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otw_news_feedAre you interested in social media, community management or outreach? Or would you like to assist AO3 users by resolving complaints? Do you want to create videos and connect with fellow fans on TikTok? The Organization for Transformative Works is recruiting!
We’re excited to announce the opening of applications for:
- Fanlore Social Media & Outreach Volunteer – closing 16 July 2025 at 23:59 UTC or after 40 applications
- Policy & Abuse Volunteer – closing 16 July 2025 at 23:59 UTC
- Communications TikTok Moderator – closing 16 July 2025 at 23:59 UTC or after 60 applications
We have included more information on each role below. Open roles and applications will always be available at the volunteering page. If you don’t see a role that fits with your skills and interests now, keep an eye on the listings. We plan to put up new applications every few weeks, and we will also publicize new roles as they become available.
All applications generate a confirmation page and an auto-reply to your e-mail address. We encourage you to read the confirmation page and to whitelist our email address in your e-mail client. If you do not receive the auto-reply within 24 hours, please check your spam filters and then contact us.
If you have questions regarding volunteering for the OTW, check out our Volunteering FAQ.
Fanlore Social Media & Outreach Volunteer
Do you have an interest in fandom history, or in fannish culture and the different tropes, ships, communities and viewpoints that make up fandom? Are you interested in social media, community management or outreach? The Fanlore committee is recruiting for Social Media & Outreach volunteers!
Fanlore Social Media & Outreach volunteers are responsible for writing and editing Fanlore’s promotional posts on social media, planning and running Fanlore’s editing challenges, maintaining Fanlore’s social media channels, and thinking of ways to reach out to and engage with new corners of fandom.
No extensive experience required—only reliability, teamwork, good communication skills, and an interest in fandom and Fanlore in particular. Join us!
As part of our application process, candidates who pass the initial review will also be asked to create a sample social media post for Fanlore consisting of a 280-character tweet and a 100-word Tumblr post promoting a Fanlore article. Further directions will be given upon applying.
Applications are due 16 July 2025 or after 40 applications
Apply for Fanlore Social Media & Outreach Volunteer at the volunteering page! If you have further questions, please contact us.
Policy & Abuse Volunteer
The Policy & Abuse committee (PAC) is responsible for addressing questions and concerns about potential violations of the AO3 Terms of Service. We determine whether reports are about legitimate violations of the Terms of Service, and what to do about them if they are. PAC volunteers correspond directly with AO3 users and collaborate on projects both within PAC and with other OTW committees.
Our main goals as a committee are:
- to adhere to the AO3 Terms of Service
- to make our reasoning and processes as clear and transparent as possible
- to handle all user reports consistently, no matter which volunteer is doing the work
- to keep every case we work on completely confidential
We are seeking people who can:
- Commit to working on cases regularly
- Be patient with rephrasing explanations
- Ask for help when needed
- Collaborate both inside the team and with other committees
- Act in accordance with established rules, policies, and procedures
- Treat confidentiality and user privacy as a priority
You must be 18+ in order to apply for this role. While English proficiency is required, we welcome applicants who are fluent in other languages, especially Spanish (Español), Brazilian Portuguese (Português brasileiro), Russian (Русский), Chinese (中文), or Indonesian (Bahasa Indonesia).
Applications are due 16 July 2025
Apply for Policy & Abuse Volunteer at the volunteering page! If you have further questions, please contact us.
Communications TikTok Moderator
Do you use TikTok? Do you like making videos? Do you want to connect with your fellow fans?
OTW TikTok Moderators create content for the OTW TikTok account, including drafting scripts, recording and editing videos, and reviewing other moderators’ scripts and videos. Moderators address user comments on videos by responding to user questions, removing comments that violate our policies, and flagging comments for video topics. Moderators also try to regularly engage with fandom on TikTok by interacting with relevant, appropriate videos and liking, reposting, and/or commenting.
You must be 18+ in order to apply for this role. We are looking for volunteers familiar with TikTok and passionate about outreach on the platform. They should be able to maintain a consistent level of work, collaborate inside the team and with other committees, ask for help when needed, and commit to making fair decisions about how to handle comments.
Applications are due 16 July 2025 or after 60 applications
Apply for Communications TikTok Moderator at the volunteering page! If you have further questions, please contact us.
at4wtumblr_feedHey, if you did work over the past few weeks to try to stop the GOP’s obscene and murderous budget: thanks. It ended up without the AI regulation ban, the trans healthcare ban, the western lands sell off, and without its stupid name being official.
It passing was a major loss for everyone in this country including the very wealthy and other people who believe they will be able to be better off from it.
But also, it passing was not as bad as it could have been and it took the ongoing effort of huge amounts of people to even make that a possibility, so if you were part of that, from the bottom of my heart: Thank you.
