#ao3 how-tos

[drgrlfriend]

Comments versus Bookmarks on AO3

A few people seemed appreciative of my post about how to use AO3's Marked for Later feature, so I thought I'd follow up with another tip about comments versus bookmarks. As part of the amazing @justleaveacommentfest I noticed a few people mentioned leaving nice comments in bookmarks, and I thought it might help to have a little info about how comments are different from bookmarks, and why it's better to send a comment if you want to make an author happy or make fandom friends or have an interesting discussion.

Bookmarks *are* viewable by everyone, unless you make them private. If you plan to say anything negative in your bookmark, please make it private. It's not really the flip side, however, that leaving positive statements in your bookmarks will reach the author, though.

Most authors are alerted when they get new comments, either through their dashboard or via email if they choose, or both. Yay! Serotonin boost, and also the ability to reply back and start a conversation! Plus, readers can have great discussions with each *other* in the comments section of a fic! If you're super into a fic you can read comments on the chapter even years later, and sometimes find the author adding additional thoughts or discussing their thought process while writing! It's like DVD extras for fanfic! (Do kids these days know what DVD extras are any more? Damned if I know).

You don't really know, as an author, when someone bookmarks one of your fics. Some authors, particularly when they are feeling low (cough cough) may also look at bookmarks to see if there are nice things there. This would basically just involve clicking on the bookmarks for each of your fics individually to see if there's anything a.) new and b.) nice in them.

This is an act of desperation. It's not really a wise thing to do, as 99% of bookmarks have no comments, or just list the title and author in fear of the fic being deleted some day and not knowing what you're missing. Even worse, if you, as an author, get desperate enough to cruise your bookmarks, you are as likely to see someone say something like "Meh" or "This got boring so I stopped reading at Chapter 5" or "Too many werewolves 3/10" in a werewolf fic than you are to see a nice compliment.

So, if you loved a fic and want to memorialize your love in a bookmark, be an extra super-duper sweetheart and cut and paste that into a comment for the author! Make the AO3 environment enriching for both authors and fellow readers in the comments section, and protect your friendly local author by not providing intermittent positive reinforcement for the negative behavior of scrolling through bookmarks!

I still recommend bookmarking fics. Bookmark those favorite fics you want to come back and read later, or use bookmarks to leave yourself little reminders if they are nice or in private bookmarks if they are not nice. Bookmark good resources, like how to code things in html or how to use AO3 filters most effectively. Find awesome new things to read by looking through the bookmarks of your favorite authors, because if you vibe with someone's writing you may also vibe with their favorite fics to read!

#archive of our own #ao3 #fanfiction #authors #writers #readers #bookmarks versus comments #how to ao3 #ao3 tips and tricks #ao3 how-tos #ao3 resources

[starseeker95]

Do not complain to me about how hard it is to navigate ao3 on mobile, young one. I hid under the bleachers and read Spirk fanfics on a BlackBerry during gym class. We are not the same.

#ao3 #ao3 fanfic #ao3 stuff #ao3 writer #spirk #spirk fanfiction #tos spirk #aos spock #Star Trek #star trek 2009 #yup #blackberry #my first fic experience #was spirk of course #I stumbled into it on accident and have never left #how did you find ao3?

[butevrythinggoesaway]

People on ao3 AND tumblr stop tagging Noir when he has nothing to do with your work/post challenge

#this still happens #on ao3 it suggests the fucking tags #peter b. parker isnt that hard to find you fucking halfwits #and im pretty sure the tumblr version of it might be against tos because its spam maybe idk #into the spider verse #spider-man noir #spiderverse #spider man noir #spider noir #spiderman noir #spidernoir #marvel noir #spider-noir #atsv #across the spiderverse #people will straight faced tag noir and say oops sorry those of you who just want to find decenct not smut not x reader fics of this rather #sexualised character. i lied! its actually peter b #miss me with that peter b tag is hard to find #it makes it very clear who's who. noir's tag literally shouts at you that it is for Spider-Man Noir #peter b. parkers is how it's shown in the movie #with a dot #because the middle name is shortened to an initial #you stupid fucks

