Archive of Our Own ^beta

What is better than having eight million passionate, dedicated users? Having nine million, of course! That's right, the Archive of Our Own (AO3) has recently reached nine million registered users! Thanks a million (or rather, nine million!) to every member of our community for making this success possible.

Some of you have likely noticed that AO3 is occasionally—and temporarily— unavailable due to site maintenance. However, if you prepare yourself in advance, you don't need to be deprived of content!

The best way to prepare yourself for maintenance (both scheduled and unscheduled) is to download works in advance to tide you over until the site is accessible again. You can find instructions on how to download content from AO3 in our FAQs! Works are downloadable in several formats — AZW3, EPUB, MOBI, PDF, and HTML — letting you enjoy reading across devices: desktop, mobile devices, or even eReaders. Whether the site is temporarily down or you're offline, having works downloaded means that you can always enjoy your favorite works!

Once again, thank you for your continued support of AO3 and for helping us grow each and every day. We look forward to celebrating many more achievements with you in the future!

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.

We're very excited to announce that AO3 now hosts more than one million 中文-普通话 國語 (Mandarin Chinese) fanworks! Mandarin Chinese is the first non-English language to pass one million fanworks, and we appreciate everyone who's helped us reach this milestone.

AO3 hosts fanworks in a wide variety of languages: currently, the count is around 150! You can browse the Work Languages page to see more. We're grateful that so many creators from so many backgrounds have chosen to host their fanworks on AO3, and we appreciate each and every fanwork that's been shared.

Since many users are multilingual, we wanted to open the floor: which language(s) do you prefer to engage with in fandom? Do you read, listen to, watch, and/or create works in the same language? Is your answer the same for all the fandoms you're part of?

Thanks to everyone who helped get us here! We look forward to seeing even more languages reach this milestone.

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.

We are incredibly excited to announce that AO3 now has over 15 million fanworks! Last year in May we celebrated 13 million works on the site. Two million new works in one year is an incredible achievement. And to think it took more than four years to reach one million works when AO3 was first founded!

We would not be here without your love for fandom, your dedication, and your ceaseless enthusiasm and creativity. Kudos to all of you! However you choose to contribute to fandom, you are invaluable to our community.

In keeping with the spirit of the occasion, comment below your favourite ways of engaging with fandom. Are you a creator? Do you translate works? Create podfics? Run exchanges? Are you an avid commenter on other people's works? What do you enjoy most about how you engage with fandom?

Thank you for 15 million fanworks, and here's to many more to come!

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.

Time to celebrate another milestone, as the Archive of Our Own (AO3) passes eight million registered users. That means one million new members joined the site in less than a year's time; or, in other words, more than 3,000 people a day, 130 people an hour, or two people per minute!

Whether you already are a registered user or a guest, we want to thank every single one of you who contributes to AO3 by reading, commenting, sharing, posting, or by curating and moderating collections and challenges.

If you are not already a registered user, did you know there are benefits to becoming one? Here are some examples (of many more!):

• Post your own works, bookmark works for later, and subscribe to creators, series, and works to never miss a new chapter again.
• Customize AO3's appearance when you are logged in, either with our official site skins (like Reversi, our dark mode), or your own custom look.
• Gain access to locked works that are only visible to registered site users.

To register, simply click the "Get Invited!" button on the AO3 homepage, fill in your email address, and follow the instructions once you receive our follow-up email. If you are unsure about any step of the process, you can find more information here.

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.

It's time to celebrate another milestone for the Archive of Our Own! We are incredibly excited to announce that AO3 now hosts more than 14 million fanworks. We only passed our last fanworks milestone in May, meaning fans have collectively contributed nearly 2 million works this year alone. The quill of collective fandom truly never rests! This incredible achievement is only possible because of the tireless and passionate work of fans all over the world in creating, reading, and sharing content across different fandoms and platforms.

International Fanworks Day
Did you know that there is a special day dedicated to celebrating our fannish community? Every February we come together for International Fanworks Day (IFD), where you can meet fellow fans, play fun games together, and talk to some of our volunteers. All those activities take place on our IFD Discord server, which we open only for the occasion. If you’re interested in joining, mark the date in your calendar. And keep your eyes peeled for more details as February approaches!

