Archive of Our Own

The works of Cardie-ologist/Henrietta Wotton, are being imported to the Archive of Our Own (AO3).

These were the pseudonyms of a much loved and respected member of the online Star Trek: Deep Space Nine fandom in the late 90s and early 00s. As Cardie-ologist, they contributed to zines such as Scaly Tales, and as Henrietta Wotton, they had fics that won the ASC Awards multiple times. Unfortunately, they passed away in 2025. It is thanks to friends that we are able to preserve their works for posterity.

Open Doors will be working to import the works of Cardie-ologist/Henrietta Wotton into separate memorial accounts on the Archive of Our Own.

We will begin importing works by Cardie-ologist/Henrietta Wotton to AO3 after September. You will find them on the Cardieologist_Memorial and HenriettaWotton_Memorial accounts.

We'd also love it if fans could help us preserve the stories of Cardie-ologist and Henrietta Wotton on Fanlore. If you're new to wiki editing, no worries! Check out the new visitor portal, or ask the Fanlore Gardeners for tips.

We're honored to be able to help preserve the works of Cardie-ologist and Henrietta Wotton, and while we mourn the loss of both of them, we also realize that we are fortunate that they had a friend who was given permission to collect and preserve their works on AO3 so that they will not be lost. If you are interested in preserving the works of a friend in fandom and are able to acquire permission to do so, we welcome you to contact us to set up a similar archive memorializing their fannish legacy.

- The Open Doors team

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, OTW Legal Advocacy, and Transformative Works and Cultures. We are a fan-run, donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

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 taki, who volunteers as a User Response Translation Committee Chair, Policy & Abuse Volunteer, and Tag Wrangling Volunteer.

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

I've had a bunch of roles in the OTW, all of which fit into it in different ways! I started out as a tag wrangler, where I canonize and connect tags in my fandoms, helping users more easily find what they're looking for on AO3. A couple years later I found my way into the Policy & Abuse Committee (PAC), where I investigate reports of AO3 Terms of Service violations and help users who have questions about the TOS. Finally, as co-Chair and PAC liaison in User Response Translation (URT), I help run the committee that gets PAC and Support emails in AO3's busiest non-English languages translated so that people can communicate with us in their preferred language.

What is a typical week like for you as a volunteer?

In URT, what my week looks like depends on what's going on in the committee. Routine work like assigning tasks and following up on them depends on how many translation requests we get, and if we're working on a project like a boilerplate translation or having committee-wide discussions of translation standards, I keep an eye on those and help guide them if needed. If training or recruitment is going on, I need to set aside time to update related documentation or review applications. I also handle any personnel issues that come up in the committee, and regularly discuss committee changes and improvements with my co-chair, our volunteer coordinators, and the PAC and Support liaisons.

For PAC, I check our ticket management software almost every day to see if I need to follow up on any cases. At least once a week, I sit down for a longer session of investigating new cases and reviewing other volunteers' cases. Other weekly tasks include working on projects to improve our documentation, and assigning or reviewing trainee tasks when I'm helping train new volunteers (which is often, since it's something I love doing and volunteer for whenever I can).

For wrangling, I try to set aside a chunk of time every week or two to handle as many unwrangled tags in my fandoms as I can. In general, I also keep an eye on my email or our work chat channels for anything that I need to do or discussions I should contribute to in all three committees. The OTW's work chat app is frequently at the top of the list in my weekly phone screen time report…

What made you decide to volunteer?

I'd always thought tag wrangling sounded like a fun way to put niche fandom knowledge to use. So in 2021, mid-COVID lockdown, when I quit one of my jobs and saw that the OTW was recruiting tag wranglers, I thought, why not use my newfound free time to give back to an organization that has brought me a lot of joy?

I joined PAC a couple years later because I wanted to be in a more user-facing role, and I think AO3's Terms of Service and its enforcement are a big part of what creates and maintains the site's unique culture. I also really enjoy the kind of investigative work that we do a lot of in PAC!

URT was created a little while after I joined PAC, and I volunteered to Chair it because I think that as AO3 grows internationally, it's very important for users to get high quality and quick communication from us in their native languages. I've been able to see firsthand the impact that URT has had on PAC's ability to handle tickets in the four languages we currently cover, and I'm extremely happy to have contributed even a little bit to making AO3 more accessible to people around the world.

What has been your biggest challenge doing work for the OTW?

Chairing URT has been very rewarding, and I'm really happy to see how far the committee has come, but it was definitely extremely daunting when we started (we're a very young committee –⁠ in fact, the youngest in the OTW)! We had to figure out a ton of new processes and workflows to follow and, of course, write soooo much documentation. Additionally, since URT is very closely tied with PAC and Support, we had to (and still do) communicate a lot with them to balance the needs of all three committees. These days, we still face some growing pains compared to more established committees, but it feels great to have our core workflows running smoothly and to be confident we'll keep improving.

What fannish things do you like to do?

I love discussing whatever I'm currently into with my fandom friends, some of whom I met through OTW volunteering! I also spend way too much time scrolling Tumblr and reading/writing (mostly reading) meta there. In general I think meta is an underrated form of fandom engagement, I love to seek it out and wish more people knew you can actually post it to AO3. I also read fic of course, mostly in binges every few months when I suddenly get the urge to go diving through a tag, and I have dabbled in writing oneshots, the most recent of which was a joke drabble written for a friend >:)

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 previous 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, OTW Legal Advocacy, and Transformative Works and Cultures. We are a fan-run, donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

I. SPOTLIGHT ON GOVERNANCE

August saw three new OTW Board Directors announced: congratulations to Jennifer Howard, Rebecca C. Moritz, and Theodore Bloyd. Thank you to our outgoing Board Directors Anh Pham and Qiao Chu! Board and Board Assistants Team have begun preparing for Board turnover, which will happen on October 1.

On August 1, Board held a public meeting with 37 attendees. Minutes are available on the OTW website. Elsewhere, ongoing project work continued, including BAT volunteer retention research, drafting training for new Board members who have never served as Chairs, and investigating mental health support options for volunteers.

II. ARCHIVE OF OUR OWN

In July, Support received a record high of 5,321 tickets, with 2,713 of those tickets received from July 24-31. Near the end of July, Systems implemented a block preventing users from logging in if their password was compromised in a data breach from another website and requiring users to reset their passwords before logging in again. This led to a large increase in Support tickets helping users with password/login issues and account recovery. Support is working to help everyone regain access to their accounts, and asks for your patience as they address the higher ticket count.

Policy & Abuse received 5,634 tickets in July, a slight increase which was largely due to a recent phishing scam. User Response Translation received and completed 104 requests from Policy & Abuse and Support.

The OTW's social media moderators fielded many user concerns regarding an increase in AO3 users due to changes to Wattpad's content guidelines. Communications collaborated with Support and PAC to publish a social media statement reiterating AO3's commitment to maximum inclusivity. They also answered media outlets' requests for comment, including an NBC article covering the topic. The OTW's TikTok surpassed 100,000 followers, with a recent video about AO3's minimal data collection gaining over 790,000 views.

Elsewhere at AO3, Accessibility, Design & Technology deployed a large list of bug fixes and small usability improvements, as well as several important security patches. They also published the last set of change logs before version 1.0!

Open Doors finished importing the Watchmen Kinkmeme and announced the import of American Horror Story Fic Exchange.

Tag Wrangling published their August update on "No Fandom" tags, detailing both updates to additional tags and some new relationship tags with Original Nonbinary Character(s). In July, they wrangled approximately over 630,000 tags, or around 1,400 tags per wrangling volunteer.

III. FANLORE

On August 6, Fanlore suffered a data breach, and the site went briefly offline to investigate and address the incident. Systems quickly responded to the compromise, identified the exploitation path, and redeployed all Fanlore's servers. Communications and Fanlore worked to inform users about the incident, detailing what happened and what actions we recommend affected users take.

Due to multiple controls, we quickly determined that the compromise was limited to Fanlore, and neither AO3 nor any other OTW project was affected. Systems is working on a public writeup which will be published on the official AO3_Systems account.

IV. ELSEWHERE AT THE OTW

Communications collaborated with Legal on a news post covering Canada’s Bill C-34, the Safe Social Media Act.

Fanlore is preparing for their Stub September event. This is an annual event dedicated to adding information to very short existing Fanlore articles called "stubs". They're collaborating with the Organizational Culture Roadmap to make some badges in connection with a fun new theme! Stub September will run from September 13 to the 27. Pay attention to Fanlore's social media for further announcements!

TWC is finalizing their upcoming general September 2026 issue and in review for the three 2027 issues. They're also pleased to announce Meihua Lu as their 2026 Fans of Color Prize award winners for the article "From Cinderella to i-woman: Web novels, fandom, and feminist politics in China", published in TWC’s special issue "Chinese Fandoms" on December 15, 2023.

V. OUR VOLUNTEERS

Volunteers & Recruiting offered recruitment for ten roles in August and continued to work on the Code of Conduct rollout.

From July 26 to August 22, Volunteers & Recruiting received 202 new requests, and completed 161, leaving them with 98 open requests. As of August 22, 2026, the OTW has 1021 volunteers. \o/ Recent personnel movements are listed below.

New AO3 Documentation Volunteers: Frederica (Liaison)
New BAT Volunteers: MustardPot (Chair Assistant)
New Fanlore Volunteers: Aud (Social Media & Outreach Volunteer)
New Open Doors Volunteers: homusapiens, Uni, and 3 other Technical Volunteers
New Support Volunteers: Harold Liu and 1 other Chair Assistant
New Translation Volunteers: carroncards, Hennessey, solrosan, and 3 other Translators

Departing AO3 Documentation Volunteers: 1 Editor and 1 Liaison
Departing BAT Volunteers: 1 Volunteer
Departing Communications News Post Moderation Volunteers: 1 Social Media Moderator
Departing Development & Membership Volunteers: 1 Shipping Assistant and 1 Shipping Specialist
Departing Fanlore Volunteers: The Professor (Social Media & Outreach Volunteer)
Departing Open Doors Volunteers: Doogle, Pat Zarzecka, Redwood Trees, and 2 other Import Assistants
Departing Policy & Abuse Volunteers: Joni and 1 other Volunteer
Departing Tag Wrangling Volunteers: President Hades and 9 other Tag Wranglers
Departing Translation Volunteers: LS, Urtin and 2 other Translators
Departing TWC Volunteers: 1 Proofreader

For more information about our committees and their regular activities, you can refer to the committee pages on our website.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, OTW Legal Advocacy, and Transformative Works and Cultures. We are a fan-run, donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

The OTW is turning 19 today! In the past year, we published more than 100 news posts on a variety of topics, ranging from AO3 release notes to our Five Things series to news on Open Doors archive imports, to name a few! If you're interested in following our work more closely, and keeping up to date with our latest news, there are many channels for you to do so.

