To AO3 or not to AO3?

[primsong]

Poked around AO3 a little bit last night to see what all the hoopla is about - it appears to be a fairly decent archiving site, but can anyone tell me if they've found it worth the time to copy their works over to it? Is it just re-inventing the wheel and having a reunion of the same folks we already know and love from Teaspoon and/or ff.net or have you found new readers coming out of the woodwork?

Whyfor? Can anyone tell me what makes it different/better/worth the time? Thank you!

Comments

[dbskyler]

I think the only advantage AO3 has over Teaspoon is that it allows you to house all your stories in one place, not just Whoniverse stories. I have an AO3 account because I did Yuletide last year and all Yuletide stories were archived there. However, I've never bothered to move any of my non-Yuletide fic over. Based on typical hit counts I've seen for stories over there, including some Doctor Who stories, I think that Teaspoon gets far more traffic, but as I say I can't tell you for certain as I've never tried it out with my own fic for a direct comparison. It's a generally nice site, though, easy to use and navigate from both a writer's and reader's perspective.

[senmut]

I think for me, the AO3 thing is all about searchability. So I am selfish and want to convince EVERYONE to upload there. It's too convenient for me, when I want to read, say, M*A*S*H fic, to go there, filter the fandom by other results, and wind up in a story that suits me to a tee, because I could search such a huge database, all in one place.

It also works well for me, because I am a drabble writer, by and large. People don't leave comments on drabbles, because seriously, 100 words isn't worth leaving a comment. But the hit counter that is built in tell me 'hey, I got read' and that is enough to make me keep writing.

I like the standardized formatting too. And I can tag with as much or as little as I wish, but tagging a lot is a good idea as it helps when people are searching by tag for a kind of fic.

[senmut]

I'd agree that fandoms with specific homes get more traffic on their specific homes. But once subscription goes live, even that might change up a little. Right now I just have to randomly check on folks to see what they uploaded; eventually it will be 'oh X uploaded today'.

[primsong]

Hm - I already use ff.net in that way, with all of my works no matter what they are about in one place, but the tagging might be a plus. FF.net is slightly limited there, as you can only define two characters for searches though I've taken to placing other significant characters in the description/summary so folks can still find them by searching for key words. I suppose another plus is there isn't the advertising - I have a good adblocker so I forget that ff.net has advertising, but for those who don't have one I expect that part could be rather annoying. I'll think on it.

[senmut]

Oh and for e-reader users... I saw folks talking about download ability.

[linaewen]

I decided to put in my name for a spot. I may not use it in the end, but it does look nice -- with the tags and the search feature. I have an account at ff.net, but have never put anything in it as yet, so don't know how it compares. Up until recently, I've not needed any other place than my LotR-centric archives, but I'm branching off into a totally unrelated field now, so it would be nice to have a place where I can put both kinds of writing and they both happy there. ;-)

[juliet316]

Does AO3 have the same problems with pop - up ads and hidden viruses/spyware like FF.net does?

[primsong]

Yes - that's exactly what sent me to ff.net in the first place - that I needed somewhere for "any topic" in the writing once my muse wandered from M-e. It appeared you could import fics from ff.net to AO3 pretty easily, I may go ahead and try popping one over there to see how it goes. The ad-free aspect and ability to add more tags could be very useful.

[dbskyler]

I have adblocker on my browser and also stay well away from FF.net, so I'm not very qualified to answer this. I've never come across any, if that helps.

[kerravonsen]

Absolutely not. They own the servers, it's paid for by the OTW membership, and they don't have ads, and I doubt that they ever will.

[kerravonsen]

I'm in the midst of copying my stuff to AO3 - the import from fanfiction.net is pretty good, though one does have to go in and tweak things after a story has been imported.

The first place for my fic is my own site (I run my own server) but of course nobody ever comments there. So I put my stories on fanfiction.net purely to get the audience. I'm hoping that AO3 does get lots of people on it, because I want the audience to be there too, because there are so many features (as both a reader and a writer) that are better than at fanfiction.net.

* You can reply to people's comments publicly.
* You can back-date stories to when they were actually written, not just when they were uploaded.
* The tagging is very powerful and flexible.

I'm on Teaspoon because it's a specialized archive and thus has an audience too, but my fic-writing is far far too eclectic to stick to one fandom. Teaspoon is better than fanfiction.net as far as the user interface goes, but I still think AO3 edges it out with its features, even if they're just little things like the "at a glance" icons next to story listings which indicate whether a story is gen/het/slash, whether it has warnings, what rating it is. And then there's the way one can filter things by tag. And the way that one can indicate that a story is a "gift" for someone - and they get an email telling them about it!

[juliet316]

I ask because FF.net has for years been where I've posted all my non - Who stories (my Who stories I've just posted on LJ and Teaspoon thus far), and since now it's admin seemingly doesn't care or deletes stories for arbitrary reasons. Plagiarisers can use the site without reprecussion unless their found out by fandom (that's where the little prick who stole one of my Doctor/Donna stories posted his word for word version last year), and it's littered with pop - up ads and spywhere now (and FF.net's own pop - up blocker only works for one day before you have to go back and reutlize it). If AO3 has none of that, I would more than consider moving.

[juliet316]

That's a very big plus in it's favor as FF.net's been littered with pop - up ads and spywhere for a very long time now.

[dbskyler]

I've never heard any complaints about anything like that on AO3. It's a site that's run by and for fanficcers, so I suspect they'd take a plagiarism charge very seriously. Invite codes are free (you just have to ask, then wait your turn), so you might want to try it out and see if you like it there.

[curuchamion]

Oh yes, the import function is awesomeful. It's not working so well for LJ fics at the moment, but for FFnet fics you just paste in the URL, click import, and then fiddle with the tags/summary/date/whatnot and post.

[primsong]

I saw that! I didn't have any time to explore much yet, but it looked like you could even do a batch at a time, which would be a marvelous thing. I'm thinking I'll go ahead and start patching them in a bit at a time. So nice to see you here, btw!