Archive of Our Own

Did someone make a wish for more Archive of Our Own (AO3) users at 11:11? Because that wish has come true and we are proud to share that just four months after we celebrated 10 million registered users, AO3 now has 11 million registered users! This means an average of around 250,000 people have made an AO3 account every month since then.

In honor of getting what we wished for, we're spotlighting the Gift feature on AO3! Gifts are works that are dedicated by the creators. For example, a work may have been written for a friend's birthday, created for a Gift Exchange, or simply something you made while thinking of someone else. Is there anyone you've created fanworks for that you'd like to spotlight? You can gift something to someone even if they don't have an AO3 account!

If you'd like to gift a work to someone else, refer to How do I gift a work to someone? or refer to our general Gifts FAQ for more information.

Thank you for being a part of this milestone with us and we look forward to celebrating many more achievements with you in the future (18 million works is right around the corner)!

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, OTW Legal Advocacy, and Transformative Works and Cultures. We are a fan-run, donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

Kraith Collected, a collection of Star Trek zines set in the Kraith universe, is importing a copy of the zines’ fanworks to the Archive of Our Own (AO3).

In this post:

• A bit of background explanation
• What this means for creators who had work(s) in Kraith Collected
• And what to do if you still have questions

Background explanation

Kraith Collected is a series of works in the Kraith universe, a series of Star Trek: The Original Series fanfictions, many originally published in other zines. Each volume contains works by Jacqueline Lichtenberg and other writers whose works went through several rounds of edits to be given a number in the Kraith chronology and become part of the official Kraith universe. There are also two pieces of meta, Kraith Creator's Manual and Understanding Kraith, which describe the Kraith universe.

The fanzines to be imported are:

• Kraith Collected: Fanlore page and AO3 collection
• Kraith Creator's Manual: Fanlore page and AO3 collection
• Understanding Kraith: Fanlore page and AO3 collection

The purpose of the Open Doors Committee’s AO3 Fanzine Scan Hosting Project (FSHP) is to assist publishers of fanzines to incorporate the fanworks from those fanzines into the Archive of Our Own. It is extremely important to Open Doors that we work in collaboration with publishers who want to import their fanzines and that we fully credit creators, giving them as much control as possible over their fanworks. Open Doors will be working with Kraith Collected to import a copy of the fanzines listed above into separate, searchable collections on the Archive of Our Own. As part of preserving the fanzines in their entirety, all art in the fanzines will be hosted on the OTW's servers and embedded in their own AO3 work pages.

We will begin importing works from Kraith Collected to AO3 after July 2026. However, the import may not take place for several months or even years, depending on the size and complexity of the task. Creators are always welcome to import their own works and add them to the collections in the meantime.

What does this mean for creators who had work(s) in Kraith Collected?

We will send an import notification to the email address we have for each creator. We'll do our best to check for an existing copy of any works before importing. If we find a copy already on AO3, we will add it to the collection instead of importing it. All works archived on behalf of a creator will include their name in the byline or the summary of the work.

All imported works will be set to be viewable only by logged-in AO3 users. Once you claim your works, you can make them publicly-viewable if you choose. After 30 days, all unclaimed imported works will be made visible to all visitors.

Please contact Open Doors with your creator pseud(s) and email address(es), if:

• You'd like us to import your works, but you need the notification sent to a different email address than the publisher has a record of.
• You already have an AO3 account and have imported your works already yourself.
• You’d like to import your works yourself (including if you don’t have an AO3 account yet).
• You would NOT like your works copied to AO3, or would NOT like your works added to the fanzine collections.
• You are happy for us to preserve your works on AO3, but would like us to remove your name.
• You have any other questions we can help you with.

Please include the name of the publisher or fanzine in the subject heading of your email. If you no longer have access to the email account the publisher has a record of, please contact Open Doors and we'll help you out. (If you've posted the works elsewhere, or have an easy way to verify that they're yours, that's great; if not, we will work with Kraith Collected to confirm your claims.)

Please see the Open Doors website for instructions on:

• importing your works to AO3
• adding your works to the new collections listed above

If you still have questions...

If you have further questions, visit the Open Doors FAQ, or contact the Open Doors committee.

