Welcome to Release 0.9.0! Andreja, Ariana, Chris, Elz, Enigel, Lal, Nathan, sarken, Sam J. and Scott contributed code to this release, which was tested by our awesome testing team: bingeling, Enigel, highlander ii, Jenn, Kylie, Lady Oscar, sarken, Scott, Xparrot and Zebra.

We have a lot of fixes and improvements in the pipeline, including improved search and filtering for works and bookmarks, but because of the backend work and testing involved with that, we're splitting the release up a bit to minimize complications. This is part one: filtering should be out in our next release, and we'll be starting on some of the systems-level work to pave the way for those shortly!

Highlights!

Public tag relationship pages

We've had lots of requests from users who would like to see more information about how tags on the Archive are wrangled and how they relate to one another. In order to work towards this, we've now made tag information pages visible to all users (until now, these were only visible to tag wranglers). If you go to a tag page you can now see whether that tag has been wrangled and how it relates to other tags. For example, if you go to X-Men: First Class, you can see that this is a fandom tag, that it belongs to the metatags X-Men (Movies) and X-Men (All Media types), and that it has a whole bunch of child tags including a character tag for Charles Xavier, and the 'freeform' tag Beach Divorce.

This post by our Tag Wrangling Committee explains a bit more about tag pages and how our tags are connected to one another behind the scenes. This is an alpha version of this feature: we wanted to start by exposing the basic pages and see how people use them before we develop them further. If you have feedback about how they could be more useful, please do let us know via Support.

Rich Text Editor upgrade

We've had some persistent problems with our rich text editor, which was behaving particularly poorly towards users of Internet Explorer. We've now upgraded to a newer version of the RTE which is better behaved - if you've previously experienced an issue where entering text via the RTE resulted in an error complaining there was no content, this update should fix it for you! We're really glad to have finally squashed this bug.

Tags on bookmarks can now be sorted into categories

A new wrangling feature - previously, tags created by users tagging their bookmarks (using the "Your Tags" input field) would all become Additional Tags (Freeforms). Now, any new tag that is created through a bookmark will initially be listed as an Unsorted Tag, without a category. Wranglers will then be able to sort these tags into the appropriate categories (as well as re-sort existing bookmark-only tags); or, if users put the same tags on works or when bookmarking external works, they will automatically be sorted into whatever category the works tags are created in.

Bookmark tags will still be accessible as before; you should not see any changes in how your old or new bookmark tags work. But with this, bookmark tags will now be able to be merged with matching character, relationship, and fandom tags, which will help users browsing and searching bookmarks to find more relevant works.

Known Issues

See our Known Issues page for current issues.

Release Details

Features

• Ability to recategorize bookmark tags
• Alpha version of visible-to-everyone tag pages
• Updated the Rich Text Editor, made it usable in IE9 and Opera 10+ and fixed several bugs in the process
• Revised the Support form to make it more useful

Bug fixes

• Works & Stats
  • Gift notification emails weren't sent when editing a existing work; this has been fixed
  • When previewing a chapter before posting, one was presented with the baffling choice of "Post Chapter", "Revert To Saved" and "Delete Chapter"; the buttons have now been adjusted to be more useful
  • The work information in subscription notifications and in the "Share" text on works didn't include series information; it does now
  • Editing an unposted draft allowed you to orphan it, sending the work into orphan_account's draft limbo; this isn't possible anymore
  • Improved parser handling of a, abbr, acronym, and address HTML tags
  • When trying to import a work from fanfiction.net, a URL check would display information about ff.net imports being blocked, which wrongly affected adultfanfiction.net links as well; this has been fixed
  • On the Stats page, the sort buttons weren't working in mobile Safari (iPod, iPhone), making it impossible to view works in any order but the default (hits); this has been fixed
  • Multi-fandom works were counted as one work for each fandom they were in, inflating total stats (such as the word count) and messing up graphs on the Stats page; they now only show up once in Flat View and in the charts and don't inflate the total numbers anymore
  • The number of "Comments" on the Stats page actually only reflects top-level comments on a work; the label was changed to "Comment Threads" to avoid confusion

• Collections & Challenges
  • When uploading a new user icon, the current icon would be displayed for reference; the same functionality has been added for collection icons
  • There was no way to delete an icon, once uploaded; this has been fixed
  • In collection blurbs for moderated collections, an empty button would show up where the Sign Up link for an unmoderated collection would be; the underlying logic has been fixed to display Sign Up/Join buttons for moderated/unmoderated collections/challenges with open/closed sign-ups accordingly
  • There was an issue with the "moderated" setting for a collection or challenge interacting with the "anonymous"/"unrevealed" settings and breaking anonymity; this has been fixed
  • An explanation of the "closed" option was added to the collection settings page
  • Collections only had a Delete button on the profile page; a "Delete Collection" button has now been added to the collection settings, and the "Delete" button for challenge settings was renamed to make it clearer that it only affects the challenge setup
  • When trying to submit a challenge signup that didn't adhere to signup restrictions (e.g. too many fandoms offered), the resulting error message wasn't sufficiently clear and has now been improved
  • The Kudos button on static challenge pages wasn't working; it does now

• Admin
  • Added pagination to the page admins see when managing requests for extra invites from users
  • Added a restriction to the number of invitations that can be requested by users at one time
  • When users submitted an Abuse report, no copy of the message was sent to them even if they requested one; this has been fixed

