Archive of Our Own ^beta

AD&T has been a little bit quiet for a while, as quite a few members of the committee have had a busy and/or turbulent couple of months. However, we've still been working away, and there is some exciting stuff on the horizon!

Highlights!

The AO3 is growing!

We've seen a massive expansion in user numbers over the last couple of months - 1,394 new accounts were created during April (up from 897 in March), and at peak times we had over 1000 new works being posted each day! We're really happy to see more fans joining the Archive - and we're thrilled that our shiny new servers are keeping up with all this work! We welcome readers as well as creators - if you've been wondering what the AO3 has to offer you, check out our recent post on Cool account features on the AO3: the readers' edition!.

Retiring OpenID

When we launched the Archive, we offered an OpenID option as an alternative to using a password. For various reasons, this isn't working out too well for us, and we're planning to retire OpenID account logins. If you want to know, check out our post on the future of OpenID on the AO3.

Prompt memes coming soon

This is a project that coder Cesy has been working on for a while, and we're super excited to see it coming to fruition! The new feature will make it possible to run a prompt-based challenge on the AO3! It includes anon options so that it's possible to run kink memes and other similar challenges - no more combing through multiple comment levels to keep track of your favourite prompt fills! More news coming soon.

Dark Agenda and new tag options

We've been discussing some other enhancements to our challenge feature with the mods of the Dark Agenda challenge. As part of this discussion, we've been brainstorming ways to offer more functionality on tags, so that it's possible for challenge owners (and other archive users) to create groups of tags for a specific purpose, e.g. to make a list of all fandoms which include chromatic characters. We think we've come up with a design which will give users more flexibility and take some of the load off our hardworking tag wranglers! \0/

Trial of Subscriptions RSS!

Since launching the first part of our subscriptions feature, we've had lots of requests for subscriptions via RSS. We're pretty keen on this idea ourselves, and in our next deploy we'll be trialing the feature by creating an RSS feed for works posted in the 'F/F' category - we've picked this because there is a steady stream of works posted each week under 'F/F', but not so many that we risk melting the Archive (at least, so we hope!). If all goes well, we'll roll out more tag subscriptions in the future.

Expansion of valid CSS for skins

When we first put out our skins, we erred on the side of caution and as a result, our parser didn't let through a lot of valid CSS. The parser will be updated in the next deploy, after which you should be able to use many more CSS features.

We're all going on a bug hunt!

AD&T member Ana is delving into the thickets of our current Support requests to identify some of the most problematic and recurrent bugs showing up for our users. He'll be compiling a 'hitlist' for coders to help them prioritise bugfixes. The good news is that so far, it looks as though the work we need to do to fix our more annoying bugs will also help us prepare for some of our new features. For example, we need to refactor the code that deals with posting new works in order to offer our planned new options for multimedia works, but this will also help us get to the bottom of the bug some users have reported with posting new chapters. Some bugs are trickier than others to squash, however, so we thank users for their patience while we work!

Next deploy

We interrupted our monthly posting schedule because so many of our team have needed to take a hiatus over the last month or so. The next deploy is scheduled for the end of May, and will include the new prompt code, the trial version of RSS subscriptions, and fixes for some of our more annoying bugs.

News from our sister and sub-committees

• Coders have settled into using our new version management system, Git, and have been working on a whole range of issues. There's been some great work on Cucumber tests - essential to the overall health of the site - and Enigel has taken up her trusty sword and plunged into the javascript thickets to deal with some of our bugs and continue our transition to jQuery! We're also debating the pros and cons of using some new coding tools: HAML, SASS andd Coffeescript (readers who have experience of these, let us know your thoughts!).
• Testers have had a quietish period, as we hadn't deployed any new code to our Test Archive for a while. We've now started work on the next deploy, so the team is getting stuck into work again. We've also welcomed two new testers: velocitygrass and Zebra.
• Support Committee have been working incredibly hard trying to keep up with the deluge of work. Lots of new users means lots more support tickets, so turnaround is slower than usual, but the team is doing an amazing job working through it all. If you're interested in joining Support, volunteers are always welcome!
• The Tag Wrangling Committee and their team of trusty wranglers have been working hard as always, keeping the tags ordered and useful for everyone. The TW Committee have been discussing the idea of the new tag sets options with AD&T. Wranglers have also been working closely with Support to address user questions on tags and fix the odd snag.