For starters, you can check out the news section either on this website, or the AO3 homepage for new posts and announcements. If you would like those news to be conveniently delivered to your email inbox, you can subscribe one of our RSS feeds (on AO3 or the OTW website) or to OTW News by Email for either an individual email for each news post or a monthly digest.

We also have official accounts on various social media platforms, which you can find listed on our Where to Find Us page. The OTW currently maintains accounts on

• Bluesky (@transformativeworks.org)
• Facebook (@transformativeworks)
• Instagram (@transformativeworks)
• LinkedIn (Organization for Transformative Works)
• RedNote (@OTWComms)
• TikTok (@transformativeworks)
• Tumblr (@transformativeworks)
• Twitter/X (@otw_news)
• Weibo (@OTWComms)

By following these links, you are guaranteed to be directed to one of our official accounts.

If you want to keep up with news regarding one of our projects or committees, the Where to Find Us page also contains links to project-specific accounts for AO3, Fanlore, and Transformative Works and Cultures. There are also accounts for specific committees listed on this page.

If you want to get in touch with us, you can either reach out on our social media channels or use the contact form on our website. We're always happy to hear from you!

If you're not sure who to contact with a specific question, check out our Contacting the Staff FAQ. For help with AO3, reach out to the Support committee.

As the OTW grows, and new fans join the community, it's incredibly helpful if they are pointed at our official accounts by other fans. If you see someone online looking for information on the OTW, feel free to share where we're available on social media or direct them towards our news pages.

Participate in our anniversary drabble challenge!

In honor of the occasion, join our anniversary challenge, and write a drabble – a piece of fiction that is exactly 100 words long – that centers around the theme "Social Media". Using #OTW19Drabble you can share your work with us on our various platforms, or even post it directly in the comments below this post! If you're posting it on AO3, you can tag it with OTW19Drabble | OTW 19th Anniversary Drabble Event.

A huge thank you to everyone who celebrates the OTW's 19th birthday with us this year! We're so happy to have you along for the ride, whether you have been around for a long time, or just got into fandom. Here's to many more anniversaries to come!

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.

Are you passionate about fostering a safer and more supportive volunteering environment within the OTW? Do you like planning events? Do you like communicating with fans about the OTW and fandom in general? Are you interested in the rescue and preservation of fanworks? The Organization for Transformative Works is recruiting!

We're excited to announce the opening of applications for:

• Internal Complaint and Conflict Resolution Volunteer - closing 09 September 2026 at 23:59 UTC
• Communications Event Coordinator - closing 09 September 2026 at 23:59 UTC or after 60 applications
• Communications Posting Volunteer - closing 09 September 2026 at 23:59 UTC or after 60 applications
• Open Doors Import Assistant - closing 09 September 2026 at 23:59 UTC or after 40 applications

We have included more information on each role below. Open roles and applications will always be available at the volunteering page. We only accept volunteers who are 18 years of age or older. 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 e-mail 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.

Internal Complaint and Conflict Resolution Volunteer

Do you have experience with mediation, arbitration, or conflict resolution? Are you passionate about fostering a safer and more supportive volunteering environment within the OTW?

As an Internal Complaint and Conflict Resolution ("ICCR") volunteer, you will play a key role in maintaining fair and respectful interactions across the Organization. Your work will include reviewing, investigating, and adjudicating complaints, and mediating conflicts. Our team is also in the process of refining the OTW's policies to create a more effective and inclusive volunteer experience. Our goal is to serve as an objective, neutral party for personnel-related issues to help resolve situations with compassion and equity.

Please note that due to the nature of the work, current OTW volunteers who apply for the role will have to resign from all other roles within the OTW to serve on this subcommittee.

Applications are due 09 September 2026

Apply to be an Internal Complaint and Conflict Resolution Volunteer at the volunteering page! If you have further questions, please contact us.

Communications Event Coordinator

Are you excited about bringing fandom communities together, both online and in person? Do you enjoy planning events and making them run smoothly from start to finish?

The Communications committee is recruiting for Event Coordinators to help us plan and execute a wide range of OTW events, both in-person and online. Event Coordinators organize smaller celebrations like writing a celebration post about AO3 reaching a new fanwork milestone as well as larger events like our celebrations for International Fanworks Day or OTW convention attendance. As an Event Coordinator, you would work as a team to devise event programming, collaborate with volunteers and guests, and ensure everything runs seamlessly.

We're looking for people who are organized, communicative, and comfortable working as part of a team. Experience with event planning, project coordination, or community outreach is especially helpful, but not required. We expect you to have an interest in fandom at large and a willingness to learn about the OTW's work.

You must be 18+ in order to apply for this position. If you enjoy organizing projects, collaborating with others, and helping create engaging experiences for fandom communities, we'd love to hear from you!

Applications are due 09 September 2026 or after 60 applications

Apply to be a Communications Event Coordinator at the volunteering page! If you have further questions, please contact us.

Communications Posting Volunteer

Do you enjoy writing and editing? Do you like communicating with fans about the OTW and fandom in general?

The Communications committee is recruiting for Posting Volunteers to help write and publish news posts and reports. Posting Volunteers also help Communications correspond with the public and the media to ensure that accurate information is distributed about the OTW.

We are interested in hearing from those with writing, editing, or similar communications-related experiences. People with experience in customer service or public relations are also encouraged to apply! We expect applicants to have an interest in fandom at large and an understanding of the concerns and activities of the OTW (although we will, of course, provide you with training once you start).

You must be 18+ in order to apply for this role. If you want to help others learn about the OTW, enjoy working with others, and are a good communicator, we'd love to hear from you!

Applications are due 09 September 2026 or after 60 applications

Apply to be a Communications Posting Volunteer at the volunteering page! If you have further questions, please contact us.

Open Doors Import Assistant

Do you enjoy spreadsheets, self-paced projects, and helping protect fanworks from getting lost over time? Are you interested in the rescue and preservation of fanworks? Do you still guiltily—or not so guiltily—love the first fanwork that opened your eyes to fandom?

Open Doors is a committee dedicated to preserving fanworks in their many formats, and we're looking for volunteers to support this goal. The work we do preserves fan history, love, and dedication to fandom: we keep fanworks from offline and at-risk archives from being lost, divert fanzines from the trash, and more.

Our import assistants contribute to our goal by:

• Importing works to AO3 from rescued digital archives and fanzines
• Searching AO3 for existing copies of works that creators have already uploaded themselves (to prevent us from importing duplicate versions when we import an archive)
• Compiling and correcting spreadsheets of works from an archive to be imported and/or tags to use on those works
• Copyediting/proofreading works from fanzines that have been scanned from PDFs (to ensure that the scanned works were transcribed properly by the software we used)

The training is self-directed, and so is the work for the most part, though we also have weekly working meetings/parties for people to all chip in and work on tasks together! Import assistants can generally alternate the types of tasks they work on. At any one time, we usually have several tasks of different types available.

To apply for this role, you must be at least 18 years old and legally of age to open explicit fanworks in your local jurisdiction.

If you're interested, click on through for a longer description of what we're looking for and the time commitment. For your application to be considered, you will be required to complete a short task within 3 days of submitting your application. We do not permit the use of AI tools during the selection process for this position.

Applications are due 09 September 2026 or after 40 applications

Apply to be an Open Doors Import Assistant at the volunteering page! If you have further questions, please contact us.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, OTW Legal Advocacy, and Transformative Works and Cultures. We are a fan-run, donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

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 Magda (she/her), who volunteers as a TikTok Moderator.

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

I think Communications in general does an amazing job of making the OTW a bit more accessible to the average user – we get so many people commenting on our videos who are surprised that “oh, this is the official OTW TikTok!” Archive of Our Own (AO3) and other OTW projects have obviously gotten so much more popular in the last couple years, and a lot of people are interacting without even knowing there is an organisation fully staffed with dedicated volunteers making all of this happen behind the scenes. And I think it’s important for all of these new people in fandom to know what the OTW does and stands for, if only to realise that what they’re joining is a community, not a content machine.

However small their contribution, every single OTW volunteer is making this great work happen, and as a Communications volunteer, I’m super happy and proud to be able to spread the word. I think TikTok is a particularly interesting social media platform for the OTW to be on, since an average post will reach way more new viewers than followers – which obviously comes with its own challenges, but is really great for spreading the word and reaching wider audiences!

What is a typical week like for you as a volunteer?

For me personally, it’s finding fleeting moments across the week to log on and beta scripts, sign off on videos, approve any comments, etc. This is usually five minutes I have while waiting for the train or for the water to boil for my coffee. It greatly depends on my schedule and state of mind how many of these moments I find in any given week, but I try to do as much as I can. And then on the weekend, I’ll have a longer work session where I sit down to complete the bigger tasks like writing scripts and editing videos.

What made you decide to volunteer?

I’ve been an AO3 user for a looooong time, but I wasn’t super aware of all the work that goes on behind the scenes until last year. I was doing a project on fanbinding during my MA in journalism, and I got in touch with the OTW for comment on the legality of the whole thing. I got a lovely – and speedy! – response from Legal as well as the opportunity to interview Rebecca Tushnet. The thing about being a student journalist and trying to get people to agree to an interview is… not many people do. Everyone is extremely busy, I get it, but sometimes it can be discouraging. I loved my experience with the OTW, and I’ve always been a nerd when it comes to fan culture, so I made it a point from then on to make every single project about fandom in one way or another. My lecturers loved it (heavy sarcasm, although I think they learned to appreciate my passion after a while…). I’m going to use this as an opportunity to shout out Transformative Works and Cultures (TWC) as well – an amazing resource for anyone doing any kind of research into fannish things.

Anyway, by the time recruitment opened for social media mod roles at the OTW, it felt like a natural progression for me, so applying wasn’t even a question.

What has been your biggest challenge doing work for the OTW?

This is probably a boring and predictable answer, but juggling everything – a full time job, personal projects, and keeping up with not only my tasks as an OTW volunteer but also trying to keep up with everything else that’s going on within the organisation. It is genuinely wild (and amazing) how much work goes on within the OTW.

What fannish things do you like to do?

I started writing fanfiction over a decade ago – before I even learned English, I would write cringy Violetta fanfic in Polish and post it on a personal fansite. I wrote fanfic quite regularly right up until I started university. These days, I don’t get to do it as much – I only write when something genuinely moves me to a point where I just can’t stop myself from writing something (like Project Hail Mary most recently – it won’t leave me alone, someone help).

These days, my main fannish creative outlet is FANMADE – an indie magazine about fan culture, which I run alongside some amazing writers and artists. I dreamed up FANMADE as my final uni project over a year ago, and I just couldn’t let it go after graduation. We’re still here a year later, the team has grown significantly, and it’s so much work, but it’s also so much fun. Shameless plug incoming (but I was told it was okay, haha) – I encourage anyone who is slightly unhinged about fan culture to check it out. It’s very much a work in progress, but we are getting better with each issue – and above all, it’s a labour of love, as most things in fandom are.