• Design & Display
  • On user and collection pages, the default Archive icon would shine through for icons with transparent backgrounds; we have changed this to make it possible to use transparent icons
  • HTML scopes, captions and summaries were added to the tables in the admin area, along with some rationalisation of the tables and some CSS tweaks.
  • The History page wasn't adhering to our design principles for listing work blurbs; the underlying structure has now been rewritten, fixing a pagination display bug in Chrome in the process
  • The "Notes" and "Your Tags" fields in the bookmarking form were missing visible labels; they are now properly labeled and not naked boxes anymore
  • The "View All Bookmarks" and "View Recs Only" buttons on the bookmarks index behaved differently from similar buttons elsewhere on the site; they are now both always visible, with the currently selected view clearly marked
  • The link text on static collection pages (such as this book fandom index for Yuletide 2010) was a rather sassy red color; we made the red slightly darker to reduce eye strain
  • When looking at challenge pages without being signed in, an empty navigation section would show up where the sign-up links would be if logged in; this has been fixed to hide the section completely in this case
  • In Opera, disabling images would make some link text hard to read; a background color has now been defined to solve this problem
  • Text in a monospace font (kbd, tt, code, var, pre) was very small and hard to read; we increased the font size a notch
  • Text on iPod and iPhone screens in horizontal view was very big; we changed the font size setting to be consistent in both orientations
  • In work blurbs, the title heading had two separate class definitions, breaking page validation; this has been fixed
  • In the Share box on works, the "ctrl A / cmd A" instructions to highlight the share text for copying weren't enclosed in <kbd> tags to signify keyboard input; they are now
  • When tabbing through a work blurb, arriving at the small icons for rating, category, warning etc. wouldn't make them visibly selected; they now have a visible outline
  • There was an issue in IE7 with lists of checkboxes, such as rating options in tag sets, overflowing their container instead of creating the proper scrollbar; this has been fixed
  • Added a .caution class to the "Adding a synonym to a canonical tag will make it non-canonical" warning on tag wrangling pages to make the note stand out more
  • Long collection names didn't wrap properly in the collections filter box, creating a horizontal scrollbar; this has been fixed

• Accessibility
  • The pseuds drop-down in the user sidebar was skipped when tabbing through the links, making it inaccessible for keyboard navigation; this has been fixed
  • The "Expand full list" button in a user's fandom list was skipped in keyboard navigation; it's now included in the tabbing order

• Help & Documentation
  • On the fandom index pages, such as for Video Games, we advised to "search this page by pressing ctrl F"; we have now included instructions for Mac users
  • For security reasons, we changed the way looking up your email address in the invite queue worked; the respective page text has now been changed to reflect this
  • The help text for the "Any" field in our Work Search was amended to be clearer
  • A few small text edits were made to the instructions on tag edit pages
  • The People Search didn't have proper help text; it now does
  • It is currently possible to add more than one related link (such as remix source or fanart inspiration) to one's work, although not very easily; we have added help text to explain the workaround
  • There was an option on the Preference page called "Format your own titles"; it has been renamed to "Browser page title format" to describe more accurately what it does

• Error Extravaganza
  • Trying to list a co-author who wasn't actually a fellow AO3 user would throw an error 500; this has been fixed to give a meaningful error message
  • Trying to add a work to a closed collection would throw an error 500 under certain circumstances; this has now been fixed to give a meaningful error message while making it possible to edit an already existing work in a closed collection
  • Trying to edit a bookmark for a work that had been deleted would throw an error 500; this has been fixed
  • Logging out while the first welcome banner was showing would cause an error 500; this has been fixed
  • Dismissing the first login banner, then turning it back on in Preferences would result in an 404 error; this has been fixed
  • There were problems with a few tags causing 500 errors; to fix this we added a constraint to the database to prevent duplicate tag counters from being created

• Miscellaneous
  • The bottom Select All/Select None buttons in the Inbox weren't working; this has been fixed for all such buttons across the site
  • The "External Works" count on a tag wrangling page now link to the bookmarks for that tag
  • Changed the icon alt text character limit from 50 to 250

One feature that's been asked for repeatedly since the AO3 launched is a way to see how tags are structured on the Archive. This is now possible! Although this new option doesn't show everything that goes on behind the scenes when tag wrangling, it does provide more information to users as to what tags are in use and how the tags are interlinked behind the scenes.

We should note right up front: this is a very alpha interface. In fact, all that's been done is that we've changed the accessibility of the pages, and truncated the display of longer tag lists to save the servers. We do have plans for improving them, but we thought it best to get the pages out there and see what information you want!

We should also note that, in preparation for this release and the guidelines release, we've discovered a number of wrangling terms that are used inconsistently or confusingly. The Tag Wrangling volunteers are currently discussing new terminology, which we hope will be clearer.

How to Access the Tag Display Page

There are two ways to access these pages: through navigation, and through direct links.

If you're browsing the site, you probably already know you can click on a tag to see the works that use that tag or its synonyms. You'll see early in the page "1-X of Y Works found in Tag Name". Select the Tag Name to access the Tag Display page for that tag.

If you know the name of the tag, you can also enter https://archiveofourown.info/tags/TAGNAME directly into the address bar. (Note: for relationships, replace any / in the address with *s* for the link to work, and for friendship tags replace any & in the address with *a*.) Tag Search also links to the Tag Display pages.

The tags page

Near the beginning of the page (in the top right when using the default visual skin), will be two buttons that let you see all of the works marked with the tag you're viewing. Both creators and users of the works may have chosen that tag -- the creators when the works were uploaded, and the users when they decided to bookmark those works.