[jkooktray]

how it feels to write other fandom fics while my long soukoku one marinates:

not one but TWO long skk fic wips, my apologies

#they’re an absolute menacing power duo in my head. my oc would be more scared of them than the gay cannibals #shoutout to my ao3 subscribers getting emails but it’s not skk #no doors and a near nonexistent thin window that isn’t even there that’s how endless it is #if you listen you can hear godzilla #bsd #skk #bungou stray dogs #hannibal #nbc hannibal #the hobbit #star trek #soukoku #dachuu #bagginshield #thilbo #hannigram #tos spirk #spirk #shitpost #my stuff

[whaliiwatching]

the universe is imploding but the lts are on the scene

—

end scene of interspace by confusedTraveler!!

#disco elysium #harry du bois #kim kitsuragi #kimharry #sunrise parabellum #star trek #i drew them both in ds9 outfits (bc cardassian era) before realizing theyre on a ship #which means red body/black shoulders for kim #in the fic harry would be in a hospital gown lol #also yes i did intentionally give them red uniforms even tho theyre both security bc i do not recognize the color shift from tos #command is GOLD #i respect the fic’s hcs of 1/4 vulcan kim and half cardassian half betazoid harry #imagine my delight when i saw this fic hidden in ao3 it was like discovering gold #so lovely…. so lovely #i will never figure out how to make these drawings not just a little bit blurry #disco elysium fic rec #i suppose?? yeah its cute go read it

[pacificgasandelectric]

so there's a new campaign going round hoping to Make Fandom Less Racist by... pushing for moderation on ao3. no way this could Possibly go wrong :)

#mine #first of all i'm glad ao3 is committed to its stances bc like. 'we need a moderation team that decides which works are Too Racist' #gang what the Fuck are you talking about. who the FUCK do you trust to make that call. #obvs ao3 Isn't gonna do that bc they are An Archive but it's genuinely insane to me to see people Missing The Point So Bad #'ao3 should be able to administratively hide works that don't violate the TOS' first of all No #'and should plan to regularly use this ability to hide works that are Too Harmful by x definition' HELL no. #i do agree that there may be a need for better anti-harassment rules and stuff but like. #'moderate ao3' no. make your own archive. hope this helps <3 #also like. jesus christ do you KNOW how many fanworks are on there? #'just hide the racist ones' bestie WHO do u think is gonna read thru the entire corpus of work posted on ao3 so far #in order to root out the ones which are Too Racist. #'well we're gonna make it a community reporting model—' let me stop you right there. #kind of embarrassing to be talking abt racism and specifically harassment in fandom spaces and fail to acknowledge the MASSIVE tendency #of community-based reporting for content moderation being used to harass people. #that's gonna be a pass from me gang.

[fred-the-dinosaur-draws]

Meanwhile

Not dinosaurs but I recently took part in the k/s spring fling and this is one of my favourite things I’ve ever drawn, so here is a brief fan art intermission.

It’s that scene from the motion picture where Spock comes back. Except if Kirk and Spock were more like Morticia and Gomez. Bones is there too.

#star trek tmp #star trek tos #my art #addams family #k/s spring fever #spock #kirk #bones #this is where my limited drawing energies have been going lately #excuse the wonky signature #these are hand drawn and scanned for an anonymous exchange #so i added the signature later #using my trackpad #bc i didnt want to find my tablet #dunno how well this will work on mobile #ill try and add the ao3 link #this gets rougher the longer I look at it but boy do i love it anyway

[youcouldbewonderful]

I put my essay on humanity in Star Trek on ao3 :]

#i learned how to format footnotes on ao3 for this #took me FOREVER it's tedious #its pretty cool though. if i say so myself #i could have written more and honestly I might for fun #but i was already 5 pages over the limit for class #what do i tag this #star trek #star trek meta #star trek analysis #character study #character analysis #star trek tng #star trek tos #star trek ds9

[not-poignant]

Back in the day when I was using FFN I saw a lot of people write their story however they wanted, and then remove the segment that didn’t adhere to the guidelines, leaving a link to their blog where they would post the deleted scene. It was a headache but it’s better than them not posting the story at all. I know that’s a lot of work to do for your already written stories, but maybe m&m? It’s just so sad to think that you’ll be walking on these stupid eggshells writing it.

