The future of the Archive - tell us your hopes and dreams!

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2010-06-03 09:36:09 UTC

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We recently published an updated version of the Roadmap for the Archive of Our Own, which shows all the amazing work we've already done and all the big things we plan for the future. All the original plans for the Archive grew out of fannish ideas for a 'dream Archive', and we're really proud of the way those dreams are developing into reality.

Now that the Archive is a reality, we have started to think up features which we had never even thought of. We get loads of great feedback from the fannish community via our Support and Feedback form and have used lots of those ideas to make improvements. However, we always love to hear more ideas! If there's a new feature or an enhancement you'd love to see on the Archive, please comment on this post and let us know! What's your dream feature or the one thing that bugs you? Is there something we didn't mention on the Roadmap that you'd love to see us do? No suggestion too big or too small - tell us your sparkly unicorn ideas!

We can't promise to implement everything that is suggested, but we do our best to incorporate all the cool ideas we get from users. And if you'd like to help us turn even more ideas into a reality, we always welcome volunteers!

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james Thu 03 Jun 2010 10:26AM UTC

One thing I love about the Archive is how easy it can be to find stories of a certain type, whether it's 'all stories with this one person in them, including crossovers' or 'all stories tagged with 'drowning.'
However, some of this requires the author use tags in the first place. I think it could be useful if there were a way for readers to communicate at large about what tags they find useful, or would like to see more of, or simply say 'hey, authors, think about using numerous and descriptive tags because we want to search for all stories about drowning.'
(I won't mention that, in fact, I have not myself used enough descriptive tags, but I plan to fix that Real Soon Now.) Knowing how readers are using the archive can help a lot, I think, when authors are posting stuff to the archive.
I have no idea how this would be implemented! I wave my magic wand and say make it so. ;-)

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1. Cesy Thu 03 Jun 2010 11:15AM UTC
  
  I'm hoping that the bookmarks search will also help with that - authors can see what tags readers have used when bookmarking a work, and you can search for bookmarks where either the author or a reader has tagged a work with a certain tag.
  
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2. 1. Rebecca Thu 03 Jun 2010 09:23PM UTC
    
    Maybe it would be possible to add an archive-related discussion section to the support board mentioned in the archive roadmap? I've seen a few discussions on LJ/DW regarding A03 tags, and I've found them incredibly useful and interesting.
    
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sunflow Thu 03 Jun 2010 11:09AM UTC

As a reader who does most of her reading while offline, I'd love for the Archive to have a better "print/save to local" options. I think efiction has the best implementation of this function - I can choose to print either a chapter or the whole story, and clicking "print" opens up a new page with barely-there formatting, which I can save, then format as I need it and read it later on my phone or at work. There's also a full url to the story attached, so that after I've read it offline I can go back and comment.
As it is now, save-page-as leaves me with no url for reference and a horrible mess within the text, and especially in the header/tag section (which also doesn't print well from browser level - the rating/category/fandom column disappears, leaving only their values, which looks very confusing).
Not sure if it can be implemented, and if easier saving-to-local is something that the Archive wants to encourage, but it's the main reason why I'm using AO3 as the very last resort when searching for stories to read.

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1. Zooey_Glass Thu 03 Jun 2010 11:30AM UTC
  
  Better exports are definitely in our plans - our aim is to make it easy for people to export in various formats which translate well to reading offline. We do already have a print stylesheet, though, which does show the url for the work and tidies thing up for you, although I see what you mean about the tag categories disappearing - that's a bug and we'll try to get it fixed soonish (the full on export will take longer).
  
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msilverstar Fri 04 Jun 2010 04:53AM UTC

I always get confused when looking in the story header box, because it is missing the author and title. I do understand that putting them there would be redundant, but I think a lot of fandoms generally include that information, and it's weird to not see it, to have to look up at the title or down below the box.
Also, please please underline the author name, so it's more clear that it's a link rather than plain text. We need our affordances!

