Atlanta Black

Posted by xeno

https://www.transformativeworks.org/tos-spotlight-non-fanworks/

https://www.transformativeworks.org/?p=265143

The Policy & Abuse committee (PAC) is responsible for enforcing the AO3 Terms of Service (TOS). To help users better understand the TOS, we’re posting a weekly spotlight series about the TOS and our policies. We’ll also be reading comments and answering questions on this and our other spotlight posts.

PAC handles both major and minor policy infractions. We get tens of thousands of reports each year about a lot of different types of TOS violations, but approximately half of all reports are about one specific thing: the violations we call “non-fanworks”. In this post, you’ll learn about some of the most common types of non-fanworks, why we don’t allow them, where to put this type of content instead, and what you can do if you see a non-fanwork on AO3.

Don’t go looking for things to report.

Please do not start searching for non-fanworks to report after reading this post. We know that non-fanworks are a problem on AO3. However, when people deliberately search for works to report, we end up getting a lot of duplicate tickets about works that have already been reported. Every ticket we receive is reviewed by a PAC volunteer, so we only need one report in order to investigate an issue. We know it seems like sites only respond to mass reports, but on AO3, duplicate and mass reports increase the time it takes our volunteers to investigate.

AO3 is an archive for fanworks, not other kinds of content.

AO3 has a very specific purpose: to host fanworks, and only fanworks. Our definition of “fanwork” is broad: fanworks can take many shapes and forms, including fanfiction, fanart, podfics, fanvids, fancrafts, fannish non-fiction, original works that use fannish tropes, and more. AO3 was designed by and for fans to be a place where fanworks like these could be safely preserved and shared. We will not expand our mission or services to host non-fanwork content.

What are some examples of non-fanworks?

Works that are not fanworks should not be posted to AO3. These include (but are not limited to):

• Fic searches or requests for recommendations
• Advertisements for roleplay partners or servers
• Personal messages to other users
• Updates, polls, or announcements
• Reaction, blog, or vent posts
• Spam, shitposts, or memes
• Reposted novels or other published works
• Placeholders and other empty works
• Links to or lists of works you’ve read or created
• Ideas or prompts for fanworks
• Requests for other users to provide you with ideas or prompts for fanworks

AO3 has many features that you can use instead of posting a non-fanwork.

There are many AO3 tools and features that are designed to assist you with finding, recommending, and creating fanworks. Please use these features instead of posting a non-fanwork.

• Tags and Search: AO3 has an extensive tagging and searching system, which you can use to browse for works you might be interested in or find a specific work.

• Bookmarks: You can use bookmarks to save or share fanworks hosted on AO3 or other sites. AO3 bookmarks can be organized using tags, notes, and collections.

• Series and Collections: You can make a series to organize your fanworks so that other users know what order to read them in, or a collection to group similar kinds of fanworks together. Fanworks can be placed in multiple series or collections at the same time.

• Prompt Memes: Prompts or ideas for fanworks that you would like to see (or requests for others to give you ideas for fanworks to create) are not themselves fanworks. Instead, you can request or post prompts using a prompt meme, which is a specialized type of collection that lets multiple users share and fulfill each other’s ideas.

• Drafts: All works on AO3 must be fanworks; empty placeholder works aren’t fanworks. You shouldn’t post a placeholder work that has no content, nor should you remove all the content from your work while you’re editing it. If you have a work in progress that you aren’t ready to post yet, please save your work as an unpublished draft instead.

• Profile and Notes: You can share links to your accounts on other sites or provide updates on your writing progress by editing your profile or adding notes to your fanworks.

If you need help using any of AO3’s features, please contact Support.

I’ve seen others post these “non-fanworks”. Why can’t I?

As our TOS FAQ explains, we don’t review content until it’s reported to us. You may have seen somebody else post a fic search or a prompt as a work on AO3, but that doesn’t mean it’s allowed. All it means is that nobody has reported that non-fanwork to us yet, or that we haven’t finished processing the report.

What if I plan to delete it as soon as possible?

Works on AO3 must be fanworks. By posting a non-fanwork, you’re violating our TOS. If someone reports your work to us, we may still take action even if you’ve already deleted the work.