We'd also love it if fans could help us preserve the story of Kraith Collected, Kraith Creator’s Manual, and Understanding Kraith on Fanlore. If you're new to wiki editing, no worries! Check out the new visitor portal, or ask the Fanlore Gardeners for tips.

We're excited to be able to help preserve Kraith Collected!

- The Open Doors team and Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Commenting on this post will be disabled in 14 days. If you have any questions, concerns, or comments regarding this import after that date, please contact Open Doors.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, OTW Legal Advocacy, and Transformative Works and Cultures. We are a fan-run, donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

Every month or so the OTW will be doing a Q&A with one of its volunteers about their experiences in the organization. The posts express each volunteer's personal views and do not necessarily reflect the views of the OTW or constitute OTW policy. Today's post is with Ellipsis, who volunteers as a Tag Wrangler and also a Technical Assistant for the Communications Committee.

How does what you do as a volunteer fit into what the OTW does?
I currently hold two roles with the OTW.

I wrangle tags on AO3 for a couple of smallish fandoms with lots of characters. So I’m frequently digging through wiki pages and scrubbing through episodes to figure out if the character someone tagged is from canon or an OC. It's always very satisfying to provide new canonical character tags.

I am also the "Technical Assistant" for Communications. My primary responsibility there is managing the "OTW News By Email" automations. I set up all the automations and keep an eye out for and troubleshoot any issues; this occasionally involves reaching out to Systems or the newsletter service’s support team. I also help out if any subscribers reach out for help with their subscriptions. Beyond the "News By Email" stuff, I also help with investigating or suggesting other tech solutions for the Communications committee and occasionally help to write/research some of the more technical news posts.

What is a typical week like for you as a volunteer?
I do most of my focused volunteer work on the weekends, since I’ve got a full-time job during the week (and by the time I’m done work for the day and figure out food and whatnot I don’t have much time or energy left).

Every Saturday evening I work on Comms tasks. Exactly what I’m doing depends on what I’ve got on my plate. One thing I frequently work on is writing documentation about how the News By Email automation works. (Right now I manage everything myself but it's important to make sure there is good documentation in case someone else has to hop in and do something.) I also researched and drafted a news post recently, which involved a lot of rounds of feedback from different committees since it was inspired by a request from Support and relates to AD&T. Other common tasks include helping answer support queries about the email subscription, adding new functionality (the ability to subscribe just to recruitment posts went live recently), and cleaning up unsubscribed users.

If something breaks or otherwise goes weird I’ll jump in outside of my standard hours, but most of the time things can wait.

Every other weekend I tend to do wrangling work sometime during the day on Saturday or Sunday. Often I’ll host or attend a "wrangling party" (set times when lots of folks wrangle and cheer each other on). During that time I’ll check through whatever new tags have come in for my fandoms and sort them accordingly. I’ve got a few fandoms with lots of characters, so there are almost always some new characters or relationships to make canonicals for. I’ll also occasionally dig through the additional tags to check if anything has gained enough usages to get a canonical.

What made you decide to volunteer?
I initially joined as a tag wrangler. As an avid reader of fic, a programmer, and someone who finds categorization interesting, I find the tag system on AO3 really awesome. So when I found out how it worked and that you could volunteer to wrangle tags, I started eagerly watching for recruitment posts. It took a couple rounds before there was a post that was recruiting for wranglers for a fandom I had experience with.

A couple of years ago (once I’d been a wrangler for a while), Communications was looking into sending out news posts by email. They asked for volunteers who were willing to be test subjects and report back on receiving emails. However, the services they were testing weren’t a good fit and they were running into a lot of issues. I got curious and fell down a research rabbit hole and suggested another service. The service was one that required a bit more technical knowhow, though, and the volunteers running the test weren’t comfortable setting it up, so I offered to test it out and report back. They ended up going with the service I suggested and asked me to help set it up for real. Then eventually Communications asked me if I was interested in officially joining the committee as a "Technical Assistant."

What has been your biggest challenge doing work for the OTW?
Executive functioning. I’ve got ADHD (and Autism) so I struggle with intrinsic motivation and easily lose track of time, especially when I’ve got a full-time job eating all my spoons (energy). When I first started volunteering, I had been laid off and was unemployed so I had a lot of spare time and energy. So finding the balance once I was back to working full time was tricky.