Hi hi anon!

It was a headache but it’s better than them not posting the story at all.

Definitely. I've been on fandom sites for about twenty years, and when I wrote fanfiction under another name, for a small archive, I did this myself. You know, wrote a more explicit scene, told people they could email me for the chapter (since this was more common back then), and so on.

But you know what's way way way better than all of that?

Being able to post whatever I want on AO3. The freedom is so nice, and I'm never going back to shadily hiding explicit scenes in my metaphorical trenchcoat for folks. I'm done with living that way. And I'm never going to go back to that kind of 'dark ages' dystopian way of getting past censorship while AO3 exists, y'know? :) I was so a happy to walk away from that site, and I'm so happy not to be using the un-user-friendly clusterfuck that is FF.net anymore.

If Wattpad users do want all of my works, they can come to AO3, or download the stories in their entirety from AO3 and read them at any time on their e-readers. So they're technically not missing out if they're just willing to look a bit further afield! :D

As for Mallory & Mount, I'm no longer the kind of writer who writes stories that are 80% porn and 20% story, so the sex scenes won't actually be super prevalent in Mallory & Mount, it's very story driven. And though the sex scenes will be extreme and dubcon, I don't consider this the same as the outright rape that happened in Game Theory. I'm not as worried about that. Same with Underline the Black. I'm just not that kind of writer anymore, I can still write very intense scenes and quite extreme dubcon, but I just don't really feel the urge to put it in every chapter these days? So I don't think most people reading say - The Beast that Chose Its Own Bridle - which has lengthy, intense BDSM scenes, would call that a 'porn story' first and foremost, even though it has porn. There's just too much story happening around all the sex, lol.

I don't really think of it as walking on eggshells honestly. I'm just not risking certain stories out of the gate, and they're already safe and fine on AO3 (and Dropbox). And while some of my stories are in a grey area, I'm confident I can articulate why they're valuable and have merit as narratives and/or cut my losses and keep them on AO3.

My shortlist of stories for Wattpad if folks are interested is:

The Wildness Within Stuck on the Puzzle From the Darkness We Rise Into Shadows We Fall The Golden Age that Never Was Spoils of the Spoiled possibly Falling Falling Stars (the length is offputting but I actually think the story could do really well there because it's very consent focused and it has a clear 'sexual assault is bad' message lol) Inmates Passiflora The Beast that Chose Its Own Bridle Underline the Black Mallory & Mount

I won't be putting them all up at once, but chapter by chapter as with any serial. The first two in the list are the first two I'll be starting with and they both just need covers now, they're ready to launch. I'm going with a fanfiction/original fiction mix because I can! :D

Stories that I'm not putting up on Wattpad at all:

The Wind that Cuts the Night (I think the front-heavy violent BDSM in the beginning will be too high risk even if it develops a story later - it's a shame because I think it works really well as an 'original novel' even though it's fanfiction). Game Theory The Court of Five Thrones Strange Sights short stories

Stories I'm on the fence on but will make a decision about based on how the short-list goes, or based on how well I think they can do on their own:

Eversion The Ice Plague anything else, lol.

I'm on the fence about The Ice Plague because it's the end point of the canon, but a lot of people came into Fae Tales through that story and I think handled it pretty well.

Eversion has some outright noncon, and while I think it has a strong 'sexual assault is bad' message, it also has Connor 'gosh I love degradation and humiliation and being told I'm filthy and slutty sir' Perkins in it, and even some AO3 readers struggled to find what Connor consented to, consensual, simply because they struggled to see why anyone would enjoy suffering like that. I have never had a character scream 'this is consensual' more in a story and have so many people be like 'oh god this is so horrible, he hates it so much' lmaoooo. I feel like Wattpad readers are going to be even less forgiving of that than AO3 readers.

Anyway, y'all know my plan now! :D It's going to take aaaaaages because I'll be releasing the chapters over time and I'm only going to have like 1-2 old stories updating at once, so um, it might actually take around 8 years to upload everything?