Thank YOU for posting THIS. It’s easy to despair, but there ARE wins, however small.
help with Venetian dialect
Jul. 6th, 2025 06:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dinogrrl posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
little_detailsI've got a fantasy story that's set in early 18th-century Venice. I don't speak Italian, and definitely don't know the difference between the various regional dialects, so I'm looking for some help with a nickname in Venetian.
I have a priest who can use magic, who is not exactly a nice guy. Nobody likes to be around him, he's the kind of person you can just tell will erupt like a magic-spewing volcano the moment something doesn't go his way. My main character is ten when she first meets him and has a very visceral Do Not Like reaction to him, comparing him to a pack of rabid dogs. She is not told his name at the time, so in her mind she dubs him Father Mad Dog (creative, I know).
Several years ago I tried to parse "Father Mad Dog" into Italian/Venetian, and I don't know where I came to the conclusion that it'd be "Don Can' Pazzo" but that's what I've been using. I guess somewhere along the line I was under the impression that cane would get shortened to can when used like this. Is any of this correct? Or do I need another phrase entirely?
OTW Board Meeting, July 20, 2025
Jul. 6th, 2025 03:38 pmotw_news_feedThe OTW Board will be holding its next public meeting from midnight to 1 a.m. UTC on July 20 (what time is that for me?).
This meeting will be held in the Board Discord server. The server will have a team of moderators, a set of rules (including question rules), and community guidelines. The server will remain open even after the meeting, but the channels for meeting and asking questions will be read-only. Board will be posting replies to questions that do not get addressed during the scheduled meeting two weeks after the meeting in the server’s #questions-answers channel.
The agenda will include:
- Decisions made since the last public board meeting
- OTW Board Election
- Updates to the Board Year Roadmap
- Updates to the OTW Culture Roadmap
- Any other business (Questions & Answers)
Prior to this meeting, there is an opportunity to ask questions in advance to be answered as part of the meeting. This allows anyone who wishes to ask the Board questions, whether they will be able to attend the meeting live or not. (The Board will also accept questions during the meeting.)
Questions submitted to this Google Form will be accepted up to three days before the meeting begins or until 50 questions have been submitted. At that point, the form will be turned off. You need to be logged in to a Google account to submit a question. In the future, these rules may be amended to adjust as needed. Further information will be available in the OTW Board Discord server.
at4wtumblr_feedOh, yeah, once again underestimating the commenters because the frequent message from people is that League of Legends fans steadfastly do not want people to play League of Legends.
June 2025 Newsletter, Volume 201
Jul. 5th, 2025 05:46 pmotw_news_feedI. SPOTLIGHT ON FICTIONALLEY IMPORT
Open Doors has nearly finished importing FictionAlley, a Harry Potter archive. With approximately 29,000 works imported so far, it is Open Doors’ largest import yet. You can check out all imported works at the FictionAlley collection. Unclaimed works are currently locked to logged-in AO3 users only, but per Open Doors’ agreement with the FictionAlley archivist, they will be unlocked 30 days after the import is fully completed.
All FictionAlley creators should have received one or more emails with links to claim, orphan, delete their works, or prevent the import of any additional works of theirs in the future. If you were a creator and did not receive this email, please contact Open Doors for assistance. You can also contact Open Doors if you would like to prevent future imports of your Harry Potter works specifically.
Open Doors has two other Harry Potter archives currently in their queue: HarryPotterFanFiction.com and MuggleNet Fan Fiction. If your email address has changed since you were a member of either archive, or you would like Open Doors not to import your works, please contact Open Doors. Please refer to the import announcements for a full list of how Open Doors can assist you with either import.
II. ARCHIVE OF OUR OWN
Accessibility, Design & Technology (AD&T) coordinated with Board and Volunteers & Recruiting to formally decommission the Quality Assurance & Testing (QA&T) subcommittee—thank you to everyone who has served on QA&T over the years. Quality assurance and testing of AO3’s code will continue under the oversight of AD&T’s new QA Supervisor role. AD&T’s latest releases have focused on various bug fixes, code clean-up, and monitoring improvements: check out the release notes. Also, Systems has installed some new Elasticsearch servers and repurposed the old ones as application servers! \o/
Open Doors announced the import of Absolution – The Inugrrrl Memorial, an InuYasha fanfiction memorial archive.
In May, Support received 3,177 tickets, while Policy & Abuse (PAC) received 3,763 tickets—a nearly 40% increase which is likely due to PAC’s recent TOS spotlight series. PAC worked with Legal and Communications’ News Post Moderation subcommittee to review over 1,700 comments across seven posts, with more than 400 comments receiving a reply. PAC will also be recruiting soon, so look out for the upcoming recruitment post!
In June, Tag Wrangling neared completion of phase two of three of their committee-wide guideline discussions on fandom metatags. They also launched a new procedure which streamlines creation of new “No Fandom” canonical tags, which are canonical tags not specific to any particular fandom. The committee plans to post announcements periodically detailing new tags, including one in a few weeks.
In May, Tag Wrangling handled over 610,000 tags, or over 1,200 tags per wrangling volunteer.
