Archive of Our Own ^beta

In February, we upgraded Ruby and Rails to their next major versions. In between those large upgrades, we made a variety of small bug and performance fixes all around AO3.

Special thanks and welcome to first-time contributors CJ Gorey, Connie Feng, Kayla Camacho, lou, marcus8448, and unsafe_deref!

Credits

• Coders: Amy Lee, Bilka, Brandon W, Brian Austin, calm, Ceithir, Cesium-Ice, CJ Gorey, Connie Feng, David Bilsky/Ironskink, EchoEkhi, Indes, Jake Faulkner, Kayla Camacho, lou, marcus8448, Potpotkettle, redsummernight, sarken, Scott, slavalamp, Stephen Lewis, unsafe_deref, weeklies
• Code reviewers: Bilka, Brian Austin, james_, redsummernight, sarken, slavalamp
• Testers: alien, Bilka, Brian Austin, C. Ryan Smith, calamario, Claire P. Baker, Deniz, Dre, Fishy, LilyP, Lute, megidola, Rhine, runt, Sanity, sarken, Tal, Teyris, therealmorticia, wichard

Details

0.9.394

On February 7, we deployed a release with some small improvements while the Systems team focused on the Ruby 3.2 upgrade.

• [AO3-5792] - The page that lists a tag set's tags had some unreadable text and oversized buttons in several skins due to some incorrect HTML classes. We've fixed the classes and therefore the display issues.
• [AO3-6518] - When an abuse report was submitted, the spam checker would run if the capitalization of the email listed in the report didn't exactly match the email listed on the user's account. Now, it doesn't.
• [AO3-6777] - It was possible to create blank and invisible tags. Now it's no longer possible.
• [AO3-6814] - The email sent to the creator when an Open Doors archivist adds their work to a collection can now be translated.
• [AO3-6820] - Sometimes when creating a bookmark, the information about who is creating the bookmark can get lost. This used to result in an ugly 500 error, but now it results in a nice error message that tells you what's wrong.
• [AO3-6859] - While we were limiting access to tag wrangling admin features, we accidentally restricted admins without certain roles from accessing tag landing pages. We've now let them back on those pages.
• [AO3-6872] - Open Doors archivists can now add bookmarks to a collection they control without running into an error.
• [AO3-6585] - We optimized the piece of code that displays work information in certain emails.
• [AO3-6870] - We updated the notice shown on proxy sites to include Russian and Ukrainian translations.
• [AO3-6766] - You can now use the color-scheme property in site and work skins.
• [AO3-6863] - The emails you get when someone adds you as or invites you to be a co-creator had confusing subject lines. We've made them clearer.

0.9.395

On February 11, we finished the Ruby 3.2 upgrade.

• [AO3-6884] - After the Systems team installed Ruby 3.2 (alongside Ruby 3.1) on our servers, we updated AO3 to use the new version instead of the old one.

0.9.396

On February 14, we deployed some performance and security fixes.

• [AO3-6880] - The gem we use for pagination on the site is no longer maintained, so we're trying a new gem on certain pages to help us decide if it's the one we'd like to switch to.
• [AO3-6901] - We changed an asynchronous process in an attempt to be nicer to the database server.
• [AO3-6905], [AO3-6908] - We upgraded net-imap and rack to address some potential security vulnerabilities found by our dependency checker.

0.9.397

On February 17, we upgraded to Rails 7.1.

• [AO3-6893] - We upgraded our gems and configuration files to Rails 7.1!
• [AO3-6904] - We added some logins to our default development environment so that coders can easily use those accounts for testing.
• [AO3-6909] - We updated the version of one of our automated code checks.

0.9.398

In the deploy on February 21, we made some small changes, fixed a few confusing 500 errors so they'll instead give nice error messages, and added a treat for the Tag Wrangling team.