...*laughs nervously*

But no, no, I've been in fandom for over 20 years anon, I am well and truly over the dark ages of 'lol hmu for a link of the explicit wink wonk banned stuff' or 'haha click this link because this puritanical site won't let us be adults!' AO3 is where it's at. And I think we can all just appreciate that it's truly best to just...be able to post anything fictional + sexually taboo there, and not have to worry about a corporation potentially smacking us in the face for it.

#asks and answers #pia on wattpad #gosh i love AO3 #really my heart is just a constant love-letter to AO3 #yes there's things they can always improve #and work on #and yes sometimes they've disappointed us #BUT #compared to how it was before we are miles and miles ahead #as for Wattpad i'm not so much scared as i am pragmatic about the reality of working within a TOS

[ganondorf]

you know i'm critical of fanfic esp with nerds trying to compare their work to actual novels but it is Interesting to me how i've never seen anyone badger fanartists about not producing original content or discussing how their work compares intellectually to original art like that

#thinking abt those ppl who said they will actively report commissions on ao3 bc ''its illegal and against tos'' #but fanart commissions are....also illegal #and selling fan merch on etsy without proper permissions is also against etsy tos #anyway it is Strange to me how artists can make a living off selling fanart and nobody will bat an eye #but fanfic writers are expected to just Shut Up And Write For The Love Of It

[foxskip]

CHILDREN STOP USING AO3 LIKE A SOCIAL MEDIA WEBSITE CHALLENGE

#AO3 IS FOR *FANWORKS* #JUST FUCKING USE TUMBLR FOR YOUR OTHER SHIT #Me when I go into a fandom for a cartoon & find idiot children there :surprised pikachu: #Do you know how many children I have (genuinely) kindly & politely explained that this goes against the TOS to?? TOO MANY #Yes I know that is already way more effort than it is worth

[drgrlfriend]

How to Use "Marked for Later" on AO3

People seem to be unaware of/confused about this, and I know it's a little tricky to find "how to use the site" info on AO3, so here's a little guide.

Log in to your AO3, this won't work if you're a guest I don't think.

When you find a fic you like and open it, at the top there should be a button that says "Mark for Later."

When you click it, it puts the fic on your "Marked for Later list."

3. To find your Marked for Later list, hover over your name and choose "My History."

4. The history opens to a default page that is Full History, but next to that button is one that says "Marked for Later." Click on that to view the fics you've marked for later.

5. If you are reading a fic that you've marked for later, once you're done (and have left comments and kudos of course!) you can go back to the top, and where the "Mark for Later" button usually is you will see a button that says "Mark as Read" instead.

Clicking the "Mark as Read" button takes the fic off your Marked for Later list, but if you think you will want to find it again in the future it will still be in your Full History (unless you've deleted that fic from your history or cleared your history altogether, either of which you can do) and you can always make a Bookmark for the fic as well! Remember, authors can and do read bookmarks so be kind or make your bookmark private, and please do not try to add fics to Collections just for your personal tracking purposes.

#fanfiction #authors #readers #ao3 #archive of our own #ao3 how-tos #ao3 resources #how to use the marked for later function #marked for later #how to ao3 #ao3 tips and tricks

[taikeero-lecoredier]

If you migrate from Wattpad to Ao3....

I'm fucking begging you to actually tag your works properly AND DO NOT CENSOR WHAT YOU WRITE OR TAG !!! Terms like "unalive" "sewer slide" and other censored terms are NOT welcome here, and you wont be punished by the algorithm for talking about death and blood and stuff BECAUSE THERES IS NO ALGORITHM ! Also making place holders IS NOT ALLOWED BY AO3 TOS. It just clogs up the archive for nothing, if you do this, thats a sure way to get your stuff reported. Please learn how Ao3 works, its nothing like Wattpad.