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1. EosRose Sat 05 Jun 2010 02:40AM UTC
  
  I actually favor the current header box because of it's lack of redundance (it's very neat and clean), but I can see where you're coming from. ♥
  
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2. 1. Rebecca Mon 07 Jun 2010 01:21PM UTC
    
    I can imagine that this is something that can be customised as soon as themes are fully implemented. If not, that's an item I'd like to add to my wishlist.
    
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EosRose Sat 05 Jun 2010 02:38AM UTC

I confess that I haven't been toying much with new search features, but it would be nice if people had the option to pull up both authors' tags and users' tags when filtering stories. Some author's don't use any unrequired tags at all, so relying on tags in bookmarks is all that can be done. I never look at the bookmarks, so I'm sure I'm missing out on things I might have otherwise found...

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Jaaaarne Sat 05 Jun 2010 08:23AM UTC

What's been really bugging me lately is the author profile page. Or rather the "Dashboard" view, to be precise. It's the default view you get when you click the username and it contains just everything without even having a good distinction between sections. It gets overly confusing, especially the bookmarks. Lately I've been withholding myself from making new bookmarks and recs because I have already had a person confuse one of the bookmarked works with my own. >.<
Thing is, what I as a potential reader want to see on the page that loads upon clicking the author name is 1) their brief profile where they tell about themselves (which is now available via "Profile" link) and 2) the list of their stories. Going through their bookmarks is interesting (especially if I find the author interesting), but it's not a top priority. Having this section, which tends to be very big if you're reading actively, on a default view is confusing. I think the "Bookmarks" section should be either removed from the default author profile view (the "Dashboard") or maybe made collapsible via JS and be concealed by default.

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1. Jaaaarne Sat 05 Jun 2010 11:27AM UTC
  
  Also, a field where you could put you website/journal URL should definitely be added to the Profile. :)
  
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2. Cesy Sat 05 Jun 2010 03:08PM UTC
  
  How about only showing the bookmarks if a user doesn't have any stories? Remember the archive is for readers as well as writers - some of our users are primarily reccers and haven't posted any stories at all.
  
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3. 1. Jaaaarne Sun 06 Jun 2010 04:22AM UTC
    
    That would be an awesome solution, too. :)
    
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Scribblesinink (Scribbler) Sat 05 Jun 2010 11:08AM UTC

In the "it'd be so cool if..." category: a way to download/format stories for use with eReaders (ePub, Mobi, etc.). No idea how this would work technically (integrate with Calibre, maybe??), or if it's even feasible, but that'd be a dream feature.

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1. Elf_Herself Sat 05 Jun 2010 03:49PM UTC
  
  As a non-committee person with limited coding experience but much ebook love--it should be possible. 2epub.com is an online epub converter based on Calibre (used to be lib2go, an LRF/ePub converter); it works okay on saved-out "print-ready" HTML files from some fannish archives.
  Shouldn't be too hard, as coding things go, to come up with something similar (better, even, that acknowledges chapters & puts them in as page breaks), but it would require (1) dedicated coding effort and (2) convincing authors that it's okay for people to download stories as well as reading them at AO3. (The fact that they can download them now is irrelevant; some authors will get twitchy at the idea of easy exportable & sharable files.)
  
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2. 1. Zooey_Glass Wed 09 Jun 2010 08:00PM UTC
    
    We're definitely planning to introduce various options to export to different formats in the future! :D
    Zooey, AD&T Chair
    
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Stultiloquentia Sun 06 Jun 2010 01:49AM UTC

Okay, I've got an itty bitty one, for when you've got the bandwidth to spare: I'd like the archive servers to host header images, like Yuletide's swirly one and Clan Mitchell's mountains.

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sunflow Sun 06 Jun 2010 10:58PM UTC

Another thought - is there any way in the archive to be notified when a new chapter is added to a bookmarked work in progress? If not, I do hope that's in the works!