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 previous 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, OTW Legal Advocacy, and Transformative Works and Cultures. We are a fan-run, donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

AO3 Tag Wranglers continue to test processes for wrangling canonical additional tags (tags that appear in the auto-complete) which don't belong to any particular fandom (also known as "No Fandom" tags). This post overviews some of these upcoming changes.

In this round of updates, we continued to adjust existing canonical "No Fandom" tags to add or remove new subtag and metatag relationships. We also continued to streamline creating new canonical tags, prioritizing more straightforward updates which would have less discussion compared to renaming current canonical tags or creating new canonical tags which touch on more complex topics. This method also reviews new tags on a regular basis, so check back on AO3 News for periodic "No Fandom" tag announcements.

None of these updates change the tags users have added to works. If a user-created tag is considered to have the same meaning as a new canonical, it will be made a synonym of one of these newly created canonical tags, and works with that user-created tag will appear when the canonical tag is selected.

In short, these changes only affect which tags appear in AO3's auto-complete and filters. You can and should continue to tag your works however you prefer.

New Canonicals

The following concepts have been made new canonical tags:

• Coronation Ceremonies
• Low Fantasy
• Menstrual Pain | Period Cramps
• PMS | Premenstrual Syndrome
• Menopause
• One-Sided Pining
• One Falls in Love First but the Other Falls in Love Harder
• Royal Weddings

Subtag/Metatag Revisions

Additionally, we continued to adjust existing canonical tags to add or remove new subtag and metatag relationships, which help users find related content and filter in/out content as they browse works on AO3.

• Female Anti-Hero is now a subtag of Anti-Hero
• Sloppy Makeouts is now a subtag of Making Out
• Manipulative Relationship is now a subtag of Manipulation
• Character Turned Into a Ghost is now a subtag of Ghosts

In Other Wrangling News

We recently held guideline discussions about how to handle the canonization of relationship tags associated with Original Nonbinary Character(s). You can view the changes made to wrangling guidelines in the section on Original Characters. As a result of this update, we have canonized and/or updated the following tags:

• Canon Nonbinary Character
• Original Nonbinary Character(s)
• Original Female Character(s)/Original Nonbinary Character(s)
• Original Male Character(s)/Original Nonbinary Character(s)
• Original Male Character(s) & Original Nonbinary Character(s)
• Original Female Character(s) & Original Nonbinary Character(s)
• Original Character(s)/Original Nonbinary Character(s)
• Original Nonbinary Character(s) & Original Nonbinary Character(s)
• Original Nonbinary Character(s)/Original Nonbinary Character(s)

In Conclusion

While some of these tags may be tags and concepts you're intimately familiar with, others may be concepts you've never heard of before. Fortunately, our fellow OTW volunteers at Fanlore may be able to help! As you may have seen in the comments sections of previous posts, Fanlore is a fantastic resource for learning more about these common fandom concepts, and about the history and lore of fandom in general. For the curious, here's a quick look at a few articles about concepts related to this month's new canonical tags:

• Fantasy
• Pining
• Trans Characters in Fandom

While we won't be announcing every change we make to No Fandom canonical tags, you can expect similar updates in the future about tags we believe will most affect users. If you're interested in the changes we'll be making, you can continue to check AO3 News or follow us on Bluesky @wranglers.archiveofourown.org or Tumblr @ao3org for future announcements.

You can also read previous updates on "No Fandom" tags as well as other wrangling updates, linked below:

• Past "No Fandom" Additional Tags Updates and 5 Things Said by Wrangling Volunteers
• Past Fandom-Specific and "No Fandom" Tag Wrangling Change Posts

For more information about AO3's tag system, check out our Tags FAQ.

In addition to providing technical help, AO3 Support also handles requests related to how tags are sorted and connected.​ If you have questions about specific tags, which were first used over a month ago and are unrelated to any of the new canonical tags listed above, please contact Support instead of leaving a comment on this post.

Please keep in mind that discussions about what tags to canonize and what format they should take are ongoing. As a result, not all related concepts will be canonized at the same time. This does not mean that related or similar concepts will not be canonized in the future or that we have chosen to canonize one specific concept in lieu of another, simply that we likely either haven't gotten to that related concept yet or that it needs further discussion and will take a bit longer for us to canonize it as a result. We appreciate your patience and understanding.

Lastly, we're still working on implementing changes and connecting relevant user-created tags to these new canonicals, so it'll be some time before these updates are complete. If you have questions about specific tags which should be connected to these new canonicals, please refrain from contacting Support about them until at least three months from now to give us adequate time to do so.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, OTW Legal Advocacy, and Transformative Works and Cultures. We are a fan-run, donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

On June 10, the Government of Canada introduced Bill C-34, the Safe Social Media Act. If passed, this bill would require social media sites and AI chatbot services to implement design features and safeguards to protect young users, including a duty to make certain content inaccessible, prevent children under the age of 16 from having social media accounts, and enforce age restrictions for accessing visual pornographic content.

While the OTW supports protecting children from online harms, we continue to strongly oppose age verification laws, which threaten users' privacy and prevent open access to information. We also share concerns that blanket social media bans risk isolating young people from social and support networks they rely on.

Bill C-34 would establish a new Digital Safety Commission of Canada to set and enforce standards for online safety. The breadth and concentration of power granted to the Commission –⁠ which consists of just three to five appointed commissioners –⁠ raises significant concerns that the framework is vulnerable to political influence and regulatory scope creep, laying a foundation for internet censorship. Additionally, the burden of complying with the Commission's extensive safety and reporting standards, along with fines of up to $10 million CAD or 3% of the service’s gross global revenue –⁠ whichever is greater –⁠ for violations, risks overwhelming the administrative and financial resources of non-commercial or volunteer-run sites.

Bill C-34 has a long way to go before it is passed into law. Without more details about how platforms will ultimately qualify as regulated services, it is hard to say whether this bill would apply to the Archive of Our Own (AO3); typically, AO3 and other non-commercial sites that do not rely on algorithmic recommendations do not count as "social media" under these types of proposals. Nevertheless, we encourage concerned fans who live in Canada to contact your local MP and urge them to protect access to noncommercial sites, such as AO3 and Wikipedia, and to support freedom of speech and privacy on the internet. We'll be tracking this bill –⁠ and the other bills and proposed bills that have cropped up elsewhere –⁠ as it moves through the legislative process.

Is there a new law that might affect fans or fannish activities in your country? Send us a message about legislation you think we should know about. (Submitting a concern doesn’t guarantee that it will be included in a future Spotlight on Legal Issues post.)

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, OTW Legal Advocacy, and Transformative Works and Cultures. We are a fan-run, donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

The Elections Committee would like to thank all of our candidates for their hard work in this year's election. We would also like to thank our departing Board Directors, Anh Pham and Qiao Chu, for all their work during their Board terms. As previously advised, the Board of Directors is sorry to inform the membership that directors Erica Frank, elected in 2024, and Kathryn Soderholm, elected in 2023, stepped down from their positions on the Board prior to the 2026 election. We are grateful for their service and thank them for their hard work and dedication.

With that, we are pleased to present the results of the 2026 Election. As this year’s election was uncontested, there was no voting.

The following candidates (in alphabetical order) have been officially appointed to the Board of Directors:

• Jennifer Howard
• Rebecca C. Moritz
• Theodore Bloyd

Board turnover will formally begin on October 1. We wish the new members of the Board well with their terms.

With that, the election season comes to a close. Thank you to everyone who got involved by spreading the word and asking the candidates questions! We look forward to seeing all of you again next year.

Best Wishes,
OTW Elections Committee

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, OTW Legal Advocacy, and Transformative Works and Cultures. We are a fan-run, donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

In June and early July, we updated the AO3 Terms of Service FAQ and made improvements all around prompt memes and gift exchanges. We also improved skin previews and the AO3 admin area, along with a few other small fixes.

Special thanks to the first-time contributors charliewhiskee, Gardin233, gemmie, lynn, Naomi Liu, sagittaerys (Olamilekan Aremu), Smaran Jawalkar, Soaphbar, and varram. Thank you also to notpies for alerting us to a security issue!

Credits

• Coders: Aya Sayadi, Bilka, bre-nana, caitlin, charliewhiskee, Danaël / Rever, David Bilsky/Ironskink, Gardin233, gemmie, KooShnoo, Ling-Yi, Luis Pabon, lydia-theda, lynn, Naomi Liu, nicolacleary, Pablo Monfort (VAIRIX), reader-dev-2026, sagittaerys (Olamilekan Aremu), Sarken, slavalamp, Smaran Jawalkar, Soaphbar
• Code reviewers: Bilka, Brian Austin, james_, lydia-theda, marcus8448, redsummernight, Sarken, slavalamp
• Testers: Bilka, Brian Austin, calamario, choux, Cocoa, Lute, lydia-theda, marcus8448, megidola, ömer-faruk, pk2317, Runt, slavalamp, therealmorticia

Details

0.9.482

Our June 8 deploy was themed around improvements to prompt memes and gift exchanges.

• [AO3-5713] - There was a tag set option that would prevent participants in a challenge from offering or requesting characters outside the tag set. However, this would only apply to the autocomplete suggestions, and not actually prevent someone from entering a tag manually and submitting that sign-up. Now the sign-up is actually checked against the allowed tags!
• [AO3-6084] - We now make sure no input is lost if you try and fail to submit prompts for a prompt challenge with a noncanonical tag. We also greatly improved the error message, so you can fix your prompts and try again!
• [AO3-6876] - Some special characters wouldn't be displayed correctly in prompt titles; now everything is tidy again.
• [AO3-7182] - If a prompt had fills that were restricted to logged-in AO3 users only, guests could still see the blurb containing information about the work, even if they couldn't access the work itself. Now everything is hidden from guests, as it should be.
• [AO3-7243] - We prepared three help pop-ups related to creating a work for translation.
• [AO3-7261] - It was previously possible to create a challenge with zero allowed fields for requests or offers, which would indeed make for quite a challenging sign-up process. If you try to do that now, we return an error message to ask for at least one allowed field.
• [AO3-7379] - There were no delimiters in the stats listed in collection blurbs (e.g., the number of works or bookmarks in said collection). You now get more readable numbers such as 11,111 instead of 11111.
• [AO3-7398], [AO3-7399] - The Challenge Sign-ups and Challenge Assignments pages now include your username in the browser page title.
• [AO3-7406] - Moved the gift exchange mailers to a separate file.
• [AO3-7407] - Added an anonymous CSS class to work, series, and bookmark blurbs of currently anonymous works and series.
• [AO3-7494] - Work skins are only meant to apply to the section of the page containing a work, its title, and its notes, but certain combinations of styles sometimes allowed skins to break free of that area. We've made some adjustments to keep them contained.

0.9.483

On June 17, we deployed a Terms of Service FAQ update and made some improvements to skin previews as well as pages used by admins.