• [AO3-2898] - We fixed the character count below the editing window so that it updates when you use the Rich Text editor.
• [AO3-3810] - We made it possible for admins to edit skins with the word "Archive" in the title.
• [AO3-4735] - Searching for a work title with a hyphen would result in a 500 error. We made it ignore the hyphen instead.
• [AO3-4820] - When users would try to create skins with the word "Archive" in the title, they'd get a 500 error page or even a blank screen. Now they'll get a nice error message telling them the word is reserved for official skins.
• [AO3-6004] - When an admin would hide a bookmark from public view, it would also be hidden from admins. That made it difficult to unhide. We changed it so that admins can now see hidden bookmarks.
• [AO3-6450] - Tags on unrevealed works used to show up in the wrangling bins, which made tag wranglers' jobs more difficult. Now those tags don't show up in the wrangling bins until the work is revealed.
• [AO3-6769] - The browser page titles for unrevealed series were missing the "| Archive of Our Own" at the end, so we added it.
• [AO3-6790] - We fixed a 500 error when a user or an admin would try to edit a pseud that didn't exist.
• [AO3-6810] - When our Policy & Abuse team manually marks a spam work as hidden, the creator now gets sent the correct email.
• [AO3-6846] - To make testing easier, we added a preview for the automatic email that's sent out when a Policy & Abuse admin hides a work.
• [AO3-6847] - We also added a preview for the email you receive about your work in a collection when the maintainer sets the collection as anonymous or unrevealed.
• [AO3-6850] - We removed some unused code from assignments in gift exchanges. We were happy to discover that this sped up loading the assignment pages for large exchanges.
• [AO3-6856] - Admins can no longer edit AO3's default language to change its name or abbreviation, or to stop including it in the list of languages Support and Policy & Abuse handle tickets in.
• [AO3-6868] - We fixed a 500 error when admins edited a language and provided an invalid abbreviation or display name.
• [AO3-6888] - We made sure that the tags and stats above a work are nicely left aligned after line-breaks.
• [AO3-6902] - We updated the after_commit_everywhere gem for a new feature that made our code a little cleaner.
• [AO3-6903] - We removed some pesky extra spaces after the colons of labels in a few emails.

Over the past several months, the Archive of Our Own has been experiencing an increase in spam comments left by registered users. To help prevent these comments, which typically ask for contact information and offer art commissions or collaboration, we'll be introducing limits on commenting and other activities for logged-in users. We expect to have these limits in place within the next few days.

As a result of these limits, you may get error messages telling you to "Retry later," especially when leaving or editing multiple comments over a short period of time. Our aim is to slow down the spammers with minimal impact on legitimate commenters, so we'll be monitoring the situation and adjusting the rate limits as needed once the code is in place. (This also means we can't tell you exactly what the limits are. However, we recommend waiting at least 15 minutes before trying again.)

Once these limits are in place, we'll also be looking into other methods that we hope will reduce spam with even less disruption to legitimate users. We apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate your understanding as we work to find a balance that meets everyone's needs.

Update 21:45 UTC 24 March 2025: Rate limiting for logged-in comments is now in place.

Would you like to assist AO3 users by resolving complaints? Are you fluent in a language other than English and passionate about making OTW more accessible? Do you have experience copyediting or proofreading academic journals? Or do you have experience with research methods, problem solving or nonprofit governance? The Organization for Transformative Works is recruiting!

We're excited to announce the opening of applications for:

• PAC Volunteer - closing 26 March 2025 at 23:59 UTC
• Translation Volunteer - closing 26 March 2025 at 23:59 UTC
• TWC Copyeditor - closing 26 March 2025 at 23:59 UTC
• Strategic Planning Volunteer - closing 26 March 2025 at 23:59 UTC

We have included more information on each role below. Open roles and applications will always be available at the volunteering page. If you don't see a role that fits with your skills and interests now, keep an eye on the listings. We plan to put up new applications every few weeks, and we will also publicize new roles as they become available.

All applications generate a confirmation page and an auto-reply to your e-mail address. We encourage you to read the confirmation page and to whitelist our email address in your e-mail client. If you do not receive the auto-reply within 24 hours, please check your spam filters and then contact us.

If you have questions regarding volunteering for the OTW, check out our Volunteering FAQ.

PAC Volunteer

The Policy & Abuse committee (PAC) is responsible for addressing questions and concerns about potential violations of the AO3 Terms of Service. We determine whether reports are about legitimate violations of the Terms of Service, and what to do about them if they are. PAC volunteers correspond directly with AO3 users and collaborate on projects both within PAC and with other OTW committees.

Our main goals as a committee are:

• to adhere to the AO3 Terms of Service
• to make our reasoning and processes as clear and transparent as possible
• to handle all user reports consistently, no matter which volunteer is doing the work
• to keep every case we work on completely confidential

We are seeking people who can:

• Commit to working on cases regularly
• Be patient with rephrasing explanations
• Ask for help when needed
• Collaborate both inside the team and with other committees
• Act in accordance with established rules, policies, and procedures
• Treat confidentiality and user privacy as a priority

You must be 18+ in order to apply for this role. While English proficiency is required, we welcome applicants who are fluent in other languages, especially Spanish (Español), Brazilian Portuguese (Português brasileiro), Russian (Русский), Chinese (中文), or Indonesian (Bahasa Indonesia).

