OTW 16th Anniversary Survey Report

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Published:

2023-10-20 17:34:44 UTC

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2023
Reports

Let's celebrate! 16th Anniversary

On September 5, 2023 the OTW launched a user survey to coincide with its 16th anniversary. The purpose was to identify locations used by fans for fandom activities so as to better understand where they might be encountering and sharing news. In compliance with our Strategic Plan's Vision Statement, we also used this survey to establish a baseline of fans' familiarity with the OTW and its projects.

The survey asked between 16 to 35 ticky box and radio button questions (depending on what answers were given) and was open for 16 days, closing on September 21. During that time the survey was accessed 90,607 times. This may indicate that some people visited the form several times, either to start and stop a survey response or to read the opening page.

Our survey platform designated the consent form as Q1, so survey questions began with Q2. Of the 79,222 respondents to the consent form, 78,258 said Yes (98.78%) they consented to take the survey and 965 (1.22%) said no, at which point those users did not continue with the survey.

The survey report covers the following:

1) How many responses there were to each question
2) What number and percentage of respondents chose each answer, and
3) How many people skipped the question.

Below are a few examples of responses from the report:

Q2: How long have you been active in online fandom spaces?

78,258 survey takers received this question.
77,358 answered it.
1,865 exited the survey at this point.

Bar graph with numbers as shown below

Less than a year - 1,964 (2.54%)
1-2 years - 6,563 (8.48%)
3-5 years - 20,369 (26.33%)
6-10 years - 25,105 (32.45)
11-15 years - 13,040 (16.86%)
16-25 years - 8,690 (11.23%)
26-30 years - 1,257 (1.62%)
Over 30 years - 370 (0.48%)

Q26: Have you ever downloaded a fanwork from Archive of Our Own/AO3?

67,544 survey takers received this question.
67,475 answered it
69 exited the survey at this point.

Pie chart with numbers as shown below

Yes - 46,574 (69.02%)
No - 20,901 (30.98%)

Visit this link to access the rest of the report.

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

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pitytheviolins Fri 20 Oct 2023 05:47PM UTC

Love that the document is 69 pages. Nice.

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1. dizmo Fri 20 Oct 2023 05:49PM UTC
  
  Nice.
  
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2. 1. loverboi_music_nerd Fri 20 Oct 2023 09:46PM UTC
    
    Nice
    
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3. maevedarcy Sat 21 Oct 2023 12:43AM UTC
  
  nice
  
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4. 1. Glutenfreeviolence Sat 21 Oct 2023 07:35PM UTC
    
    Nice
    
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5. L_Oeuf Sun 22 Oct 2023 05:39AM UTC
  
  Nice
  
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6. thelisteners Sun 22 Oct 2023 06:44AM UTC
  
  Nice
  
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7. 1. SarkyLittleMonster Tue 24 Oct 2023 05:07AM UTC
    
    Nice
    
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clowngirldotpng Fri 20 Oct 2023 06:50PM UTC

It's exciting to see how long many of us have been involved in fandom. Really challenges the idea of fanfiction/fandom being something only for teenagers.

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OfMonstersAndWerewolves Fri 20 Oct 2023 07:01PM UTC

Almost 50/50 split as to whether they'd heard of Fanlore, and 50% of the 50% who had have never visited it! *cries in Fanlore Gardener*

Last Edited Fri 20 Oct 2023 07:02PM UTC

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1. OdeziaAtrata Sun 22 Oct 2023 09:56PM UTC
  
  Having visited it, while I think it's nice, it feels very incomplete. Additionally, when I hear Fanlore brought up in other fan spaces, it's always people saying that it's a hostile space for new editors or people who want to contribute things. I hear people say to stay away from it more frequently than I do anything else. I'm not sure what's causing this to be its' reputation, but what I've heard is that if you can't write the entire page yourself with correct formatting, citations and academic language, you'll likely have your contributions deleted and be snapped at by editors. So that keeps a lot of people from contributing or even looking at it, I think, in addition to keeping those that do from wanting to contribute. Maybe all of this is inaccurate - I haven't tried to contribute anything to it, so I have no experience to base this off of, only word of mouth from others who tried to edit it in years past - but this is not being said as an accusation, just as a way to possibly explain the low traffic and low name recognition of Fanlore.
  
