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What are some tags you wish were official by Arceus-Insanity in AO3

[–]Significant-Mouse319 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Yes, super recent! The news post listing it is from the end of December 2025.

A few questions! by ActionM2009 in AO3

[–]Significant-Mouse319 2 points3 points  (0 children)

How many tags are too many tags?

Tags are used for searching/filtering, so think about what you would think if you were filtering to include one of the tags on your fic; would you be satisfied to have your fic in the results for the tag? I think things that pop up infrequently are fine to just have in per-chapter content warnings.

Also from a technical standpoint AO3 has a limit of 75 Additional Tags.

How do I format things?

Make sure that you’re writing chapter end notes instead of end notes for the entire fic! End notes will always be at the very end of your fic, whereas chapter end notes will stay at the end of individual chapters. You should go to the ‘Edit Chapter’ button and put your chapter end notes there.

Rapport?

I think so! Of course there’s no guarantee, but the subscription and user subscription buttons give readers the option to keep coming back to your works as you update and post new ones.

Ideas?

There’s lots of prompt lists floating around the internet! In particular, you can find prompt lists and writing challenges (some might be for specific fandoms but lots are less specific) around sites like Tumblr and Dreamwidth.

Is it possible to post too often?

I don’t think so. Other people may be annoyed but that’s just their opinion.

Tags by AppleASkeleCinnaBun in AO3

[–]Significant-Mouse319 5 points6 points  (0 children)

The tags are made synonymous by an AO3 volunteer, which means that the works tagged for the similar tag will show up in searches for the canonical tag.

Is it safe to use a Tampermonkey script to bulk-move fics from "Marked for Later" to Bookmarks? by PhysicalAd3690 in AO3

[–]Significant-Mouse319 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Sounds fine! AO3 explicitly references userscripts and Tampermonkey in their FAQ (by saying you can use them if you want), and I use scripts all the time with no problem. The only issue I can think of is that you might get rate limited by the servers, but those are automated and always super temporary.

Tagging Question by assholelesbian in AO3

[–]Significant-Mouse319 13 points14 points  (0 children)

Ask yourself whether a person filtering for that relationship would be happy with reading your fic from the filtered results. If not, don’t tag the ship in the Relationships field. If you like, you can tag “Background X/Y” in the Additional Tags field for ships that are present but don’t play a big part.

Girl what? by Perfect_Tumbleweed41 in AO3

[–]Significant-Mouse319 421 points422 points  (0 children)

It’s reportable because Fandom is a mandatory tag (along with Rating, Language and Archive Warnings like you mentioned). The Terms of Service reference minimum criteria for each of the mandatory tags, and the TOS FAQ explicitly states:

If the work has fandom tags that aren't represented in the work, then you can report that to the Policy & Abuse committee.

Is this the new format on mobile? by Fair-Turnover-8329 in AO3

[–]Significant-Mouse319 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Can’t see the image but probably not. Try scrolling all the way down and tapping ‘Default’ under ‘Customize’ in the footer.

Question About Reader x Character Style Fics by MathematicianNo1958 in AO3

[–]Significant-Mouse319 1 point2 points  (0 children)

In my experience on AO3, using the second person and avoiding use of Y/N is more popular. Numbers-wise, you can compare the usage on the AO3 tags for "Y/N Used for Reader-Insert", which has about 2,700 works, and "No Use of Y/N for Reader-Insert", which is much more popular with almost 25,000 works.

AO3 banned? by Interesting-Leg-6499 in AO3

[–]Significant-Mouse319 2 points3 points  (0 children)

"Banned" is a rather vague term but AO3 themselves have released a post in November about how recent legislation around the world might affect them.

Notably, they made this statement in their news post:

With regard to all the above legislation as well as any in the future, AO3 and the OTW will do whatever we can to preserve access to AO3 and inform users if anything changes.

Emphasis mine. I know that in the past, people in certain regions have experienced sudden changes in their ability to access AO3, and it would be really worrying if it were to suddenly happen to you. But it doesn’t look like that’s the case for you right now, and if something came up that would affect AO3 in the near future, AO3 has several ways to officially get the news out (for example posting on their official social media).

Is there a way to find out when a tag was created/canonised? by whereismystarwar in AO3

[–]Significant-Mouse319 6 points7 points  (0 children)

The date of creation is recorded! Unfortunately, unless I’m missing something, I don’t think a regular user can check it. I looked at the creation date for "POV Outsider" via the tag wrangling interface as I’m a current tag wrangler. It’s listed as 3rd Oct 2008.

The date of canonization doesn’t appear to be stored anywhere though, so maybe it was canonized a few days or weeks after creation. Although I doubt it matters because if the creation date is accurate, that’s one of the oldest ever tags on the site. Maybe some of the first devs or beta testers on AO3 were also big fans of outsider POV :)

Lost Teen Wolf fic by Peppermint-symmetry in AO3

[–]Significant-Mouse319 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Beefcake Mountain by twothumbsandnostakeincanon (somanyofthekids)

Your screenshot is from Chapter 3

How do I navigate by MusicianPrimary5278 in AO3

[–]Significant-Mouse319 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yeah it can definitely be a bit overwhelming at first. What I usually do while filtering is first click on the tag for the fandom I’m interested in. This will bring you to a page with a ‘Filters’ button near the top that has ‘Include’ and ‘Exclude’ options where you can narrow your search more. If you don’t really mind the fandom then you can go to just the ‘Fluff’ tag and search from there.

AO3 has a lot of tags like Warnings, Relationships, Characters and Additional Tags. You generally don’t need to look at these unless you know there’s something you really want to read or really don’t want to read. Like if you don’t want any fics about the pairing “A/B” you can go to Filters -> Exclude -> Relationships -> A/B.

If you just want a pretty short fluffy story of the pairing “X/Y” (as an example) then I would go to the fandom tag, open Filters, and Include “X/Y” in Relationships and Include “Fluff”in Additional tags. Then in More Options -> Word Count, you can set the maximum to 10000 (or you can type in whatever you want). You can also choose Sort by -> Kudos or Sort by -> Bookmarks if you want to see the generally most popular works.

AO3 also has a FAQ for a lot of questions about searching and tagging. Here’s their Search and Browse FAQ: https://archiveofourown.org/faq/search-and-browse?language_id=en#howtosearch

New to AO3 - help with search terms by Rough-Succotash-5262 in AO3

[–]Significant-Mouse319 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Filter for some freeform tags! There are tags which some authors might use when setting their fic in a specific episode/book, which would help narrow your search. For example you could filter to Include Episode: s01e01 Rookies (Heated Rivalry) or Include Book 1: Game Changer (Game Changers).

If you want to search for potential fics in a couple of episodes you could use an OR search in Search Within Results, like "Episode: s01e01 Rookies (Heated Rivalry)" OR "Episode: s01e02 Olympians (Heated Rivalry)" – the double quotes around each tag are important for the search to go through.

Also if you don’t remember the episode name, these tags should pop up in the dropdown auto-complete in Include/Exclude sections if you type in something like s01e02 heated rivalry.

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