Jassanja

I wrote this for a LJ community, but I guess it won't hurt to post it to my journal as well

1) What is the AO3

The AO3 is a fan owned and fan programmed Fanfiction Archive. The idea behind it was for fandom to own the servers and develop the easy to use features that are important to authors and readers of fanfic, not to leave it to the hands of some corporation interested in ad revenue (like Livejournal or FF.net)
The financial and organisation stuff is handled by the Organisation for Transformative works - read on their site how to become a member/donor and/or how to volunteer


2) How do I get an account on AO3

Since the Archive is still in Beta current sign ups are restricted to 50 users a day
You can enter the invitation queue at the archive

I have also have some invitations that I requested for interested users of this community, so if you PM me your email address, I can send you one of those


3) What can I archive at the AO3

Fanfiction of all kind. All Fandom, ratings and genre are welcome. (Yes, even that RPF MPREG with extra tentacle action)
For the future the hosting of Fanart and Fanvids is planned, for now Fanart can be implemented if hosted externally

4) How to post a fic to the archive? How to import from LJ or FF.net

See Work FAQ here

See Import FAQ here

5) What are Tags? How do they work?

See Tag FAQ here

Some tips from me about tags

- You are only asked to warn for death, rape, underage or violence
if you don't want to warn about any of that you can choose the warning that says that you choose not to warn

- Further stuff can be added as tags
(One persons warning is another's kink, see that RPS MPREG tentacle fic)
A fic with good tagging can get you interrest from people who are not looking to read a single fandom or pairing but something they have a special fondness of (first time stories, stories featuring people of colour, spanking fic etc)

- Use commas to separate the names of two pairings, character names and tags

- If a story was written for a challenge and community the name of those can also go into the tags (common format is Community: communityname, Challenge: challegename)

- If you don't want to use common tag names you can use your own preferred term (MPREG would be common or "Canonical" - as it is called in the AO3 - but you can use "pregnant guy fic" and the Tag Wranglers will make sure it will show up grouped together with other MPREG stuff for people who search for that


I hope this is of help to interrested people

On a side note, I also have invites for Dreamwidth so you can PM me about those too

So I was on my way back from an Apocalyptica concert today (and yeah, the guys still do the best concerts I ever seen) and in the compartment behind me were those girls who obviously were on the show too.
At one point they start talking about Fanfiction, and how most story are Mary Sue shit, and I'm already grinning at hearing a discussion like that from other people (proves that slashers really are everywhere)
Then they start start talking about Fanfiction.net vs. AO3, and suddenly one of them wonders if there is any Apocalyptica stuff on AO3

The sound I made when one of them got out her Iphone and checked can not have been very dignified, knowing that my stuff is pretty much all there is currently

Then the one with the phone started to read, aloud

Thankfully she choose some of the silly drabbles, and they seemed amusing enough to the group as they all laughed in the right places .... and commented that they had read worse....

Still, I wanted to laugh, cry, run away, grin like a lunatic and burst with pride at the same time



But yeah, that was the most surreal thing I ever experienced (and made me realize again that once you hit "publish" your fanfic really is out there for the world to read)

2 years ago

Fandom: OMG!!!!!!! We are going to build an archive!!! We are going to own the servers!!!! OMG!!! It will be so great!! Easy to use and for EVERYONE!!!!!

jassanja: hmmm.... *waits to see how the big plans will turn out*


Present Day

AO3: *goes into Open Beta*

Fandom: *ANGST* It's so complicated!!!! The warnings do not warn what I want them to warn!!! Tags Wuzzles Freeform Tags are so complicated!!!!! If I tag something wrong the Tag Wrangles are going to hate me FOREVAH!!!!!!*ANGST*

Tag Wranglers: *ANGST* Make one mistake and the whole Archive Internet Planet Universe will break down!!!!!!! Tag something wrong and all of Fandom will hate us FOREVAH!!!!!!!!!!!

jassanja: *loves the archive and thinks that it is really easy to use for reading/archiving/feedbacking/filtering tags*






(I'm not a tag wrangler, but a friend is, and she says it's really hard to break things, and they are not telling everyone how to tag their stuff, they are just there to make sure if that if you search for Snarry you get not just stories tagged Snarry but also stories tagged Snotter, Snape/Harry, Harry/Severus, Severitus, Severus Snape/Harry Potter or every other possible form thereof)