Who We Are

The Support team helps resolve technical problems experienced by users, answer their questions about the Archive of Our Own (AO3), pass on user feedback and requests to coders and designers, testers, and tag wranglers, and forwards other questions and feedback to the relevant committees. Support serves as the main line of communication between AO3 users and the various other committees involved with running and managing AO3.

Our guiding principles are responsiveness, transparency, and confidentiality. This means that we aim to respond to users in a helpful and timely manner, to be as open as possible with both users and other committees, and to respect user privacy when handling sensitive or confidential information. As part of our role, we may have access to confidential information, but we will not reveal a user’s identity or contact information, even internally with other committees, unless that information is necessary for helping to resolve an issue. We will not discuss the contents of specific tickets publicly, although we may release aggregate information such as overall number of tickets or general trends.

We take a report from a single user as seriously as inquiries from dozens of users. Please be aware that additional reports of the same issue, unless you have new information to add, are not necessary, and indeed may only slow our work by increasing the number of tickets we need to reply to. If you resolve your issue on your own before we are able to reply, however, it’s fine to submit a new ticket to let us know!

We are an all-volunteer team that communicates with users and each other via written text, and we have volunteers located in many countries. If we don’t have a Support volunteer who speaks the language a user contacts us in, we will work with the Translation committee so that we can reply to them in their preferred language. Currently we receive anywhere between 2000 to 3000 tickets a month.

What We Do (And Do Not Do)

On a daily basis, users send in requests for help with account issues, reports of problems using AO3, questions about the site’s features, and suggestions for future development via AO3’s Technical Support & Feedback Form. Support receives all of these tickets via our tracking software, and our volunteers self-assign the tickets they will respond to, depending on their available time, familiarity with the feature or issue in question, or language skills.

Tickets do not always get handled in the order in which we receive them. Some issues can be answered very quickly, while others require more time to diagnose the cause of the problem, run tests, or communicate with other teams involved. Some issues may have high priority (such as reports of site-breaking bugs) while others might be less urgent (requests for new site features). Response times may also vary depending on the current ticket load and team members’ availability. Each reply is normally reviewed by at least one other staff member who serves as a “beta” to catch any errors, omissions, or typos, before the reply is sent out.

Other than technical support issues, we also receive questions about AO3 policies and procedures, such as questions about the type of content that is permitted on the site, or inquiries about how tags are wrangled. For issues related to specific tags, we will communicate with Tag Wrangling as necessary in order to answer the question or resolve the problem.

While we can answer general site policy questions, we cannot address issues that are more properly handled by the Policy and Abuse committee. These include reports of possible Terms of Service violations (such as harassment, spam, or plagiarism), reports that your account has been hacked, or detailed questions about the Terms of Service or associated policies. When we receive such questions, we ask the user to contact the Policy and Abuse committee instead.

Questions about donation drives, OTW membership, and premium gifts should be directed to the Development & Membership committee.

Aside from answering tickets, we also handle several other tasks. We keep the AO3 Known Issues page updated. We create internal documentation on bugs and feature requests, and often assist in testing bug fixes or new features. Finally, we collaborate with other committees to provide perspective on issues that relate to Support’s areas of expertise. For example, we provide input to the AO3 Documentation committee on common user questions that might be good to add or clarify in a FAQ, and we consult with Accessibility, Design, & Technology and Systems to track down issues with AO3 that are reported by users.

Internal Structure

Support is a highly collaborative committee that usually consists of 30-50 volunteers led by a chair or small chair team. Some volunteers informally specialize in certain types of tickets that they enjoy most, but this doesn’t require a new role. All Support volunteers are trained to take on all the common ticket types as well as the Support workflows for less common issues.

Contact Us

If you want to learn more about the Support committee, are having a problem with AO3, or if you have any other questions, please contact us—we will be happy to hear from you.