If there are things you'd like to do or say, please share them in comments, via the AO3 support and feedback form, by volunteering, or in whatever medium you feel comfortable with. Everyone is welcome to this party!

This meeting round-up by Zooey

From time to time, when people ask us about invitations for the AO3, they say things like 'I don't write fic, so I don't want to take an invitation away from someone who wants to post on the Archive'. One of the things we love about fandom is this considerate attitude - but we definitely don't see it that way! On the contrary, we think that 'consumers' are just as important to fandom as creators. After all, there wouldn't be much point in creating art, fic or vids if there was no one out there enjoying it! For this reason, we're more than happy to give invitations to people who don't plan ever to post anything on the Archive. In fact, we have a whole bunch of account features which are specifically aimed at the consumer rather than the creator. If you've been wondering whether there's any point to you having an Archive account, here's a rundown of some of the cool features which come with it!

Subscriptions!

Our recently introduced subscriptions feature is our 'killer app' for account holders! You can now subscribe to an author and receive an email every time they post a new work or a new chapter. We have lots more features planned for this (we're just taking it slow to avoid the Archive exploding), so this will only get better. If you like to keep track of what people are posting on the Archive, you definitely need an account.

History

There's that great piece of fanart you saw last week, but now you can't remember who it was by... With the AO3 history feature, you can look back to see which works you viewed on the Archive and when! It will also tell you whether they've been updated since you last looked at them. We have more features planned for history - most importantly, we reeeeeally want to make it possible to filter so you can see, say, all the Sailor Moon works you have viewed - we're just trying to fit them into our coders' time.

Mark to read later

Seen a 200,000 word fic ten minutes before you have to leave for work? You could start reading and risk incurring the wrath of your boss - or you could mark it to read later and have it added to a handy dandy list for the next time you have some uninterrupted fannish time. Works marked to read later are added to your history - you can filter to show just the works you marked. When you're done reading, hit 'Mark read' to take them off the to read list.

Bookmarks and recs

Found a wonderful work of art which you want to be sure of finding again? You can bookmark it with an AO3 account - even if it's not actually hosted on the AO3. When you're logged in, all works on the Archive have a 'Bookmark' button at the top. Our Bookmark external works page has a handy little bookmarklet - just drag to your bookmarks, and then the next time you see a genius vid on Livejournal, you simply need to click the bookmarklet to bookmark in AO3. For works which you particularly loved, you can mark a bookmark as a rec. Once again, we have tons of improvements we'd like to make for bookmarks - browsing filters are top of that list - but we think they're already handy for keeping track of stuff you've loved.

Archive skins

Hate the default font on the Archive? You can change that - and almost everything else about the way it displays - by using Archive skins. You can choose from skins other people have made, or design your own. See our Skins tutorial for more information.

Site preferences

When you're an account holder, there are lots of preferences you can set to make using the Archive a more pleasant experience. You can choose never to see 'adult content' warnings on explicit works. You can choose to have all chaptered works show as a single page rather than chapter-by-chapter. You can opt never to see warnings or freeform tags. You can disable custom styling on other users' works. Preferences are handy things to have.

Signed, trackable comments and kudos

As a logged in user, your comments will be signed by you by default, and when someone replies you will get a notification. You can keep track of all comments addressed to you in your user inbox, as well as having them emailed to you (and you can opt out of the emails if you prefer). When you're logged in, the kudos you leave will be signed by you (otherwise it shows as guest kudos).

User icons

If you have an account on the Archive, you can have a user icon! This will show up wherever you leave a comment, as well as on your user profile.