#wattpad #wattpad purge #ao3 #archive of our own #OTW #please take a moment to understand how ao3 works. begging on my knees. #taike speaks

[ao3org]

Update on "No Fandom" tags

AO3 Tag Wranglers recently began testing processes for updating canonical tags (tags that appear in the auto-complete and the filters) that don’t belong to any particular fandom (commonly known as No Fandom tags). We have already begun implementing some of the decisions made during the earliest discussions. By the time this post is published, you may have already noticed some changes we have made.  Several canonical tags are slated to be created or renamed, and we will also be adjusting the subtag and metatag relationships between some tags to better aid Archive users in filtering.  Please keep in mind that many of these changes are large and require a lot of work to identify and attach relevant tags, so it will likely take some time to complete. We ask that you please be patient with us while we work! While we will not be detailing every change we make under the new process, we will be making periodic posts with updates on those changes we believe are most likely to prove helpful for users looking to tag or filter works with the new or revised tags and to avoid confusion as to why changes are being made. 

New Canonicals!

1. Edging

For a long while, there has been some confusion caused by the fact that we have a canonical for Edgeplay, but not for Edging which has led to some unintentional mistagging and other challenges. Consequently, we will be creating a canonical tag for Edging with the format Orgasm Edging and this new canonical tag will be subtagged to Orgasm Control. Relatedly, we will be reorganizing the Orgasm Control tag tree to allow for easier and more straightforward filtering and renaming Edgeplay to add clarity. You’ll find more details regarding these changes in the Renamed and Reorganized canonicals section below.

2. Generative AI

We have canonized three tags related to Generative AI. 

Created Using Generative AI

AI-Generated Text

AI-Generated Images 

All tags which make mention of specific Generative AI tools will be made a synonym of the most relevant AI-Generated canonical. Additionally, please note that AI-Generated Text and AI-Generated Images will be subtagged to Created Using Generative AI. How to Use These To Filter For/Filter Out Works Tagged as Using Generative AI: ❌ Filtering Out: To filter out all works that use tags about being created with AI, add Created Using Generative AI to the “other tags to exclude” field in the works filter. This will also exclude works making use of the subtags AI-Generated Text and AI-Generated Images. If you wish to exclude either the Images or Text tags only, you can do so by excluding either AI-Generated Text or AI-Generated Images.

☑️ Filtering For: Add Created Using Generative AI to the “other tags to include” field in the works filter. This will also automatically include the works making use of the subtags AI-Generated Text and AI-Generated Images. If you wish to filter for Images or Text only, you can do so by including either AI-Generated Text or AI-Generated Images only .

As a reminder, the use of these tools in the creation of works is not against AO3's ToS. These new tags exist purely to help folks curate their own experience on the Archive. If you would like to see more information about AO3’s policies in regards to AI generated works, please see our News post from May 2023 on AI and Data Scraping on the Archive.

Renamed and Reevaluated Canonicals!

3. EdgeplayAs mentioned above, we will be renaming Edgeplay to clarify the tag's meaning, given that it is often confused for Edging. This tag will be decanonized and made a synonym of Edgeplay | High Risk BDSM Practices. It will be removed as a subtag of Sensation Play and be subtagged instead directly to BDSM. Please note if you have made use of the Edgeplay tag on your works or wish to continue to use it in the future, you are still welcome to do so. The tag Edgeplay will be made a synonym of the new canonical, so all works tagged with Edgeplay now or in the future will fall under the new tag so that they’re still easy for users to find. If you have made it a favorite tag, it will be transferred  automatically when we make this change. 

4. Orgasm Delay/Denial The tag Orgasm Delay/Denial will be decanonized and made a synonym of Orgasm Control to help limit confusion with the more specific Orgasm Delay and Orgasm Denial canonicals. Tags that are currently synonyms of Orgasm Delay/Denial are being analyzed and moved to either Orgasm Control or Orgasm Delay or Orgasm Denial or Orgasm Edging. The revised tree structure for this tree will feature Orgasm Control as the top-level metatag with subtags Orgasm Edging, Orgasm Delay, and Orgasm Denial. So, if you wish to filter for all these tags at once, you can do so just by filtering for Orgasm Control. 

5. Female Ejaculation Female Ejaculation will be decanonized and made a synonym of Squirting and Vaginal Ejaculation.  We hope this new phrasing will be more inclusive, clear, and make the tag easier to find whether users are searching for Squirting or the previous canonical. All current synonyms of Female Ejaculation will also be made a synonym of Squirting and Vaginal Ejaculation, including Squirting. You may continue to tag your works as suits your preferences, and we will make sure these tags are made synonyms of the new canonical so that your work can be found in the filters for it.