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2. 1. Eli0t Mon 23 Oct 2023 07:07AM UTC
    
    For what its worth, Ive contributed to it many times and have never once had drama on it or even had someone reverse an edit
    
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  2. 1. OdeziaAtrata Mon 23 Oct 2023 12:45PM UTC
      
      Interesting. What I'd heard on tumblr was that Fanlore's atmosphere is highly hostile to new contributors, and that take has never been one I've seen anyone disagree with until now. I think Fanlore may have a bit of an image problem.
      
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    2. 1. Eli0t Mon 23 Oct 2023 12:54PM UTC
        
        It may just be that I haven't come across the drama myself (I am just one person after all and have a weird knack in fandom for somehow avoiding drama and then getting blindsided by it years later when people are mad at me for not knowing about some drama that just never once came up in my life somehow) but yeah it may just be an image problem or people not understanding wiki editing trying to edit some fanlore article and then being upset when they get something wrong and get their edit reversed (Ive also edited a lot of wikipedia pages over the years and the drama over there can be insane sometimes but that does mean I already had wiki editing experience before ai ever tried to edit fanlore so idk what its like for completely new to wiki editing editors). Its very easy to let your first interaction being someone correcting you color your entire view of a website
        
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      2. OdeziaAtrata Mon 23 Oct 2023 02:10PM UTC
        
        This raises an interesting point, which is that most people I've known have said that they found the atmosphere unwelcoming not because their edits were removed, but because their edits were removed, their page ideas were removed, and they were never directed to where to learn how to format something. So the vibe is "if you mess up, people are furious, and you're never given a link to a tutorial on formatting you could use to learn". Additionally, a complaint I see a lot is that you need to have an academic level citation to share, and that sources that are perfectly valid are not accepted due to the standards being too high.
        I want to reiterate that I myself have never tried editing it - I don't have anything I can think of to add, for one thing, and for another I try to avoid wikis lest I get sucked into reading them for multiple hours - so none of these opinions are mine or are things that I believe without question. However, when a lot of people warn you away from a specific site, even if you take it with a grain of salt and try to be skeptical, it's natural for you to go, "Ah yes, I've heard about that place." and have your view of it skewed by years of that. For all I know, everyone involved is perfectly kind and cordial there, but on a subconscious level the wariness remains.
        I have no idea how Fanlore ended up with this reputation other than my non-hot take of "social media twists the truth". I think, though, that people at Fanlore may want to think about some kind of social media outreach to encourage people to try out browsing and editing it and see if that helps combat the idea of it as hostile. Hard to incorrectly judge something you've had positive experience with, after all.
        
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        Eli0t Mon 23 Oct 2023 02:38PM UTC
        
        and they were never directed to where to learn how to format something
        
        I think some of that may be due to the difference between the mobile version of the site and the desktop version. When you are on the mobile version and look at the side bar, it only lists a couple of things. But when you are on the desktop version, the sidebar includes the editing cheatsheet, templates, a sandbox, a site policies page, and the New Visitor Portal which leads to a tutorial and many help pages. So if you are on desktop and don't realize that mobile users do not have all of these resources listed directly on every single page like you do, you probably aren't going to be trying to direct people towards them all that often, especially if you aren't one of the actual volunteer staffers and are just some other user trying to also edit the site and keep things accurate/tidy/etc. This could probably be fixed by having those actually linked on the mobile site.
        
        Additionally, a complaint I see a lot is that you need to have an academic level citation to share, and that sources that are perfectly valid are not accepted due to the standards being too high.
        