III. ELSEWHERE AT THE OTW
Fanlore’s Annual Bingo was a huge success! \o/ 25 participants completed at least one bingo, and 16 got a total blackout. Thanks to everyone who took part!
In July, Fanlore is running a themed month—Fandom in Color—which celebrates characters of color, the contributions of fans of color, and more! Check out their social media (Bluesky and Tumblr) for page spotlights throughout the month.
Communications is now overseeing the OTW’s Convention Outreach division, which was previously run by Development & Membership. If you have inquiries regarding OTW’s convention presence, Communications can be reached through their contact form on the OTW website.
TWC is finalizing their upcoming general issue of Transformative Works and Cultures, volume 46, which will be published on September 15. They are still accepting submissions for their Latin American Fandoms special issue until January 1, 2026.
IV. THE 2025 ELECTION AND GOVERNANCE
Elections announced the 2025 Election candidates; this year’s election is contested, with three candidates running for two open seats in this year’s election. Their platforms are available on the Elections website. Communications has been coordinating public posts, while Translation is working on translating candidates’ platforms.
2025’s OTW Board Election will take place on August 15-18. OTW Members who plan to nominate a proxy should contact Elections by August 6. Specific dates for Q&A and Candidate Chats will be made available on the 2025 Election Timeline page.
Development & Membership has been checking membership for Board candidates and donors who want to vote in this year’s election, while Finance has begun preparing for the 2024 audit.
Board uploaded minutes from the April 2025 Board public meeting to the OTW website. They also approved two new Finance Bookkeepers, held check-in meetings with Legal and the Paid Staff Transition Lead, and continued to work with the Organizational Culture Roadmap Workgroup. The Board Assistants Team’s work also continues on several projects, including the Procurement Policy and Board Discord Server Guidelines revamp.
V. OUR VOLUNTEERS
Volunteers & Recruiting conducted recruitment for two committees—Tag Wrangling and Support—and two subcommittees—News Post Moderation and Internal Complaint and Conflict Resolution—this month.
From May 19 to June 22, Volunteers & Recruiting received 147 new requests and completed 139, leaving them with 53 open requests (including induction and removal tasks listed below).
As of June 22, 2025, the OTW has 944 volunteers. \o/
New Committee Chairs/Leads: 2 Organizational Culture Roadmap Workgroup Heads
New AD&T Volunteers: 1 QA Supervisor
New Communications Volunteers: 2 Convention Specialists and 3 TikTok Moderators
New Communications News Post Moderation Volunteers: Mossie, Vihi, and 1 other News Post Moderator
New Fanlore Volunteers: 90PercentHuman, Hobgirl, Sparrow, and 1 other Policy & Admin Volunteer
New Finance Volunteers: Scott and 1 other Bookkeeper
New Open Doors Volunteers: Bette, devinwolfi, Kelpie, korry, November_Clouds, Pat Zarzecka, scattered_coreopsis, Starlings and 6 other Import Assistants
New Organizational Culture Roadmap Workgroup Volunteers: 1 Goal Supervisor; megidola and 1 other Volunteer
New Support Volunteers: 2 Chair Assistants
New Translation Volunteers: 1 Volunteer Manager; Adri Jaimes, Lia404, ttom1323, and 5 other Translators
New User Response Translation Volunteers: Felipe and friki (Translators)
Departing Committee Chairs/Leads: Nary (Support) and 2 QA&T Leads
Departing AD&T QA&T Volunteers: runt and 1 other QA&T Testing Volunteer
Departing AO3 Documentation Volunteers: Leja, Evolcahra, and 1 other Editor
Departing Communications Volunteers: 1 TikTok Lead
Departing Development & Membership Volunteers: 1 Convention Specialist
Departing Fanlore Volunteers: 1 Policy & Admin Volunteer
Departing Open Doors Volunteers: 2 Import Assistants and 1 Technical Volunteer
Departing Policy & Abuse Volunteers: 1 Volunteer
Departing Support Volunteers: Sandra 002 (Volunteer)
Departing Tag Wrangling Volunteers: ladydragona (Supervisor); Daniailís, MFY11EP, Barbara Thomas, and 3 other Volunteers
Departing Translation Volunteers: 1 Volunteer Manager; Mirjam, DaisyJane, DanielUL, and 6 other Translators
Departing Volunteers & Recruiting Volunteers: 1 Volunteer
For more information about our committees and their regular activities, you can refer to the committee pages on our website.
Manga (Anime) series info?
Jul. 3rd, 2025 01:37 pmgoddess47 posting in little_detailsThe story is the relationship between the main character and the dad, so this is a small piece of the larger story. But I know absolutely nothing about anime (or manga, obviously!) and would appreciate some recommendations of titles that would fit those categories.
Thanks!
ETA: I'm looking for currently available titles and perhaps where they are best purchased (a bookstore, a comic book store, a specialty shop, online?)