What will happen if I get reported for posting a non-fanwork?

First, we’ll review the reported work to confirm that you violated our TOS by posting a non-fanwork. If we determine that your work is a non-fanwork, we’ll hide the work and send you an email telling you to delete the non-fanwork. In some cases, we may offer you the chance to edit your work instead.

We’ll only ever contact you by email, and only after we’ve determined that your work is a non-fanwork. We will never comment on your work or contact you through social media. Please make sure to keep your account’s email address up to date and check it regularly (including your spam folder), or else you may miss our warning email.

If you repeatedly post non-fanworks, you may be temporarily suspended. Continuing to violate the TOS will result in you being permanently banned from AO3. You can learn more about warnings and suspensions in our TOS FAQ.

What should I do if I encounter a non-fanwork?

You can give the creator a heads up by politely commenting on their work and linking to the TOS FAQ or this post. Alternatively, you can report the work to us.

How do I report a non-fanwork?

Although we ask that you do not deliberately seek out non-fanworks to report, if you come across a non-fanwork while browsing, you can report it using the Policy Questions & Abuse Reports form, which is linked at the bottom of every page on AO3.

Please don’t report more than one user at a time or submit multiple reports about the same user. When reporting multiple works by the same user, please submit only one report with links to each work you’re reporting, so that all information about that user is in the same place.

For example, a non-fanwork report might look like this:

Link to the page you are reporting: https://archiveofourown.org/works/00000000

Brief summary of Terms of Service violation: Non-fanwork

Description of the content you are reporting:
This work by USERNAME is a search for a fanfic.

If you are reporting additional works, please include all relevant links and other information in your report description:

Description of the content you are reporting:
This work by USERNAME is a search for a fanfic.

Some of their other works are also not fanworks:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/23456789 is a request for roleplaying partners.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/34567890 is a list of prompts.

You can add more details if you like, but this example provides the basic information we need:

• Who posted the non-fanwork(s): Tell us their username or if the work is anonymous or orphaned.
• Where we can find the work(s): Enter one URL in the “Link to the page you are reporting” field, and (if applicable) include links to any other violating works in the description of your report.
• What violates the TOS: Explain why you think each work you’re reporting is not a fanwork. A brief description of the work is fine; you don’t need to be very detailed or quote an entire TOS or FAQ section.

You’ll receive an automatic email confirming that we received your report, and our volunteers will investigate when they get a chance. Please be patient and do not submit another report about the same work. While PAC investigates every report we receive, it can take several months for us to process a report, and not every report will receive a reply.

What if I have more questions about non-fanworks?

PAC follows a strict confidentiality policy. Therefore, while you are welcome to ask general questions in the comments of this post, we will not give information on specific cases, publicly rule on a work, or update you on the status of a report you have already submitted. Comments on this post that discuss specific works or users will be removed.

If you think you’ve found a non-fanwork on AO3, or if you want to know whether a particular work is a fanwork, please report the work to us as described above. For more information, you can read our TOS FAQ for examples of fanworks and non-fanworks.

If you are still uncertain, you can comment below or submit a question through the Policy Questions & Abuse Reports form.

https://www.transformativeworks.org/tos-spotlight-non-fanworks/

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Posted by therealmorticia

https://www.transformativeworks.org/ao3-releases-0-9-404-0-9-408-change-log/

https://www.transformativeworks.org/?p=264982

April came with a lot of smaller changes and fixes to AO3. We also made a few bigger improvements, such as fixing gif icons that weren’t animating and updating the way we send invitations to new users. On top of that, we added a confirmation email to the email change process and created a button to delete all your subscriptions. We also made a number of changes to make the work of our Policy & Abuse committee easier as they continue to tackle a wave of spam. Special thanks and welcome to first-time contributors Emily Wiegand, Hamham6, Laura, melo, Michelle Tanoto, niic, and Tom Li!