The tags page is divided into several sections. In most sections, if multiple tags are listed, they're automatically sorted into alphabetical order. Please note that these sections at present will only display the first 300 tags, in order to prevent unwieldy server loads. In the meantime you can use the Tag Search to find a particular tag. We plan to improve this display in later versions of this feature, so eventually you will be able to see all the tags under any tag.

A Sample Entry

A good example to see the Tag Display page in action is the Being Human (UK) fandom tag. Accessing the page, you'll find that:

• the tag is a Fandom tag, and it has been marked Common, so it will pop up in the auto-complete;
• the tag is for a TV Show;
• the tag has a synonym;
• the tag has a metatag, indicating that it's a distinct part of a larger group (in this case, there are other versions of the series);
• the tag contains a number of Character, Relationship, and Freeform tags.

What does any of that mean?

All the tags on the Archive can be in one of three states -- common (canonical), merged (synonym), or unfilterable. Common tags (also known as "canonical" tags) can be filtered on and appear in the auto-complete. Merged tags (also known as "synonyms") are connected to a single common tag and works/bookmarks tagged with it will appear in the common tag's filter. Unfilterable tags cannot be used in filters but can still be searched and will still bring up lists of works. Here is an example:

If you click on the merged tag Aido Hanabusa, you can see that this Character tag has been merged into a different tag due to spelling differences. If you then click on the Aidou Hanabusa tag, you will see that it is the common tag. It has various mergers and it is also connected to both broader and narrower tags.

Any tag can be merged if it has a common meaning with another tag or tags. This is true whether it is a Fandom, Character, Relationship or Additional tag. However, not all tags get merged. Some remain unfilterable both because they have no shared meaning with other tags, and yet they are so rarely used that they are not likely to be searched on by other users. Some may be only temporarily unfilterable, until a tag wrangler has had time to review them and mark them as common or merge them with another tag.

Here is an explanation of the other sorts of tags you'll see on the tag pages.

Parent tags

Each user-created tag has one or more Parent tags. These are broad terms which may contain many subgroups of tags that fit a certain theme.

• For example, Fandoms will have their Media type(s) listed as their Parent. All television show fandoms will have "TV Shows" as a parent tag.
• Characters, Relationships, and Additional (or Freeform) Tags will have one or more Fandoms listed as their Parent.

Tags with the Same Meaning

These tags are "synonyms" of another tag, which have all been merged into the common tag. There are various reasons why tags are merged, such as spelling variations, fanon names when canon only gives part of the name, or just that there are many different ways to describe the same thing. When tags are merged they all get pooled together for better filter results.

Metatags and Subtags

Metatags are common tags that can include one or more subtags that are subsets of the metatag. Metatags are created for a number of reasons — the most common reasons are:

• Fandoms that include different media productions or different media formats under the same name or within the same universe
• Ambiguous versions of more specific tags (such as all characters named "Mary")

So if you click on Star Trek: The Next Generation you will see it is a subtag of the larger Star Trek universe metatag.

You can also see its subtags, in this case the movies associated with the series, and you can see that those subtags can have subtags of their own.

Child tags

Like Parent tags, above, each tag can have Child tags. Different types of tags can have different Child tags:

Media tags

These tags, like "Books & Literature" or "Movies" can have Fandom tags.

Fandom tags

These tags can have as Child tags: Character tags from that fandom, Relationship tags that involve one or more characters from that fandom, and Additional tags (called "Freeforms", here) that are specific to that fandom.

Character tags

These can have Relationship tags that involve specific characters, if set by the wranglers.

Other tags

Besides all of these user-created tags, some tags on the Archive are standardized and cannot be wrangled, though they are still tags and their tag pages are visible. Users are probably familiar with Archive-created tag types such as "Warning", "Rating", and "Category" (the latter is for Gen, F/F, F/M, M/M, Multi, and Other). For example, clicking on the Choose Not To Use Archive Warnings tag will tell you "This tag belongs to the Archive Warning Category. It's a common tag. You can use it to filter works and to filter bookmarks."

Guidelines are coming

In addition to visible tag structures, the Tag Wrangling Committee is working on making the guidelines that tag wranglers work with available for public viewing. An initial FAQ post about this process is now available. It provides more detail about both terminology and some general concepts.

Questions

For those who have questions about tags and what they're seeing, you can always send a question to our Support team, who'll pass it on to the Wranglers. The Tag Wrangling Committee also has a Twitter account at ao3_wranglers for all sorts of tag-related discussion.

Hello readers, creators, and archivers! It's the end of August which means it's time for an AO3 Newsletter.

Cool stuff on the Archive

This month, we were able to up the number of invitations issued each day to 350. With our invite queue holding steady at 31k, this may seem like a drop in the ocean, but we are excited to welcome that many more users to Archive each day. We're also excited to announce that AD&T, Tag Wrangling and Support have a great big deploy coming soon to an Archive near you. Release 0.9.0 contains new features and a whole lot of bug fixes; stay tuned for details in the coming week.

What’s up in the world of tags?

One of the most used Additional Tags on the Archive is Alternate Universe. There are currently 45k works tagged to indicate some form of Alternate Universe!

Popular universe tropes on the AO3 include Modern Settings, High School and Gender Changes. There are tags for AUs based on where characters work, such as Coffee Shop, Circus and Library; AUs much more out of this world, like Dragons and Shapeshifters; and AUs that put the characters out of time, from Ancient Greece & Rome to the 1960s.

We're always interested to see what other universes are out there!

Support Superstars

Support have had our hands full this month with a whopping 542 tickets opened in August. We've closed 511 of those tickets and have 31 left to go!