• [AO3-4274] - If your work is a remix or translation of another work, and that work is deleted, the Notes section will now say, "Inspired by a deleted work." (You can edit your work to remove the association, if you want.)
• [AO3-6218] - To help troubleshoot problems with challenges or assist in cases of abuse, AO3 admins from our Support and Policy & Abuse committees can now access pages in a collection that are usually only accessible to owners or mods of that collection.
• [AO3-6765] - Made some changes to the message you get when previewing a site skin to make it more helpful!
• [AO3-7397] - You used to be redirected to a random tag page to preview a skin. We've now designated a specific page for this preview, since redirecting to a random page can be unreliable.
• [AO3-7366] - Changed which page AO3 admins use to edit work tags and language.
• [AO3-7413] - The browser page title and the page heading for external bookmark creation now match.
• [AO3-7456] - Updated the Terms of Service FAQ. You can view the differences here.
• [AO3-7447] - We improved the wording of the Content Policy notice on the work posting form.
• [AO3-7453], [AO3-7454], [AO3-7450] - Updated the Policy & Abuse Confidentiality Policy link in our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy, and added a link to the Fannish Next of Kin FAQ item to the Terms of Service.
• [AO3-7474] - Updated the faraday gem to address a security issue.
• [AO3-7476] - We fixed that text-only bylines sometimes contained raw HTML.
• [AO3-7488] - We no longer submit comments that are already deleted or considered spam to the spamchecker when manually marking comments as spam from the console.
• [AO3-7478] - We made it impossible for admins to enable a language for our future translated interface if we don't already have some emails available in that language (since translated emails will come first).

0.9.484

The July 6 release included more improvements for AO3 admins, most notably the ability to preview and save drafts of news posts such as this one!

• [AO3-2782] - We now make sure tag wranglers can't assign themselves non-canonical tags.
• [AO3-4989] - Deleting a bookmark would redirect you to the first page of bookmarks, even when the deleted bookmark was on a different page, or you had applied filters to your bookmark listing. We now make sure you'll stay right where you are.
• [AO3-5696] - We added another check before we send out subscription emails, which means people who are subscribed to the orphan_account will not receive a notification if a user adds a chapter to a work previously co-created with the orphan account.
• [AO3-6779] - If a Policy & Abuse admin previously corrected the language on a work, that change would be recorded as tag edit in the admin area's activity logs. Now it is correctly considered a language edit!
• [AO3-7250] - Conversely, an admin's cancelled or invalid attempt at editing a work's tags (such as trying to perform an operation that results in an error message) would be logged, even though the work remained unchanged. That's also fixed now.
• [AO3-6960] - Admins with posting privileges can now preview a news post or save a draft, like it's long been possible for creative works on the Archive. Yay!
• [AO3-7242] - We prepared four more work creation related help pop-ups for translation.
• [AO3-7421] - We fixed that the CSV export of gift exchange sign-ups could contain unescaped special characters in the sign-up titles.
• [AO3-7493] - In addition to checking an account's age (i.e. how long ago it was created) to determine how many comments that account can be allowed to leave in quick succession, we now also consider how many comments that user has left previously.
• [AO3-7496] - We updated the net-imap gem to address some security advisories.
• [AO3-7498] - We made sure that one of the dependencies of our automated tests can't update without our approval.

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 megidola, who volunteers as an Organizational Culture Roadmap Workgroup Head, Policy & Abuse Volunteer & Supurrvisor, and Tag Wrangling Volunteer & Supervisor.

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

I juggle a bunch of different things within the org, because I like variety!

I started out as a tag wrangler, so I am part of the team of people who look at the tags you all add to your works on Archive of Our Own (AO3) and decide how to connect them on AO3's backend to help users filter things properly. I've since also become a Tag Wrangling supervisor. This means that I am responsible for all kinds of administrative tasks within the committee, helping train and graduate new wranglers, and answering questions or concerns any wranglers might have.

I am also part of the Policy & Abuse committee (PAC), or a PAC cat, as we are also called. (Meow.) We investigate user reports about content that violates AO3's Terms of Service (TOS), as well as make decisions about how the TOS should be enforced. I am a supervisor (or supurrvisor; we commit to the cat theme) for that committee as well, which comes with similar duties around dealing with admin, documentation, and enquiries from other PAC cats.

Last but certainly not least, I am head of the Organizational Culture Roadmap Workgroup (OCR). We are responsible for implementing the goals on the OTW Culture Roadmap, which are all themed around making the OTW a more accessible, equitable, and welcoming place to volunteer.

What is a typical week like for you as a volunteer?

Because I am juggling so many different roles, my weeks also look pretty different depending on what's needed.

Generally, I'll start by logging into our org chat tool and checking what I've missed since I was last online and whether anything is urgent or needs my immediate attention. Then I'll start working down my reminder list of tasks to do. I try to keep a pretty in-depth to-do list, because my memory is Swiss cheese and things will fall through the cracks otherwise. (Thanks, ADHD.)

Which tasks are on said to-do list varies from week to week. The things I do consistently are leading OCR meetings and contributing to various project work, checking my wrangling page to make sure my fandoms are taken care of, and logging into our PAC ticket programme to take care of tasks there. This involves drafting tickets, sending tickets which have been beta'd and therefore signed off on, betaing other peoples' tickets, or responding to user replies. PAC work also often requires me to discuss our policies and guidelines with other cats to make sure we enforce the TOS fairly for all users.

Supervisor work for both PAC and Tag Wrangling depends on which tasks need doing, which rotates based on a lot of factors, including time of year. Usually it will involve a lot of writing documentation, database admin, record keeping, and various emails though. (ᵕ,—ᴗ—,)

OCR project work is really dependent on the specific project. Because so much of the culture roadmap centres around creating new processes or guidelines, a lot of our work by necessity involves writing and editing various documents. We also often find ourselves analysing and summarising survey results or facilitating communication between lots of different OTW committees. The last part especially is something I find quite fun, as it gives me cause to talk to committees and people I wouldn't normally get the chance to interact with in my other roles!

What made you decide to volunteer?

I really care about the mission of the OTW and wanted to contribute. I was around when fandom was much more decentralised than it is these days, and it makes me quite sad to think about how many of these independent fan spaces we lost when the internet became more expensive and more corporate. I am therefore really grateful to the OTW for helping archive fandom history, including through the wonderful Open Doors project. It's also important to me to have a place where we don't have to fear the censorship that permeates so many other online spaces. Being able to enforce the AO3 TOS that cares about protecting the rights of creators is a big reason why I volunteer for PAC.

By nature of being a global, entirely online volunteer organization which has grown tremendously since the OTW was first founded, there are certain challenges the OTW has to deal with as a result when it comes to managing its volunteers. I love this community, and if there is a way for me to help make our volunteers feel as safe and supported as possible, then I would like to do everything I can to ensure that. Hence why I lead OCR.

Finally, I just find categorising things really satisfying, so obviously Tag Wrangling called to me immediately. ٩(^ᗜ^ )و ´-

What has been your biggest challenge doing work for the OTW?

I have to be pretty careful to balance my time properly and assess my commitments to make sure I'm not taking on too much and therefore stressing myself out. When you really care about the work you do and some of it is legitimately fun, it's sometimes easy to forget that it's nonetheless work. Saying yes to too many things or forgetting to take regular breaks can lead to pretty spectacular burnout.

I track the time I spend on volunteering every month to make sure I'm not overdoing it. I also make sure to carve out regular time for my other hobbies, such as the tabletop roleplaying campaigns I am a player in, or going to gigs, museums, plays, and the cinema with my friends.

What fannish things do you like to do?

One of my favourite things is in-depth meta or analysis of my favourite characters or my favourite fandoms' narratives! I adore connecting dots on our little conspiracy boards with my friends and getting pretentious about themes. I studied film theory at university, and now there is no one to stop me from using this knowledge for evil.

I also really like writing and reading fanfic, though as someone who chronically gets invested in vanishingly tiny fandoms and ships, there is unfortunately not a lot for me to read… (◞‸◟；)

I am super grateful to the authors who have written for my tiny fandoms, and thrilled I can contribute to the org that enabled them to share their work with me. I also try my best to contribute fanfic for these fandoms myself in the hopes that someone who may become invested in my niche blorbos in the future will be just as excited to find my works as I was to find works by other authors.

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 previous 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, OTW Legal Advocacy, and Transformative Works and Cultures. We are a fan-run, donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

In May, updates to AO3 focused on improving skins, collections, and gift exchanges, boosting performance across AO3, and addressing several security issues. The Collections page now has options to sort by number of works and bookmarks, and we've added some improvements to tag set nominations and the matching process for gift exchanges. The month also included multiple security fixes for permission issues, strengthened URL import protections, and updated dependencies.

Shoutout to this month's first-time contributors gemmie and Mane Muradyan, and special thanks to notpies and Taxen99 who alerted us to security issues.

Credits

• Coders: Aya Sayadi, Bilka, cayugulan, Céline Bertau, gemmie, Hunter Ada Smith, Jesse Malark, Julian Saxl, kiyazz, Lara Rodrigues, Ling-Yi, Luis Pabon, Mane Muradyan, marcus8448, mjec, Nate Berkopec, nicolacleary, Noah Bravo, Pablo Monfort (VAIRIX), Pearl, Respheal, sarken, Scott Venkataraman, slavalamp, wAO3rker, Yang, zrei
• Code reviewers: Bilka, Brian Austin, james_, Ling-Yi, marcus8448, redsummernight, sarken, slavalamp
• Testers: Bilka, Berix, Brian Austin, choux, Claire P. Baker, LilyP, lydia-theda, marcus8448, Nary, ömer faruk, pk2317, sarken, slavalamp, therealmorticia

Details

0.9.474

On May 1, we released a bunch of miscellaneous bug fixes and updated the text on several pages.

• [AO3-3601] - Deleting a pseud and choosing "Transfer these bookmarks to the default pseud" wouldn't reliably update the default pseud's bookmark index, so the bookmarks appeared to be gone. But they weren't! And now they should show up under the default pseud without a big delay.
• [AO3-4693] - It was previously impossible to delete a collection that contained a challenge (such as a gift exchange or a prompt meme). Now you can delete your collection no matter what.
• [AO3-6348] - In the tag autocomplete, a stray semicolon would sneak into tags with ampersands (&) if those tags also contained a pipe (|). That's fixed now!
• [AO3-7267] - We now serve 404 Not Found errors to users and site admins if they try to access a preferences page for a user that doesn't exist.
• [AO3-7316] - Shuffled some CSS around in the code for site banners. Neater now!
• [AO3-7320] - We now make sure a comment won't be sent to our spam checker for evaluation if it's already considered spam.
• [AO3-7331] - A user's Marked for Later page now displays their username in the browser page title.
• [AO3-7337] - The "Sign-up closes:" time in a collection's blurb now adjusts to the timezone selected by a user in their preferences.
• [AO3-7353] - When you're on your Refused Gifts page, the navigation buttons now indicate that this is indeed the page you're on, and Accepted Gifts are just a click away.
• [AO3-7362] - Updated our takedown policy to add guidance related to requests made under the Take It Down Act (TIDA).
• [AO3-7375] - JavaScript would break in browsers with localStorage disabled or not supported. Now it shouldn't throw up errors anymore!
• [AO3-7376] - We now display a helpful message when you try to delete a pseud you have already deleted (e.g. in another tab), instead of throwing an Error 500.
• [AO3-7405] - We improved the performance of generating the RSS feeds for tags.