In the last year or so I’ve started being firmer on scheduling specific times to do my volunteer work to help avoid losing track completely. For Comms work, I have a scheduled time set up each week that I work. And at that time another Comms volunteer will poke me on the volunteer messaging service to check in and ask about what I’m doing that evening; having that sort of external check in is massively helpful for me. Signing up to host wrangling parties serves a similar purpose in giving me external accountability about being present at a specific time to wrangle.

What fannish things do you like to do?
Mostly reading so much fic. I started reading fanfiction when I was a kid, probably around 8 or 9 years old. One of my real-life friends introduced me to it and in their words they "created a monster." (I don’t know exactly when I started reading because I no longer have the email I used at that time and my autistic kid brain was hung up on "you aren't supposed to have an account if you aren’t 13" so I read for quite a while before getting my FFN account). I occasionally count up how many words I’m reading per week and I’m frequently somewhere around 200k words per week. (It varies a bit depending on the density of the fic and how much else I’ve got going on. When I’m unemployed, it goes way up.)

I try to leave lots of comments as my way of giving back to all the authors who provide all the wonderful fics I get to read for free. (I’ve recently started using the sticky note app on my phone to compose comments with blockquotes while I’m reading so I can call out favorite bits or “live react” a bit.)

Now that our volunteer’s said five things about what they do, it’s your turn to ask one more thing! Feel free to ask about their work in the comments. Or if you'd like, you can check out previous Five Things posts.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, OTW Legal Advocacy, and Transformative Works and Cultures. We are a fan-run, donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

I. SPOTLIGHT ON OPEN DOORS

Open Doors is preparing to import ArtisticAlley, the last FictionAlley house. Unfortunately, they've only been able to retrieve thumbnail versions of the artworks. They're currently asking creators if they can provide copies of the full versions. If you're an ArtisticAlley creator and can provide your full artworks—or would like Open Doors to do anything other than import the thumbnail copies—please check your emails and reply, or get in touch with Open Doors directly. They will begin importing after 30 June.

In May, Open Doors also announced the import of multifandom fanfiction archive Mediafans and its hosted Duncan/Methos zine Futures Without End. They also completed the semi-automated portion of the import of HBO Oz archive Unit B, with more works being imported manually in the coming months. These additional works comprise Big Bang fics, the Unit B Yahoo Group, and the Cellblock 5 Yahoo Group. Thank you to everyone on Open Doors' technical and administrative teams who contributed!

II. ARCHIVE OF OUR OWN

Accessibility, Design & Technology worked on more security updates as well as quality-of-life bug fixes and AO3 internationalization work. Thank you to the coders for those fixes and to the testers for helping with swift releases! They also published release notes for March.

In April, Policy & Abuse (PAC) received 4,358 tickets. PAC also worked with Communications to publish a news post spotlighting ways to keep your AO3 account secure as part of World Password Day. Also in April, Support received 4,325 tickets. User Response Translation completed 77 requests from PAC and Support.

Tag Wrangling wrangled over 638,000 tags in April, or approximately 1,300 tags per wrangling volunteer. They also collaborated with Communications to publish a Tumblr post about a new Avatar: The Last Airbender fandom metatag and a news post announcement of 21 new "No Fandom" tags.

III. ELSEWHERE AT THE OTW

Fanlore celebrated Public Domain Fandoms, or Public DoMay, on their socials all throughout the month! Check out their Bluesky, Tumblr, and Twitter/X for fun featured articles and posts.

Their annual Bingo Challenge also will begin on June 16 and will end June 29! It's open to new and experienced editors alike, and everyone is encouraged to join in!

Legal continues to answer internal and external questions and monitor the changing legal situation for privacy and free speech.

TWC continued to work on their planned issues related to Music Fandom and Latin American Fandoms. May was the deadline for nominations for the Fans of Color Research Prize, which recognizes the best article about fans and/or fandoms of color published in TWC. The next issue will be a general issue published in September.

IV. GOVERNANCE

Elections continues to prepare for the 2026 OTW Board of Directors election, which will fill four seats (three full term seats and one partial term seat).