Access to restricted works

Some fans prefer to make sure that their fanworks aren't accessible to just anyone stumbling in from Google (we know this is especially important to people who create RPF). When posting on the Archive, they can choose to lock their works to Archive account holders only (currently 1,503 works are restricted). You need an account to see these works!

We hope the above features make AO3 accounts valuable to all users, whether or not they are using them to post works. If you'd like an account, simply add your email address to our invitations queue. Wait time is currently less than a week!

As you may have noticed, we have lots of plans for making even more awesome features for AO3 accounts. However, our coders are few and our to-do list is big! If you'd like to help make things even shinier, we always welcome volunteers!

May has arrived, and our April Showers Challenge has drawn to a close! Through the month of April, we were highlighting fandoms in need of love on the Archive of Our Own and our sister project Fanlore. We've been enjoying all the fannish May flowers which have appeared as a result.

595 works were posted on the AO3 under the April Showers Challenge tag. People didn't confine themselves to the fandoms we highlighted - we were happy to see people archiving works in more than 80 fandoms, including Captain Future, Starsky and Hutch and Monty Python and the Holy Grail! In addition, 2,122 works were posted in the fandoms we highlighted. See the full list below!

On Fanlore, fans took the opportunity to fill in some of their fannish history. The Fanlore team created a bunch of memories pages for the featured fandoms - memories pages are designed as an informal place to record your defining memories of a particular fandom, without worrying about exactly how to categorise them. Check them out and add your fannish history! Other April Showers activity on Fanlore included updates about the history of the fan convention. You can read more about what Fanlore have been up to during the challenge at their April Showers posts.

April Showers - The Masterlist

• Star Wars - 142 new works posted! Star Wars on the AO3 | Fanlore's main Star Wars page | Star Wars Memories
• Sailor Moon – 27 new works posted! Sailor Moon on the AO3 | Fanlore's Sailor Moon page | Sailor Moon Memories
• Figure Skating RPF – 7 new works posted! AO3's Figure Skating works | Fanlore's Figure Skating page | Figure Skating Memories
• The X-Files – 43 new works posted! X-Files on the AO3 | X-Files on Fanlore | X-Files Memories
• Diana Wynne Jones - 11 new works posted! Diana Wynne Jones on the AO3 | Fanlore's DWJ page | DWJ Memories
• Mass Effect - 19 new works posted! Mass Effect on the AO3 | Fanlore's Mass Effect page.
• The Losers - 4 new works posted! Losers on the AO3 | Fanlore's Losers page
• Kuroshitsuji | Black Butler - 5 new works posted! Black Butler on the AO3 | Fanlore's Kuroshitsuji page
• Johnny’s Entertainment - 39 new works posted! Johnny's Entertainment on the AO3 | Fanlore's Johnny's Entertainment page | Memories of Johnny's Entertainment
• Xena: Warrior Princess - 4 new works posted! Xena on the AO3 | Fanlore's Xena page | Xena Memories
• Jane Austen - 5 new works posted! Austen on the AO3 | Austen Fanlore page
• Final Fantasy - 130 new works posted! Final Fantasy on the AO3 | Fanlore's Final Fantasy page | Final Fantasy Memories
• High School Musical - 1 new work posted! High School Musical on the AO3 | High School Musical on Fanlore
• X-Men - 32 new works posted! X-Men on the AO3 | X-Men on Fanlore
• Backstreet Boys - 19 new works posted! Backstreet Boys on the AO3 | Backstreet Boys on Fanlore | Backstreet Boys Memories
• Sports Night - 57 new works posted! Sports Night on the AO3 | Sports Night on Fanlore | Sports Night Memories
• A Song of Ice and Fire - 10 new works posted! A Song of Ice and Fire on the AO3 | ASOIAF on Fanlore | ASOIAF Memories
• Kingdom Hearts - 39 new works posted! Kingdom Hearts | Kingdom Hearts on Fanlore | Kingdom Hearts Memories
• Inception - 225 new works posted! Inception on the AO3 | Inception on Fanlore | Inception Memories
• Naruto - 115 new works posted! Naruto on the AO3 | Naruto on Fanlore
• Disney RPF - 34 new works posted! Disney RPF on the AO3 | Disney RPF on Fanlore
• Doctor Who - 431 new works posted! Doctor Who | Doctor Who on Fanlore | Doctor Who Memories
• JRR Tolkien - The Lord of the Rings - 150 new works posted! JRR Tolkien/The Lord of the Rings on the AO3 | The Lord of the Rings on Fanlore | LOTR Memories
• Pokemon - 13 new works posted! Pokemon on the AO3 | Pokemon on Fanlore | Pokemon Memories
• The Fast and the Furious - 40 new works posted! The Fast and the Furious on the AO3 | on Fanlore | Gundam Wing on the AO3 | on Fanlore | Gundam Wing Memories
• Big Bang (Band) - 0 new works posted :(. Can you give Big Bang some love? Big Bang on the AO3 |Big Bang on Fanlore | Big Bang Memories
• Highlander - 253 new works posted! Highlander on the AO3 |Highlander on Fanlore | Highlander Memories
• Stephenie Meyer/Twilight - 57 new works posted! Twilight on the AO3 | Twilight on Fanlore
• Dragon Age - 138 new works posted! Dragon Age on the AO3 | Dragon Age on Fanlore

