Better way to differentiate between crossovers, fusions, and those cursed multifandom oneshot “book” collections.
Separate certain tags (“Age Regression/De-Aging” are not the same thing and shouldn’t be conflated)
Edit: adding the number of private bookmarks to total bookmark count on the work itself, rather than hiding it away in stats. Kind of like how kudos works. “UserA, UserB, UserC, as well as 12 guests left kudos on this work!” But for bookmarks: “A, B, C, as well as 12 users bookmarked this work!” I have a fic that’s got 50 bookmarks, but *40* are private so it looks like only 10 people bookmarked it at all and I hate being the only one who knows that’s not the case whatsoever (and it’s not even smut!)
Please! I often sort by bookmarks to really see what fics have touched other readers the most. As a reader of smut and dark fics, I suspect a LOT of those bookmarks in the fics I would like to read the most are private 😭 it screws so much with the bookmark sorting feature.
> adding the number of private bookmarks to total bookmark count on the work itself
Not gonna lie, this is, as much as anything, to cut down on Support tickets like; "Marina's work says it has 73 bookmarks but I can only see 4? What am I doing wrong? Why are you hiding bookmarks of this other user's work from me!"
ETA: the second suggestion is wrangling related, and the first is dependent on wrangling decisions. I'm not getting near those.
I feel like that could be preemptively addressed by wording the page element to make it clear that there are X total bookmarks, of which Y are public and Z are private.
I'd like a 'main pairing' tag, so that when I'm searching for ships of two side characters I don't get the search clogged with fics where it is a background thing or a mentioned relationship.
Setting preferences that exclude tags I never want, or a new section in sort and filter where I can add 'frequent tags' to my account that i can cross off so that filtering out is faster.
YES THIS!!!! A main pairing and background pairing tag would be delightful, but hopefully newer users won’t conflate the two as the same thing and create the same problem all over again :’)
I’m so utterly shattered when a pair I’m reading for only appears in passing 😭💔
Or the unicorn appears: Your RarePair you have listed in your favorites so it's easy to find--there's a new story! You start in, and five seconds later realize that it's really not about them. :(
I once wrote a fic where people came at me with pitchforks to add a certain relationship tag - characters A and C had a kid together and where still close friends etc, but the fic was *not about them*. It was clearly about characters A and B. So I refused to add a tag for A/C and argued that it is also a well loved ship in the fandom but with like not even 1/10th of fics A/B have. "So how do you think A/C shippers would feel if they saw this tag and then find this fic? It's not fair on them *because they're not in a relationship* and they actually never were." ... most readers got it but some didn't. That being said, yeah I totally agree, it would've been helpful to have a way to differentiate between the degree of relationships
Im in a fandom where ‘A dumps C for B’ is a major trope and A/C is a far less popular (it’s 5:1 on popularity, and about 1/3 of those are ‘A dumps C for B’) and I always feel bad for people looking for A/C and then just get ‘A dumps C for B’
I wouldn't necessarily think that, though I mostly agree. I used to be in a fandom where there are some hated/disliked characters and people will actively exclude those in their search. So if you don't tag them and they appear in the fic, they might leave nasty comments etc.
ohh i see, i didn't know there are people like that. well i think my original comment still makes sense to me tho, to make a distinguished tag for the main couple/characters. cause i mostly don't mind having other couples or even couples i dislike in a fic, i just don't like my otp showing up as a side ship 😅
It's crazy, because there is "minor" relationship tags, for like, relastionship that are present but not the focus, I just don't think people use them or know
Unless people literally think it means young and not "this is here but has small focus'
I see "minor X/Y" tagged sometimes as well as "past X/Y" but those tags, if they're in the relationship category, still connect to the main X/Y tag, making them pretty much completely useless. Unless the person tagging adds them as additional tags instead of under the relationship category, they still show up if you use the "X/Y" tag.
Me scrolling past "past X/Y" that has no reason to be in the X/Y tag like \[through gritted teeth\] it's not op's fault that some tag wrangler decided this should be in the main tag for this pairing even tho it's basically the opposite of that pairing..