If you'd like to vote this year, you must become an OTW member by June 30. To become a member, you must donate at least $10 USD in one donation and check the yes circle under "Do you want to be an OTW member?" on the donation form.

Board, Board Assistants Team, and Organizational Culture Roadmap spent the month collaborating on projects, including sharing the Code of Conduct draft for review from OTW volunteers and working on tasks related to closing out the OTW Crisis Management Plan project.

Finance completed the audit of the OTW's 2024 financials and began preparing our 2025 financials to be audited.

Development & Membership worked on wrap up from the April Membership Drive and began thinking ahead to the next one in October.

V. OUR VOLUNTEERS

In May, Volunteers & Recruiting opened recruitment for four roles for the Fanlore, Communications, and Open Doors committees.

From April 22 to May 23, Volunteers & Recruiting received 202 new requests, and completed 177, leaving them with 70 open requests. As of May 23, 2026, the OTW has 1,040 volunteers. \o/ Recent personnel movements are listed below.

New Communications Volunteers: 2 Event Coordinators and 1 Fanhackers Volunteer
New Open Doors Volunteers: 1 Senior Technical Advisor and 1 Digital Collections Intern
New Policy & Abuse Volunteers: Arashi, Bellis, Citrine, lazyredheeler, Rika G, SaltDove, ZoeT, and 3 other Volunteers
New User Response Translation Volunteers: 1 Translator

Departing Committee Chairs/Leads: 1 Policy & Abuse Chair and 1 Organizational Culture Roadmap Head
Departing Communications Volunteers: 1 Fanhackers Lead and 2 Convention Specialists
Departing Fanlore Volunteers: 1 Gardener
Departing Finance Volunteers: 1 Financial Analyst
Departing Open Doors Volunteers: 1 Senior Technical Volunteer and 1 Import Assistant
Departing Policy & Abuse Volunteers: 1 Volunteer
Departing Tag Wrangling Volunteers: Allonym and 15 other Tag Wrangling Volunteers
Departing Translation Volunteers: Katarina Hjarpe and 1 other Translator
Departing Volunteers & Recruiting Volunteers: 1 Volunteer

For more information about our committees and their regular activities, you can refer to the committee pages on our website.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, OTW Legal Advocacy, and Transformative Works and Cultures. We are a fan-run, donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

AO3 Tag Wranglers continue to test processes for wrangling canonical additional tags (tags that appear in the auto-complete) which don't belong to any particular fandom (also known as "No Fandom" tags). This post overviews some of these upcoming changes.

In this round of updates, we continued to adjust existing canonical "No Fandom" tags to add or remove new subtag and metatag relationships. We also continued to streamline creating new canonical tags, prioritizing more straightforward updates which would have less discussion compared to renaming current canonical tags or creating new canonical tags which touch on more complex topics. This method also reviews new tags on a regular basis, so check back on AO3 News for periodic "No Fandom" tag announcements.

None of these updates change the tags users have added to works. If a user-created tag is considered to have the same meaning as a new canonical, it will be made a synonym of one of these newly created canonical tags, and works with that user-created tag will appear when the canonical tag is selected.

In short, these changes only affect which tags appear in AO3's auto-complete and filters. You can and should continue to tag your works however you prefer.

New Canonicals

The following concepts have been made new canonical tags:

• All Characters Are Adults
• Anal Hooks
• Anal Prolapse
• Prolapse
• Vaginal Prolapse
• Baby Trapping
• Burping
• Cooking Together
• Coprophagia | Eating Feces
• Feces | Poop
• Cryptic Pregnancy | Character Didn't Know They Were Pregnant
• Developing Feelings
• Drug-Induced Heat
• Forced Heat
• Induced Heat
• Heat Suppressants
• Scent Blockers
• Implied/Referenced Suicide Attempts
• Inferiority Complex
• Sexual Trauma
• Sports Injuries
• Stubbornness
• TBI | Traumatic Brain Injury

Subtag/Metatag Revisions

Additionally, we continued to adjust existing canonical tags to add or remove new subtag and metatag relationships, which help users find related content and filter in/out content as they browse works on AO3.