We've really enjoyed seeing people delving into their fannish history (recent and not-so-recent). Remember, you don't have to wait for a special occasion to archive on the AO3 or record your fannish history on Fanlore. Anyone who is interested is welcome to post their recollections (atany time) on Fanlore itself or to the Fanlore dreamwidth community posts linked in this post. Don't worry about formatting - their trusty team of wiki gardeners are eager to help out! On the AO3, you can use our import function to easily upload work hosted on other sites. If you don't have an account and you want one, then just add your email address to our invitations queue (wait time currently less than a week).

Enjoy fannish May flowers, and the wealth of fannish histories we share!

In common with most sites out there, we were keen to offer an OpenID login option when we started out, to ease the burden of juggling yet another username and password. Unfortunately, also in common with other sites, we found that OpenID created as many problems as it solved. We regularly receive Support requests from users who can't log in because of some problem with their OpenID provider, or because their provider has changed their authentication code unexpectedly. We've also had ongoing problems persuading OpenID logins to persist (the 'Remember Me' option often doesn't), as well as a lot of confusion from users about exactly what an OpenID account on the Archive actually was.

Not many of our users are taking advantage of the OpenId option: out of 16,119 users, only 383 have an OpenID set. Of those, only 73 use OpenID as their sole login option (the rest have a password as well). Despite the small number of users involved, OpenID issues are one of our most regular types of Support request! We feel that the amount of work involved in keeping our code functioning with OpenID and in supporting users with it outweighs the amount of added value it brings to our users, and we're strongly considering phasing out OpenID logins for accounts altogether. (This is in line with other sites such as 37 Signals.) If you have concerns or questions about this, then please do comment to this post.

If you're currently using OpenID and you want to switch to using a password login, just select the 'Forgot password' option. This will send out a temporary password - log in with your user name and this password, and you can set a permanent password.

One reason so few users have OpenID logins for the site is that the way our accounts work mean it's only really a password replacement (you still have to give us an email address and a user name, and we can't really offer the kind of OpenID features adopted by sites such as Dreamwidth). So, OpenID accounts aren't offering anything super useful compared to regular accounts. However, we do like the idea of offering more flexible ways to use the Archive, and retiring OpenID account logins doesn't mean we've abandoned this aim.

One area where more flexible authentification options would be useful is comments. We know that some people don't have much use for the features of an Archive account, but do want to use the Archive for reading and commenting. We think it would be very handy for them to be able to leave comments without creating an account or leaving a name and email. So, we're currently looking into the omniauth plugin, which would allow people to sign in via other sites such as Twitter, Foursquare, Google apps, etc in order to leave comments. This isn't a change we'll make immediately - we want to do some more research into different options and the privacy implications first - but we think something like this would offer our users more flexibility going forward.