Credits

• Coders: Amy Lee, Bilka, Brian Austin, EchoEkhi, Emily Wiegand, Hamham6, irrationalpie, Isabel Nunes, Laura, lydia-theda, marcus8448, melo, Metallicity, Michelle Tanoto, niic, sarken, slavalamp, Tom Li, unsafe-deref
• Code reviewers: Bilka, Brian Austin, ceithir, EchoEkhi, Hamham6, lydia-theda, redsummernight, sarken
• Testers: Aster, Bilka, Brian Austin, calamario, choux, Deniz, Jennifer D2, Lute, lydia-theda, megidola, Rachel Linton, Ridicully, Runt, Sanity, sarken, Scott, Teyris, therealmorticia, wichard

Details

0.9.404

On April 2, we fixed gif icons which weren’t animating and deployed a number of small changes all around the site.

• [AO3-5596] – When the boxes on the All Fandoms page were of unequal heights, we’d sometimes end up with a box jumping over to the wrong side of the page and creating a big empty space where it should’ve been. We’ve fixed it so the boxes should now stack up in the correct columns no matter how tall they are.
• [AO3-6751] – When a fandom tag had a period in its name, the “Relationships by Character” link on its tag landing page would give a 404 error. We’ve fixed that by properly escaping the periods in the link.
• [AO3-6939] – We’ve added more information to the browser page title for various collection pages, so now they include which page you’re on in addition to the collection title (e.g., “Collection Title – Profile” or “Collection Title – Fandoms”).
• [AO3-6942] – The page where a Policy & Abuse admin confirms the deletion of a spammer’s works and comments had the browser page title “Confirm Delete User Creations Admin User.” This was computer-generated gobbledygook, so we changed it to “Confirm Deletion of User Creations,” which is at least marginally better.
• [AO3-6955] – When we changed the code library we use for icons across the site, animated gif icons stopped being animated. We’ve fixed this so gif icons, including icons uploaded before this release, are now animated again.
• [AO3-6799] – Our Support and Policy & Abuse committees needed to move some things around in their ticket trackers, so we moved some things around in the code to make sure ticket information still ends up in the right place.
• [AO3-5744] – If the URL you entered when importing a work redirected you to a different URL, you’d get a 500 error. We’ve fixed it so the work will still get imported.
• [AO3-6949] – We bumped our version of the nokogiri gem from 1.18.3 to 1.18.4.

0.9.405

On April 11, we deployed some improvements for the Policy & Abuse committee. We also made a number of display fixes and increased the reliability of sending invitations from the invitation queue.

• [AO3-5573] – If you tried to change the sort order on your Works in Collections page, the works stubbornly remained sorted by their updated date no matter which option you chose. We’ve fixed it so now they’ll actually be sorted in the desired order.
• [AO3-6597] – We were making some changes around invitation pages, so we took the opportunity to prepare those pages for future translation.
• [AO3-6877] – When you fill a prompt in a prompt meme, we automatically add some text to the work notes linking back to the prompt meme. We’ve updated this text so it will now use the collection’s display title rather than its name, which is primarily intended for the URL. (Please note that this will not affect notes on existing works.)
• [AO3-6957] – We improved the look of the error highlighting when you try to leave an invalid comment, such as an exact duplicate of a comment you previously left in the same place.
• [AO3-6961] – We made caution notices, such as the text informing you what will happen if you change your username, more readable in the Reversi skin.
• [AO3-6672] – When a Policy & Abuse admin needed to change someone’s username to a generic one, they used to need help from someone with database access. Now they can press a button and the username will be automatically changed.
• [AO3-6830] – When someone reports a work to our Policy & Abuse committee, we now automatically add a list of the work’s creators to the ticket PAC receives.
• [AO3-6913] – Admins can now control how often invitations are sent by specifying the frequency in hours instead of days. This helps improve the stability of sending emails by letting us spread the load out over the course of a day instead of doing all the work at once.
• [AO3-6952] – When a Policy & Abuse admin bans a spammer, we no longer submit comments that are marked as deleted to our spam checker.

0.9.406

On April 17, we added an option to delete all your subscriptions to the Subscriptions page. Additionally, we improved error messages all around the site to be more informative and made some other small changes.