• Alternate Universe - Radio is now a subtag of Radio
• Power Bottom is now a subtag of Bottoming
• Service Top is now a subtag of Topping
• Corsetry has been removed as a subtag from Clothing Kink
• Latino Character has been removed as a subtag from Hispanic Character

In Conclusion

While we won't be announcing every change we make to No Fandom canonical tags, you can expect similar updates in the future about tags we believe will most affect users. If you're interested in the changes we'll be making, you can continue to check AO3 News or follow us on Bluesky @wranglers.archiveofourown.org or Tumblr @ao3org for future announcements.

You can also read previous updates on "No Fandom" tags as well as other wrangling updates, linked below:

• Past "No Fandom" Additional Tags Updates and 5 Things Said by Wrangling Volunteers
• Past Fandom-Specific and "No Fandom" Tag Wrangling Change Posts

For more information about AO3's tag system, check out our Tags FAQ.

In addition to providing technical help, AO3 Support also handles requests related to how tags are sorted and connected.​ If you have questions about specific tags, which were first used over a month ago and are unrelated to any of the new canonical tags listed above, please contact Support instead of leaving a comment on this post.

Please keep in mind that discussions about what tags to canonize and what format they should take are ongoing. As a result, not all related concepts will be canonized at the same time. This does not mean that related or similar concepts will not be canonized in the future or that we have chosen to canonize one specific concept in lieu of another, simply that we likely either haven’t gotten to that related concept yet or that it needs further discussion and will take a bit longer for us to canonize it as a result. We appreciate your patience and understanding.

Lastly, we're still working on implementing changes and connecting relevant user-created tags to these new canonicals, so it’ll be some time before these updates are complete. If you have questions about specific tags which should be connected to these new canonicals, please refrain from contacting Support about them until at least three months from now to give us adequate time to do so.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, OTW Legal Advocacy, and Transformative Works and Cultures. We are a fan-run, donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

Manacles Press, publisher of various fanzines including Nudge Nudge Wink Wink (Professionals), McPikus Interruptus (Wiseguy), and Consupiscence (multifandom), is importing the zines’ fanworks to the Archive of Our Own (AO3).

In this post:

• A bit of background explanation
• What this means for creators who had work(s) in Manacles Press’s fanzines
• And what to do if you still have questions

Background explanation

Manacles Press was run by Megan Kent and Charlotte C. Hill in the 1990’s, publishing both anthology and novel zines. Megan and Charlotte are happy to archive these works in an effort to preserve fannish history and to keep the fanworks available and free.

The fanzines to be imported are:

• Arabian Nights: Fanlore page and AO3 collection
• Chains of Being: Fanlore page and AO3 collection
• Concupiscence: Fanlore page and AO3 collection
• McPikus Interruptus: Fanlore page and AO3 collection
• Never Let Me Down: Fanlore page and AO3 collection
• Nudge Nudge Wink Wink: Fanlore page and AO3 collection
• Outrider: Fanlore page and AO3 collection
• Professional Dreamer: Fanlore page and AO3 collection
• Walking Distance: Fanlore page and AO3 collection
• What If…: Fanlore page and AO3 collection
• Whisper of a Kill: Fanlore page and AO3 collection

The purpose of the Open Doors Committee’s AO3 Fanzine Scan Hosting Project (FSHP) is to assist publishers of fanzines to incorporate the fanworks from those fanzines into the Archive of Our Own. It is extremely important to Open Doors that we work in collaboration with publishers who want to import their fanzines and that we fully credit creators, giving them as much control as possible over their fanworks. Open Doors will be working with Manacles Press to import the fanzines listed above into separate, searchable collections on the Archive of Our Own. As part of preserving the fanzines in their entirety, all art in the fanzines will be hosted on the OTW's servers and embedded in their own AO3 work pages.

We will begin importing works from Manacles Press’s fanzines to the AO3 after June 2026. However, the import may not take place for several months or even years, depending on the size and complexity of the task. Creators are always welcome to import their own works and add them to the collections in the meantime.

What does this mean for creators who had work(s) in Manacles Press’s fanzines?

We will send an import notification to the email address we have for each creator. We'll do our best to check for an existing copy of any works before importing. If we find a copy already on the AO3, we will add it to the collection instead of importing it. All works archived on behalf of a creator will include their name in the byline or the summary of the work.

