashboard, which has data about all fandoms on AO3, doesn't seem to show anything amiss. Their data uses login credentials, meaning they can count archive locked fics.

I also went through several tags manually while logged in and logged out to compare numbers from this week to previous weeks. It doesn't seem like there was a mass deletion or retag that I could see.

I also used the "restricted:true" search operator to search for archive locked fics while logged in. A lot of those missing fics pop back up!

I absolutely welcome other theories though, if you think of one!

Is this still happening?

Seemingly yes, for Thai Dramas at least! When I checked the "All Thai Dramas" AO3 search this morning, the total number of Thai Drama fics had dropped below the 40K mark - lower than when I first started keeping track a month ago!

We probably have a lot more archive locking in our future!

How do I archive lock my own fics?

There's a really good tutorial over here.

Help! I don't have an AO3 account, so I can't read all these archive locked fics anymore.

Please message me! I have some spare invites.

Which fandoms are the most "locked down"?

I'm not sure, but there is a Fanlore article about Hockey RPF and the Fourth Wall which provides some comparison stats. Hockey fandom has traditionally been one of the most locked down fandoms; less than half of hockey rpf fics are publicly available.

You can also peruse this AO3 search to see all archive locked fics.

[ekat-fandom-blog]

Is something up on Ao3 rn? Cuz no matter what part of the site I go to, I keep getting the Error 500 message. I checked the Ao3 support page, and still got the message. Went to their twitter and nothing's been posted since last year. And I can't find anything official saying what the problem is or when it might be fixed.

The only things I could find was Downdetector which tells me that other people are having the same problem.

[treemaidengeek]

!AO3 trollbot alert!

(via twitter, from r/ao3)

text ID:

PSA: there's a negative comment bot active right now I realize that many folks won't see this. But on the off chance this helps someone, there is a negative comment bot doing the rounds at the moment. Comments are generic, two sentences in length, and tend to be things like: "It's like you didn't even try. This is beyond awful" or "You've single-handedly lowered the bar for fanfiction. This is a new low, even for amateur writing" or "This fanfic is proof that not everyone should be allowed to write. It's that bad." Mark them as spam so that AO3 can start filtering them out.

[whumpthefuck]

Sharing this because I've heard of way too many writers finding out someone dislikes or even HATES their fic because of this exact sorta situation.

REMEMBER fic writers create content FOR FREE!! You don't have to like what we post, you don't have to read what we post. Just be a decent person.

hey do people know that like. notes that you leave in bookmarks on ao3 are visible? because i was looking at the bookmarks on one of my fics and someone left a kind of crazy comment, and then when i looked at the rest of that person’s bookmarks they were also kinda… not awesome. and there were some that i know would have hurt me if i saw them on one of my fics.

like idk i just think if you’re gonna leave comments that critique a fic, or say that you’d like it more if it was by another fic writer, or call a fic ‘mid-range, 6.8/10’, there’s a private bookmark button that you can hit. and then you won’t be putting down fic writers who are writing for free, taking time out of their day to share their work with you, purely out of love for the characters and the media. it just feels like the least you could do is show some kindness and not leave negative remarks where anyone can see them.

anyways TL;DR your bookmarks are visible. fic writers can see them. either be nice or make them private.

[cryptidpandas]

LATEST UPDATE!!!!

Please remember that Ao3 is run solely by volunteers, who at this point have been working on fixing the site for 12 HOURS

[ekat-fandom-blog]

AO3 PSA

If the reader or an oc is a main character in your fic, please tag them as characters. It is literally impossible to filter out every platonic or romantic pairing.

I don't mean "I added an oc into the fic but they're only brought up once or twice as a side character." Most people wouldn't blink twice at adding an oc as, like, a cashier or someone the main character talked to for a few moments. I know some people add characters from other shows/movies/comics/etc without it feeling out of place or needing it to be tagged because the character is only relevant for maybe a few paragraphs at most.

I mean "Reader/oc is the main character" or "Reader/oc is part of the main group and is plot relevant."

I understand almost everyone tags their fics as "character/Reader" or "Original Character(s) & canon character" and that does help with filtering, but it's not enough.

The tags "Reader", "Reader-Insert", "Original Character(s)", "Original Female Character(s)", and "Original Male Character(s)" exist for a reason. Please, for the love of the universe, please use them when it's relevant.

[sheinthatfandom]

Ao3 hate bot is going around leaving nasty messages. If you get a comment like this mark it as spam. According to comments it seems to be going to most recent not fandom specific.

[soulless-bex]

the world is going to shit and i hate it

PSA: bot comments are taking over ao3

The above examples have been provided with the authors' permission to demonstrate what these look like.

Basic rundown:

They are all 3 sentences long

Perfect grammar, capitalization, and punctuation

Like absolutely flawless English teacher-style writing with only a single exclamation mark, ever

No mentions whatsoever of character names, settings, situations, or anything that could be tied to the story

The usernames may be identical to people who exist on ao3, but the name is not clickable, and no profile is associated with it EXCEPT when you directly search for that name. What this means: the comments come from an unregistered (not logged in) reader, bots scrape the site for real usernames, attach that to the comment, and post

Please spread the word about this so authors can filter comments and report them accordingly

There has been some speculation about why this is happening at all, and the best guess is that this is a feature that AI-training story-scraping tools are implementing to try and make their browsing traffic look legitimate

[sleep-deprived-person]

So apparently KOSA (2024 edition) is getting either thrown out until next year or put into effect in six days. That was a guesstimate based on a different person saying that's when Congress is back in session and may be false.