AD&T Committee business of note

As we mentioned in last month's newsletter, our fearless captain mumble leads the way as we update the AO3 roadmap. As a guide for site development, a roadmap helps to keep us on task while we work on new features and plan deploys. We can't promise that we'll be able to keep to it exactly--a quick glance at our old roadmap should show you where we got off track--but it does provide us a framework to work with and milestones to work towards. For example, milestones such as release 0.9.0! We've been hard at work on this deploy which will roll out new features, bug fixes, and upgrades that will help Support, Tag Wrangling, and the Archive to run more smoothly. And finally, with Sarken as our guide, we continue work on a brand new header for the site (another milestone!) and have plans to consult you on various aspects and features of the header sometime soon.

Support Committee business of note

Users have kept Support busy this month. We've answered some 'Help - how do I...' questions, logged some bugs, and recorded some feature requests. Our new Support Form is almost ready for prime time. It's currently in the testing stage, and if all goes well, it should go live in the next deploy.

Tag Wrangling Committee business of note

In the upcoming deploy, we're looking forward to making public some of the behind-the-scenes tag pages that wranglers see! In these public tag pages, you will be able to see what sort of tag structures are used when our wranglers get wrangling. In connection with this new Archive feature, we're also working towards moving our guidelines to the Archive's FAQ pages, discussing revisions of some of the Archive's tagging terminology, and making some of our internal guidelines clearer and more consistent.

Apologies

While moving servers behind an upgraded, more secure firewall, we introduced a typo that caused some users to be redirected to a site that was decidedly not AO3. We've been receiving reports from users who are still unable to access the Archive; if this has been the case for you, please read this post and let us know if you continue to have trouble. Tag filtering remains unavailable as we continue rewriting the necessary code to give you a better tag-filtering experience. We also ran into some problems with audio embeds when we inadvertently deployed code that allowed Google audio embeds, which is an embed we cannot support.

We apologize for the inconveniences these mistakes have caused and appreciate your continued patience with us.

Questions? Comments?

We welcome feedback from users! If you have questions or comments, feel free to leave them in the comments of the latest news post, or send in a Support request (if you're reporting a bug, please send that to Support, as they're super efficient - comments on our news posts sometimes get overlooked).

As many AO3 users have noticed, the types of fanwork available through the Archive have been expanding! Unfortunately our current inability to directly host any non-text content has created workaround efforts and these sometimes run into problems.

This has been the case with podfic, and we're particularly sorry that these problems have affected a recent podfic challenge hosted through the Archive. To quickly sum up, this is what has happened:

• We were allowing people to use Google's audio player as an embed but then Google stopped supporting it so that it no longer worked.
• We were planning to do our own hosting of Google's player (and announced this in our last newsletter) but decided that we wanted a different open-source solution that we will be able to fully support; we are working on this.
• We did a quick deploy to enable people in the pod_together challenge to use another audio embed option specifically for that challenge, because they'd been waiting on our fix in order to host their event.
• We inadvertently enabled our own Google player hosting at the same time. However, this was accidental and has now been disabled - this means it will have broken again for anyone who changed their code to use it. We're very sorry about this.
• We do plan to offer an alternative solution for podficcers in the near future: this will be a player hosted on the Archive's own servers so that we can ensure it will remain available in future.

Paraka, the pod_together mod who is hosting the player, has generously offered to make it available to people outside the challenge: see this post for streaming code. We should note that this is a small site and is unlikely to be able to support lots and lots of users (also, we can't guarantee it will continue to function long-term) so we recommend that you only take up this option if you have a podfic that you want to post right now (and don't, for example, change your whole back catalogue right now).

We apologize for the confusion this series of events has caused and also about the lack of timely communication in regards to this matter. If you have further questions about audio work on the Archive, please comment here and we will do our best to address them. For specific assistance you may also want to contact Support.

Our Systems team have been doing some behind-the-scenes maintenance over the past week or so to improve the Archive of Our Own's firewalls. This has mostly been invisible to users, but last night it briefly gave everyone a fright when a typo introduced during maintenance caused some people to be redirected to some weird pages when trying to access the AO3. We also had a few additional problems today which caused a bit of site downtime. We've fixed the problems and the site should now be back to normal, but we wanted to give you all an explanation of what we've been working on and what caused the issues.

Please note: We will be doing some more maintenance relating to these issues at c. 22:00 UTC today (see when this is in your timezone). The site should remain up, but will run slowly for a while.

Upgrading our firewall

The AO3's servers have some built-in firewalls which stop outside IP services accessing bits of the servers they shouldn't, in the same way that the firewall on your home computer protects you from malicious programmes modifying your computer. Until recently, we were using these firewalls, which meant that each server was behind its own firewall, and data passed between servers was unencrypted. However, now that we have a lot more machines (with different levels of firewall), this setup is not as secure as it could be. It also makes it difficult for us to do some of the Systems work we need to, since the firewalls get in the way. We've therefore been upgrading our firewall setup: it's better to put all the machines behind the same firewall so that data passing between different servers is always protected by the firewall.

We've been slowly moving all our servers behind the new firewall. We're almost done with this work, which will put all the main servers for the Archive (that is the ones all on the same site together) behind the firewall. In addition, our remote servers (which can't go behind the firewall) will be connected to the firewall so that they can be sure they're talking to the right machine, and all the data sent to them is properly encrypted. (The remote servers are used for data backups - they are at a different location so that if one site is hit by a meteor, we'll still have our data.) This means that everything is more secure and that we can do further Systems maintenance without our own firewalls getting in the way.