All imported works will be set to be viewable only by logged-in AO3 users. Once you claim your works, you can make them publicly-viewable if you choose. After 30 days, all unclaimed imported works will be made visible to all visitors.

Please contact Open Doors with your creator pseud(s) and email address(es), if:

1. You'd like us to import your works, but you need the notification sent to a different email address than the publisher has a record of.
2. You already have an AO3 account and have imported your works already yourself.
3. You’d like to import your works yourself (including if you don’t have an AO3 account yet).
4. You would NOT like your works moved to the AO3, or would NOT like your works added to the fanzine collections.
5. You are happy for us to preserve your works on the AO3, but would like us to remove your name.
6. You have any other questions we can help you with.

Please include the name of the publisher or fanzine in the subject heading of your email. If you no longer have access to the email account the publisher has a record of, please contact Open Doors and we'll help you out. (If you've posted the works elsewhere, or have an easy way to verify that they're yours, that's great; if not, we will work with Manacles Press to confirm your claims.)

Please see the Open Doors website for instructions on:

• importing your works to the AO3
• adding your works to the new collections listed above

If you still have questions...

If you have further questions, visit the Open Doors FAQ, or contact the Open Doors committee.

We'd also love it if fans could help us preserve the story of Manacles Press and its fanzines on Fanlore. If you're new to wiki editing, no worries! Check out the new visitor portal, or ask the Fanlore Gardeners for tips.

We're excited to be able to help preserve Manacles Press’s fanzines!

- The Open Doors team, Megan and Charlotte

Commenting on this post will be disabled in 14 days. If you have any questions, concerns, or comments regarding this import after that date, please contact Open Doors.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, OTW Legal Advocacy, and Transformative Works and Cultures. We are a fan-run, donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

The OTW Elections committee is pleased to announce that the timeline for the 2026 election for new members of the Board of Directors has been posted!

As previously announced, Erica Frank and Kathryn Soderholm stepped down from their positions on the Board. Anh Pham and Qiao Chu are also stepping down from the Board as they have reached the end of their terms. There are seven Directors on the OTW's Board and this year OTW members will elect four new Directors - three Directors to serve a full-term (3 years) and one Director to serve a partial term (1 year).

This year's election will be held August 14-17. This means that the deadline for volunteers to declare their candidacy is June 19.

As usual, the election membership deadline is June 30. If you're interested in voting, please make sure your membership is active as of that date. If you are unsure whether your donation was made before the deadline, please contact our Development and Membership committee by using the contact form on our website and selecting "Is my membership current/Am I eligible to vote?".

You can find out how to become a member on the Elections website, or if you're familiar with the process, you can donate here!

If you want to know more about the election process in general, you can check out the Elections Policies.

We're looking forward to an active election season with ample communication between candidates and voters, and we hope you'll be a part of it. Don't forget to follow the Elections committee on Bluesky and Tumblr to keep up to date with the latest news!

If you have any questions or comments, don't hesitate to contact Elections.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, OTW Legal Advocacy, and Transformative Works and Cultures. We are a fan-run, donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

Our releases in March included a slew of collection, bookmark, and history bug fixes, as well as several improvements for site admins.

Special thanks to first-time contributors charliewhiskee, Dobe, goose, Lubczi, Marianna, mellowmarsach, Nathan Cunningham, nghz, Oyon Ganguli (0ce10tsgit), and Xiang Rassul Li!

Credits

• Coders: Bilka, Brian Austin, calm, charliewhiskee, Cubostar, Daniel Haven, Danaël / Rever, Dobe, EchoEkhi, FlyingFalcon, goose, Lubczi, Mae Light, Marianna, mellowmarsach, Nathan Cunningham, nghz, ömer faruk, Oyon Ganguli (0ce10tsgit), Richard Hajek, sarken, Scott Venkataraman, varram, Yi Fang, Xiang Rassul Li
• Code reviewers: Bilka, Daniel Haven, marcus8448, redsummernight, sarken, Scott Venkataraman, slavalamp
• Testers: Berix, Bilka, Brian Austin, calamario, choux, EchoEkhi, hvalrann, Lute, lydia-theda, marcus8448, pk2317, therealmorticia, Ven, wichard

Details

0.9.462

On March 2, we deployed a patch for the gem we use to manage authentication (to address a performance issue related to the March 2026 Downtime).