These are just some of the changes being implemented. While we won’t be announcing every change, you can expect similar updates in the future as we continue to work toward improving the Archive experience. So if you have an interest in the changes we’ll be making, you can follow us on Twitter @ao3_wranglers or keep an eye on this Tumblr for future announcements. Thank you for your patience and understanding as we continue our work!

(From time to time, ao3org posts announcements of recent or upcoming wrangling changes on behalf of the Tag Wrangling Committee.)

#ao3 #archive of our own #tag wrangling changes #no fandom #upcoming tag updates

[lyricposting]

ughhhhhh i've lost a fic and it's killing me bc i'm sure i'd bookmarked it... did it get deleted?

#own post #unfortunately i can't remember if it was tos or aos... i think aos? but i've absolutely scoured ao3 all afternoon and no dice #i remember it bc the end tied back in to the beginning so well. the line was something like 'i take it you let yourself feel it' #i don't think there was any smut tho? maybe a bit limey. #AAAAAAHHHHHHHHH #hhhhhhhhhhhhhh #ugh i hate this so much i just want to KNOW #i'm 90% sure it got deleted at this point tho i've tried everything i know how to do ugh

[copperbadge]

Hey Sam! Since it's currently AO3 donation time, I'm wondering what your thoughts are on it? I'm asking because you've written RPF and it's one of many "anti-AO3/anti-AO3 donations" people's favourite things to bring up when they're complaining about AO3 getting so many donations that it continuously obtains an excess of its donation goal whenever donation time rolls around? (Wow, how many times can I say "donation" in an ask?) Sorry if this question bothers you! I don't mean to offend or annoy.

Hey anon! Sorry it took a while to get to this, I don't even know if the drive is still going on, but the question came in while I was traveling and I didn't really have the time for stuff that wasn't travel-related. In any case, let's dig in! (I am not offended, no worries.)

So really there are two issues here and as much as some people who are critical of AO3 want to conflate them, they are different. While some criticism of AO3 may be valid, rhetoric against AO3 tends to misinterpret both in separate ways.

First there's the issue of what AO3 hosts -- RPF, yes, but more broadly, varied content that some people find distasteful or think should be illegal, which is a misunderstanding of the purpose of the archive and more broadly a dangerous attitude towards the concept of freedom of expression.

Second, there's the issue of AO3 generally outpacing its fundraising goals while not allowing monetization, which is a misunderstanding of the legal status of AO3 and to an extent a misunderstanding of philanthropy as a whole.

The longer I watch debates about content go on, the more I come to the conclusion that I was fortunate to have a teacher who really wanted to instill in us an understanding of free speech not as a policy but as an ongoing dialogue. It's not only that freedom of expression "protects you from the government, not the Justin" as the meme goes, but also that freedom of expression is not a static thing. It's an ongoing process of identifying what we find harmful in society and what we want to do about it.

Should the freedom to shout "Fire!" in a crowded theater be restricted? Should the freedom to yell slurs at drag performers? Should the freedom to teach prepubescent kids about gender, sexuality, and/or safe sex? Should the freedom to wear a leather puppy hood at Pride? Who gets to say, and why?

I was nine when my teacher did a unit on freedom of speech and the intersection of "harm prevention" and "censorship", which is (and should be) a discussion, not a set of ironclad rules. This ambiguity has thus been with me for over thirty years, and I'm comfortable with the ambiguity, with the process; I'm not sure a lot of people critical of AO3's content truly are. Perhaps some can't be, especially those affected by hate speech, but RPF is not hate speech. It's just fiction. Or is fiction "just fiction"? This is a question society as a whole is grappling with, although fandom seems to be a little out ahead of society in terms of how explicitly we discuss it.

The idea that prose can incite violence or cause harm is both valid to examine (witness the rise of fascism on the radio in the 20s, on Facebook and Twitter in the past ten years; they're very similar processes) and a very slippery slope. Because again: who decides what harm is, and what causes it, and what we do about it? Our values align us with certain beliefs, but those are only our values, not universal truths. So AO3 is part of the ongoing question of harm and benefit both to society and individuals.