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1. Zooey_Glass Wed 09 Jun 2010 08:04PM UTC
  
  That functionality will be introduced with Subscriptions, which is Version 9 in our roadmap. (We're all really excited about Subscriptions, so we'd have liked to have it sooner, but it relies on us doing some other work first.)
  Zooey, AD&T Chair
  
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Rebecca Mon 07 Jun 2010 01:50PM UTC

With all the stuff on already on your roadmap, including those items you listed as additional goodies, there's not much left to be desired. As I said elsewhere, I'd definitely approve of a Beta search service, and a private messaging system.
One thing, though: I think it would be useful if there some kind of system to state various author policies. E.g. allow remixes, allow podfic reading, allow critique, allow archiving, ... , with the possibility to set default policies on a per author basis but allow different choices per story. And of course being able to filter for certain policies, so that I can find all German NCIS BDSM fics that I'm allowed to create a podfic of. ;-) How exactly one might go about this remains to be discussed.
Just some smaller things: A preview option for comments would be nice. And wouldn't it make sense to be able to choose a language for an external bookmark, just like you can choose a language for a story?

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1. zzzp Fri 11 Jun 2010 05:42AM UTC
  
  wow, i agree with all of this. as someone who frequently writes in fandoms that I don't necessarily live in, i would die for an organized beta search service. also, the policies bit would be grand. it could even encourage the creation of podfic if everyone knew who was cool with it and stuff and podfic is my main squeeze for fic consumption.
  
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Tanaqui Tue 08 Jun 2010 09:00PM UTC

At the moment, series are tagged with all the tags that have been applied to the individual stories in the series. Once you have a lengthy series (I have a shared series with a cowriter than has 80 stories in it and we're not done yet), the number of tags can become overwhelming and perhaps not terribly useful to people scanning series in a particular fandom looking for one to read.
It would be nice to be able to show just a subset of the most important tags for the series, perhaps with the ability to click on some kind of "more..." link and see all the tags applied to that series.

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Rodo Wed 09 Jun 2010 01:55AM UTC

I don't remember if it's planned or not, but I just wanted to look for a specific collection/collections on a certain topic and noticed that collections don't have tags, or at least that you can't filter them.
I think it would be useful if you're looking for, say, and open collection for Due South fic only, or remix challenges, gift exchanges and collections that allow entries in a specific language.

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1. Pslasher Wed 09 Jun 2010 04:57PM UTC
  
  I agree with this one. You should be able to search collections by fandom, individual tags, open/closed, ect... It would make it so much easier to find what you want.
  
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2. 1. Zooey_Glass Wed 09 Jun 2010 08:10PM UTC
    
    We'll definitely be introducing better search and browse options for collections as part of our more general overhaul of those functions :D
    Zooey, AD&T Chair
    
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inalasahl Wed 09 Jun 2010 07:45PM UTC

It would be nice if there were a dedicated space for people to include links to podfic versions of their stories, so that they showed up on the story page similar to how remixes/translations do.
Oh! And some kind of minimize search engine inclusion option. (For outside search engines like Google and Bing. Not for archive searches.)

Last Edited Wed 09 Jun 2010 07:55PM UTC

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1. Zooey_Glass Wed 09 Jun 2010 08:12PM UTC
  
  Minimise search engine inclusion is already planned! It's just waiting for a coder to take the project on.
  We're working on more features for multimedia, and the inspired-by link for podfics is a great idea!
  
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anenko Fri 11 Jun 2010 01:50PM UTC

I think this would look really messy, but: I wish there was a way to mark off primary vs. secondary characters. If I do a search for "Jane," for example, I don't want to pull up a bunch of stories where she's a background character in a fic that's primarily focused on "Bob/Max."
On the Works page, I'd really love to be able to sort by fandom as well as author, title, word count, date, and hits. I know that it's possible to filter by tags, but that doesn't give me what I'm looking for.

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1. Penknife Thu 17 Jun 2010 06:01PM UTC
  
  I'd also really love to be able to split out primary vs. secondary characters, and also primary vs. secondary/background pairings -- right now I tend to go with listing background pairings in my summary rather than using tags, because I don't want a story with one throwaway mention of Bob/Ted to clutter up searches for actual Bob/Ted stories, but that's clunky.
  
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Marimba (Guest) Wed 16 Jun 2010 01:39PM UTC

I hope for introduction of real pseudonyms and not just these given name pseudo-pseudonyms.