What went wrong - redirects

Last night, some users started getting redirected to a different site when trying to access the AO3. The redirect site was serving up various types of spammy content, so we know this was very alarming for everyone who experienced it. The problem was caused by an error introduced during our maintenance. It was fixed very quickly, but we're very sorry to everyone who was affected.

In order to understand what caused the bug, it's necessary to understand a little bit about DNS. Every address on the internet is actually a string of numbers (an IP address), but you usually access it via a much friendlier address like https://archiveofourown.info. DNS is a bit like a phonebook for the internet: when you go to https://archiveofourown.info, your Domain Name Service goes to look and see what number is listed for that address, then sends you to the right place. In the case of the AO3, we actually have several servers, so there are several 'phone numbers' listed and you can get sent to any one of those.

As part of our maintenance, we had to make changes to our DNS configuration. Unfortunately, during one of those changes, we accidentally introduced a typo into one of our names (actually into the delegation of the domain, for those of you who are systems savvy). This meant that some people were being sent to the wrong place when they tried to access our address - it's as if the phone book had a misprint and you suddenly found yourself calling the laundry instead of a taxi service. Initially this was just sending people to a non-existent place, but a spammer noticed the error and registered that IP address so they would get the redirected traffic. (In the phone book analogy, the laundry noticed the misprint and quickly registered to use that phone number so they could take advantage of it.) It didn't affect everyone since some people were still being sent to the other, valid IP addresses.

We fixed the typo as soon as the problem was reported. However, Domain Name Services don't update immediately, so some users were still getting sent to the wrong address for a few hours after we introduced the fix. To continue the phone book analogy, it's as if the misprinted phone book was still in circulation at the same time as the new, updated one.

If you were affected by this issue, then it should be completely resolved now. Provided you didn't click any links on the site you were redirected to, you shouldn't have anything to worry about. However, it's a a good idea to run your antivirus programme just to be absolutely sure.

Downtime today

It turned out one bit of the firewall configuration was a little overenthusiastic and was blocking some users from getting to the site at all. We rolled back part of the changes, which caused a little bit of downtime. Because this involved changing our DNS configuration again the change took a while to take effect and the downtime was different for different users (effectively we changed our phone number, and the phonebook had to update).

The site should be back up for everyone now. We'll be completing the last bits of work on the firewall upgrade today at roughly 22:00 UTC. At present we don't expect any downtime, but the site will be running more slowly than usual.

Thank you

We'd like to say a massive thank you to James_, who has done almost all of the work upgrading the firewall. He's done a sterling job and the site is much more secure because of his work. This glitch reminds us just how high pressure Systems' work is - for most of us, a tiny typo does not have such noticeable effects! We really appreciate all the work James_ has put in, and the speed at which he identified and fixed the problem when it went wrong.

We'd also like to thank our other staff who swung into action to keep people informed on Twitter, our news sites, and via Support, and who provided moral support while the issues were being dealt with.

Finally, thanks to all our users: you guys were super understanding while we were dealing with these problems and gave us lots of useful info which helped us track down the source of the bug.

Reminder: site status information

The first place to be updated when we have problems with the site is our Twitter AO3_Status. We try to answer questions addressed to us there as well as putting out general tweets, but it can be hard for us to keep up with direct conversations in busy periods, so apologies if you sent us a message and we didn't respond directly. If you see a problem, it's a good idea to check our timeline first to see if we already tweeted about it. For problems other than site status issues, the best place to go for help is AO3 Support.

We'd like to apologise for the delay in returning tag filtering. We had hoped to have tag filtering updated, run through our testers, and back out to you by the end of July. However, it's taking us much longer than we expected to finish that code and get it all tested. We hope to have all the work finished and the tag filters returned by the end of September. However, we can't promise we won't run into more unexpected snags, so right now this is a very rough timetable and we may have to revise it. We'll keep people updated as the work progresses.

We've been able to tackle a lot of other performance-related issues since the problems started in May/June. However, sadly this isn't enough to allow us to restore the old filter code, which just isn't able to cope with the number of users the site has now. It's been necessary to completely remove the old filter code and rewrite it from the ground up, which is a major piece of coding.

We already knew that this code was nearing breaking point and were actively working on new tag filters before the performance problems hit, which is why we were optimistic about introducing the new tag filters quickly. However, coding is always an uncertain business, and it's taken longer than we expected to finish the new code. In writing a big piece of functionality like this, it's not too unusual to run up against challenges while coding that you didn't anticipate up front. In addition, we only have a limited number of coders who are able to take on something this complex: the coder who is taking the lead on this project has been working on it all available hours, but sadly we've yet to figure out how to clone her.

In the meantime, if you've not already seen the Disabling filters: information and search tips post, check it out for alternate ways of finding works on the Archive.

Once again, many apologies for the inconvenience. We thank you for your patience while we work hard to bring back tag filtering!

*coughs* *taps microphone* Is this thing on?

Ahem, after something of a pause, this is (hopefully) the return of our regular AO3 newsletter! Your friendly AO3 news poster (that's me, Lucy!) started off the year with good intentions and a shiny new format. However, between writing various other special edition posts, co-chairing the Communications committee, and dealing with real life, somehow the newsletter kept slipping down the to-do list. The good news is that new Communications staffer Camden has volunteered to take the baton, so hopefully these newsletters will be making a more frequent appearance in the future. So, without further ado, a few updates on the major happenings in recent times.