Applications are due 26 March 2025

Translation Volunteer

If you enjoy working collaboratively, if you're fluent in a language other than English, if you’re passionate about the OTW and its projects, and want to help us reach more fans all around the world, working with Translation might be for you!

Translation volunteers help make the OTW and its projects accessible to a wider global audience. We work on translating content by the OTW and its projects from English to other languages, such as site pages, news posts, AO3 FAQs and AO3 Support emails. (However, we do not translate fanworks.)

We really need volunteers who speak Afrikaans, Arabic, Basque, Bengali, Bulgarian, Catalan, Estonian, Filipino, French, Galician, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Malay, Marathi, Norwegian, Persian, Portuguese-PT, Romanian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, and Welsh—but help with other languages would be much appreciated. If you're interested in starting a team for a language we don't have yet, you're very welcome to!

(Please note that our Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, German, Greek, Italian, Polish, Portuguese-BR, Russian and Vietnamese teams are not accepting new members at this time. If you are fluent in one of these languages and interested in volunteering, please consider volunteering for another team within the organization instead.)

Applicants will be asked to translate and correct short text samples and will be invited to a chatroom interview as part of the selection process. More information about us can be found on the Translation committee page.

Applications are due 26 March 2025

TWC Copyeditor

Transformative Works and Cultures (TWC) is an international peer-reviewed Diamond Open Access online publication about fan-related topics that seeks to promote dialogue between the academic community and fan communities. Copyeditors professionally copyedit submissions for TWC according to Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS) 18, Merriam-Webster online, and the TWC style guide. Editorial standards are those of a university press.

The copyeditor's main responsibility will be to carefully copyedit word-processed manuscripts to correct errors of grammar, usage, style; normalize presentation of information; check the literature; and ensure consistency of usage of, e.g., presentation, capitalization, italic, and numbers.

Applicants are required to pass a brief copyediting test that will be drawn from live copy (a not yet published article that is currently in production). All returned tests will be assessed and the applicant provided with feedback.

You must be 18+ in order to apply for this role.

Applications are due 26 March 2025

Strategic Planning Volunteer

The Strategic Planning Committee is recruiting for new volunteers! We are a close-knit and collaborative committee of 6-9 people who are tasked with researching, developing, and supporting the implementation of the OTW's strategic plan, which is a written document that articulates the OTW's priorities and direction. The process to establish priorities involves many people across the organization and is an important part of aligning the organization around shared goals; monitoring implementation also provides accountability to the organization's mission and our user community. We are in the implementation monitoring phase of the 2023-2026 Strategic Plan and are looking for organized people well-versed in communication and project management, with experience in goal management and feedback response. Knowledge of data analysis and understanding how to complete research are helpful as well, as is experience using various project management tools, document collaboration software and text-based messaging platforms.

We typically review around 50 applications, induct 2-3 new volunteers and provide training on the committee's tools and processes. We welcome all perspectives and are actively interested in people with diverse views on fandom and the OTW! The Strategic Planning Committee is committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion, and will make reasonable accommodations for candidates who may require them.

You must be 18+ in order to apply for this role.

Applications are due 26 March 2025

Apply at the volunteering page! If you have further questions, please contact us.

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.

At the start of the year, we upgraded our library for managing pseud and collection icons. To follow that large effort, we deployed some smaller fixes and improvements while we worked to address some performance issues due to increased traffic. We also did some preparations for the next big Ruby and Rails upgrades.

Special thanks and welcome to first-time contributors Indes, Jeslyn See, John Mathai, and Sekoia!

Credits

• Coders: Amy Lee, Bilka, Brian Austin, Cesium-Ice, Indes, Jake Faulkner, james_, Jeslyn See, John Mathai, lydia-theda, mystyrust, Scott, Sekoia, slavalamp
• Code reviewers: Bilka, Brian Austin, james_, redsummernight, Sarken, Scott
• Testers: Bilka, Brian Austin, Deniz, Indes, Keladry, Lute, lydia-theda, megidola, redsummernight, Rhine, Runt, Sanity, Sarken, Taki, Teyris, therealmorticia, Vio

Details

0.9.388

On January 14, we migrated to a new library for managing icon uploads.