AO3 itself, however, has a fairly defined policy that it is not meant to police content; it is an archive, not a bookstore or a school board. AO3 refines its TOS and policies as necessary, but the goal is always open access and as much freedom of expression as possible, and if that's uncomfortable for some people then that's a discussion we have to have; ignoring it won't make it go away. But it has to be a discussion, it can't be a unilateral change to the archive's TOS or a series of snaps and clapbacks, and I don't see a lot of people ready to move beyond flinging insults. Perhaps because they were taught a much more binary view of freedom of expression than I was.

So, self-evidently, I support AO3 and I don't have a problem with RPF. Whether other people do is something we're going to have to get to grips with, and that's likely to be a process that is still going on when most of us are dust. I'd rather have a century of ambiguity than a wrong answer tomorrow, anyway.

But whether AO3 hosts RPF is truly a separate issue from its donation drives, because it's a criticism some people level at the site which exists whether it's fundraising or not. So people can criticize AO3's open policy and they can give it as a reason not to support the site, but it's just one aspect of the archive and the fundraising as a whole should be examined separately.

I think AO3's fundraisers are deeply misunderstood (sometimes on purpose) because even people who are anticapitalist get a little crazy when money gets involved, and this is, to fandom, a lot of money -- a few hundred thousand, reliably, every fundraiser. To me, a fundraiser that pulls in three hundred grand is almost quaint; my current nonprofit pulls in better than ten million a year and my previous employer had an endowment of several billion dollars. At my old job I didn't even bother researching people who couldn't give us a hundred grand.

On the other hand, AO3 is an extreme and astounding outlier in the nonprofit world, because basically it's the only one of its kind to work the way it does. It is entirely volunteer-run on the operational side (ie: tag wranglers, coders, lawyers, etc) and has no fundraising staff (gift officers, researchers, outreach officers) as far as I'm aware. To pull in three hundred grand from individual one-time donations, without any paid staff and without even a volunteer fundraising officer? That's insane. That doesn't happen. Except at AO3.

What people misunderstand, however, is the basic status of a nonprofit, which is a legal status, not simply a social one. (I'm adding in some corrections here since it gets complicated and the terminology can be important!) The Organization for Transformative Works, the parent of AO3, is a nonprofit, which indicates how it was incorporated as an organization; additionally it is registered federally as tax-exempt, which carries certain perks, like not paying sales tax, and certain duties, like making their financials transparent to a certain extent. (Religious nonprofits are exempt from the transparency requirement.) If you're interested in more about nonprofits and tax-exempt status a reader dropped a great article here.

Nonprofits, unlike for-profit companies, cannot pay a share of their income to stakeholders. Nonprofits don't have financial stakeholders, only donors. They can have employees and pay them a salary -- that's me, for example -- but if a nonprofit pulls in $10M in donations, my salary is paid from that, I don't get a percentage and nobody else does either. That's what it means to be a nonprofit -- the money above operational costs goes back into the organization. The donations we (and AO3) receive must be plowed under and used for outreach, server maintenance, further fundraising, services expansion, et cetera. You can see this in the 990 forms on Guidestar or ProPublica, or in their more accessible breakdowns on Charity Navigator. Nonprofits that do not put the majority of their income towards service provision tend to get audited and lose their nonprofit status. So nobody's getting paid from all that money, and the overage that isn't spent goes into what is basically a savings account in the name of the nonprofit. (I'm vastly simplifying but that's the gist.) Using that money for personal purposes is illegal. It's called "private inurement" and there's a good article here about it. The money belongs to the OTW as a concept, not to anyone in or of the OTW.

So the biggest misunderstanding that I see in people who are mad at AO3 fundraisers is that "they" are getting all this money (who "they" are is never clearly stated but I'm pretty sure people think @astolat has a special wifi router that runs on burning hundred dollar bills) while "we" can't monetize our fanfic. But "they" get nothing -- nobody even earns a salary from AO3 -- and you can easily prove that by looking at the 990 forms they file with the government, which are required to be made public. You can see the most recently available 990, from 2020, here at Guidestar. Page seven will show you the "highest compensated" employees, all of whom are earning zero dollars or nonmonetary perks (that's the three columns on the right).