ETA2: I'm looking US-centric here.
Five Things Rhine Said
Jul. 1st, 2025 03:57 pmotw_news_feedEvery 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 Rhine, who volunteers as a volunteer manager in the Translation Committee.
How does what you do as a volunteer fit into what the OTW does?
As a Translation volunteer manager I mostly deal with admin work that surrounds the work our translators do – be it talking to other committees about things that are to be translated, preparing English texts for translation, making sure our version of the text is up to date, or getting texts published once they are translated – along with more general personnel stuff like recruiting new translators, keeping a clear record of who is supposed to be working on what and who is on break, checking in with translators and how they feel about their work, that kind of thing. Having been in this role for some time now, I also help with mentoring newer volunteer managers in how to do what we do, at the scale we do it.
What is a typical week like for you as a volunteer?
There isn’t one singular stereotypical week in this role, but some different modes with different focuses that are more or less typical for me:
- Going on-call for a week: Translation volunteer managers work from a shared inbox that serves as a first point of contact for all inquiries related to the Translation Committee. Each week, one or two volunteer managers go on-call as the ones primarily responsible for making sure everything gets actioned and squared away as needed. This usually means spending a couple hours each day working through everything in the shared inbox, including but not limited to assigning tasks to translators, checking on translators who were on hiatus, triaging translation requests from other committees, and responding to any questions translators may have in the course of their work.
- Working on a bigger project, like a series of high-visibility posts (e.g. membership drive, OTW Board elections), opening recruitment, or internal surveys: When Translation does a committee-wide thing, it’ll by necessity involve most or even all of our forty-some language teams, each with 1–8 members. Coordinating all that takes some organisational overhead (and some love for checklists and spreadsheets, along with automations where feasible), which typically means sitting down for a few hours on three or four days of the week and chipping away at various related tasks to keep things moving, including but not limited to asking other people to double-check my work before moving on to the next step.
- Working on smaller tasks: When I want to have a more relaxed week while still being active, I’ll sit down on one or two afternoons/evenings, and take care of a task that is fairly straightforward, like scheduling and leading chats to check in with translators or train people on our tools, creating a template document with English text for translation, drafting and updating our internal documentation, asking others to look over and give feedback on my drafts, and giving feedback on others’ tasks, drafts, and projects.
- Weekly chair training/catch-up chats: We have a regular weekly meeting slot to sit down and talk about the few chair-exclusive things in the Translation Committee, as part of chair training.
What made you decide to volunteer?
I actually started volunteering at the OTW as an AO3 tag wrangler back in 2020, when lockdowns were on the horizon and I felt like I could pick up some extra stuff to do. Growing up bilingual and with some extra languages under my belt, I ended up hanging out in some of the spaces with lots of OTW translators. Then I found out that I could internally apply as a Translation volunteer manager, and the rest is pretty much history. At that point I was missing the feeling of doing some volunteer management and admin work anyway!
What has been your biggest challenge doing work for the OTW?
On a high level, I’d say it’s striking a balance between the expectations and the reality of the work the Translation Committee does, including the sheer scale. On a more concrete level, it’s like this: Being a translator in the Translation Committee is, by default, a relatively low commitment, with a number of optional tasks and rosters that we encourage people to take on, if they have the time and attention to spare. Part of how we ensure that is by dealing with as much of the overhead in advance as we can, as Translation volunteer managers.
This means that for instance, when the English version of a text is updated – which may take about two minutes in the original text – we go through each language team’s copy of the text, make the changes as needed in the English copy, highlight what was changed, and reset the status in our internal task tracker so that it can be reassigned to a translator. This way the changed part is clearly visible to the translator, so they can quickly pinpoint what they need to do and make the corresponding changes in the translated text.
For both the author of the original English text and the translator, this is a very quick task. On the admin side, on the other hand, it’s the same two-minute process of updating our documents repeated over and over, about 15 times on the low end for frequent news post series that we only assign to teams that consistently have some buffer to absorb the extra workload, and almost 50 times on the high end for some of our staple static pages that (almost) all teams have worked on, meaning it’s something that takes somewhere between 30 minutes to almost two hours even when it’s a tiny change and you’re familiar with the workflow.
(And that’s before getting to very last-minute changes and emergency news post translations with less than two days’ turnaround time, where we manually track everything across around thirty teams, usually. Each time that has happened, everyone’s dedication has blown me away. Thank you so much to everyone who answers those calls, you know who you are!)
What fannish things do you like to do?
I like to read, especially if it’s something that plays around with worldbuilding or other things that were left unsaid in canon. I wish there were more hours in the day so that I can pick up some of my creative projects again. I suppose some of my coding projects like my AO3 userscripts and my AO3 Saved Filters bookmarklet also count as fannish?
Now that our volunteer’s said five things about what they do, it’s your turn to ask one more thing! Feel free to ask about their work in the comments. Or if you’d like, you can check out earlier Five Things posts.