• [AO3-6578] – If you marked a work as inspired by a work not hosted on AO3, the ratings in the blurb for the inspiration would overlap the text informing you that the work is not posted on the Archive. We’ve moved the text so it’s now completely readable.
• [AO3-6896] – We’ve made it so long usernames in the kudos section of a work will wrap across lines instead of running off the side of the page on small screens.
• [AO3-6935] – Trying to create a skin with a title that matched an existing skin’s title in every way but capitalization used to result in a 500 error, but now it will give a nicer error telling you the skin title must be unique.
• [AO3-6956] – We reworded the error message you get when you try to make duplicate comments in the exact same spot (for example, submitting the same comment twice in a row on the same work).
• [AO3-6965] – We optimized some of our automated tests by spending less time on posting works.
• [AO3-3524] – We adjusted our HTML parser so you can now use media embeds from 4shared.com in your works.
• [AO3-6401] – If an OTW volunteer tries to leave kudos while logged in to their committee’s official account, they’ll get an error message telling them to log in with their personal account instead.
• [AO3-6711] – Your subscriptions page now has an option to delete all of your subscriptions. (You can also delete all subscriptions of a certain type, such as work subscriptions, by going to the page listing that kind of subscription.) Don’t worry, all of these buttons come with a separate confirmation page.
• [AO3-6849] – To make testing and translation easier, we made a preview of the email users receive when they are gifted a work.
• [AO3-6911] – When a page takes too long to respond, you will now be redirected to a more informative error page.
• [AO3-6945] – When you were entering a tag with a pipe (|) in a field, the autocomplete would return unexpected results if you didn’t surround the pipe with spaces. We’ve fixed that and also sped up the autocomplete search for tags with pipes.

0.9.407

In our deploy from April 24, we improved account security by adding a confirmation email that will be sent to your new email address when you attempt to change the email address of your account.

• [AO3-6113] – Previously, the autocomplete dropdown for tag fields would sometimes stay open after you selected a result from it. It should now always close as expected.
• [AO3-6938] – We updated the browser page title on the Related Works page to include the username of the page’s owner.
• [AO3-6962] – When reviewing nominated tags for tag sets, the tags were unreadable in the Reversi skin. We fixed this and also adjusted the Snow Blue skin to address an issue with hover styles on that page.
• [AO3-6972] – Our dependency updater bumped our code style checker from version 2.21.2 to 2.21.3.
• [AO3-5350] – We updated the email that is sent to you when your work is hidden as spam, so that the email can be translated in the future.
• [AO3-6388] – To help keep your AO3 account secure, we’ve changed the process for updating your account’s email address. We already made you enter your new email address twice to reduce the risk of typos, but now you’ll need to confirm the new address is correct one more time before we start processing the request. You’ll still receive a notification at your old email address, but now we’ll also send a confirmation link to your new email address. Your email address will officially be changed only if you log in and use the confirmation link within seven days.

0.9.408

On April 29, we deployed some improvements to our automated tests and fixed a few bugs on the archive.

• [AO3-5053] – When you updated your username or pseud, the blurbs for your bookmarks would continue to show the old name for some time. We’ve changed this so they will now update immediately.
• [AO3-6136] – Admins can now see the timestamp when a user successfully reset their password in the user’s account history.
• [AO3-6813] – When translated emails were enabled but an admin disabled translations for a specific locale, emails would continue to be sent in that locale. Since that’s not what the admin intended when disabling the translations, we’ve fixed this behavior.
• [AO3-6845] – When an admin searched for invitations sent to a particular email, the result would be displayed in a different format if there was only one invitation. That format was inconvenient, so we’ve changed it to display the same way as a search result of multiple invitations.
• [AO3-6963] – Some normally invisible line breaks in the page title would result in awkward AO3 link previews on other sites. We removed the extra whitespace, so the title in the link preview now looks nicer.
• [AO3-5862] – Back in 2018, we created a migration to remove a column from the database, and then promptly forgot to run it. We’ve updated the migration and didn’t forget about it this time.
• [AO3-6982] – We fixed some automated tests that were randomly failing.
• [AO3-6031] – The file for our automated comment tests was getting quite large and unmanageable, so we split it up into several smaller files.
• [AO3-6980] – One of our automated tests started failing because it was accessing a website that no longer exists. We changed the test to use a mock website instead.
• [AO3-6974] – We bumped our version of the nokogiri gem again, this time to 1.18.8.

https://www.transformativeworks.org/ao3-releases-0-9-404-0-9-408-change-log/

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Posted by Sveritas

https://www.transformativeworks.org/five-things-corr-said/

https://www.transformativeworks.org/?p=264875

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 corr, who volunteers in the Volunteers and Recruiting Committee.

