Releases 0.9.399 - 0.9.403: Change Log

March brought a handful of noteworthy changes to AO3 in addition to the usual assortment of bug fixes and enhancements: we increased the maximum tag length from 100 to 150 characters, expanded the wrangling status options in tag search, and added the ability to have your invitation resent if it didn't arrive. Then we wrapped up the month with some changes to help combat an increase in spam, including spam checks on new users' comments and a rate limit on comments from all logged-in users. Thank you and welcome to first-time contributor Metallicity!

Credits

• Coders: Bilka, Brian Austin, EchoEkhi, Indes, james_, lou, lydia-theda, Metallicity, Sarken, slavalamp, warlockmel, weeklies
• Code reviewers: Bilka, Brian Austin, james_, redsummernight, Sarken, slavalamp
• Testers: Bilka, Brian Austin, C. Ryan Smith, calamario, choux, Claire P. Baker, Deniz, Dre, Lute, lydia-theda, Rhine, Runt, Sam Johnsson, Sanity, Sarken, spacegandalf, Tal, Teyris, therealmorticia, Vio, wichard

Details

0.9.399

On March 7, we increased the maximum length of tags from 100 to 150 characters and made it possible to resend unused invitations, among some other smaller fixes.

• [AO3-3945] - Tag landing pages now list subtags in alphabetical order. (They used to be ordered by the date they were subtagged.)
• [AO3-6712] - In January 2024, we tried to make it so checking the status of your invitation would give you the option of having it resent to you, assuming you hadn't used it yet and it was sent more than 24 hours ago. Unfortunately, we ran into a performance issue and had to remove the feature. We've fixed the performance problem and now you can resend your invitations for real!
• [AO3-6737] - On the bookmark pages for tags and collections, the section containing the bookmarker's notes and other information was too narrow. We made it fill the available space.
• [AO3-6748] - When using the Low Vision Default skin, the stats in the work meta would be very long and cause horizontal scrolling on narrow screens. We've changed the stats to wrap onto the next line instead.
• [AO3-6791] - Admins used to get a 500 error when trying to access the pseud edit page for a user that didn't exist. Nonexistent pages should give 404 errors, not 500 errors (which occur when there's a bug or other problem), so we fixed the bug and started giving the right error.
• [AO3-6836] - To make testing and translation easier, we made a preview of the email users receive when one of their works has been deleted by an admin.
• [AO3-6867] - Tags can now be 150 characters long instead of 100. That's 50% more tag!
• [AO3-6915] - Our dependency updater bumped our version of nokogiri from 1.18.2 to 1.18.3.

0.9.400

On March 17, we deployed a number of small fixes and improvements for admins. Additionally, we expanded the tag search with a few more wrangling status options.

• [AO3-6544] - To improve our spam checker's accuracy, we've started telling it whether the data we're sending it is from a user or a guest, and what sort of data it is (e.g., a support request or a comment on a news post).
• [AO3-6934] - We updated one of our dependencies to incorporate a security fix.
• [AO3-931] - When someone used an invitation and then later deleted their account, the invitation would have a confusingly empty "Redeemed by" field. Now it correctly says that a deleted user redeemed the invitation.
• [AO3-5498] - When an admin views an invitation, the "Redeemed by" field now conveniently links to the redeemer's account administration page.
• [AO3-6129] - We've added a very low rate limit to the login page for admins for a little extra security. (We haven't had any issues, but it's good to be prepared just in case.)
• [AO3-6313] - The FAQ pages used to tell an admin when the FAQ category was last updated. A reasonable person would think that meant when questions in that category were updated, but it actually only tracked when something like the category's name or position changed. Since this was pretty confusing, we've stopped including that information.
• [AO3-6775] - We now have a handy preview for the email a user receives when they (or their co-creator) delete a work.
• [AO3-6875] - We added three new options to tag search, so now you can filter for tags that are (or are not) synonyms of another tag.
• [AO3-6922] - We updated the Policy Questions & Abuse Reports page to better align with the November 2024 Terms of Service update.
• [AO3-6923] - We updated our DMCA Policy to include an extra link to the Terms of Service FAQ.
• [AO3-6204] - Sometimes, users orphan works with their pseuds attached and later wish they hadn't. We've made it easier for certain admins to remove the identifying pseuds.
• [AO3-6943] - We fixed some automated tests that were failing half the time, which was just plain annoying.

0.9.401

On March 20, we finished off the last part of the Rails 7 upgrade by deploying a single change.

• [AO3-6687] - After we changed cookies to a more modern format in November, we now removed the support for the old format.

0.9.402

On March 24, we implemented comment rate limits for logged-in AO3 users to address an increase in spam comments.

• [AO3-6926] - We changed our rate limiting code to make it possible to specify rate limits per user.

0.9.403

On March 28, we deployed spam checking for comments posted by newly registered users to further combat the spam comments.

• [AO3-6439] - We changed how the code accesses the currently logged-in user to make our automatic tests behave more consistently.
• [AO3-6946] - In some very rare scenarios, the Manage Items page for a collection could show a completely unrelated work instead of the bookmark that was really part of the collection. We've made it always show the right item.
• [AO3-6951] - We bumped our version of reviewdog/action-rubocop from 2.21.0 to 2.21.2.
• [AO3-6933] - We added spam checking for comments from new users on works and admin posts.