0.9.475

Our May 12 deploy focused on collection and challenge improvements. On our Collections page, you can now sort all collections by the number of works or bookmarks they contain. \o/

• [AO3-3764] - It was previously impossible to see all tag set nominations awaiting review. If there were too many to fit on one page, you'd have to review some first to make room. We have now added pagination buttons, so you can access all nominated tags!
• [AO3-6068] - Some code cleanup.
• [AO3-5764] - The notifications we send when someone submits a prompt fill contained very little information about the submitted work. We now include the same information as in subscription emails, so the prompter can review tags and warnings before opening the work.
• [AO3-6106] - Checking the "Approve" ticky for a filled assignment in a moderated gift exchange will now correctly let the submitted work into the collection and mark the assignment as completed.
• [AO3-6277] - If you run matching on gift exchange sign-ups and get no potential matches back, the notification email and matching page will now contain helpful information about the status of your matches, and what to do about it.
• [AO3-6978] - In an effort to speed up a background process during work imports, we created a new table to store the original URLs of imported works. Making sure we aren't adding duplicates to AO3 should be much faster in the future!
• [AO3-7012] - Gift works locked to registered users were hidden from site admins (such as Policy & Abuse volunteers) on gift pages or in gift searches. Now they show up.
• [AO3-7179] - The success message you get when updating someone's membership status in a collection (such as making them an owner, or removing them as a member) now contains their pseud and username, as it should.
• [AO3-7188] - You can now sort collections by the number of collected works or bookmarks!
• [AO3-7239], [AO3-7392] - We prepared several help popups related to posting a work, as well as a line in work-related email notifications, for translation.
• [AO3-7356] - We improved the performance and reduced the load on our database servers when displaying a series.
• [AO3-7400] - The browser page title for a user's Gifts page is now correctly formatted.
• [AO3-7411] - The browser page title for a work now lists both fandoms if the work contains two, and says "Multifandom" for works with three or more fandom tags.
• [AO3-7415] - In a user's Preferences, the site skin options included skins that were just created as a parent for other skins and weren't actually supposed to be used by themselves. That's fixed now.
• [AO3-7422] - We updated the erb gem update to address a security issue.

0.9.476

Our May 15 release focused on security issues.

• [AO3-7385] - Under certain circumstances, it was possible to use the parent skin option to access the title and CSS of a site skin belonging to another user. It was not possible to look for skins belonging to a specific user. If a user included a name in skin titles or CSS (e.g., Darth Vader skin), that name would be visible, but it would not be possible to confirm whether that skin was created by a specific user. We are unable to verify that all or any skins were accessed in that manner.
• [AO3-7420] - We fixed an issue that made it possible to use a POST request to reorder works in series you didn't own.
• [AO3-7443] - We have removed Google from our list of permitted audio embed sources as they discontinued their audio player a long time ago.
• [AO3-7433], [AO3-7438], [AO3-7439] - We updated some gems to address some security issues.

0.9.477

We deployed multiple improvements to skins, including allowing some new properties, on May 20.

• [AO3-6390] - It's now only possible to change the default look of AO3 if you have database access (and not if you're merely logged in as a site admin).
• [AO3-7160] - The username autocomplete when trying to assign a pinch hitter to an assignment will no longer be cut off after the first username.
• [AO3-7189] - If a user applies a site skin containing broken code that renders the site unusable (and prevents them from accessing the option to revert to a different skin), a Support admin can now reset the skin in the user's Preferences.
• [AO3-7345] - We have made the success message for temporarily setting a new site skin more informative.
• [AO3-7388] - Since it's impossible to use a skin that's set to be a "Parent Only", it's also impossible to generate a preview of what AO3 would look like with that skin. We now display an error message if you try.
• [AO3-7390] - We now allow the fill, stroke, and stroke-width CSS properties in work and site skins.
• [AO3-6198], [AO3-6454] - We switched the code library for talking to our spamchecker to our own code, because the library was no longer maintained.
• [AO3-7391] - We fixed some incorrect selectors in some rarely used CSS.
• [AO3-7427] - We changed how we define some config variables to make things easier when using the Rails console.

0.9.478

On May 27, we turned on a setting to hopefully improve overall website performance.

• [AO3-7465] - We enabled a Ruby setting which aims to improve performance of the whole site.
• [AO3-7475] - We switched away from a GitHub Actions dependency that wasn't maintained.

0.9.479 & 0.9.481

On May 28 and May 31, we deployed security fixes for the work import form.

• [AO3-7483], [AO3-7484] - When importing a work from a URL, some URL imports could bypass our proxy and access URLs within the internal AO3 network. We made sure they can't do that anymore.

I. AO3 SECURITY & PHISHING COMMENTS

In late July, Policy & Abuse (PAC) coordinated with Accessibility, Design & Technology and Systems to increase AO3 account security measures against logins with insecure passwords in response to an active phishing comment scam targeting thousands of users. PAC also worked with Communications and Support to publish several social media posts to help users secure their accounts and keep them informed.

We'd like to remind you that AO3 volunteers will never communicate with you about the status of your account through comments on your works. We will also never require payment from users to make an account or to "unlock" features. AO3 is and will always be free to use.

We recommend you verify that the email on your account is one that you have access to and that it is up to date. Please also make sure that your password is secure and unique to AO3. Read our update on insecure passwords for more information.

For general advice on how to keep your AO3 account secure, refer to World Password Day: Keeping Your Account Secure. If you need help changing your email or password, refer to our Archive FAQ questions on: How can I change the email associated with my account? and How do I change my password?

II. ARCHIVE OF OUR OWN

In July, AO3 surpassed 80,000 canonical fandoms! \o/

As of July 10, AO3 is officially on version 1.0. Accessibility, Design & Technology's releases have included internationalization work, documentation tweaks, gem updates, bug fixes, improvements to admin tools, and filters for user collection pages.

AO3 Documentation updated the Statistics FAQ and Your Account FAQ.

Open Doors announced that the Mass Effect Kink Meme will be imported to AO3, and they began importing the unfilled prompt challenges from Forging Ghost.

In June, Support received 3,556 tickets, while PAC received 4,254 tickets. As of July 31, PAC has consistently reduced their ticket backlog for the past six months in a row, and all PAC tickets submitted prior to January 2025 have been closed. User Response Translation received and completed 78 requests from PAC and Support.

Tag Wrangling published a July update on "No Fandom" tags. In June, they wrangled over 595,000 tags, or approximately 1,300 tags per wrangling volunteer.

III. ELSEWHERE AT THE OTW

Communications published an overview behind why AO3 doesn't have an official app and provided some alternatives for specific functionalities. They also formally said goodbye to the OTW's LiveJournal account as the automated cross-posting used for OTW News there is no longer supported.

Fanlore's themed month for July, Fandom in Color, was a big success! Their next editing challenge is Stub September—keep an eye on their social media (Bluesky, Twitter/X, and Tumblr) for announcements about the challenge!

TWC's production team is preparing the 49th issue of Transformative Works and Cultures which will be published September 15, 2026. Their editorial team continued work on the two special issues slated for 2027—Music Fandom and Latin American Fandoms—and their editorial board jury is finalizing the reviews for the 2026 Fans of Color Research Prize.

IV. GOVERNANCE

Elections announced the publication of the first batch of Q&As from candidates, focusing on the future direction of the OTW. They also shared that this year's synchronous candidate chat will be on August 8 at 4pm UTC (what time is that for me?). It will be held in the Elections Discord server.

Board spent July primarily focusing on internal projects and preparing for the public Board meeting which took place on August 1; minutes will be uploaded to the website soon.

Board Assistants Team completed the project to update the static content on the OTW website that they've been working on with Communications since 2024. All pages have been reviewed to ensure that they are up to date, clear, and consistent.

V. OUR VOLUNTEERS

Volunteers & Recruiting continued work on rolling out the updated Code of Conduct and conducted recruitment for five roles across Open Doors, Tag Wrangling, and Translation.

From June 23 to July 25, Volunteers & Recruiting received 321 new requests, and completed 294, leaving them with 55 open requests (including induction and removal tasks listed below). As of July 25, 2026, the OTW has 1,044 volunteers. \o/ Recent personnel movements are listed below.

New Committee Chairs/Leads: Lulu S (AO3 Documentation Chair)
New Communications Volunteers: 1 Chair Assistant and Aquilas (Social Media Moderator)
New Fanlore Volunteers: 1 Gardener
New Legal Volunteers: Amy R (Trademark Specialist)
New Open Doors Volunteers: ahcandy, Faye Wright, Gina-Nicole, GineSage87, Invariance, limethymes, Ro Koseki, and 6 other Import Assistants; Fly-dot-net, navy-yard-elle, TC, and 1 other Administrative Volunteer; and 1 Documentation Specialist
New Support Volunteers: 2 Support Volunteers

Departing Fanlore Volunteers: 1 Graphics Designer
Departing Open Doors Volunteers: Fly-dot-net and 1 other Import Assistant, and 1 Technical Volunteer
Departing Policy & Abuse Volunteers: Iolanthe and 2 other Volunteers
Departing Tag Wrangling Volunteers: Bette, lovemelikesunday, OldScoil, Paula, Potato, and 2 other Tag Wrangling Volunteers
Departing TWC Volunteers: 1 Copyeditor, 1 Outreach and Communications Editor, and 1 Symposium Editor
Departing User Response Translation Volunteers: 1 Translator

For more information about our committees and their regular activities, you can refer to the committee pages on our website.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, OTW Legal Advocacy, and Transformative Works and Cultures. We are a fan-run, donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

Are you detail-oriented and passionate about supporting meaningful work behind the scenes? Do you have an interest in preserving fannish history, wiki editing, or writing help documentation? Do you know your way around the platforms where fan studies conversations happen? Are you a senior PhD student (ABD) or an early career scholar? Would you like to help your fellow fans use AO3? Are you fluent in Spanish? Do you have experience with mediation, arbitration, or conflict resolution? Are you good at administrative tasks and working with people? The Organization for Transformative Works is recruiting!