The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan-run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.
Rebuilding journal search again
Jun. 30th, 2025 03:18 pmalierak posting in ![[site community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/comm_staff.png){kind=small}
dw_maintenanceMeanwhile search services should be running, but probably returning no results or incomplete results for most queries.
if you’re in Europe PLEASE consider signing the Stop Destroying Games initiative. the deadline
Jun. 29th, 2025 09:08 pmat4wtumblr_feedif you’re in Europe PLEASE consider signing the Stop Destroying Games initiative. the deadline is July 31st 2025. i’ve posted about it before; it aims to create legislation for publishers to stop killing the games you pay for and to provide an end-of-life plan for live-service products. thank you!!!
at4wtumblr_feedProbably not ALL of them. The manga ones I'm more reluctant to do because I got hit by a copyright claim on the Uzumaki stuff, but there's still plenty to revisit.
at4wtumblr_feedNah. I think most people understand that something like that they may not get is a reference to a past video they just haven't watched. I also follow the words said by Joel Hodgson once: "We never say 'nobody will get this.' We always say 'The RIGHT people will get this.'"
Otherwise... yeah, I suggest new or casual viewers check out more! You may become exposed to some media you never saw before, a lot of wackiness and weirdness, or just some half-way decent dad jokes from me. =)
TOS Spotlight: Commercial Promotion
Jun. 28th, 2025 05:27 pmotw_news_feedThe 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.
For our last post in this series, we’ll be talking about our non-commercialization policy. AO3 doesn’t allow users to engage in commercial promotion of any type, which includes everything from paywalls to tip jars, and quite a lot in between. In this post, we’ll discuss why AO3 doesn’t allow commercialization, what kinds of activities are considered to be commercial promotion, and what to do if you see commercial promotion on AO3.
Don’t go looking for things to report.
Please do not start searching for works to report after reading this post. We know that commercial promotion frequently appears 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.
What is commercial promotion?
Commercial promotion covers all references or links to commercial sites, monetized features of non-commercial sites, and anything else that makes it clear someone is asking for or has received financial contributions.
On AO3, you can’t encourage anyone to give other people money, or talk about anyone having given people money in the past. This applies whether you are promoting yourself or a friend, or even if you’re collecting donations for other people or causes. If there is money changing hands, then it likely violates AO3’s TOS.
AO3 is a non-commercial space.
AO3 was created and is managed by the Organization for Transformative Works (OTW), a nonprofit organization committed to the defense and protection of fanworks from commercial exploitation and legal challenges. The OTW is entirely staffed by unpaid volunteers, and AO3 is itself entirely non-commercial. No one involved in AO3’s creation or management profits from it. The site is made available free of charge to all fans who wish to share their works with other fans and fan communities.
We understand that many people today choose to monetize their creative activities. However, in order to keep AO3 as the non-commercial space it was designed to be, users are not permitted to engage in any commercial activity on the site.
When you use AO3, you agree to follow our Terms of Service, which includes the non-commercialization policy. This applies to all parts of the site, whether you’re posting a work based on an existing source or creating content entirely original to you.
AO3’s non-commercialization policy applies to the entire site.
Real-world commercialization is banned everywhere on AO3. This includes:
- Profile pages
- Usernames, pseuds, and pseud descriptions
- Works (including all tags, beginning or end notes, chapter notes, summaries, and titles)
- Series (including titles, summaries, descriptions, and notes)
- Bookmarks (including tags and notes)
- Comments
- Prompt memes, gift exchanges, and other collections
- Any other part of AO3
It’s okay for fictional characters in fanworks to talk about fictional monetization. For example, it’s fine if a character has a fictional OnlyFans or Patreon within the story, as long as that commercial reference doesn’t direct the reader to a real-world OnlyFans or Patreon account for the work creator or anyone else.
What are some examples of commercial activities?
There is a wide variety of things that are not allowed under AO3’s non-commercialization rules.
Links or references to any commercial site or service. A “commercial site” is any site whose primary purpose is to facilitate the transfer of money. This includes, but is not limited to:
- Storefronts like Amazon or Etsy
- Crowd fundraisers like Kickstarter or GoFundMe
- Tip jars or membership subscriptions like Ko-Fi or Patreon
- Payment platforms like PayPal or Venmo
Links or references to the monetized features of non-commercial sites. This covers any site that has features you can enable or opt-in to earn revenue, but the primary purpose of the site is social media, sharing artwork, or anything else that isn’t inherently payment-focused. This includes, but is not limited to:
- Paywalls or early-access content like Wattpad Paid Stories or Webtoon Canvas
- Storefronts like DeviantArt Shop or Instagram Shop
- Tip jars or membership subscriptions like TikTok Donation Stickers or Twitch Prime
Previews and other promotions for paid content. This covers situations like excerpts or teasers shared in an attempt to entice people to purchase a book or become a paying subscriber. It also includes references to paywalled or early-access content (e.g. “Patreon subscribers get the new chapter one week early before I post it on AO3”).