        As for this, the most common things I've seen people try to do (though both of these Ive only seen like twice each) has been either trying to link to password-locked pages which goes against fanlore's policies or is something that while not disallowed on fanlore, is disallowed on wikipedia called Original Research. And while that's not disallowed on fanlore, because anyone can edit on fanlore and many people are going to be used to wikipedia's rules, its very easy for random editors to not realize that fanlore doesn't disallow OR and reverse edits that do it or those that are aware still might revert and OR edit if the person didn't cite themselves per the citation requirements page. Here is the page on citation requirements for more info on that kind of thing. Not sure how to fix that kind of issue really.
        And yeah if your experience is only or mostly being told its a terrible place to be, it makes complete sense to be wary! I would have been too if I had had any experience like that with it prior to editing there myself. I don't blame you on that at all. I do highly highly doubt you have nothing to add but can totally respect not wanting to accidentally deep dive into another wiki. Ive been there too 😅
        
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      3. imahira Mon 23 Oct 2023 07:25PM UTC
        
        Unfortunately I have to second this. As a longtime contributor to Fanlore myself, I've seen several new editors come in with a lot of enthusiasm only to leave with hurt feelings after being reprimanded for creating new stubs and wanted categories. It was very uncomfortable seeing this happen, especially since they were being reprimanded for doing exactly what the public Fanlore guidelines tell new users to do. Apparently the gardeners decided on new guidelines a long time ago, but no efforts have ever been made to change the old ones, or even make the new rules public.
        The atmosphere in the Discord especially has made me feel like I can't encourage new users to join Fanlore, because unless they can read minds, they'll just have people gossiping behind their back as if their contributions are making the website worse. On one occasion a new, very active user came into the Discord hoping to talk with other users, only to find that people had been complaining about them without making any effort to let them know about the secret new rules that they were breaking. I left the server entirely after that happened, and I can't in good conscience tell other fans to try putting time and effort into a website that's going to treat them like this.
        
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      4. OfMonstersAndWerewolves Mon 23 Oct 2023 11:59PM UTC
        
        I think I know the instance you're talking about, and though unintentional, I believe I may have contributed to that gossip and for that I will apologise profusely. It got called out at one point, maybe it was you though I can't remember, and since then I've been actively trying to avoid that kind of thing and self-reflecting when and where I can as to how to improve the experience of new editors. How successful it's been is another matter, and there's some bigger questions and dialogue to be had about how to foster a genuinely welcoming and helpful atmosphere regarding the site.
        
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        imahira Tue 24 Oct 2023 02:10AM UTC
        
        I haven't spoken about this before except in private, so I'm glad to hear that someone else was bothered enough to call it out. It wasn't an isolated incident, though. Since I've been there I've seen at least one prolific user be told by longtime contributors to stop creating stubs unless they could make a full page. It was implied pretty heavily that their work was damaging the site. Obviously, they left Fanlore. That was baffling to me, because not only do Fanlore guidelines say to create stubs wherever you can, but I've created plenty of them myself and no one ever told me to stop.
        Even if none of that had happened, I still don't feel like I can recommend a website where there are secret rules that only a few select people know about. I was in the Discord server myself for some time, and I don't know what these new guidelines are even supposed to be. As far as I could tell they were just being decided in private conversations, and one single answer would be relayed into the server when someone asked a specific question. That's not a functional system, and in my time there I didn't see any interest in fixing it.
        I'd like to see Fanlore grow and improve too, but the atmosphere right now is erratic to say the least.
        
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        OdeziaAtrata Tue 24 Oct 2023 07:08AM UTC
        
        This was basically what I'd been told - that if you didn't make the whole article yourself in full, if you produced a stub, you'd just get your work deleted. No one mentioned the secret rules, though, which is one of the worst ways to run any site I can imagine but especially a wiki. If a site isn't willing to make its' rules something people can know and there's a dedicated gossip corner in the form of the Discord, then it can't really be a surprise that people who know of it also don't use it.
        IDK, maybe some people are having very positive experiences with it or maybe things have changed - I haven't been involved, I wouldn't know - but it appears, from the outside looking in, to be a place where you can either put in a ton of effort and get reprimanded, or put in none and not get that. And with how toxic most of fandom is already these days I can't see many people wanting to wade into that. People don't want more drama in their lives, they want less.
        