• [AO3-7306] - Devise patch to prevent an excessive amount of strain on the database.

0.9.463

Our March 6 deploy included a few gem updates.

• [AO3-6916] - Migrated from Gitpod/Ona to devcontainers for our development needs, as Gitpod was no longer suitable.
• [AO3-7271] - Updated which data is included when comments are sent to our spam checker for evaluation.
• [AO3-7305] - We updated the internationalization of some emails based on feedback from translators.
• [AO3-7227], [AO3-7304], [AO3-7308] - Code cleanup and gem updates.

0.9.464

On March 12, we released a whole bunch of bug fixes.

• [AO3-6359] - In some rare cases it was possible to delete the pseud that corresponds with your username. We fixed this edge case.
• [AO3-6688] - In order to prevent tragic accidents, we've made it harder to delete your entire History. Instead of a small "Are you sure?" popup, you are now directed to a confirmation page that requires another button click.
• [AO3-7214], [AO3-7215] - On a page with several bookmarks, closing and opening the "Edit" or "Save" functions on several bookmarks would get the popup form all confused which bookmark you wanted to edit or save. Or, in some cases, the buttons would just disappear on you! We've now sorted out the underlying JavaScript to let you save, or indeed edit, the bookmark you clicked on last.
• [AO3-7273] - When an account is banned for posting spam, we now also automatically delete all its profile contents, including any icons and alt text.
• [AO3-7285] - The user ID was missing from a page accessible to Policy & Abuse volunteers; we've added it now.
• [AO3-7290] - When you access AO3 without being logged in, you might be able to scroll down the page a bit, but then a popup will inevitably ask you to agree to our Terms of Service before you can continue. We now take you back to your scroll position once you click the button.
• [AO3-7314] - We've fixed the draft deletion to make sure it adheres to the correct deletion dates even for drafts created in the short month of February.
• [AO3-5683] - We fixed some security warnings pointed out by the helpful Brakeman tool.
• [AO3-7302] - We changed the code for displaying work meta-information so it accesses the work in one unified way.

0.9.465

On March 18, we released a bunch of bookmark, admin, and accessibility fixes.

• [AO3-5937] - On some pages, the "Save" button on bookmarks was visible to logged-out users, not that clicking it would do anything. Now it's only there when you're logged into your account.
• [AO3-6203] - On tag pages, we display a list of tags associated with the one you're browsing, e.g. the characters or relationships for a fandom (with a limit of 300 tags per type). For large fandoms, for example, that would put a considerable strain on the database. We have now moved to getting this data from our search engine, so retrieving the associated tags doesn't hammer the database servers anymore.
• [AO3-7030] - When we introduced Archive skins, we envisioned a system where users could create custom CSS to change the appearance of AO3, and then apply to make the code available to other users with a button click. This was never a sustainable idea, so we've been working on phasing it out. Now only official accounts, e.g. those belonging to the AO3 development team, can apply to have their skin reviewed for general usage. (All users can still create skins for themselves and make the code available in other ways, e.g. on GitHub or Tumblr or as a fanwork on AO3.)
• [AO3-7131] - The text used by screen readers to announce a help link was confusing, reading out the question mark we use to indicate the availability of the help popup. We've cleaned up the way we generate the text, which should be easier to follow now.
• [AO3-7256] - We've added a limit to how many times a specific bookmark can be submitted to the Policy & Abuse team for review.
• [AO3-7272] - When accessing a comment via the "Reply to this comment" link, some buttons would be gone for site admins or logged-out users that they'd normally be able to use, e.g. if viewing a single comment thread. Now the buttons are always there!
• [AO3-7303] - On your Statistics page, the tool-tip you get when hovering over a graph would flicker if it popped up right under your cursor. That's fixed now, so it should be easier to read.
• [AO3-7317], [AO3-7318] - We removed an incorrect ARIA attribute from some HTML.
• [AO3-7319] - If a site admin bans an account for posting spam, they are now redirected to the admin dashboard for that account (after the successful deletion of all the spam).
• [AO3-7335] - We fixed that running all the tests in one sitting would leave extra files and models behind.