Advertising content or services involving an exchange of money, such as buying merchandise, collecting donations, offering paid commissions, or selling published works.
Any other language which one might interpret as requesting or having requested financial contributions, whether for yourself or others. This covers indirect references, euphemisms, or other language intended to get around the TOS. Some examples of this include:
- Thanks for the coffee!
- My ☕ username is the same as my username here
- This chapter is brought to you by my patrons
- You know where to find me if you want early or bonus chapters
- Check out my Twitter to learn how you can donate to me
since I’m not allowed to discuss it here - If you want to hear more about my ideas, talk about fandom, or find more of my stuff for a coin, visit my Tumblr
Solicitation is not allowed, whether it’s for yourself or on behalf of someone else.
Commercial activity is not permitted on AO3. It doesn’t matter if you’re promoting yourself or a friend, or even if you’re collecting donations for other people or causes.
This means that if you paid an artist to create artwork for your fanfic, you’re not allowed to mention that they have a Patreon or use any other language that suggests people should also commission or donate to them. If you like a book by a particular author, you are certainly welcome to gush about what a great book it is, but you can’t link to the Amazon page where it’s for sale or encourage others to buy it.
What is the difference between a commercial site and a non-commercial site that has monetization features?
As mentioned above, a commercial site is a platform that is first and foremost intended to facilitate the exchange of money. For example, while you can use Ko-Fi as a blog, the site’s primary purpose is to encourage people to give each other money. Ko-Fi’s social features are secondary to its purpose as a donation and paid membership platform. This means you cannot link to or mention your or anyone else’s actual Ko-Fi on AO3 whatsoever.
An example of a non-commercial site that has monetization features is DeviantArt, an art gallery that is mainly intended as a place to share artworks. DeviantArt also allows its users to opt-in to additional monetization features, such as the DeviantArt Shop. Because DeviantArt’s paid features are both optional and not the primary reason people use the site, you can talk about or link to DeviantArt on AO3 – as long as you aren’t directing anyone to a paywalled post or referencing DeviantArt’s paid features in any way.
Can I link or mention a social media site where I talk about making money or collecting donations?
You’re allowed to link or mention social media like Tumblr or personal websites like WordPress, even if you sometimes post about commercial activities on those sites. However, you cannot reference commercial promotion on AO3 itself, nor may you link, mention, or give instructions for finding an account, page, or post that is solely promoting paid content.
Statements such as “Follow me on social media” or “Check out my Linktree” are fine. Directing people to an Amazon author page or to the Ko-fi link in your Twitter bio would not be allowed. This includes things like “Check out my Linktree to learn how you can support me” in cases where you are clearly referring to monetary support.
Can I post a fanwork created for a charity drive or for-profit zine?
While you cannot promote, solicit, or otherwise ask for donations on AO3, you are allowed to add your work to a collection or otherwise briefly mention why you created a fanwork, as long as you do so in a non-commercial manner. This means you can say “This was created for [Event]” or “Originally Written for [Name of Person/Zine]” as long as you do not directly link to a donation page or ask others to donate to them.
Keep in mind we also do not permit mentions of monetary transactions, regardless of when they occurred. A note such as “This was a $100 bid for Fandom Trumps Hate” would still be considered commercialization.
I’ve seen authors say their works are commissions. Is this allowed?
You are allowed to gift your work to someone else or otherwise briefly mention why you created a fanwork, as long as you do so in a non-commercial manner. Because not all commissioned fanworks were created for pay, we do permit usage of the word “commission” as long as there is no indication that a monetary transaction was involved in the creation of the work or that you are available to create other paid commissions.
For example, phrasing like “This is a commission for X” is acceptable, but “Commission for my Gold Tier Patron, Julie” or “My client agreed to let me post the first chapter of their commission” isn’t. The context makes it clear that both “patron” and “client” are references to a paying sponsor.
I’ve seen others ask for donations or advertise paid commissions. 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 mentioning their paywalled content or otherwise engaging in commercial activities on AO3, but that doesn’t mean that it’s allowed. All it means is that nobody has reported that content to us yet, or that we haven’t finished processing the report.
What will happen if I get reported for commercial promotion?
First, we’ll review the reported work to confirm that you violated our TOS by engaging in commercial activities on AO3. If we determine that you did, we’ll send you an email telling you to remove the violating material.
If your work can be edited to fix the issue, you’ll be asked to edit the work. Your work may be hidden from other users until you do. If you choose not to edit the work, or if your work cannot be edited into compliance with the TOS, it will be deleted.
PAC will only ever contact you by email, and only after we’ve determined that your work violates our Terms of Service. 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 works that violate our commercial promotion policies, you may be temporarily suspended. Continuing to violate the TOS will result in your being permanently banned from AO3. You can learn more about warnings and suspensions in our TOS FAQ.
What should I do if I encounter commercial activity on AO3?