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erindeadwood Sat 21 Oct 2023 12:58AM UTC

Fanfic been my interest since I was 12, now I'm in my thirties, and it still is<3

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barbaravitoriatp Sat 21 Oct 2023 01:54AM UTC

Eu não cheguei a terminar de responder essa pesquisa por um erro de uma das questões que impedia determinado número de respostas (mesma sendo dada a opção). Me chateou muito esse acontecimento, mas fico feliz que outras pessoas tenham concluído e possamos ter acesso a tais dados. O que me deixa meio mal é que o tempo das pessoas no meio dos fãs está numa média de 10 anos, achei que estivesse na casa das duas décadas, com mais gente com um tempo razoável, mas parece que temos muito mais sangue novo iniciando sua vida de fã do que antigos membros ainda aqui.

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1. Morncreek Thu 26 Oct 2023 10:19AM UTC
  
  (Translation via Bing Translator)
  
  I didn't get to finish answering this survey due to an error in one of the questions that prevented a certain number of answers (even though I was given the option). I was very upset about this event, but I'm glad that other people have completed it and we can have access to such data. What makes me feel a little bad is that the time of people in the middle of the fans is an average of 10 years, I thought it was in the two decades, with more people with a reasonable time, but it seems that we have a lot more new blood starting their fan life than old members still here.
  
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ijustreallylikeharrypotter Sat 21 Oct 2023 05:52AM UTC

I'm surprised so many of the responders go on AO3 every day!

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Global_Liver_Eater Sat 21 Oct 2023 11:10AM UTC

See, it's perfectly normal to read ao3 at least once a day!

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Pallapakology Sat 21 Oct 2023 11:53AM UTC

Thank you for the thorough walk-through of the results.
At least I now know that I am not the only supposedly well-functioning adult who cannot commute to my very serious adult job without reading fanfic.

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1. BloodstainedRazorBlade Mon 23 Oct 2023 04:37PM UTC
  
  I read fanfic on my lunch break at my very adult job. We're everywhere lol
  
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PC012 Sat 21 Oct 2023 12:46PM UTC

Would definitely be interesting to see how many people don't use, say, tumblr, or neither tumblr or reddit, or neither tumblr, reddit or tiktok, or whatever the top several places are, and then see what sites a lot of them use, to figure out what places could be used to reach people not on those big sites (for instance, I follow OTW news on Dreamwidth and via RSS separately).

Last Edited Sat 21 Oct 2023 12:59PM UTC

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Lielac Sat 21 Oct 2023 04:40PM UTC

It's very funny that 71 people said they'd never heard of AO3. Given that the link to the survey was posted on AO3 news, I presume those 71 people were feeling trollish.

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1. SarkyLittleMonster Tue 24 Oct 2023 05:09AM UTC
  
  lol true 😂
  
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tocasia Sat 21 Oct 2023 05:58PM UTC

Very interesting! Glad to know I'm not the only one who checks AO3 multiple times per day!

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thewriterinpink Sat 21 Oct 2023 10:46PM UTC

Honestly surprised how many people don’t know what Fanlore is or have ever visited it before. I feel like it’s the most visible and viable out of the other sites outside of ao3, so if no one knows or cares about Fanlore it’s hard to imagine them having knowledge or interest of any of the other otw projects. :/

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1. OdeziaAtrata Sun 22 Oct 2023 09:59PM UTC
  
  Fanlore has a reputation for hostility that precedes it in a lot of fannish spaces, so that could be part of why people aren't visiting. The general consensus seems to be that it is perceived as being hostile to new contributors or people who don't write the entire page they want to add themselves with good coding and academic level citations. Regardless of how true that perception is, it certainly kept me from using it for a long time. And now that I do, I definitely wouldn't try to contribute anything to it; I try to avoid drama.
  