• [AO3-5843] - The browser page title of the Invitation Requests page is now -- wait for it -- "Invitation Requests."
• [AO3-5578] - The library we were using to manage uploading pseud and collection icons, as well as skin preview images, was in maintenance mode and not getting improvements. Rails' built-in solution, Active Storage, got a lot of improvements with Rails 7, so we switched to it.
• [AO3-6873] - The Elasticsearch version we were using wasn't compatible with the newest Linux kernel when running in Docker for development, so we upgraded our development setup to a fixed version.

0.9.389

We deployed a fix for a performance issue on January 21.

• [AO3-6878] - By default, Active Storage tries to extract metadata from every uploaded image. We don't need or want that behavior, and it was causing major strain on the database because we'd just reuploaded every icon on the site as part of our migration from Paperclip, so we disabled it.

0.9.390

On January 26, we deployed a number of small fixes and improvements to take it easy while we recovered from the Active Storage changes.

• [AO3-5977] - Admins who can access unreviewed moderated comments on works could see the "Approve All Unreviewed Comments" button even though they absolutely do not have the ability to approve unreviewed comments. We've hidden that button.
• [AO3-6238] - The "Random Items" button didn't work on the collection's homepage. We've now made it work, like on all other collection pages.
• [AO3-6378] - The browser page title when looking at all series by a pseud didn't mention series at all. Now it does!
• [AO3-6874] - The browser page titles for the TOS pages and the TOS FAQ were missing the "| Archive of Our Own" at the end, so we added it.
• [AO3-6755] - We removed some unused stylesheets.
• [AO3-6871] - We updated one of our Rails dependencies to incorporate a small security fix.
• [AO3-5502] - We made the browser page title on the adult content warning page for chapters more informative.
• [AO3-6529] - It was possible to import a work from a URL on AO3, resulting in two copies of the work. Bookmarks are much better suited for saving other AO3 works, so we prevented importing works from AO3 and the error helpfully mentions bookmarking the work instead.
• [AO3-6587] - When our Policy & Abuse team edits a user's pseud or profile in response to a ticket, they have to enter the ticket ID to authorize the action and create a log of the changes. To make it easier to copy and paste the ID from the ticket tracker, the field now accepts a leading #.
• [AO3-6774] - To make testing easier, we added a preview for the email that is sent when an admin manually grants invitations to users.
• [AO3-6848] - We also added a preview for the email sent when you're assigned a request in a challenge.
• [AO3-6801] - We clarified the text of the error message banned and suspended users receive when they try to do something they're not allowed to do (e.g., posting a work).
• [AO3-6862] - We updated the example URLs in some of our help text to use example.com, which is a domain that exists specifically for that purpose.

0.9.391

With our deploy on February 3, we prepared to upgrade to Ruby 3.2 and addressed some performance issues.

• [AO3-6882] - To prepare for upgrading to Ruby 3.2, we made it possible to run the Archive with both Ruby 3.1 and Ruby 3.2.
• [AO3-6889], [AO3-6890] - We added some gems to try to work around some performance issues.
• [AO3-6892] - We did a schema dump to capture what the current data structure looks like before we upgrade to Rails 7.1.
• [AO3-6897] - In an attempt to address regular database load spikes, we adjusted the schedule of a regularly running task.

0.9.392

In an attempt to address some more performance issues, we deployed a second release on February 3.

• [AO3-6898] - We disabled some functionality in Active Storage that may cause some threading issues, but allowed us to cache icons to reduce traffic.

0.9.393

And then, on February 4, we undid the change we made on February 3.

• [AO3-6900] - Our previous change led to some 500 errors related to missing pseud icons, so we took the change back out.

I. INTERNATIONAL FANWORKS DAY 2025

On and leading up to February 14th, Communications celebrated the 11th annual International Fanworks Day (IFD)! Translation helped make IFD content available in 26 languages.

Celebrations included a Feedback Fest, Discord server chatting and games, the IFD Fanlore Challenge in collaboration with Fanlore, and more. Thanks to everyone who participated and joined the festivities, and to the volunteers from across the OTW who helped with its organization. We hope you enjoyed!

II. AT THE AO3

In February, Accessibility, Design & Technology implemented a few performance improvements and focused on important software updates (Ruby and Rails). Systems continued to work on keeping AO3 stable while waiting on new Elasticsearch servers. Jointly, they published an update on Intermittent site slowness and errors, which Translation helped make available in 22 languages.