As always, we welcome feedback from users about features you would like to see on the Archive! Feel free to comment on this post or get in touch via our Support and Feedback form to let us know what you think!

We're getting close to the end of our April Showers importing challenge! We've had a great response, and we've seen a lot of new works in a variety of fandoms - check out the challenge tag for some of those. You have a couple more days to import your existing works... and, of course, we encourage everyone to keep posting through the rest of the year. :D

Here are some of the fandoms that we featured on our @ao3org Twitter account. Read some of the works that people have posted, and see if there's anything you can add to the Fanlore page for any of your fandoms!

GROUP 3

• High School Musical | High School Musical on Fanlore
• X-Men | X-Men on Fanlore
• Backstreet Boys | Backstreet Boys on Fanlore
• Sports Night | Sports Night on Fanlore
• A Song of Ice and Fire | ASOIAF on Fanlore
• Kingdom Hearts | Kingdom Hearts on Fanlore

GROUP 4

• Inception | Inception on Fanlore
• Naruto | Naruto on Fanlore
• Disney RPF | Disney RPF on Fanlore
• Doctor Who | Doctor Who on Fanlore
• JRR Tolkien/The Lord of the Rings | The Lord of the Rings on Fanlore
• Pokemon | Pokemon on Fanlore

Drumroll, please... it's time to announce the winners of the server name poll which we conducted a while back! In this post you'll find the winning names -- and also some metadiscussion about why it's taken us so long to announce the winners of the poll.

First, we want to thank everyone who worked on orchestrating the process, collecting name nominations, and creating the slate of names on which fans voted -- and especially everyone who cast a vote in the poll and let us know which names please you most.

Here are the names which won the vote:

* DB: Ada Lovelace
* Rails: Sherlock Holmes & John Watson
* Storage: TARDIS
* O1: Spock
* O2: James T. Kirk
* Switch: Nyota Uhura

Hooray for these names and for our awesome servers of our very own!

And now for the promised metadiscussion.

The reason it's taken us so long to announce the winners is that once the voting was already underway, some folks within the OTW raised concerns that the results might not fully reflect the fannish diversity which we want to promote and celebrate. There was concern that the relatively narrow scope of the winners - plus the absence of beloved character names from any non-Western fandoms or genres like gaming - might make some fans feel alienated.

Our intention was always to celebrate fandoms that we love -- but never to make fans who don't share these fandoms feel unwelcome. Once that possibility was raised, we entered into a period of intense discussion.

Here's where we've arrived: first, we do want to celebrate these names and the fans who voted for them! And we also want to move forward with a continuing commitment to fannish diversity, and to make future choices in a way which will make all fans feel welcome taking advantage of org projects.

We've had some great conversations already about how to do more diversity work in the future. For instance, next time we run a poll for new server names (because someday we will need even more machines!) we might choose to design the poll in such a way that one machine gets a name drawn from anime fandoms, and another machine gets a name drawn from gaming fandoms, and so on. And/or: next time we have machines to name, we might draw from the pool of names which were runners-up in this election -- runners-up included Zelda, Dick Grayson, Sailors Uranus and Neptune, and Izumi Curtis.

Those are two ideas; we're hoping that you guys have more. We welcome your suggestions about how best to make, and keep, the OTW and the OTW's projects (the AO3, Fanlore, Open Doors, etc.) open and welcoming to fans from a diverse range of fannish backgrounds. Please feel free to offer suggestions here, or to contact us anytime.

Mirrored from an original post on the OTW Blog. (Translations coming soon!)

We love preserving fannish history, so we're having tons of fun here at the Archive of Our Own and over at our sister project Fanlore with the April Showers Challenge! For those of you just tuning in, April Showers is our month-long challenge dedicated to encouraging people to store old bits of fannish activity - whether it's dredging up a few fics from your first fannish LJ or that old BB Board thread, scanning in your very first fanart which is still languishing in the back of your school exercise book, or documenting the great ship wars of your fandom over on Fanlore, we want to hear from you. And if you don't have anything old to store, but your current fannish activities have yet to be represented on the AO3 or talked about on Fanlore, we want to hear from you too - today's hot new fandom is tomorrow's history!

