Posts in Archive of Our Own
AI and Data Scraping on the Archive
With the proliferation of AI tools in recent months, many fans have voiced concerns regarding data scraping and AI-generated works, and how these developments can affect AO3. We share your concerns. We’d like to share what we’ve been doing to combat data scraping and what our current policies on the subject of AI are. Data scraping and AO3 fanworks We’ve put in place certain technical measures to hinder large-scale data scraping on AO3, such as rate limiting, and we’re constantly monitoring our traffic for signs of abusive data collection. We do not make exceptions for researchers or those wishing to create datasets. However, we don’t… Read more
Further Changes to Support and Policy & Abuse Responsibilities
As we continue to work on better balancing the responsibilities of our Support and Policy & Abuse committees, we are shifting two further types of issues from Policy & Abuse to Support’s mandate: Fannish Next-of-Kin This is an option we offer that allows a designated person to manage your account if you die or become incapacitated. To learn more about the Fannish Next-of-Kin program, you can read our TOS FAQ on the subject. Please note that if you have a currently-in-process Fannish Next-of-Kin request, our Policy & Abuse team will complete the ones that they have already received. Going forward, if you wish to set… Read more
The Archive of Our Own Reaches Ten Million Fanworks!
The OTW is delighted to announce that the Archive of Our Own has reached ten million fanworks! After hitting nine million fanworks in March of this year, it’s taken only seven months for our users to post the most recent million works. By contrast, it took just under four and a half years after going into open beta for users to post the first million works to AO3. It’s been a year of milestones for AO3 and the OTW. In 2022 alone, we’ve reached not only ten million works but also five million registered AO3 users, 50,000 canonized AO3 fandom tags, and the OTW’s fifteenth… Read more
OTW Signal, August 2022
Every month in OTW Signal we’ll take a look at stories that connect to the OTW’s mission and projects, including legal, technology, academic, fannish history, and preservation issues that are important for fandom, fan culture or transformative works. In the News A recent article celebrating Pride and game modding gave an unexpected shoutout to OTW’s academic journal, Transformative Works and Cultures (TWC):
Changes to Support and Policy & Abuse Responsibilities
In order to better balance the workloads of our Support and Policy & Abuse committees, we are making some changes to who is responsible for which kinds of requests. Policy & Abuse will continue to address Terms of Service violations, and Support will continue to answer questions on how to use the site and address bug reports, as always. But there are some cases which Policy & Abuse have previously been handling, and which will now be handled by Support. These are: Loss of access to an account (for example, if you no longer remember or have access to the email address you used to… Read more