Open Doors finished importing the memorial archive Remembering Tiger Lily Roar. It was enthusiastically received, especially from fans of Batman, Young Justice, and Nightwing.

In January, Policy & Abuse received 2,957 tickets, while Support received 3,595. AO3 surpassed 70,000 canonical fandoms, and Tag Wrangling wrangled over 465,000 tags: more than 1,100 tags per wrangling volunteer!

In February, Tag Wrangling also collaborated with Communications on a page for the OTW website about the Tag Wrangling Committee, which gives an overview of their work, who they collaborate with most, and explains the "lifecycle of a tag."

III. ELSEWHERE AT THE OTW

In addition to the annual IFD editing challenge, Fanlore also ran a themed Femslash February month! Check out the highlighted posts on their Tumblr.

Legal worked with others to advocate against legal proposals requiring ID checks and age verification for websites in various jurisdictions. They also responded to a number of questions from the public.

TWC announced a new upcoming special issue this month, titled "Latin American Fandoms"! The deadline for submissions is January 1, 2026, and the issue is slated for publication in 2027.

IV. GOVERNANCE

Board held the first quarter public meeting on January 26, with 69 attendees and 13 questions asked. All questions were answered live and the official meeting minutes are available on the OTW website.

Board Assistants Team worked hard on several ongoing projects this month: a review of the Board Discord server, non-profit training research, and OTW emergency procedures as part of the OTW culture roadmap.

In February, Strategic Planning provided Volunteers & Recruiting with research on volunteer retention at organizations similar to the OTW. This is a step in the Strategic Plan's Retention goal to better support OTW volunteers and keep them engaged throughout their time volunteering. They’ve also worked on research for goals related to Paid Staff positions.

Development & Membership arranged OTW's attendance at Ret-Con in Durham, North Carolina, U.S., this month where one of their volunteers ran a panel on searching for lost media. Come see the OTW soon at the Tucson Festival of Books in Arizona, U.S.; Chicago Entertainment and Comic Expo (C2E2) in Illinois, U.S.; Supanova Melbourne in Australia; CitrusCon (online); and more—our tables have plenty of goodies and shenanigans to share!

V. IT'S ALL ABOUT THE PEEPS

Volunteers & Recruiting conducted recruitment for three committees in January: Communications, User Response Translation, and Volunteers & Recruiting.

From January 22 to February 19, Volunteers & Recruiting received 135 new requests and completed 91, leaving them with 72 open requests. As of February 19, 2025, the OTW has 863 volunteers. \o/ Recent personnel movements are listed below.

New Committee Chairs: Apple and choux (Communications)
New Communications Volunteers: Indes (Posting Specialist) and 1 Site Moderator-Weibo
New Volunteers & Recruiting Volunteers: corr (Senior Volunteer), Ehryn, Gwendolyn, Kalincka, Kathleen B, and 2 other Volunteers

Departing Directors: Jenni D. (Paid Staff Transition Lead)
Departing Committee Chairs: Prisca (Translation Chair), Jenni D. (QA&T Lead)
Departing Communications Volunteers: 1 TikTok Moderator
Departing Development & Membership Volunteers: 1 Shipping Specialist and 1 Volunteer
Departing Open Doors Volunteers: 4 Import Assistants
Departing Tag Wrangler Volunteers: Roland, Inrainbowz, Sijing, and 20 other Tag Wranglers, and 1 Supervisor
Departing Translation Volunteers: A_I, Hao and 2 other Translators

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, 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.

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 GenreCat, who volunteers as part of the Policy & Abuse Committee.

How does what you do as a volunteer fit into what the OTW does?

The Policy & Abuse committee is responsible for interpreting and enforcing the Terms of Service on AO3. When users report content that they believe isn't allowed on AO3, that report comes to us. We then investigate independently and determine if the report is about something that is actually against AO3's Terms of Service. If it is, then we'll contact the person who posted it and tell them what they need to remove and why. If it's not a violation, we'll let the reporter know, and provide information about how they can avoid seeing similar content in future. We also answer questions about what is or isn't allowed on AO3.