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2. 1. SarkyLittleMonster Tue 24 Oct 2023 05:10AM UTC
    
    i don't really enjoy going on fanlore, its harder to navigate and seems a bit... difficult?
    idk maybe its because i prefer to write in AU's
    
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Moon6Shadow Sat 21 Oct 2023 11:38PM UTC

Thanks for the report! Interesting so many download, I used to only download for personal archive purposes every now and then in bulk batches but mostly read online but now I have an ereader phone, that doesn't like extensive scrolling, it's downloads all the way so I can use page turn instead of scroll. Which is a good thing because it already meant I was sheltered the last time AO3 went down during an attack. I was very much appreciating my shiny new download habit and just how easy AO3 makes it to download content right then!

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LadyShelley Sun 22 Oct 2023 04:04AM UTC

Some interesting numbers.
Nice to see the vast majority understand that writers need regular care and feeding. :)
Q25: Have you ever left comments or kudos at Archive of Our
Own/AO3?
Yes 65,556 97.16%
No 1,919 2.84%
_______________________
It seems a few more readers took the survey than writers.
Q28: Have you ever posted a fanwork to Archive of Our
Own/AO3?
Yes 30,355 47.17%
No 33,994 52.83%
______________
I was surprised so few people had heard of Open Doors and the work they do.
Q31: Have you ever heard of Open Doors?
Yes 8,758 12.98%
No 58,716 87.02%
That's a huge difference, especially for one of the key pieces of the OTW mandate.
___________________
Thanks for sharing the survey results. Lots of cool data points to dig into.

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pengukat Mon 23 Oct 2023 04:06AM UTC

I missed the link to the survey!! Would have greatly enjoyed the chance to answer the questions

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Eli0t Mon 23 Oct 2023 07:17AM UTC

Its so weird to me how much more people have heard of Legal Advocacy compared to Open Doors. Where are yall reading about LA that isn't posting about OD??

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1. grommile Mon 23 Oct 2023 10:14AM UTC
  
  External sites not directly involved in a particular Open Doors activity don't notice Open Doors, but they do notice Legal Advocacy and signal-boost it (frequently wih their own spins, of course).
  
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2. 1. Eli0t Mon 23 Oct 2023 11:52AM UTC
    
    Ah I have never had an external news source mention AO3 to me outside of the ddosing event a few months ago. Very weird. I get all of my AO3 news from AO3 or other fans
    
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  2. 1. grommile Fri 27 Oct 2023 01:01PM UTC
      
      There are fandom communication environments close to AO3 that are not AO3, and some of those are more likely to pick up on drama than on happy things, simply because humans.
      (I'm sure I'm unusual among Archive users for reading the Archive news.)
      
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    2. 1. Eli0t Fri 27 Oct 2023 01:03PM UTC
        
        There are fandom communication environments close to AO3 that are not AO3
        
        Such as?
        
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      2. grommile Fri 27 Oct 2023 01:05PM UTC
        
        Threads about events here pop up in fannish parts of Dreamwidth, TWFKA Twitter, etc.
        I don't peruse them much myself, but others do.
        
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        Eli0t Fri 27 Oct 2023 01:06PM UTC
        
        Oh I thought you meant something non-social media 😅
        
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3. seqka711 Thu 26 Oct 2023 09:46PM UTC
  
  I didn't remember what open doors was when filling out the survey, but reading the survey back I was like "oh wait I have seen this on my ao3 newsfeed before"
  I think it's just that the Legal Advocacy thing stuck in my mind better maybe?
  
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Clairshadows Thu 26 Oct 2023 08:55AM UTC

You need a kudos button on this post. Well done collating so many survey responses into a readable and interesting paper.

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