Major doings: performance, performance, performance

For the last few months, all the AO3 teams have been working really hard dealing with the various performance issues on the Archive. These started to appear in around May and got really acute in June, before we got them under control with a lot of hard work and some emergency measures (which involved 5 code deploys in the space of a few weeks). There's been some heroic work from Coders, Testers and Systems to get the situation under control quickly: we're really grateful to everyone who pitched in and helped out. We're continuing to work on performance, most recently with a RAM upgrade and upgrades to our server software, and we'll keep users posted as new developments arise.

Fanstravaganza!

Our performance crunch was largely down to a gigantic increase in traffic: we had over 1.4 MILLION visitors in the month of June alone! Our invitations queue also continues to grow apace: we recently increased the number of invitations being issued each day to 300, but this is still not keeping up with demand. We're doing our best to keep expanding, but we can only increase accounts so fast while preserving site stability, so we're afraid the queue will probably remain long for a while. :(

Tag filters are coming back - we promise!

As an emergency performance measure, we disabled our tag filters. We know they're much missed, but their absence has enabled the site to run without 502 errors. We'd hoped to have the replacement filters finished by the end of July, but unfortunately they're taking a bit longer than we'd hoped (turns out we have to let coders leave the house now and again). Everyone is working super hard to get them coded, tested, and up on the site as soon as possible - we apologise for the inconvenience in the meantime.

Tags and media categories

Speaking of tags, the new Category Change workgroup recently got off the ground with their discussion of how we organise the media categories on our Fandoms page. This is an issue which we've been chewing over in-house for a really, really long time - we know lots of users find the current categories confusing and/or problematic, and we'd like to come up with a better way of handling them. However, this is a really big can of worms: for example, we know that "Anime & Manga" is problematic as a catch-all category including manhua, manhwa, etc., but we also know that lots of fans are used to looking for anime and manga and would be confused if we scrapped that terminology altogether. So, we're looking to find ways of handling the different categories which are understandable but also less problematic.

The Category Change workgroup includes members from lots of relevant committees: Internationalization and Outreach, Tag Wranglers, Support, and Accessibility, Design and Technology. They will be discussing the various issues and a range of possible solutions.

As part of this process they'll be seeking input from various groups inside and outside the organisation and using that feedback to help identify some possible solutions. They'll also be looking into the technical aspects – for example, improvements in searching and browsing on the Archive in general will open up more possibilities for how we handle categories specifically - so we don't wind up with a great theoretical solution that’s impossible to implement. Tag wranglers have already given some great ideas and thoughts on this issue - they've been discussing it on and off for at least two years - and the workgroup is really looking forward to moving ahead with it. Stay posted for more news on this!

Tag wrangling - a new view!

We've had lots of feedback from users who've said that they'd love to be able to get more information about how tags are wrangled and how they all relate to one another. This has also been one of the most frequent feature requests from tag wranglers, who put lots of work into making the tags link up in a meaningful way and would like their work to be more useful to users. Our awesome coder sarken took up the challenge and did some work to make the tags pages which are currently only visible to tag wranglers visible to any user. This will be an 'alpha' feature when it goes live - we expect we'll get lots of feedback about how it could be better - but we hope this news will be welcome to lots of people who have been wondering what's going on behind the scenes!

For those who are really curious about tag wrangling, the Tag Wrangling Committee are also currently preparing a public version of the tag wrangling guidelines. We hope to have these posted shortly after the tags pages are made public.

What else is up in the world of tags?

The Archive welcomes all types of fanworks! We have plans to make it much more useful for different types of fanworks by adding some more browsing and posting features. However, right now, people use the "Additional Tags" field to make it clear what type of creative endeavour their particular work consists of. Tag Wranglers have wrangled the more common tags like podfic, fanart, fanvids and AMV, and even things like knitting and crochet patterns, and we're always excited to see people tagging for a diverse range of fanworks.

But you might not be aware that the tags we've wrangled go further than just describing the media type and content. Once the filters are reenabled, you'll be able to use the additional tags we've made canonical to further filter those media types by format or length - click on one of the fanwork types linked above, and browse the list, or use the advanced search.

For Fanart, there are tags that describe medium, such as Crayons, or Digital Art. For podfic and video, there are tags which describe the audio and video formats that it is available in, such as Video Format: AVI or Audio Format: MP3. For podfic specifically, there are tags which indicate the length of the recorded work, such as Podfic Length: 0-10 Minutes, through to Podfic Length: 15-20 hours.

Wranglers will add more to the canonical tag lists as we find them, but if there's a media related tag that you'd find useful to be filterable, let us know through a support request or by tweeting us at @ao3_wranglers!

Streaming podfic

We hit a snag recently with our podfic provision when Google disabled their Audio Player, which we were using to enable people to stream podfic. The good news is that we've snagged a copy of the audio player code to host on our own servers, so this will return in our next code deploy. When the deploy has taken place, you'll once more be able to embed podfic, using the following embed code:

<embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" flashvars="audioUrl=MP3_FILE_URL" src="https://archiveofourown.info/static/audio-player.swf" width="400" height="270" quality="best" > </embed>


(Essentially, if you were previously using the Google player, you'll just be replacing the Google url with https://archiveofourown.info/static/audio-player.swf.) Apologies for the inconvenience in the meantime!

Support superstars

The recent increase in users on the site has resulted in a corresponding increase in Support tickets. The fantastic Support team have been amazing at keeping up with all the tickets and giving users the help they need. Their turnaround is really quick and we know that people appreciate their hard work - thanks Support!