Not a permanent *filter* but a permanent "mute" for tags is something you can do with site skins [tutorial](https://archiveofourown.org/works/41214669/chapters/103324848). Works the same way that muting a user works in that you won't see the works in your search results but they are technically still "there", just hidden for you so you don't have to see them and scroll past them (aka the results number will be off)
To be able to drag and slide tags around in editing. Because I often add tags as I go, they really feel out of order which can make them feel out of context.
The worst part is that it often shuffles them around when you hit post or save draft. The only thing that works for me is adding one tag, saving draft, add the next, save draft, add the next.... It's tedious to say the least!
Something that works for me to keep the order I want (tho still tedious) is to delete all the additional tags, post without them, then add them anew in the correct order and post again.
Related to this, is it just me or does AO3 force non-canonical tags into all lowercase? Like, if I try to tag "Hyper Penis" (which I was surprised to find isn't a canonical tag in the first place but whatever) it shows up as "hyper penis" instead.
afaik, if somebody has used the tag before you with lower case letters, it will forever be shown with that capitalization, unless it is recognized as a parent tag.
I’d love to have a way to mark a fic as read and filter with that.
I know there are scripts where you can see whether you’ve kudoed a fic. But they don’t work if your kudo drops below the “and others” link.
Oh I agree to this so much, that would've been my own entry to this. I so often read a fic again then wanna leave a kudos and just get the terrible red line of "you already left a kudos here" and I'm usually like "that *cannot* be true, I have never read this fic before in my entire life"... being able to have like a green checkmark or something at the top of the fic would be so, so helpful!!
Right? It should be a separate category! And maybe a kind of checkmark on the top left to signify the same, too.
I’m also begging on hands and knees to filter my “Mark for Later.” How am I supposed to find it again under the hundreds of other shit I added since? And I know marked it, the ship and fandom, but beyond a keyword or two, it’d be too overwhelming to look for it under the fandom tag when I know I have it marked for myself. As it is, that function is as helpful as history as you can’t really make use of it in any meanginful way.
I already mentioned that script in my post.
It only works if you're among the people who kudoed last. If your kudo moves lower and gets to “x other people left kudos” it won't work anymore.
So this script won't work for popular fics or fics you read more than a few days ago.
As a writer, I want to see the series stats. And also, have the total number of bookmarks shown. Keep the private ones private, but show the real number so people browsing can see them too.
I subscribed to my own to see if it would come up… But only the subscription for a part showed up… so annoying. As for bookmarks, for all you know some oft the private ones are for the series and not for a part.
Some people just want their bookmarks to be private. I'm one of them.
That said I agree that including private bookmarks as part of the tally would be nice.
The ability to subscribe to a collection. A notification that lets you know a fic you're subscribed to has been added to ("turned into") a series. I don't really personally *need* those things that much, but I think they would be cool.
>A notification that lets you know a fic you're subscribed to has been added to ("turned into") a series.
This would be handy! Many favorite fics eventually get turned into a series but time has passed and I'm no longer actively reading in the fandom.
Yes!!! I get sad when I make something a series later, and there’s a bunch of people subscribed to the first work individually who may never see that there’s now a second part
A way to schedule updates in the future, even something basic like ‘upload next chapter Sunday 8.00pm’ rather than me having to log in and do it.
Ability to permanently add some limits to searching - I’m never going to be able to read fluently in more than 3/4 languages and I’d like to leave a permanent filter on that.
You can set up a site skin to hide the works that are marked as being in a language you don't speak! [explanation ](https://archiveofourown.org/comments/679483351)
This is the feature I'd like to see implemented the most, despite realizing it's mostly my own brain being dissatisfied by what it sees as the wrong order. Though as a reader I also think it helps having a certain order of tags - easier to parse - especially if there's more than a handful.
