Celebrations are in order, because the Archive of Our Own (AO3) has recently surpassed 16 million fanworks! Incredible timing, as very soon AO3 will also celebrate its 16th anniversary (keep an eye out for that)!

As always, we’d like to thank each and every one of you for contributing to this achievement. Whether you are out there creating fanworks celebrating them in the comments, sharing them online or hosting fandom-related events – or engaging in fandom in any other of the myriad possible ways – you are a cornerstone of the archive’s continued existence, growth and improvement!

Speaking of improvements: Did you know that you can learn about all the latest changes and updates to AO3 by reading our change logs? Our volunteer programmers, code reviewers and testers work tirelessly behind the scenes to maintain the site, combat bugs, and bring you new features. If you are interested in reading the latest releases, simply filter AO3 news using the release notes tag.

Or, if you want to delve deeper into some AO3 and OTW related technical topics, the Systems committee—who manages the OTW’s servers and technical infrastructure— occasionally posts about exciting insights into past tech-related issues with AO3 on their account: AO3_Systems.

If you are interested in coding yourself, you can even contribute to improving AO3’s code, all without becoming a volunteer! You can find more in our Contributing Guidelines on GitHub.

Whether you are a tech enthusiast or here to celebrate reaching 16 million works on AO3, we are once again more than grateful for your support, and excited to share more achievements with you in months and years to come!