Support staffer Yshyn wrote a great post on Support ticket stats which gives an insight into what kinds of questions people ask and how many tickets we receive. One of the things which has been particularly nice for Support recently is the number of tickets which have included some positive feedback for the site, even when it's been experiencing problems. They always pass this onto the other teams and it makes everyone's day brighter - thank you lovely users!

Roadmap, feature requests, and plans

We try to keep users informed on what's going on with the site, although it can be lots of hard work! You can see the details of all our code updates to date in our release notes. Awesome AD&T staffer mumble is currently working really hard to update our very, very outdated Roadmap: this is important as a way of helping us focus our work, and a useful way of giving users an idea of what we have planned. We've also recently started using a new tool, Trello, to manage feature requests from users. Like our codebase on Github and our issues list on Google Code, this is open to the public, so you can now see what's already been requested and vote for the things you'd like! You can also see proposals that were rejected, and why. Support staffer Sam wrote up a handy introduction to our internal tools, and there's also a new AO3 Internal Tools FAQ.

We have limited resources, so we can't always introduce requested features as fast as we'd like (right now, we're focusing on site stability and trying to avoid too many new things). However, we hope that these tools will help people see what's in the works, and we're excited to have found a tool (Trello) which makes it easier for people to let us know which features they're most interested in.

Questions, comments?

We welcome feedback from users! If you have questions or comments, feel free to leave them in the comments of the latest news post, or send in a Support request (if you're reporting a bug, please send that to Support, as they're super efficient - comments on our news posts sometimes get overlooked).

This post by Lucy

A short update on Survey Sundays

We've been working on a rough schedule for our Survey Sunday reports to give the committees involved time to review their data and make sure we systematically cover all questions. Unfortunately, this means that we may not be able to answer your Survey Sunday inquiries in a timely fashion, as the related post might be scheduled for weeks or months off. We've done our best to push posts which people showed particular interest in to the top of the pile, but this hasn't always been possible. Although we warned about possible delays in our announcement post, we wanted to give you a specific heads up about this.

In short: we're still very happy to take questions, but we will integrate them into our regular releases, which might mean long delays. Thanks for your patience!

About the answers

Today we’ll be answering questions #84 to #88. These relate to the OTW website (transformativeworks.org) usage, design and content. We've prioritized preparing this data so that our webmasters can factor the results into their planned OTW website redesign. All questions presented in this post are complete and include final numbers, including the last three open (i.e., free-text response only) questions.

It’s important to note that everyone who replied to Question #84 saying that they hadn’t read the site before or that they didn't remember having done so would have skipped all the other site-related questions and automatically been redirected to the last question in the survey, #89, though this fact will also be mentioned when relevant in the corresponding sections.

Additional notes on Freeform Questions #86-#88

In these questions users were given a text box in which to enter their opinions. This type of question obviously requires more time and labor to answer than one with limited choices. This fact, along with the skipping logic, the fact that these questions were at the end of a long survey, and possibly a lack of awareness of the OTW website likely contributed to these questions having a small number of answers compared to the rest of the survey. (Only 4-5% of total survey respondents answered these questions.) Many categories thus represented the opinions of only a very small portion of the respondent pool, so we have chosen not to represent these results as percentages, preferring to focus on the actual counts.

We categorized the answers to these questions by assigning one or more categories to each (similar to tagging) rather than simply dividing responses into distinct bins. Some comments were quite lengthy and included several different ideas, suggestions, and concerns. For this reason, the number of answers in each category will often add up to a number greater than the total number of respondents who answered a question.

84. Have you read the OTW website (transformativeworks.org) before?

82.9% (4,963) of the people who took the survey answered this question. People who answered either "I don't remember" or "No" were immediately redirected to the last question in the survey (question #89), while people who skipped this question, or answered "Yes", were directed to the following questions related to the transformativeworks.org site.

Only 35.7% of the people who answered this question chose "Yes", indicating that they had read the OTW website. 41.2% said "No", and 23.1% said they didn't remember.

85. Based on your previous visits to the OTW website (transformativeworks.org), how strongly do you agree or disagree with the following statements?

Only 28.5% (1,707) of survey respondents gave an opinion on at least one of the statements. Of the 4,279 people who skipped this question, 3,191 did so automatically by answering "No" or "I don't remember" to question #84. This means that 18.2% of the people who took the survey skipped this question purposefully. Taking into account that only 2,795 people would have seen this question (1,772 who answered "Yes" on question #84 and 1,023 who skipped question #84), about 38.9% of the people who saw this question skipped it.

In general, response count for each statement was nearly identical, and a high percentage of people skipped the question purposefully compared to other sections and questions. The percentage of people expressing a particular opinion on each statement had few variations. Given that the statements are related (particularly "easy to navigate" and "made it easy to find the information I was looking for" – the third option is more ambiguous), this is not overly surprising.

Below we'll analyse each statement separately.

The OTW website made it easy to find the information I was looking for.

28.5% (1,706) of people who took the survey gave an opinion about this statement. This is almost 100% of the people who answered question #85 in any form (1,707).

53.6% (915) agreed in some manner (whether strongly or not), 37.5% (640) expressed neutrality by choosing "no particular opinion", and 8.8% (151) disagreed in some manner (whether strongly or not).

The OTW website is easy to navigate.

28.5% (1,702) of people who took the Survey gave their opinion about this statement (about 99.7% of the people who answered this question in some manner).

53.1% (954) agreed in some manner (whether strongly or not), 35.3% (600) expressed neutrality by choosing the "no particular opinion" option, and 8.7% (148) disagreed in some manner (whether strongly or not).

The OTW website met my expectations as a user.