We're excited to announce the opening of applications for:

• Board Assistants Team Volunteer - closing 12 August 2026 at 23:59 UTC or after 60 applications
• Fanlore Committee Policy & Admin Volunteer - closing 12 August 2026 at 23:59 UTC or after 40 applications
• TWC Outreach and Communications Editor - closing 12 August 2026 at 23:59 UTC
• TWC Assistant Editor - closing 12 August 2026 at 23:59 UTC
• Support Volunteer - closing 12 August 2026 at 23:59 UTC or after 40 applications
• Support Volunteer (Spanish) - closing 12 August 2026 at 23:59 UTC or after 40 applications
• Internal Complaint and Conflict Resolution Volunteer - closing 12 August 2026 at 23:59 UTC
• Volunteers & Recruiting Volunteer - closing 12 August 2026 at 23:59 UTC or after 30 applications

We have included more information on each role below. Open roles and applications will always be available at the volunteering page. We only accept volunteers who are 18 years of age or older. 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.

Board Assistants Team Volunteers

Are you detail-oriented, highly organized, and passionate about supporting meaningful work behind the scenes? The Board Assistants Team (BAT) is looking for volunteers to assist the OTW Board of Directors and the OTW-at-large with essential administrative and project management tasks.

As a BAT Volunteer, you’ll play a key role in ensuring smooth operations by:

• Supporting and completing special projects, both for Board and at the request of other committees
• Moderating Board meetings on Discord
• Drafting and editing communications, documentation, and statements
• Offering feedback to improve workflows and communications

We're looking for volunteers who are proactive, driven, and committed to the OTW's long-term success.

You must be 18+ in order to apply for this role. In addition to the initial application, you will be emailed part two to help us understand how well you understand and can complete the committee's tasks. You must complete both parts to be considered for the role.

Applications are due Wednesday, 12 August or after 60 applications.

Apply to be a Board Assistants Volunteer at the volunteering page! If you have further questions, please contact us.

Fanlore Committee Policy & Admin Volunteers

Do you have an interest in preserving fannish history? Do you have an interest in wiki editing, or writing help documentation? Fanlore is recruiting for Policy & Admin volunteers!

Fanlore's Policy & Admin volunteers are responsible for dealing with the behind-the-scenes support and administrative tasks that ensure that Fanlore runs smoothly. We respond to questions and complaints; shape Fanlore's policies, tutorials, and guidelines; and assist Fanlore gardeners and other editors. No extensive experience is required—just a strong interest in documenting and preserving fandom, good communication skills, and a willingness to work with a team and further Fanlore's mission. Join us!

Applications are due Wednesday, 12 August or after 40 applications.

Apply to be a Fanlore Committee Policy & Admin Volunteer at the volunteering page! If you have further questions, please contact us.

TWC Outreach and Communications Editor

Transformative Works and Cultures (TWC) is an international peer-reviewed Diamond Open Access online publication about fan-related topics that seeks to promote dialogue between the academic community and fan communities. TWC is looking for an Outreach and Communications Editor to help connect our scholarship with the communities who need it. In this role, you'll announce new issues and calls for papers across the fan studies landscape: Bluesky, Tumblr, Discord, Facebook groups, and academic listservs. You'll spotlight individual articles, resurface work from the journal's archive, contribute monthly updates to the OTW newsletter, and help improve the journal's visibility through promotion and indexing. If you enjoy finding the right audience for good scholarship, and you already know your way around the platforms where fan studies conversations happen, this might be the role for you. We're looking for two people for this role (who can apply separately or as a team) who are organized, comfortable with public-facing writing, responsive communicators, and genuinely interested in fan studies and open-access publishing. Familiarity with Bluesky and Tumblr is a real asset; familiarity with the field's scholarly communities is even better.

Applications are due Wednesday, 12 August

Apply to be a TWC Outreach and Communications Editor at the volunteering page! If you have further questions, please contact us.

TWC Assistant Editor

Transformative Works and Cultures seeks an assistant editor as part of building a leadership pipeline for the journal and in the field more broadly. TWC is an international peer-reviewed Diamond Open Access online publication about fan-related topics, promoting dialogue between the academic community and fan communities. Assistant editors work closely with the editor to perform editorial manuscript review, email authors, and research and correspond with peer reviewers.

Under the supervision of the editors, the assistant editors will assist with editorial review of new submissions, managing the peer review process, and communicating with authors. Estimated time commitment is approximately 2-3 hours per week.

Applications are due Wednesday, 12 August

Apply to be a TWC Assistant Editor at the volunteering page! If you have further questions, please contact us.

Support Volunteer

The Support team is responsible for handling the feedback and requests for assistance we receive from users of the Archive of Our Own. We answer users’ questions, help to resolve problems they’re experiencing, and pass on information to and from coders, testers, tag wranglers and other teams involved with the AO3. If you enjoy helping others to learn how to use the Archive and figuring out solutions to problems, you might enjoy being a Support volunteer!

Applications are due 12 August 2026 at 23:59 UTC or after 40 applications

Apply to be a Support Volunteer at the volunteering page! If you have further questions, please contact us.

Support Volunteer (Spanish)

The Support team is responsible for handling the feedback and requests for assistance we receive from users of the Archive. We answer users’ questions, help to resolve problems they’re experiencing, and pass on information to and from coders, testers, tag wranglers and other teams involved with the Archive.

We’re currently recruiting for applicants who are fluent in both English and Spanish (we welcome all dialects!). If you are a fluent Spanish speaker who enjoys helping others to learn how to use the Archive and figuring out solutions to problems, you might enjoy being a Support volunteer!

Our Spanish volunteers will be focusing primarily on tickets from Spanish-speaking users, providing answers directly in Spanish, assisting other volunteers with translation of tickets and answers to and from Spanish, as well as creating and translating documentation when needed.

Applications are due 12 August 2026 at 23:59 UTC or after 40 applications

Apply to be a Support Volunteer (Spanish) at the volunteering page! If you have further questions, please contact us.

Internal Complaint and Conflict Resolution Volunteer

Do you have experience with mediation, arbitration, or conflict resolution? Are you passionate about fostering a safer and more supportive volunteering environment within the OTW?

As an Internal Complaint and Conflict Resolution ("ICCR") volunteer, you will play a key role in maintaining fair and respectful interactions across the Organization. Your work will include reviewing, investigating, and adjudicating complaints, and mediating conflicts. Our team is also in the process of refining the OTW's policies to create a more effective and inclusive volunteer experience. Our goal is to serve as an objective, neutral party for personnel-related issues to help resolve situations with compassion and equity.

Please note that due to the nature of the work, current OTW volunteers who apply for the role will have to resign from all other roles within the OTW to serve on this subcommittee.

Applications are due Wednesday, 12 August

Apply to be a Internal Complaint and Conflict Resolution Volunteer at the volunteering page! If you have further questions, please contact us.

Volunteers & Recruiting Volunteer

Are you great at admin and enjoy the satisfaction of completing short tasks and ticking them off to-do lists? Or do you have experience in CRM or database software, data privacy, managing software access, or other related areas? Volunteers & Recruiting is looking for additional volunteers to help our busy team!

Volunteers & Recruiting supports the Organization for Transformative Works as a volunteer-driven organization by ensuring that volunteers are in the right roles, at the right time, with the right tools.

We recruit and manage incoming volunteers, handle exiting volunteers, handle all committee set up as well as chair and board turnover. We help answer volunteers’ questions about the OTW or the tools we use, or direct volunteers to the right places. We set up tools for committees and subcommittees, mentor volunteers in their work, and track the service of each and every volunteer throughout their time with the organization. We ensure that every volunteer in the organization has the resources they need to complete their work efficiently and effectively.

This recruitment round we’d especially love hearing from applicants who, in addition to helping out with our day-to-day case work, are interested in developing and maintaining documentation (including tool tutorials, committee policies, and our volunteer handbook) and collaborating on committee projects. Shortlisted applicants will be invited to a live text-based chat interview.

Applications are due Wednesday,12 August or after 30 applications.

Apply to be a Volunteers & Recruiting Volunteer at the volunteering page! If you have further questions, please contact us.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, OTW Legal Advocacy, and Transformative Works and Cultures. We are a fan-run, donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

The election season is in full swing! As part of the election season, we have a chat with our candidates coming up soon. You can also find links to the candidates' answers to your questions at the bottom of this post.

Chats

There will be one public chat with all three candidates that will last 90 minutes. Chats will take place in our public chatroom (Discord).

It is scheduled for:

• Saturday, August 8, from 4pm UTC to 5.30pm UTC – Live chat with all candidates (What time is the Candidate Chat where I live?)

During this chat, chat attendees will have the opportunity to ask the candidates questions not already covered in their platforms, bios, and Q&A, as well as to ask individual questions of specific candidates. New questions will only be accepted for the first hour of the scheduled chat time to make sure candidates have time to finish them all.

We hope that you can join us for this chat!

Please note that though the link to the public chatroom is already active, chatting capabilities will not be enabled until approximately half an hour before the chat begins.

Read on to learn more about using Discord.

• On the login page, you'll need to provide a screen name.
• Once you enter the server, you'll find a list of users on the right and a list of chat rooms on the left. Settings are available via the gear icon on the lower left, near your screen name; there you can choose, among other options, whether you prefer a dark or light chat room appearance.
• There are three rooms available to chat attendees who are not candidates or Elections Committee volunteers: general, candidate_chats, and open_chat.
  • General is where you'll find a list of rules for the chats. Please read through these carefully before entering the other two rooms.
  • Candidate_chats is where the candidates will answer questions and debate amongst themselves. Only the candidates and moderator will be able to chat in this room.
  • Open_chat is where all attendees can participate and talk to each other. We ask that you try to stay on topics related to the election. A moderator will be in the room, so if you have a question for the candidates, you can signal the moderator with o/, the candidate's name, and the question. Use o// if it's a follow-up question to the current discussion.

Q&A

When we posted the Board candidates' bios and platforms, we asked the public to submit additional questions for them. Once again, our sincere thanks to everyone who did so! We will be posting groups of questions as the candidates finish their responses, and one has already been posted. The second group of Q&A questions will be posted on August 7th.

To navigate answers by individual candidate, please use the links below:

• Jennifer H.
• Rebecca C. M.
• Theodore B.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, OTW Legal Advocacy, and Transformative Works and Cultures. We are a fan-run, donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

AO3 Tag Wranglers continue to test processes for wrangling canonical additional tags (tags that appear in the auto-complete) which don't belong to any particular fandom (also known as "No Fandom" tags). This post overviews some of these upcoming changes.

In this round of updates, we continued to adjust existing canonical "No Fandom" tags to add or remove new subtag and metatag relationships. We also continued to streamline creating new canonical tags, prioritizing more straightforward updates which would have less discussion compared to renaming current canonical tags or creating new canonical tags which touch on more complex topics. This method also reviews new tags on a regular basis, so check back on AO3 News for periodic "No Fandom" tag announcements.

None of these updates change the tags users have added to works. If a user-created tag is considered to have the same meaning as a new canonical, it will be made a synonym of one of these newly created canonical tags, and works with that user-created tag will appear when the canonical tag is selected.

In short, these changes only affect which tags appear in AO3's auto-complete and filters. You can and should continue to tag your works however you prefer.