Because we're an all-volunteer team, and not a very large one, the wait-times on tickets can be lengthy. Here's some advice if you want your ticket to be processed more quickly:

1. Provide us a direct link to the thing you want to report. If that's a work, provide us a link to the work. If you want to report multiple works, provide links to each work in your report description. If it's a comment, select the 'Thread' button on the comment to get the direct link to that comment. If you only report the user's profile instead of the thing they posted, we have to go track it down, which immediately makes a case take longer.
2. Don't report more than one user at a time (unless they're co-creators on the same violating work). Having multiple unrelated users on one report complicates the paperwork for us.
3. Don't encourage other people to also report it. We investigate every report we receive, and we don't make rulings based on how many people reported it. All mass-reporting does is give us more admin work that has to be handled before we can actually address the problem.
4. If you're reporting plagiarism or copyright infringement, give us a link to the source material. Please don't make us guess!
5. Be succinct. We only need a short description of what and where the problem is -- a single sentence is usually sufficient.

What is a typical week like for you as a volunteer?

I usually do PAC work every day, sometimes in long chunks and sometimes just quick check-ins. If I only have a short period of time, I'll catch up on messages from other volunteers and check new tickets that have come in. If there's tickets that haven't been categorized, I'll categorize them—categories help PAC volunteers decide what tickets to work on next. If there's higher-priority tickets, I'll quickly glance at them to attach evidence and see if there's something that we can resolve quickly.

When I have more time to work in a stretch, I'll review cases that other volunteers are handling and sign off on their plans of action, or I may pick up new tickets of my own to handle. I also spend quite a lot of my time working on documentation. PAC is constantly reviewing portions of our internal policies, training, and guidance material, which I like being involved in; it helps us determine better methods of doing things and ensures that we stay consistent in our rulings.

What made you decide to volunteer?

I'd been on AO3 for about a decade, and I'd always wanted to volunteer, because I feel like AO3 is a really important thing for fandom to have. I've been in fandom long enough to remember how slash fiction was banned or highly censored on a lot of older sites explicitly because of homophobia, and compared to that AO3 was a much-needed breath of fresh air. However, the stars had never quite aligned for me to apply—until the middle of 2020, when like many people, I suddenly had a lot more time where I was supposed to be at home. So when the next round of applications opened, I sent mine in.

What has been your biggest challenge doing work for the OTW?

The OTW is a very big organization, and it has a lot of inertia. At times, trying to push for necessary change—procedural or cultural—has been very frustrating. However, since I've joined the OTW I've seen this improve a lot, both within PAC and within the OTW overall. I'm very hopeful that we've got a brighter future ahead of us.

On a much less serious note: in terms of tickets that are challenging, personally it is the ones that are labelled only 'spam'. This is because many, many things get called 'spam', so I never know what the ticket is about until I go and investigate the link. A small sample of things I have seen called 'spam' includes: donation requests, duplicate postings of works, fanworks that have deliberately terrible grammar and spelling, fanworks that have the wrong pairing tag, comments consisting entirely of emojis, works that are just "WIP coming soon", works that are solely requests for prompts, copyright infringement, plagiarism, works with dozens of extra fandom tags, death threats, and comments from actual spambots. Some of these are violations, some of them aren't. It's nice to have a better idea of what I'm getting into before I open a report. So a request for anyone reading this—if you're reporting actual spambot spam, please say 'spambot' somewhere in your report instead of just 'spam'! And if it's not an actual spambot, please include an extra 2-3 words of description. Your ticket-handler will appreciate it!

What fannish things do you like to do?

I spend a lot of time reading and writing fic! Fellow PAC volunteers introduced me to several new fandoms in the last couple of years, the biggest of which are MXTX's novels. One of the things I love about big fandoms is that there's so much fic, it would be really difficult for me to work through it all—there's always something new to read.

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 earlier 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, 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.

Copyright is the legal protection granting the owners of creative works (such as books, music, artwork, and so on) the authority to control their use, distribution, and sale. Copyright is a limited right, with key exceptions such as fair use. Fair use allows people to use copyrighted works for transformative purposes, such as commenting, reporting, and criticizing. Noncommercial uses are particularly favored as fair uses.

For Fair Use Week 2025, we want to spotlight recent discussions about Fair Use and highlight its importance for transformative works, because fair use makes fanworks legal under copyright law.