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.

Fanlore, the Organization for Transformative Works' collaborative wiki about all things fandom, is celebrating a huge milestone: one million edits!

Fanlore is a multi-fandom, free and open wiki that was designed to be a living, evolving record of fandom’s past and present. Like AO3, it was created by fans in 2008 and, since then, fans have built an ever-expanding record of our shared history.

To celebrate this momentous event, we're inviting you to take part in a scavenger hunt across Fanlore for the chance to win a Citrus Scale sticker set, as well as commemorative badges that you can add to your Fanlore User page – or anywhere you want!

Want to know more about fannish history or learn about commonly-used terms? Fanlore has pages on everything from the origins of A/B/O to Destiel becoming canon; from the Citrus Scale and Vulcan genitalia to the infamous badfic My Immortal. You never know what you might discover!

Want to add some of your own knowledge or experiences? Fanlore can be edited by anyone and everyone – all you need to do is create an account. You don’t need to be an expert, or have been in fandom for a long time, to contribute. Any edits, big or small, are welcome! If you aren’t sure where to start, our New Visitor Portal has a bunch of handy tips and links, while our newly-updated FAQ can answer any questions you might have.

We hope you'll come and join our scavenger hunt! A big thank you to all those who have contributed to Fanlore thus far; every single edit helps Fanlore to preserve the amazing creativity and passion of fandoms old and new. So here’s to our awesome community – this is all thanks to you!

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.

The OTW is thrilled to announce that AO3 has reached seven million fanworks! That averages out to around 1700 fanworks a day since AO3 first went online on November 14, 2009. AO3 hit its first million fanworks only seven years ago, on February 15, 2014, and since then it’s grown exponentially, hitting three million fanworks on April 28, 2017, and five million fanworks on July 20, 2019.

AO3 also recently hit three million registered users on November 26, 2020.

We could not be more grateful for all the users and creators who make this possible. Thank you for sharing all of your wonderful fanworks with us!

Fanlore, the collaborative fandom wiki from the Organization for Transformative Works that anyone can edit, is celebrating a huge milestone: 50,000 pages! Would you like to come celebrate with us?

If you haven’t heard of Fanlore, it’s a multi-fandom, free and open wiki that was designed to be a living, evolving record of fandom’s past and present: created by fans, and maintained by fans. Like AO3, Fanlore was launched in 2008, and since then, fans have made more than 900,000 edits across more than 50,000 pages to record tropes, communities, meta, memes, fanworks, fannish perspectives and much more.

Fanlore is open for anyone to edit – all you need to do is create an account. Any edits, big or small, are welcome! You don’t need to be an expert, or have been in fandom for a long time, to contribute. The wiki wouldn’t have gotten to where it is without the dedication, perseverance and experiences of thousands of fans over the years who have added to and edited Fanlore.

Recently, Fanlore editors have been working to document hundreds of fannish Yahoo! Groups before they’re deleted in December, and last year fans took to Fanlore to document the history of fandom on Tumblr in the midst of the Tumblr NSFW Content Purge. But it isn’t just about big historical events or fandom migrations – every corner of fandom, from the Hanahaki Disease trope to A/B/O, massive fan archives to tiny niche ships, has a place on Fanlore. Try searching for your favorite character or ship! You could add something of your own to those pages.

If you’d like to edit Fanlore but aren’t sure where to start, our New Visitor Portal has a bunch of tips and links to get you started. We also have a how-to on editing pages, and a tutorial for creating new pages if you’d like to help us start down the road to 100,000 pages! Every single edit helps Fanlore preserve more of fandom’s history and experiences, and helps ensure that the amazing creativity and passion of fandoms old and new is recorded and remembered.

The Fanlore team have set our sights on one million edits next – we hope you’ll join us!

To learn more about what Fanlore’s volunteers do behind the scenes, check out our previous spotlight posts:

• Five Things Kate Flanagan Said
• Five Things SoyAlex Said
• Gardener Spotlight: MPH