New Canonicals

The following concepts have been made new canonical tags:

• 4+1 Things
• Aquarium Dates
• Coffee Dates
• Dinner Dates
• Movie Dates
• Picnic Dates
• Anger Issues
• ASMR | Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response
• Author is Projecting
• Canon - Book & TV Combination
• Complicated Feelings
• Concubines
• Courtesans
• Depersonalization
• Derealization
• Droit du Seigneur | Jus Primae Noctis | Lord's Right of the First Night
• Emotional Breakdowns
• Emotional Vulnerability
• Falling Out of Love
• Fibromyalgia
• Glasses Kink
• Medieval Fantasy
• No Mpreg | Male Pregnancy
• New Game Plus
• Piss Kink
• POTS | Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome
• Reassurance
• Self-Care
• Sex as a Coping Mechanism
• Sex as Self-Harm
• Sleep Paralysis
• Stimming
• Tattoo Artists

Subtag/Metatag Revisions

Additionally, we continued to adjust existing canonical tags to add or remove new subtag and metatag relationships, which help users find related content and filter in/out content as they browse works on AO3.

• Falling In Love is now a subtag of Love
• Uniform Kink has been removed as a metatag of Clothing Kink and is now a subtag instead
• Uniform Kink has been removed as a metatag of Uniforms and is now a subtag instead

In Conclusion

While some of these tags may be tags and concepts you're intimately familiar with, others may be concepts you've never heard of before. Fortunately, our fellow OTW volunteers at Fanlore may be able to help! As you may have seen in the comments sections of previous posts, Fanlore is a fantastic resource for learning more about these common fandom concepts, and about the history and lore of fandom in general. For the curious, here's a quick look at a few articles about concepts related to this month's new canonical tags:

• Coffee in Fanworks
• Stimming
• Yuri Aquarium Date

While we won't be announcing every change we make to No Fandom canonical tags, you can expect similar updates in the future about tags we believe will most affect users. If you're interested in the changes we'll be making, you can continue to check AO3 News or follow us on Bluesky @wranglers.archiveofourown.org or Tumblr @ao3org for future announcements.

You can also read previous updates on "No Fandom" tags as well as other wrangling updates, linked below:

• Past "No Fandom" Additional Tags Updates and 5 Things Said by Wrangling Volunteers
• Past Fandom-Specific and "No Fandom" Tag Wrangling Change Posts

For more information about AO3's tag system, check out our Tags FAQ.

In addition to providing technical help, AO3 Support also handles requests related to how tags are sorted and connected.​ If you have questions about specific tags, which were first used over a month ago and are unrelated to any of the new canonical tags listed above, please contact Support instead of leaving a comment on this post.

Please keep in mind that discussions about what tags to canonize and what format they should take are ongoing. As a result, not all related concepts will be canonized at the same time. This does not mean that related or similar concepts will not be canonized in the future or that we have chosen to canonize one specific concept in lieu of another, simply that we likely either haven't gotten to that related concept yet or that it needs further discussion and will take a bit longer for us to canonize it as a result. We appreciate your patience and understanding.

We're still working on implementing changes and connecting relevant user-created tags to these new canonicals, so it'll be some time before these updates are complete. If you have questions about specific tags which should be connected to these new canonicals, please refrain from contacting Support about them until at least three months from now to give us adequate time to do so.

Lastly, we'd also like to celebrate a major milestone this month with the creation of our 80,000th canonical fandom on AO3, The Grand Deception of Benedict Blackmoor - Gaia Tate. To give a brief overview of the growth of fandoms on AO3, there were 5,000 fandoms canonized around New Year's Day 2010, around 20,000 fandoms around December 2015, and about 40,000 fandoms canonized in November 2020. We look forward to continuing to share and celebrate future tagging milestones with all of you in the months and years to come. \o/

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, OTW Legal Advocacy, and Transformative Works and Cultures. We are a fan-run, donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

We're excited to announce that we've crossed another milestone: AO3 now has more than 18 million fanworks! A big Thank You to everyone who contributed to that success, whether you're a fanwork creator yourself, or cheering on your favorite creators with kudos and comments.

Of those 18 million fanworks, a lot live in collections. A collection is a group of works and/or bookmarks compiled together under one theme. You can, for example, group together works for a specific trope or relationship. Prompt Meme and Gift Exchange challenges for specific events are also hosted within collections!

Did you know we recently rolled out some changes adding new features to collections (fairly) recently? Our Accessibility, Design, & Technology committee published a post on it last September, if you want to check it out!

Some of the most important updates were:

• giving collection owners the ability to add up to 10 tags to the collection that show up in the collection blurb
• a "Multifandom" filter for collections containing works from more than one fandom
• the automatic addition of fandom tags to collections as the feature went live (or the "Multifandom" tag for collections with works/bookmarks from many fandoms)

Some additional changes that were rolled out with the tag-feature as well: for example, the Open Challenges page (including the Open Gift Exchange and Open Prompt Memes pages) now shows collections that are closing soonest at the top of the page!

To try out the new features for yourself, you can head on over to the Collections page by selecting "Browse → Collections". Once there you can filter collections either by a specific tag, or include or exclude collections with the "Multifandom" tag. By selecting "Open Challenges" on the top right, you can browse currently open challenges. And if you want to learn more about how to navigate, create, or administrate collections, check out our Collections FAQ!

Thanks again for your continued support, time, and passion for fandom! We hope to celebrate many more milestones with you in the future.

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.

Users often ask us to create a mobile app and wonder why we haven't done so already. We've spotlighted this before and even included it in our FAQs, but it comes up often enough that we wanted to provide an updated explanation of why we don't have –⁠ and don't plan to make –⁠ an app.

Third-Party Apps

There is no official AO3 app. If you have come across or are using an app that looks like AO3, it is not official and is not owned by the OTW. These apps are made by third parties and are normally just specialized web browsers that change the way AO3 looks when you access it.

These apps may have ads or request payment from users, neither of which AO3 will ever do. AO3 does not allow ads and will always be free to use. Anyone charging you for access to AO3 in any way – whether by forcing you to view ads, pay to access works, or subscribe to enable additional features –⁠ is violating the AO3 Terms of Service.

As these third-party apps aren't controlled by us, if you log in to AO3 on these apps, the apps' developers may gain access to your username and password. You're trusting both that the developer is not malicious and that they have taken all proper precautions to keep your login information safe. If your login information is exposed to someone with malicious intent, they could log into your account to post Terms of Service-violating content, delete your works, change your account's credentials so you can't log in, or even delete your account.

App Store Restrictions

If we did develop an official app, it is unlikely we could distribute it via the Apple App or Google Play stores. Both have rules against "objectionable" or sexual content which would require us to go against AO3's policy of maximum inclusiveness of fanwork content.

Apple's App Store developer guidelines state that "apps should not include content that is offensive, insensitive, upsetting, intended to disgust, in exceptionally poor taste, or just plain creepy", while Google's content standards "don't allow apps that contain or promote sexual content or profanity, including pornography, or any content or services intended to be sexually gratifying". While both app stores give slightly more leeway for user-generated content, they still only permit "incidental" sexual content and warn that apps that heavily feature, actively promote, or have a reputation for sexual content are subject to removal. Both app stores also generally require app makers to prescreen or remove "objectionable" content promptly when it is reported.

To have an app in either app store would require us to dramatically change what content we allow on AO3, which we are unwilling to do.

While it's possible to distribute apps outside of the Apple App or Google Play stores, it's a much more complicated process with a much smaller audience. We prefer to focus our efforts on improving the site itself, which benefits all of our users – regardless of which devices they use to access AO3.

App Alternatives

When people reach out asking about an AO3 app, they usually have a specific functionality they would like out of an app. Many quality-of-life features often associated with apps (such as mobile layouts, saving your spot when you tab away, etc.) don't actually require an app.

This means our developers could implement some of these app-like features as part of their normal efforts to improve the site, without devoting additional time to make a separate app. Incrementally adding app-like feature options to the existing site is much more feasible for us than creating a standalone app.

In fact, some of these functions are already available. We've collected some of the most common requests and their existing solutions below.

Customize AO3

If you want to change how AO3 looks, for example by changing the colors or making it more mobile friendly, you can create a site skin. Skins allow anyone to change the way AO3 displays for them. There are several publicly available skins which can be accessed via the footer at the bottom of every page, including Reversi which is AO3's default "dark mode".

If you don't like any of our default skins, you can also make your own. Check out our Skins and Archive Interface FAQ or Site Skin video tutorial for more information.

If you don't want to make your own site skin from scratch, you can find a number of users sharing their own custom skins under the AO3 Site Skin tag.

Homescreen Shortcut

If you want easier access to AO3 from your device's homescreen, you can add a shortcut to make AO3 appear alongside your other apps. Follow these instructions for iOS or Android devices.

Read Offline

If you want to access works offline, you can download works from AO3 directly onto your mobile device. We offer a variety of download formats to fit a range of programs and devices. For help downloading works, check out our Downloading Fanworks FAQ.

Remember Where You Left Off

If you frequently have trouble remembering where you were in a fic, you can use the notes section of a private bookmark to keep track of the chapter or paragraph you stopped at. Or, if you download a work to read offline, many e-reader apps will save your spot automatically.

Listen to Fics

If you want to listen to fics instead of reading them, there are a few options. You can check out the Podfic tag to find audio created by other users.

If there isn't a podfic for the story you are looking for, you can use Text-to-Speech (TTS) software to listen to a fic. Most mobile devices will have some form of TTS built in for accessibility purposes if you search through the settings. Some desktop browsers also have a built-in TTS function, often as part of a "reading mode". There are many solutions depending on your specific use case, but here are some how-to articles to get you started:

• Have your iPhone read the screen aloud
• Android: Use Select to Speak
• How to use Reader View in Firefox
• Use Reading mode in Chrome (Desktop)
• Have your Mac speak text that's on the screen
• Use Immersive Reader in Microsoft Edge

If you have further questions about AO3 site functionality or about a specific "AO3 app", contact Support for assistance. They handle technical support, requests for new site features, and reports about unofficial AO3 apps.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, OTW Legal Advocacy, and Transformative Works and Cultures. We are a fan-run, donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

American Horror Fic Exchange, an American Horror Story fanfiction exchange archive, is being imported to the Archive of Our Own (AO3).

In this post:

• A bit of background explanation
• What this means for creators who have work(s) on American Horror Fic Exchange
• And what to do if you still have questions

Background explanation

The exchange’s owner, jandjsalmon, decided to import the works from LiveJournal in order to safeguard the history of fandom and prevent meaningful works from potentially vanishing. By moving these stories to Archive of Our Own, where a large and active fanfiction community exists, the archivist wants to ensure the works remain accessible, organized, and protected.