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adderpated Thu 08 Jul 2010 01:26AM UTC

About bookmarks:
1. Multiple links in bookmark. Uses include: works at two or more different archives, single stories spread over unconnected and unindexed posts (an example: WIPS on LJ communities).
You can, of course, choose to hand write in more links into a review, but there might be an advantage to creating links in actual link-categories in the database for this. For one thing, it puts this very factual information with the story, rather than the bookmarker's review.
2. A different kind of bookmark, a multi-work bookmark for other archives, off-site author pages, perhaps mailing lists and communities.
I'm already using the current bookmark for this sort of thing to a small extent.

Last Edited Thu 08 Jul 2010 01:54AM UTC

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Pslasher Sat 10 Jul 2010 01:38AM UTC

First off, I want you all to know that I appreciate all the hard work going into the Archive, and how responsive to user input and desire the OTW is. Thanks! I thought about it a lot and came up with some things I'd love to see. I'm sorry if it got too long!
I envision the Archive as a huge resource to find fannish works for any fandom, character, and type of fanwork available. On the menu at the top of the page, there could be a "Type of fanwork" button (or something else more concise) where you could search just for one type of fanwork. I want a place where I can search for specific pairings, characters or tags and get all the fic, vids, icons, podfic, artwork (and anything else that fen come up with) that are related to that tag, all in one place. I want the option of getting results in all types of fanworks, or limiting my search to just the specific type of fanwork(s) I'm looking for that day. It would be neat if communities could be open to all types of fanworks, or limited to whatever the maintainer wants. (All this may already be in the works, but I figured it couldn't hurt to express my interest in the idea.)
I'm really excited about the up-coming addition of vids to the archive. Vidding fandom really needs a permanent home, and I think the OTW's archive could be the place. I really liked everything in the Vidding Roadmap. I look forward to being able to browse the Archive for vids, whether they are embedded from other sites, or streamed or downloaded from the TO3. Having a central gathering place for the info that's searchable is really exciting.
When it comes time to add different types of media to the Archive, I hope that all the different formats that a given work might be offered in will show up all together in one post. For example, if a vid is offered in WMV, AVI and H.264 options, all three options will show up on that vid's page in one place. The same thing for podfics, or art. The reason I include this is that the major archive for podfic ( http://audiofic.jinjurly.com/ ) lists each file option for a given recording separately from each other, meaning there is overlap. A specific podfic may have three different listings for that fic by that reader, and a series consisting of multiple fics, with each part offering multiple formats, is going to have a whole lot of entries with a lot of them being overlap. That makes browsing kind of cumbersome, and I think the Archive can eliminate the confusion.
I'd also like to be able to embed text, streaming video, pictures/art, ect. into one post, while somehow being able to credit the makers for each individual part of the post, and for that part of the work to show up in the creator's profile. A good example of this is the last round of entries for the Star Trek Ship Wars.
It would be awesome to be able to have video playlists, preferably streaming when the option is available, and rec sets for fic, podfic, ect... of a certain theme, or whatever the reccer wants.

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Pslasher Sat 10 Jul 2010 01:39AM UTC