So far we've had 266 works posted on the AO3 under the April Showers Challenge tag - we've also seen lots more older works being uploaded in various fandoms. If you want to flag up that you're uploading as part of this challenge, then you can use this tag (but we love all your uploaded works regardless!)

All fandoms are welcome in the April Showers Challenge, but to provide a little inspiration we're highlighting a different fandom for love each day on our Twitter @ao3org. You can check out the first six highlighted fandoms in our last round-up post; our second batch is listed below!

The Losers - There are few things in life a liberal application of fandom won't fix. Get your Losers works on the AO3 or spin some stories on Fanlore's Losers page.

Kuroshitsuji | Black Butler - The most beautiful death in the world? Not if fanworks are lost - happily you can get your Black Butler works on the AO3 or document dark and beautiful death on the Kuroshitsuji page of Fanlore.

Johnny’s Entertainment - Love Arashi, Kanjani8, KAT-TUN & the rest of the Johnny's Entertainment boys? Enjoy Johnny's Entertainment works on the AO3, or add to Fanlore's Johnny's Entertainment page.

Xena: Warrior Princess - Making the subtext text: see the many histories of Xena on the AO3 or tell tales of your fannish experience on the Xena Fanlore page.

Jane Austen - It is a truth universally acknowledged that a fanwork must be in search of a home. Austen fans, find an abode of good repute among the Austen works on the AO3, or contribute to the drawing room conversation on the Austen Fanlore page.

Final Fantasy - YOU SPOONY BARDS! Preserve your tales for posterity among the Final Fantasy works on the AO3, or recount epic stories of fannish exploits on Fanlore's Final Fantasy page.

We're halfway through the month - have you told any of your fannish history? Help us make it pour April Showers!

This month, we're all about the history on the Archive of Our Own and sister site Fanlore! During our April Showers challenge, we're encouraging all fans to document their fannish history (recent or long past). Maybe you have zines which have been sitting in a drawer for the past 40 years, or maybe you have a bunch of things you've posted to your LJ in a fannish frenzy over the last few months - either way, if you have yet to upload it to the AO3 we'd love to see you share (and store) it here. While you're at it, why not record some of the awesome community or fannish controversies that have made your fandom what it is on our sister site Fanlore.

April Showers is an open call for folks of all fandoms - if you have unarchived fanworks or untold stories we want to see them! We're highlighting a few fandoms that we think are currently underrepresented and need a little love (you can keep track of our daily picks on our Twitter @ao3org). The daily picks so far:

Star Wars - Use the Force to preserve your fannish history! Check out the Star Wars works on the AO3 and Fanlore's Star Wars page.

Sailor Moon – Fighting evil by moonlight? Share the love by daylight! There are awesome Sailor Moon works on the AO3 and history on the Fanlore Sailor Moon page.

Figure Skating RPF – Preserve your fannish triple axels for posterity! 6.0 for the AO3's Figure Skating works and Fanlore's page.

The X-Files – The fic is out there! See the evidence: X-Files works on the AO3 and X-Philes history on Fanlore.

Diana Wynne Jones - Love the many worlds of Diana Wynne Jones? Celebrate the inspiring influence of this late, great and much-beloved fantasy writer: Diana Wynne Jones works on the AO3 and the DWJ fandom history on Fanlore.

Mass Effect - Game on: check out Mass Effect works on the AO3 and histories on Fanlore.

In addition to contributions in all these awesome fandoms, we're been excited to see people taking the opportunity to dig out other things in their back catalogues during this challenge. Check out the works on the AO3 tagged April Showers challenge - so far c. 30 fandoms are represented!

Have you uploaded works for the challenge or added something to Fanlore? Comment to this post with links!