Either AO3 is entirely volunteer-run or someone's Doing A Real Fraud. The money the OTW spends is documented (that's page 10 and 11 primarily) and while they may pay for, say, the travel and lodging expenses of a lawyer going to DC to defend a freedom-of-expression case, they don't pay the lawyer for their time, or give them a cut of the income.

Despite what you've read, the reason "we" can't monetize our fanfics on AO3 has nothing to do with the site being the product of volunteer handiwork or AO3 having it in their terms of service or it being considered gauche by some to do so; it's because

IT'S ILLEGAL.

I cannot say this loudly enough: It is against the law for a nonprofit to be used by its staff, volunteers, or beneficiaries to earn direct profit from the services provided by the nonprofit.

You can be paid to work at one, but you cannot side-hustle by selling your handmade friendship bracelets for personal gain on the nonprofit's website. If the nonprofit knowingly allows monetization of its services, it can lose nonprofit status, be fined, be hit with back taxes, and a lot of other unpleasant bullshit can go down, including prosecution of those involved for fraud. If you put a ko-fi link on your fanfic, you are breaking the law, and if AO3 allows it, they are too.

Okay, that was a sidebar, but in some ways not, because it gets to the heart of the real complaints about AO3 fundraising, which is that people in fandom are sick or unhoused or in some form of need and other people in fandom are giving to AO3, a fan site that is financially stable, instead of giving to peoples' gofundmes or dropping money in their Ko-Fi or Paypal. And while it is a legitimate grievance that there are people who are in such desperate need while we live in an era of unprecedented abundance, that's not AO3's fault. AO3 doesn't solicit actively, there's no unasked-for mailings or calls from a gift officer. They just put a banner up on their website, and people give. (Again, this is incredibly outlier behavior in the nonprofit world, I'd do a case study on it but the conclusion would just be "shit's real, yo.") You might as well be mad that people give to their local food bank instead of someone's ko-fi.

You cannot lay at AO3's feet the fact that people want to give to AO3 instead of to your fundraiser. That's a choice individuals have made, and while you can engage with them in terms of why they made the philanthropic choices they did, to blame an organization they supported rather than the person who made the choice to give is not only incorrect but futile, and unlikely to win anyone over to supporting you. We know from research that guilt is not a tremendous motivator of philanthropy.

It is also not necessarily a binary choice; just because AO3 gets a hundred grand in $5 donations doesn't mean most of the people giving don't also give $5 elsewhere. I support the OTW on occasion, and I also fundraise for UNICEF and the Chicago Parks Foundation and BAGLY and others, in addition to giving monthly to several nonprofits that I have longterm relationships with -- my alma mater, the animal rescue where I got the Cryptids, my shul. And I give, occasionally and anonymously, to fundraisers that pass through Radio Free Monday, which are mainly individuals in need, because I was once in need and now I pay it forward. These are the choices I have made. Nobody twisted my arm. I respond poorly to someone making the attempt to do so by attacking places I've given.

I think the upshot is, after all of this that I've written, that we cannot begin to come to grips with questions of institutional inequality in philanthropy, or freedom of expression and censorship, until people actually understand what's going on, and too few do. So all I can do is try and explain, and hopefully create a forum for people to learn and grow when it comes to charitable giving.

Archive Of Our Own and the Organization for Transformative Works are products of our community and as that community changes, we will necessarily continue to re-evaluate what aspects of it mean and how AO3/OTW express the community sentiment. I hope that the ongoing discussion of support for AO3 also leads to people learning more about their philanthropic options. But criticizing AO3 for fundraising by attacking it for fulfilling one of its stated purposes is silly, and attempting to guilt people into giving in the ways one thinks they should give rather than how they do give is just going to make one extremely unlikable.

As members of this community, we have to be a part of the push and pull, but it's difficult to do that competently in ignorance. So, I do my best to be knowledgeable and to educate my readers, and I hope others will do the same.

#ao3 #otw #nonprofit #fundraisers #ao3 nonprofit #that's my new tag for posts like this #if anyone has any of the earlier posts I've done drop a comment in them so I see the post and can tag it #archive