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

As a Volunteers & Recruiting (VolCom) volunteer, I help keep the OTW running from an organisational point of view. We run recruitment, offering many recruitment rounds each year so every committee has enough volunteers for their work, while managing onboarding, departures, and tool access for all volunteers. Behind those tasks is a lot of documentation that we need to keep up to date, so document reviews are a huge part of what we do. We also have various projects: one example is that we do something to show our appreciation to all our volunteers on International Volunteer Day in December each year. Other examples are the development of a Volunteer Handbook for new volunteers, the development of a Chair Training Plan, or the implementation of new tools to help the organisation run smoothly.

What is a typical week like for you as a volunteer?
It depends. I mainly focus on cases, document reviews, and projects. Some weeks, I’ll be up to my knees in document reviews or planning/implementing a project, other weeks I’ll mostly work on cases. Cases can be about so many different things—assistance with tools, role onboardings or departures, name changes, updating our volunteer database to account for changes in a volunteer’s record, and all other questions our volunteers or interested not-yet-volunteers might have that are about the volunteering experience in general and not specific to one of the other committees.

When we have new Volcom volunteers, I help show them how everything works—I love training people, so that’s a lot of fun for me. We also have regular working parties within our committee and all try to attend at least one each week, and I look at our committee chats at least two to three times a day and keep an eye on all the incoming requests.

What made you decide to volunteer?
I’ve been a user of the Archive for about a decade. I’m not a native English speaker and was mostly active in my native language’s fandom corner in the 00s and early 10s, so I only learned about the Archive’s existence after becoming fluent enough to enjoy writing and reading in English. Since then, I’ve been an avid fan: I firmly believe in the mission behind protecting all transformative works, and fanfic has kept me company through many stages of my life.

I also wanted to get more in contact with fandom-loving people who share my opinion about maximum inclusiveness of content, and I am a very curious person who likes to peek behind the scenes and understand how things work, so it was honestly just a matter of time until I applied. The last part is, apart from our committee’s work involving many to-do lists and my passionate love for to-do lists, also the reason why I love volunteering for Volcom specifically: we interact with every part of the OTW, so I get to see and learn a lot about the organisation and how it works.

What has been your biggest challenge doing work for the OTW?
Last summer, I tabled at a convention for the OTW. It was incredibly fun, and the mix of people who got excited about meeting “the AO3 people” and people who I got to explain our mission to was amazing. On a few noteworthy occasions, I even got to explain to people what fanfiction is, and I know of at least two people who googled it and got excited about reading more stories for books they enjoyed! It was a very big challenge for me, because I’m not a particularly talkative person, but I’d do it again in a heartbeat. Getting to talk about the OTW and especially being able to tell people about all of our other projects aside from the Archive was so much fun and incredibly rewarding.

What fannish things do you like to do?
I’m a writer and a reader. My main fandom is All For The Game, but if a hook is compelling, I’m willing to read almost any fandom. I love dark stuff – I’m one of those people who actively search for the Major Character Death warning and who find Dead Doves very intriguing! I’m active on a few fandom-related Discord servers, and I often sign up for exchanges or challenges (I keep telling myself that this time, there will be a prompt that matches a story that already lives in my head, and then completely unexpectedly get too excited about an entirely unrelated prompt. I have hundreds of half-written stories, snippets, or prompts that all wait to see the light of day).

Also, I have developed a special interest in the Omegaverse. I can talk for hours about why I think it’s an incredibly interesting genre to write in and why there is sooo much interesting worldbuilding cooked into the premise. This has gotten to the point where people listened to me hold a presentation about it for over an hour, and I have become the resident Omegaverse expert in at least one Discord server and two friend groups. Recently, I was tagged with “i need your omegaverse PowerPoint, it’s an emergency” and I am pretty proud of that. Let it be known that I am always ready to help with an Omegaverse emergency!

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.

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