Update that's going in the main post at the top: it has enough support to pass Congress.

It failed the last two times because people were voting against it.

This time, KOSA has traction among the pro-LGBTQ parties. Because nobody is fucking calling their bullshit and screaming from the rooftops that calling it the "Kids Online Safety Act" is misleading.

What will it passing do?

Nothing much, only prevent any education on LGBTQIA+ (it's that stupid fucking argument about us grooming kids again), shut down nearly every fandom space on the internet, and make it required for most big tech companies to have your ID.

Want to have resources for kids to discover their identity readily available? Yes? Then fucking speak up against this stupid fucking bill.

Fandom spaces like Tumblr, Twitter (? I thought the MAGA assholes liked Musk?), Tiktok, Archive Of Our Own, and any other website that hosts fanfic or fanart? Either shut down permanently, forced to uproot to a different country and down for a while (best case scenario, and they likely won't be able to send any data, and therefore fanfics, to the US), or gutted so that you only get to put G rated cishet ships on there, if any shipping at all. How to avoid that? I've already said it: Call your fucking representatives.

Want to avoid the fucking dystopic task of being legally obligated to give big tech your government issue ID? Again, cause an uproar. Call your goddamned representatives.

If they can pass this, the ripple effects could be catastrophic.

So, for fuck's sake, any Americans that can impact this stupid fucking bill and see this? Do everything in your power to shut it down because you have until February twenty sixth (26th) to send this bill back to where it belongs.

And if you can't do that? Reblog, copy my tags, and boost the signal.

Sorry not sorry for ranting, making you scroll through that, and swearing a probably excessive amount, but KOSA is a bill with a GLOBAL IMPACT being passed by ONE COUNTRY because some old people are scared of two guys with who were told they were girls kissing within five hundred miles of a child. Fuck this shit, I shouldn't have to worry about bad bills in America but I fucking do because I use the internet and would like to avoid mass censorship. Fuck this, fuck conservatives, and fuck the fact that some boomers make your country's policies.

Now, if you won't mind me, I'm going to be up until three in the morning downloading fanfiction or copying and pasting them into a a text file if I can't so I can read them by the end of the week.

[cryptidpandas]

After over 24 hours of near non-stop volunteer work, Ao3 is back!!! The admins are still asking everyone to be patient as they work through any lingering issues, but the site is functional.

Consider making a small donation to them during their next fundraising campaign! They've done amazing work for a site we all love!!❤️

[watcher0033]

Y’all, the Archive admins are made up of VOLUNTEERS. And they have been working for 12-13 HOURS STRAIGHT.

I better not hear any complaints when donation period comes around. OR ELSE.

cosplay by @woahchriswoah on Twitter

EDIT: How do we show appreciation to the volunteers? For me reading these deep dives on OTW issues u guys apparently it's been said multiple times that one of their objective statements is to have paid staff for ao3 and there's a surplus of donations they haven't used up or the other community solutions that needs to address. For those more financially literate feel free to analyze, snipe me or add to the discussion etc. linked here by deepa. They’re cool and these yearly analysis they did aint no joke.

But Seriously what can we do for these volunteers? The probable burn out from this entire fiasco would be no joke. @ao3org

[eowyn7023]

So, if there is no violence and noncon except in the sense “the evil villain killed my baby” and “the villain forced me to commit crimes by threat of horrible death,” and “I was enslaved by his evil mental control”, and “the villain raped me,” and no death except the villain dying gorily at the end — should that be no archive warnings apply? Or creator chooses not to use archive warnings? Or should I tag for rape/noncon when a character says “these bad things happened and so I hate the villain”? Or for graphic violence when the only time it occurs is when a bunch of victims kill the villain slowly and by pieces? The whole thing is E, btw, because the hero and heroine like to have sex, and words like clitoris and cock are used in describing it. I honestly don’t know what I should do.

This is a Moving Forward PSA for everyone using AO3. I am witnessing the results of a culture clash and communication failure. Not a lack of communication, but a misunderstanding caused by changes in fandom culture.

Before fic tagging was common, fics weren’t tagged. You had a pairing, if applicable, an author’s note about genre or general content, and if they were feeling charitable, a vague content warning. There are even a few genres of fic where even vaguely tagging literally spoils the plot and impact (such as horror, psyche thriller, in which the likely content is implicit to the genre). As a result, there is a basic category tag that permits this, as a courtesy to “old-fashioned” writers.

“No Archive Warnings Apply” means the fic is PG13 at worst, probably fluff, totally safe.

“Choose Not to Use Archive Warnings” is the polar opposite. It’s a glaring Enter at Your Own Risk billboard. It means: a shitload of warnings apply but I ain’t telling because this story requires shock value. It’s very important to read the author’s notes for those fics because they might be using that older format from above.

But without the context of fandom culture that generated AO3, it’s understandably easy to conflate the two categories, given their similar wording.

[ruby-red-inky-blue]

one of my favourite things about AO3 tags is their dedication to canon accuracy, even when that means it devolves into complete mayhem like

Percy was not named with a fan following in mind, this was clearly a running gag but it's his name so they have to use all of it