Part 2 :)
I know gift exchanges (like Yuletide) have been made part of the Collections code, but what about prompt-based communities like the Star Trek XI Kink Meme? Something where anyone can put up a prompt, anonymously if desired, and anyone can fill it (either during a limited period of time that the maintainer decides on, or at any time), also anonymously if desired. The prompt could be based on tags which could be searched within the Collection, but ideally not outside of it. (It wouldn't be cool for prompts which haven't been filled to show up in the works section of the general Archive.) Having prompts based on tags would make searching through a large Meme easier. The STXI meme got extremely large, and searching through it became cumbersome after a while. A fic (or other fanwork) could be somehow marked as a fill for a given prompt, and show up in the Collection and general Works section of the Archive. This type of collection could also be coded so that filled and unfilled prompts could be segregated for easy reading or inspiration for writing. Kink Memes seem to require a lot of hands-on maintenance to do everything mentioned above, so an Archive that can do some or all of that automatically might make a neat and current Kink Meme easier to maintain and browse, thus keeping them alive longer.
It would be nice to see all the authors who have posted to a given Collection, and see the works they have posted to that Collection, within that Collection's dashboard. Currently it seems like only the people who maintain the Collection can be viewed in the "People" option of the dashboard.
I'd like to be able to filter works that I've already viewed/bookmarked/commented on out of search results. Also, a user's bookmarks/recs need to be sort-able by fandom/pairing/tag within that user's profile, just like an author's works. Currently that is the reason I'm not collecting outside bookmarks in the AO3, and am still using delicious for fic bookmarks.
I'm curious to know how the Archive is handling multiple bookmarks for the same fic. Will the fic show up on the bookmark page each time it's bookmarked, or are they all collected into one central bookmark? If so, do the tags also get collected together? What about if users give multiple url's for a fic, what happens then?
I'm also curious to know what security measures are in place to prevent the Archive from being hacked and being damaged. I realize that you can't give out very detailed info, as that might undermine the security measures, but it would be nice to have an idea of how secure the Archive is, and be reassured that measures are being taken against something like that.

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1. Jaaaarne Sun 18 Jul 2010 02:44PM UTC
  
  Seconding the exclusion of already viewed works from the search results. I suspect it's actually doable since there is already the History feature which has the necessary statistics. Although this potential feature (ability to exclude the already viewed works from searches) should be of the opt-in variety. A checkbox on the search parameters or an account setting, perhaps. There are certainly occasions when you might actually need something you have already seen at some point. :)
  
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2. 1. Pslasher Mon 19 Jul 2010 01:03PM UTC
    
    I was so excited to see that new history feature with the upgrade, I think it's probably very doable too. And I agree, it should be opt-in, a feature you can choose to use, or not.
    
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3. Pslasher Mon 19 Jul 2010 01:22PM UTC
  
  "I'm curious to know how the Archive is handling multiple bookmarks for the same fic."
  Just FYI, I was referring to external bookmarks, not bookmarking fic already posted within the archive.
  
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4. Zooey_Glass Mon 19 Jul 2010 02:00PM UTC
  
  Thank you for all this great feedback! We're really glad you're enjoying the Archive as-is, and there are some great ideas here.
  We have someone working on some code for prompt memes right now! We're also working on our browsing functionality, which will address a lot of the things you've asked for.
  We're currently trying to figure out a good way to deal with external bookmarks. At the moment, if someone bookmarks the same url, then it will be linked to other bookmarks for the same thing - you can still see the bookmark on its own, but it offers the option to see who else has bookmarked the link. If someone bookmarks something with a slightly different url (for example, style=mine on the end) then this linking doesn't happen. We're thinking about ways of combining these kinds of bookmarks, but haven't figured out a good way to deal with it yet because there's no way to be sure if it really is the same work - for example, some authors use cut tags to post several works on one page on Livejournal. But we're thinking about it!
  We just took on a security expert, actually, so rest assured we are thinking about security. Everything on the site is backed up regularly, so we are fairly well protected against data loss. I'd have to ask our security person to give more details of exactly how our security measures work, though.
  Zooey
  AD&T Chair
  
  Last Edited Mon 19 Jul 2010 02:01PM UTC
  
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5. 1. Pslasher Mon 19 Jul 2010 03:25PM UTC
    
    You're welcome! That's awesome about the kink meme code!
    Thanks for the info about bookmarking. I like the idea of combining multiple bookmarks for the same work, and I'm sure you guys will be able to come up with some way of dealing with multiple url's.
    I'm glad that security is a concern, and very happy to hear about backing up the Archive. I'd enjoy hearing more in the future, if it is possible.
    
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reading_is_in Mon 02 Aug 2010 08:07AM UTC

A somewhat late comment, but I just joined this remarkable archive and am exploring. It's a huge accomplishment.
I second that a searchable list or other feature to find betas would be useful. Also, would the support forum only cover the site, and if so, has a writing support/discussion forum been considered? This could also be used to faciliate co-authoring.

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