28.3% (1,696) of people who took the Survey gave their opinion about this statement; this is about 99.4% of the people who answered this question.

56.1% (951) agreed in some manner (whether strongly or not), 38.2% (648) expressed neutrality by choosing the "no particular opinion" option, and 5.8% (97) disagreed in some manner (whether strongly or not).

#86 - What should we improve about the website, in your opinion?

Question #86 was first of the 3 free-form answer questions in the OTW website section, and used the same skipping logic as 85. Thus, only 2,795 people saw the question. Out of this number only 375 (13.42% of those who saw it) answered it in any form. (See the note at the beginning of this post for a description of how answers to this question were categorized.)

Out of 375 respondents, 114 answered to clarify that they had no opinion, 14 gave feedback for a different site (often AO3), 24 stated that no improvements were necessary and that the site was fine the way it was, and 223 pointed out issues with the site or offered suggestions to make it better.

Suggested Improvements

223 survey takers left comments suggesting site improvements or describing site issues.

The largest number of comments involved the overall organization and navigation of the site (100 answers) and the navigation/searchability of the blog (40 answers). Users expressed frustration with not being able to find the content they were looking for, even though that content is present on the site. Some users were only able to find the information after a Google search of the site, others said they reached it in ways they did not expect or that they wouldn't have found the content if they didn't know it was there in first place. There were several suggestions that information on volunteering should be made easier to access and find, and that the tagging of posts should be improved.

Another common theme was the organization of the front page and the general layout (33 answers). Here one of the biggest points was users not seeing the search box. Some users noted it was hard to find, others asked for a search box, having overlooked it. Other frequent topics included adding some static information in addition to the blog and making the path to access project links and information shorter.

A third common type of feedback was requests for improvements to visual aspects of the site (29 answers). These fell into two main themes. The most frequent request was a review of the color scheme of the site both for accessibility and aesthetic reasons. Others requested that the OTW website layout be more lively, with images.

A fourth common topic included missing content and content presentation. 33 comments involved content being missing or hard to find, including information about the OTW, its projects and committees, and its finances, as well as information about helping the Org by volunteering, joining, or donating. Note that some users identified multiple types of missing content, giving a total of 67 answers.

26 comments were related to content presentation. Within the content presentation feedback two frequent issues mentioned were language clarity on the textual content, and a request for more charts, videos, pictures and general visual cues to make the content more appealing and easier to read

The remaining 15 comments covered a variety of topics not mentioned above, such as improvements to the calendar feature, performance issues, search engine optimization and accessibility.

Breakdown of missing/hard to find content mentioned

While the nature of missing content was the focus of question #87, several respondents specified types of content they had tried to access but could not find, had difficulty finding, or felt could be clarified further in answer to this question. The most commonly mentioned content was information on projects and committees (21 answers), information about the OTW as a whole, such as general structure and finances (19 answers), information on volunteering, donating and membership (16 answers) and elections (11 answers).

87. What information would you expect to find on the OTW website that's not currently there?

Question #87 used the same skipping logic as #85 and #86; thus, only 2,795 people saw the question. 253 (less than 10%) of them decided to answer it.

Of the 253, 98 of them answered to clarify they had no opinion on the topic, 6 mistakenly gave feedback on specific OTW projects (often AO3), and 43 answered that they didn't think anything in particular was missing. 106 answers contained suggestions to add new or improve existing content.

Nature of content improvements requested

Although the question was specifically asking about missing content, the responses covered a variety of concerns. 87 answers mentioned missing content or asked for more detailed content. 4 answers asked for more frequent updates to particular content. 21 respondents stated that the information they were looking for was there but hard to find.

Breakdown by type of expected information not found

The topic with the greatest number of requests for more information was the legality of fandom and previous cases (18 answers). It is important to note that half of these (9 answers) were specifically requesting information on legal issues with an international scope. Second most frequent request on information was volunteering and donating. Users were looking for more information on volunteering and making donations (17 answers). Specific requests included more current and detailed information on what types of volunteers are needed, what new volunteers should expect, and what is the difference between becoming a member, volunteering, and donating.

Other common requests were more detailed information on OTW finances and how donations are put to use (15 answers), more detailed and up to date information on projects (13 answers), more information on how the OTW is structured, and information on committees and the Board (11 answers).

The remaining answers contained a variety of content requests such as more information on staffers and volunteers as people, FAQs, translations, resources for existing volunteers, or better access/merging of information originating from various OTW communications outlets.

88. Do you have any other feedback about the OTW website?

Question #88 asked for additional comments on the OTW website on topics that weren't covered by the previous two questions. Since the question was under the same skipping logic as #85, #86 and #87, only 2,795 people saw it. Out of these, 234 (less than 10%) chose to answer this question.

Of these answers, more than half (127 answers) were to state that the respondent had no further comment or that they had no opinion. Answers that only referred to previous questions by number (e.g., "what I said in question 86") with no further comments were also categorized here.

13 of the comments were feedback on other OTW projects, general commentary on the OTW, or other off topic content such as frustration with the length of the survey (this was the question-before-last of 89 questions).

94 answers included further suggestions or general comments on the website.

Nature of feedback on the website

The most common type of feedback given in response to this question was to suggest improvements to the site (53 answers). The most common topics mentioned for improvement were organization and issues about the look of the website.

30 users used this space to state that regardless of their previous suggestions or comments they were overall happy with the site. 14 users thanked the website team or sent them encouragements. 5 answers contained non-specific dissatisfaction with the site as a whole, and 4 answers included comments on particular aspects of the site that worked well for the respondent.