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.
What about spam comments?
The best way to deal with spam comments, commercial or otherwise, depends on whether the comments are from registered accounts or guests.
How do I report commercial activity?
Although we ask that you do not deliberately seek out commercial promotion to report, if you come across commercial activity 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.
Please tell us exactly where in the work the commercialization is. The best way to do this is to give us a description or short quote that we can search for in order to immediately find the content. If you are reporting multiple works by the same creator, please group all the works into one report and provide this information for each work.
For example, a report of commercial promotion might look like this:
Link to the page you are reporting: https://archiveofourown.org/works/00000000
Brief summary of Terms of Service violation: Commercial promotion
Description of the content you are reporting:
This work by USERNAME advertises a ko-fi in the end notes of chapter 3.
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 advertises a ko-fi in the end notes of chapter 3.Some of their other works also contain commercial promotion:
https://archiveofourown.org/works/23456789 encourages readers to purchase their book on Amazon: “If you’re curious what else I’ve been working on or want to support me elsewhere, check out my new short story on Kindle Unlimited!”
https://archiveofourown.org/works/34567890 contains an embedded image with a Patreon watermark. Underneath, the sentence “If you want more like this, click here” takes you to their commissions price sheet.
You can add more details if you like, but this example provides the basic information we need:
- Who posted the commercial promotion: 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 commercial promotion has occurred, for example by including a quote and/or providing context for a comment exchange. A brief description of the situation 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 commercial promotion?
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 commercial promotion on AO3, or if you want to know whether a particular work contains commercial promotion, please report the work to us as described above. For more information, you can read our TOS FAQ on Commercial Promotion.
If you are still uncertain, you can comment below or submit a question through the Policy Questions & Abuse Reports form.
AO3 Releases 0.9.409 – 0.9.413: Change Log
Jun. 27th, 2025 02:23 pmotw_news_feedIn May and June, we made some security additions for user accounts by adding email notifications when an account’s username or password is changed. We also made some improvements around tag sets and challenge signups. As one more security change, we also permanently disabled image embedding in guest comments.
A special thank you to our new contributors Ashley Tan, dismayonnaise, Grayson von Goetz, Jen Mann, kitbur, and ryelle!
Credits
- Coders: Ashley Tan, Bilka, Brian Austin, Ceithir, Connie Feng, dismayonnaise, EchoEkhi, Grayson von Goetz, Hamham6, Jen Mann, kitbur, marcus8448, ryelle, Sarken, Scott, slavalamp, weeklies
- Code reviewers: Bilka, Brian Austin, Ceithir, james_, lydia-theda, redsummernight, slavalamp, Sarken, weeklies
- Testers: Bilka, Brian Austin, choux, Deniz, Eskici, LilyP, Lute, lydia-theda, Maine, megidola, Runt, Sam Johnsson, Sarken, Scott, Tal, Teyris, therealmorticia, wichard
Details
0.9.409
On May 11, we deployed some improvements to tag sets and added an email notification whenever the username on your account is changed.
- [AO3-5513] – Admins can now successfully create and rename media tags without running into 500 errors or caching issues.
- [AO3-5714] – When a canonical fandom and a non-canonical character or relationship were added to the same tag set, the non-canonical tags were automatically listed under the fandom. However, this is just how the tags were displayed in the tag set. They weren’t really connected to the fandom, which meant they weren’t included in autocompletes and couldn’t be used in challenge sign-ups. We’ve stopped automatically listing the non-canonical tags under the fandom and will instead only do it if the tag set moderators set up an association (which will also make the non-canonical tags usable in sign-ups and help ensure they appear in the autocomplete).
- [AO3-5919] – We updated the code for kudos emails to avoid using a method that wasn’t particularly efficient.
- [AO3-6757] – When an admin hides a comment, any embedded images in the hidden comment will now be replaced with the image URLs.
- [AO3-6844] – We fixed a whole bunch of display and page structure issues on pages that list the tags in a tag set.
- [AO3-6977] – We’ve started spam checking edits to comments from new users and stopped spam checking any comments a work creator leaves on their own work.
- [AO3-6981] – To improve account security, we now send you an email when you (or someone logged in to your account) change your username.
- [AO3-6984] – Our dependency updater bumped our version of net-imap to 0.5.7. It’s not something we use, but keeping dependencies up to date is good.
- [AO3-6988] – We started caching the package installs involved in our automated tests, making each test run faster.
- [AO3-6990] – We bumped our version of the rack gem to 2.2.14 to get the latest security fix.
0.9.410
On May 16, we added an email notification whenever the password of your account is changed. We also made a number of small improvements all around the site.
- [AO3-5712] – Under certain circumstances, it was possible to sign up for a challenge using a character or relationship that wasn’t permitted by the challenge’s tag set. Now you’ll get an error if you try to do that.