0.9.466

We upgraded to Rails 8.1 on March 20.

• [AO3-7328] - We updated Rails, the framework the AO3 runs on, to the next major version.
• [AO3-7346] - Updated a gem used by our search engine to address a security issue.

0.9.467

For our penultimate March release, we deployed several display fixes and small site improvements on March 25.

• [AO3-5866] - The links to work creators in our RSS feeds were broken; now they're fixed!
• [AO3-6138] - Leaving kudos on a work with JavaScript disabled would previously knock you back to the top of the page. You can now see the success message (or the friendly hint that you've already left kudos) without having to scroll down to it.
• [AO3-6385] - On the page displaying all prompts in a prompt meme, or all requests in a gift exchange, the page content would overlap the sorting buttons at the top if viewed on a small screen. Now everything looks tidy.
• [AO3-6498] - To assist in abuse cases involving our gifting feature, members of the Policy & Abuse team can now access a user's refused gifts page.
• [AO3-7059] - We will now display a warning message if the password you're using to log into AO3 was found in a data breach documented on HaveIBeenPwned.
• [AO3-7255] - We've added a limit to how many times a specific series can be submitted to the Policy & Abuse team for review.
• [AO3-7268] - If you try to navigate to the inbox for a nonexistent user, you will now get an Error 404, since, like the user, the inbox does not exist.
• [AO3-7280] - Creating a multi-chapter draft and then hitting "Post" on the first chapter would indeed post that chapter, but treat the work as a whole still as a draft. It now publishes the work, with the first chapter, leaving any other chapters alone so you can post them later.
• [AO3-7315] - Members of the Policy & Abuse team can now edit and save a work's tags, e.g. to change the selected language, even if it has more than 75 tags. (As a regular user, you'd be prompted to remove tags from your work until you're below the limit.)
• [AO3-7323] - We updated the introductory text on our homepage.
• [AO3-7352] - Our previous fix making help text links more accessible for screen readers unfortunately prevented some content in work blurbs (e.g. warnings and ratings) from being read out loud. This has now been fixed!
• [AO3-7329], [AO3-7330] - Your History page and the page listing your blocked users now have your username in the browser's page title, as they always should have.
• [AO3-6906] - Updating the autocomplete for users and pseuds no longer depends on an unmaintained library!
• [AO3-7120] - In the rare case that the admin search results for a user are outdated, admins can now manually mark the search to be updated.
• [AO3-7338] - We recently changed how we cache bylines, and now all that new code is organized neatly in its own file.
• [AO3-7354] - We updated Rails to 8.1.2.1 for some security fixes.

0.9.468

On March 31, we deployed another batch of miscellaneous fixes and performance improvements.

• [AO3-6998] - Trying to search all signups in a gift exchange by pseud would cause an Error 500; now it returns the signup you were looking for!
• [AO3-7062] - AO3 site admins can now view all work blurbs on a user's "Works in Collections" page.
• [AO3-7223] - We prepared the help pop-ups on the Preferences page for translation.
• [AO3-7284] - When we rebuild our Elasticsearch indexes, we batch multiple objects together into one reindexing operation. We can now easily configure how large those batches are.
• [AO3-7292] - On the page for managing wranglers assigned to fandoms, the button to remove a wrangler only had a small clickable area around the X. Now the whole button does what it's supposed to do.
• [AO3-7311] - When a collection's settings were changed, e.g. from moderated to unmoderated, that information wasn't fully reflected everywhere. Now we make sure that listings and search results are updated immediately.
• [AO3-7321] - If you subscribe to a work that is then added to an unrevealed collection, we now display a "Mystery Work" placeholder on your subscriptions page until and unless the work is revealed again.
• [AO3-7332] - The page listing your muted users now has your username in the browser's page title!
• [AO3-7341] - If old jobs are still running on the development environment when a coder pushes changes to their branch of the Archive software, those jobs will now be stopped to save resources.
• [AO3-7347] - We cleaned up an unused method related to prompts.
• [AO3-7350] - We improved the performance of the History page by reducing the number of queries required to show each page.