The purpose of the Open Doors Committee’s Online Archive Rescue Project is to assist moderators of archives to incorporate the fanworks from those archives into the Archive of Our Own. Open Doors works with moderators to import their archives when the moderators lack the funds, time, or other resources to continue to maintain their archives independently. It is extremely important to Open Doors that we work in collaboration with moderators who want to import their archives and that we fully credit creators, giving them as much control as possible over their fanworks. Open Doors will be working with jandjsalmon to import American Horror Fic Exchange into a separate, searchable collection on the Archive of Our Own.

We will begin importing works from American Horror Fic Exchange to AO3 in August 2026. However, the import may not take place for several months or even years, depending on the size and complexity of the archive. Creators are always welcome to import their own works and add them to the collection in the meantime.

What does this mean for creators who have work(s) on American Horror Fic Exchange?

We will send an import notification to the email address we have for each creator. We'll do our best to check for an existing copy of any works before importing. If we find a copy already on AO3, we will add it to the collection instead of importing it. All works archived on behalf of a creator will include their name in the byline or the summary of the work.

All imported works will be set to be viewable only by logged-in AO3 users. Once you claim your works, you can make them publicly-viewable if you choose. After 30 days, all unclaimed imported works will be made visible to all visitors. We will then permanently close down the site.

Please contact Open Doors with your American Horror Fic Exchange pseud(s) and email address(es), if:

• You'd like us to import your works, but you need the notification sent to a different email address than you used on the original archive.
• You already have an AO3 account and have imported your works already yourself.
• You’d like to import your works yourself (including if you don’t have an AO3 account yet).
• You would NOT like your works moved to AO3, or would NOT like your works added to the archive collection.
• You are happy for us to preserve your works on AO3, but would like us to remove your name.
• You have any other questions we can help you with.

Please include the name of the archive in the subject heading of your email. If you no longer have access to the email account associated with your LiveJournal account, please contact Open Doors and we'll help you out. (If you've posted the works elsewhere, or have an easy way to verify that they're yours, that's great; if not, we will work with the American Horror Fic Exchange mod to confirm your claims.)

Please see the Open Doors Website for instructions on:

• importing your works to AO3
• adding your works to the new collection American Horror Fic Exchange

If you still have questions...

If you have further questions, visit the Open Doors FAQ, or contact the Open Doors committee.

We'd also love it if fans could help us preserve the story of American Horror Fic Exchange on Fanlore If you're new to wiki editing, no worries! Check out the new visitor portal, or ask the Fanlore Gardeners for tips.

We're excited to be able to help preserve American Horror Fic Exchange!

- The Open Doors team, jandjsalmon

Commenting on this post will be disabled in 14 days. If you have any questions, concerns, or comments regarding this import after that date, please contact Open Doors.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, OTW Legal Advocacy, and Transformative Works and Cultures. We are a fan-run, donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

Do you know SQL and Python or other programming languages and want to rescue at-risk fan archives? Would you like to wrangle AO3 tags? Can you read and translate from Chinese to English? Would you like to translate AO3 tags from another language to English? Are you fluent in a language other than English? The Organization for Transformative Works is recruiting!

We're excited to announce the opening of applications for:

• Open Doors Technical Volunteer - closing 22 July 2026 at 23:59 UTC or after 30 applications
• Tag Wrangling Volunteer - closing 22 July 2026 at 23:59 UTC or after 110 applications
• Tag Wrangling Volunteer (Chinese) - closing 22 July 2026 at 23:59 UTC or after 45 applications
• Tag Wrangling Volunteer (Specified Languages) - closing 22 July 2026 at 23:59 UTC or after 50 applications
• Translation Translator - closing 22 July 2026 at 23:59 UTC

We have included more information on each role below. Open roles and applications will always be available at the volunteering page. We only accept volunteers who are 18 years of age or older. 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.

Open Doors Technical Volunteer

Do you know SQL and Python or other programming languages and want to rescue at-risk fan archives?

The Open Doors project receives many requests to rescue fan sites which are at risk of disappearing because their owners can no longer maintain them. The sites we import to the Archive Of Our Own range from database-driven archives based on common software packages like eFiction and Automated Archive to hand-coded HTML sites that are over twenty years old!

As a technical volunteer for Open Doors, you will process the contents of legacy sites to do the following:

• analyse the original data to find all the content and metadata needed for the import
• remove spam, legacy navigation and personal information such as email addresses from HTML files
• convert tags to official AO3 tags as specified by the Tag Wrangling team
• ensure no text exceeds AO3's character limits, splitting summaries, notes or chapters as needed
• detect and fix any garbled text resulting from encoding errors
• detect and fix any invalid author emails and empty chapters
• convert the cleaned data to MySQL tables in a standard format that can be ingested automatically into the Archive

As the person responsible for ensuring that all the content from the original site is correctly imported to the AO3, you will have an excellent eye for detail and an ability to work independently within the rules of Open Doors. You will also liaise regularly in chat with other Open Doors volunteers, keeping them up to date with your progress on your assigned tasks.

To apply for this role, you must be at least 18 years old and legally of age to open explicit fanworks in your local jurisdiction.

Please note that you will be asked to complete a short coding test (to be returned in 1 week) as part of your application. You are not expected to spend more than an hour on this coding test, though you are welcome to do so if you have time. We do not permit the use of AI tools during the selection process for this position.

Applications are due 22 July 2026 or after 30 applications

Apply to be an Open Doors Technical Volunteer at the volunteering page! If you have further questions, please contact us.

Tag Wrangling Volunteer

The Tag Wranglers are responsible for helping to connect and sort the tags on AO3! Wranglers follow internal guidelines to choose the tags that appear in the filters and auto-complete, which link related works together. This makes it easier to browse and search on the archive.

If you're an experienced AO3 user who likes organizing, working in teams, or having excuses to fact-check your favorite fandoms, you might enjoy tag wrangling! To join us, click through to the job description and fill in our application form. There will also be a short questionnaire that will help us assess whether you have the skills and attributes that will lead to your success in this role.

Please note: you must be 18+ in order to apply for this role. For this role, we're currently looking for wranglers for specific fandoms only, which fandoms are eligible will change each recruitment round. Please see the application for which fandoms are currently in need.

Wranglers need to be fluent in English but we welcome applicants who are also fluent in other languages, especially Čeština (Czech), isiZulu (Zulu), Français (French), Polski (Polish), Tiếng Việt (Vietnamese), ไทย (Thai), and 日本語 (Japanese), but knowledge of additional languages is always appreciated!

If you are fluent in 中文 (Chinese), we strongly encourage you to apply for our Chinese Tag Wrangling role, which is specifically designed to support our growing Chinese community. We welcome all dialects!

We also have a separate Specified Languages role, intended to provide additional opportunities for applicants fluent in the following languages: Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian), Español (Spanish), Filipino, Italiano (Italian), Português (Portuguese), Türkçe (Turkish), Українська (Ukrainian), Русский (Russian), and 한국어 (Korean). If you speak one of these languages, we encourage you to consider applying for that role, as space in the general role can fill quickly.

Applications are due 22 July 2026 or after 110 applications

Apply to be a Tag Wrangling Volunteer at the volunteering page! If you have further questions, please contact us.

Tag Wrangling Volunteer (Chinese)

The Tag Wranglers are responsible for helping to connect and sort the tags on AO3! Wranglers follow internal guidelines to choose the tags that appear in the filters and auto-complete, which link related works together. This makes it easier to browse and search on the Archive.

If you're an experienced AO3 user who likes organizing, working in teams, or having excuses to fact-check your favorite fandoms, you might enjoy tag wrangling! To join us, click through to the job description and fill in our application form. There will also be a short questionnaire that will help us assess whether you have the skills and attributes that will lead to your success in this role.

Please note: you must be 18+ in order to apply for this role. For this role, we're currently looking for wranglers for specific fandoms only, which fandoms are eligible will change each recruitment round. Please see the application for which fandoms are currently in need.

Additionally, for this role, applicants will also need to be fluent in English and any dialect of Chinese (中文). We welcome applicants fluent in any Chinese dialect! The work of those in this role will involve both regular Tag Wrangling work and, in addition, will also involve translating tags from Chinese into English.

Applications are due 22 July 2026 or after 45 applications

Apply to be a Tag Wrangling Volunteer (Chinese) at the volunteering page! If you have further questions, please contact us.

Tag Wrangling Volunteer (Specified Languages)

The Tag Wranglers are responsible for helping to connect and sort the tags on AO3! Wranglers follow internal guidelines to choose the tags that appear in the filters and auto-complete, which link related works together. This makes it easier to browse and search on the Archive.

If you're an experienced AO3 user who likes organizing, working in teams, or having excuses to fact-check your favorite fandoms, you might enjoy tag wrangling! To join us, click through to the job description and fill in our application form. There will also be a short questionnaire that will help us assess whether you have the skills and attributes that will lead to your success in this role.

Please note: you must be 18+ in order to apply for this role. For this role, we’re currently looking for wranglers for specific fandoms only, which fandoms are eligible will change each recruitment round. Please see the application for which fandoms are currently in need.

For this role, wranglers need to be fluent in English and any dialect of one of the following languages: Filipino, Indonesian (Bahasa Indonesia), Italian (Italiano), Korean (한국어), Portuguese (Português), Russian (Русский), Spanish (Español), Turkish (Türkçe), or Ukrainian (Українська). This role is designed to help provide additional opportunities in languages in which we see a continuous need while having resources to support the volunteers in those languages.

If you are fluent in 中文 (Chinese), we strongly encourage you to apply for our Chinese Tag Wrangling role, which is specifically designed to support our growing Chinese community. We welcome all dialects!

If you are fluent in languages other than mentioned on the above list, including English, we welcome you to apply for our general wrangling role.

Applications are due 22 July 2026 or after 50 applications

Apply to be a Tag Wrangling Volunteer (Specified Languages) at the volunteering page! If you have further questions, please contact us.

Translation Translator

If you enjoy working collaboratively, if you're fluent in a language other than English, if you're passionate about the OTW and its projects, and want to help us reach more fans all around the world, working with Translation might be for you!

Translation volunteers help make the OTW and its projects accessible to a wider global audience. We work on translating content by the OTW and its projects from English to other languages, such as site pages, news posts, AO3 FAQs and AO3 Support emails. (However, we do not translate fanworks.)

We really need volunteers who speak Afrikaans, Arabic, Bengali, Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Estonian, Finnish, Galician, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Malay, Marathi, Norwegian, Persian, Polish, European Portuguese, Romanian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, and Welsh—but help with other languages would be much appreciated. If you're interested in starting a team for a language we don't have yet, you're very welcome to!

(Please note that our Catalan, Chinese, Dutch, Filipino, French, German, Italian, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Vietnamese teams are not accepting new members at this time.)

Applicants will be asked to translate and correct short text samples and will be invited to a chatroom interview as part of the selection process. More information about us can be found on the Translation committee page.

Applications are due 22 July 2026

Apply to be a Translation Translator at the volunteering page! If you have further questions, please contact us.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, OTW Legal Advocacy, and Transformative Works and Cultures. We are a fan-run, donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.