The question of how much meta's inclusion would impact the archive as a whole has definitely been an issue of concern for those working on the AO3. The only thing that we can currently be certain of is that the addition of further text works is unlikely to have as big an impact on the archive as it would if we were prepared to host multimedia at this time. And there are definitely plans for doing that in the future, so the archive will continue to evolve in terms of its hosting. While we will undoubtedly see more meta hosted on the AO3 as a result of this decision though, there's no way to know how much more there will be or how quickly it will grow.
But just as art, podfic and video can already be found on the AO3, so is meta. The difference, of course, is that the AO3's current infrastructure already supports the direct hosting of meta in text form, so meta's continuation on the archive has been more of a policy issue than a technical one. Even so, the ability to filter content in or out of searches is going to become an even more important aspect of searching on the AO3 and one which the meta decision will be helping us develop. The committees who will have to put this into place are already beginning to discuss what will be needed, though a technical solution is likely to take much longer than the policy parts.
Thank you for your feedback and we hope that the AO3 will continue to be a place you enjoy spending time at.
Comment on OTW Board Approves Meta Hosting on the AO3
admin-claudia (Guest) Sun 17 Feb 2013 01:23AM UTC
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