OTW’s Legal team is currently keeping an eye on site-blocking legislation, which has the potential to be overly broad and has been reintroduced in the new US Congress. We're also watching some interesting cases, like one against Jimmy Kimmel for his videos mocking George Santos' Cameos. Legal’s Rebecca Tushnet submitted an amicus brief in that case, defending Kimmel’s right to make fun of Santos. Another recent legal dispute saw tattoo artist Kat Von D sued by a photographer whose photo she used as a reference for a tattoo—she won a jury verdict that some of her uses of the photo were fair uses, and the tattoo itself was not an infringement. The Authors Alliance, which supports the interests of authors in strong fair use rights and strong protections against publishers’ attempts to make authors surrender their rights, submitted an amicus brief in support of fair use.

The US Copyright Office also recently released a section of a report on AI and copyright focusing on when AI-generated works are copyrightable. The Office concluded that human involvement in creation is required for copyrightability and that merely providing a prompt—even a detailed prompt refined over multiple attempts—does not represent enough human involvement to satisfy that requirement. As a result, the Copyright Office will accept works with AI-generated components, like the credits in a live-action film, but purely AI-generated works will not be considered copyrightable human creations. The Office is also expected to issue a report on AI training and fair use in the coming months. However, the Copyright Office does not decide most issues of fair use and its recommendations will not be binding in courts.

Another set of fair use developments comes from the US Copyright Claims Board, a small-claims proceeding set up by the Copyright Office. It was started in 2020 to handle some copyright claims more cheaply than litigation in federal court. Although there are some serious problems with the setup, the Board is not a rubber stamp for copyright owners – they do not always side with them. One example comes from a recent decision which found that a YouTube feud, where one YouTuber brought a claim against another for using clips of her work, involved fair use and not infringement.

It’s absolutely critical that fair use remains a robust exception to copyright, as it’s the foundation of transformative works’ existence—including, but not limited to, all types of fanworks.

As the OTW, we are committed to defending the right of transformative works to exist. Our Legal team works hard to stay on top of recent developments involving copyright law. And we want you to know your rights: exercising fair use rights and reminding people that copyright is not absolute keeps fair use healthy. In light of this, we wish you a happy Fair Use Week and hope we could help you catch up with some of the latest developments regarding copyright!

Is there a new law that might affect fans or fannish activities in your country? Send us a message about legislation you think we should know about. (Submitting a concern doesn’t guarantee that it will be included in a future Spotlight on Legal Issues post.)

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.

Since the end of December 2024, AO3 has had numerous periods of slowness, downtime, and related issues such as missing kudos emails and delayed invitations. We've been taking some steps to improve the situation, but we are also working on some highly time-sensitive updates to our infrastructure, so we can't spend as much time as we'd like on performance improvements. We expect some slowness and downtime to continue until our new servers are delivered and installed in a few months.

We first noticed some strain on the servers we use for Elasticsearch (which powers searching and filtering) in the middle of last year. The new servers we wanted weren't available yet, so we repurposed some of our other servers to help with the load on Elasticsearch until we could get the hardware.

Unfortunately, the hardware wasn't available on its October release date, and our temporary fix couldn't hold up to the traffic increase we experience at the end of every year. This has led to periods of noticeable slowness over the last several weeks.

The servers we wanted finally became available in early January, and we completed the process of getting quotes and requisitioning them by January 15. Our purchase was confirmed on January 28, but it will take a few months for the servers to be delivered and installed.

We estimate the new Elasticsearch servers will be in place by early April. Until then, you might run into the following issues, especially during busy periods:

• all pages loading more slowly
• Elasticsearch-powered pages like search results and work and bookmark listings taking longer to update
• error pages
• automated checks from Cloudflare's Under Attack mode
• stricter rate limiting
• issues with services like the Wayback Machine or Tumblr RSS accounts that rely on bots, scrapers, or other automated tools, which we have deprioritized in favor of traffic from users

In addition to new Elasticsearch servers, we'll be purchasing five database servers to improve the capacity and resilience of our database cluster. We don't currently have enough database power to handle increased traffic and do certain types of maintenance at the same time. This means we sometimes have to take AO3 offline to resolve database issues, as we did for our February 7 maintenance. Additional hardware should help us avoid this situation in the future, but it will take some time for the purchase to be completed and the servers to be installed. We do not anticipate any database issues while we wait and there is no risk of data loss.

We're very sorry for the disruptions, and we appreciate your patience and your generous donations, which fund purchases like these.

For updates on slowness, downtime, or other issues, please follow @AO3_Status on Twitter/X or ao3org on Tumblr. We're also in the process of setting up a status account on Bluesky and a status page, but they're still works in progress and might not receive all updates just yet, so please make sure to check Twitter/X or Tumblr for a fully accurate list of updates.