- [AO3-6267] – If a draft chapter was added to a work in your History, your History would lie to you and say an update to the work was available. Now it will only tell you an update is available if a new chapter has been published since you last accessed the work.
- [AO3-6627] – Whenever a site admin tried to update the roles for a user who already had roles outside the admin’s purview, those existing roles would be removed. (For example, when a Tag Wrangling admin gave the tag wrangler role to a user who had the Open Doors archivist role, the user would lose their archivist role.) We’ve fixed it so any existing roles will stay in place.
- [AO3-6994] – We fixed an issue that was causing our spam checker to run on comments from accounts with recently changed email addresses.
- [AO3-6005] – We used feature tests somewhere we should’ve been using unit tests, so we changed them over.
- [AO3-6975] – At some point the admin setting for how long to keep around unactivated accounts had become disconnected from the code it was meant to control. We fixed this so the setting once again affects the right piece of code.
- [AO3-6970] – When the Policy & Abuse committee hides a work, you get an automatic email to notify you. To prepare for some future changes, we’ve updated the email text to allow for multiple works in the same email.
- [AO3-6973] – Another account security enhancement: you’ll now get an email when you (or someone accessing your account) change or reset your password.
0.9.411
On May 24, we deployed an improvement to word counts for multichapter works on the Statistics page. We also took steps to fight abuse in guest comments by preventing them from ever displaying embedded images.
- [AO3-3818] – On some specific browsers on certain devices, leaving comments or submitting support tickets would result in an error. We’ve now fixed that.
- [AO3-4190] – Every time invitations were sent, the log on the site settings page updated to say the settings had been modified. We’ve fixed it so it will only say the settings have been updated when an admin updates them.
- [AO3-7000] – One of the external links in the Creating a Skin help pop-up pointed to a site that had been taken over by a crypto magazine, so we’ve replaced it with a new resource for learning about CSS.
- [AO3-6995] – In a previous release, we tried to drop an unused database column. Unfortunately, we had to put it back when it turned out Rails was still looking for the column due to caching. We’ve now made a code change that will let us drop the column for real after a future release.
- [AO3-5270] – The yearly word counts on your Statistics page will now only count words written in chapters posted in that year. That means if you add a chapter to a WIP you started last year, the words you wrote last year will still count toward 2024’s total instead of being added to 2025’s total.
- [AO3-5347] – The notification you get when someone cites your work as a related work has now been prepared for translation.
- [AO3-6092] – A while ago, we unintentionally fixed a bug where the chapter title didn’t display in Entire Work mode if the work only had one posted chapter. Now we’ve added an automated test to make sure we don’t unintentionally break it again.
- [AO3-6684] – The close button on the banner we use for sitewide announcements uses an ×, which typically makes sense if you’re looking at the page, but which gets read as “multiplication sign” if you’re using a screen reader. That was confusing, so we’ve made sure screen readers will now say “hide banner” instead.
- [AO3-6967] – We’ve added a second save button to the top of tag edit pages to make things a little more convenient when the page is long and a wrangler is just changing something at the top of the form.
- [AO3-6987] – Under certain circumstances, we strip embedded images from certain fields. We used to just show the image URL when we did that, but now we show all of the HTML.
- [AO3-6991] – As a safety measure, guest comments with embedded images will always show the HTML instead of embedded images. (This includes existing guest comments.)
0.9.412
On June 5, we deployed a small release with some bug fixes.
- [AO3-6166] – If you knew the ID of an unrevealed work you could access a few subpages of the work, such as the collections page, and find out the title of the work that way. Since that’s meant to be unrevealed, we’ve changed these pages so you can no longer access them if the work is unrevealed.
- [AO3-6937] – We changed the browser page title on inbox pages to a format that matches other user pages: “username – Inbox | Archive of Our Own.”
- [AO3-6953] – We made sure you’ll get an error message if you attempt to clear your History and it fails.
- [AO3-6993] – The Edit Multiple Works page will no longer display a bunch of unusable options when you don’t have any works. Instead, it will simply tell you you don’t have any works.
- [AO3-6550] – When displaying work titles, we used to call a function on them that had already been called. We’ve stopped doing that since it’s redundant.
- [AO3-6948] – We added some code to enable us to monitor the performance of the job that sends invitations to people in the invitation queue.
0.9.413
Our June 16 deploy added the ability to embed media from audio.com in works.
- [AO3-6515] – We fixed an error 500 that occured when a work with end notes was marked as published, but only had draft chapters.
- [AO3-6912] – We changed the browser page title for unrevealed works to include the site name at the end.
- [AO3-6437] – We removed some unused database tables.
- [AO3-6996] – We finally dropped that unused database column and removed the code we added to make that go smoothly.
- [AO3-6235] – Admins from the Policy & Abuse committee can now turn invitation requests on and off from the site settings page.
- [AO3-6588] – Admins from the Open Doors and Support committees can now give users the role that disables password reset emails for their account.
- [AO3-7003] – You can now add embeds from audio.com to your works.