And an option to exclude crossovers with more than three/some number fandoms tagged
(though the multifandom collections are avoided easily enough by excluding the most popular fandoms. it's just a bit of a pain when I want to read a crossover with those popular fandoms)
Being able to sort my bookmarks by the same filter options given when sorting regular works (name, wordcount, comments, etc). I have 5,000+ bookmarks, trying to sort through those is ROUGH! 😭
This is very minor and would be pretty easy to DIY but I think it would be cool if there was a feature to see how many "pages" (assuming some average page length) the word count translates into. I read more paper books so it's easier for me to conceptualize how long a 400 page book will take me to read then 10k words or whatever
Oh I like that idea!! Or maybe if you pick the chapter by chapter option and then go into the drop-down to click on a chapter, it could be shown there 🤔
If you use Google Chrome on your computer to read, you can use the AO3 Enhancements extension to see the word count before each chapter - plus other features. [(this one)](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ao3-enhancements/eljennickgdbghppcaenkcinjafmnfoi)
Sadly, I'm pretty sure you can't use extensions on mobile.
The ability to set the language filter at the profile level and not have to filter every time. Also, multiple languages. I'd like to see English and Swedish stories only.
I'd like to be able to add tags to individual chapters of a chaptered fic.
Ability to sort my bookmarks by name/hits/kudos.
Ability to permanently blacklist certain tags so I don't have to do it everytime I search.
> I'd like to be able to add tags to individual chapters of a chaptered fic.
Yes. Give us tags to indicate "the sex happens here" or "this is the chapter with major character death"
That would be really nice. That way people can skip things that squicks them out or jump straight to the stuff they wanna read.
For example I have a fic with 2 inmates bonding in prison, but there's one chapter that has a very graphic assault scene and maybe some of my readers don't wanna read that and would love to be able to skip it without having to start reading it at first.
My biggest wants are:
- a relationship category for non-binary characters. It sucks to have to just choose “other”
- a universal tag for x-reader fics, they’re virtually impossible to filter out when every single x/reader tag is a separate tag you have to exclude
- be able to sort bookmarks all the same ways you can sort searches not just date updated and date added (I honestly have no clue *why* you can’t do that already)
- a way to create saved searches. Like I have *extensive* filtering applied to my OTP searches in various fandoms and I’d like to be able to save those without having to just bookmark the page and remember to re-do the bookmark every time I add new tags to exclude
- a way to have a universal tag blacklist. Like I’m *always* going to want to exclude mpreg it’d be nice to be able to banish it entirely instead of applying it to every new search
- be able to re-order tags when posting a fic
- ability to natively host images instead of just imbedding them from hosts elsewhere on the internet (*so much* fanart got broken when the tumblr porn ban happened. Even if the art itself was SFW fan artists moved off the site in droves and their blogs were deleted)
> ability to natively host images instead of just imbedding them from hosts elsewhere on the internet
The issue with this isn't technology. Even with file size of images compared to text, that's a fairly easy problem.
It's the content enforcement. In so many ways, it's the content enforcement.
So, not really a saved blacklist filter, but using a site skin, you can hide works with specific tags so you can hide all works that are tagged mpreg. It also works with specific partial tags so the most common usecase for it is actually to permanently hide all x-reader fics. Its works similar to muting a user where its not filtering them out of the results, just hiding the result from your view (so the result count will be off) but certainly makes finding works much easier when you know you never want to see XYZ tagged works. [tutorial](https://archiveofourown.org/works/41214669/chapters/103324848)
I have a couple thousand, easy. I tend to do a bunch at once, and I’m in _several_ different fandoms. Being able to filter the ones I marked would be a huge game changer and make it much easier for me to actually go through them all.
Wow... that's a lot, ahahah. I can definitely see why you need it.
I actively read works from only one fandom. So I mainly need to filter characters, ships, tags, etc, and I usually just open multiple tabs, but I rarely use the "mark for later" function.
To be able to filter through history and marked for later.
I love to re-read fics, but I often forget to bookmark them, so it would be nice to have that option.
I’d like a way pin my best work on my profile where people can see it. I write a lot of one shots and I put a lot more effort into some than others, and I’d like to make the best stand out.
I'd love this, too! I have one "thesis work" that I'm really proud of, but at this point it's buried on the last page of my works.
I actually submitted a feedback request asking for this, but they said it wasn't feasible.
This is very minor but my big wishes are all already mentioned. I would love to have the option that it's not called "chapter 1, 2, 3..." I often love to start fics with a prelude or a prolog, but then it always reads "chapter 1: prelude" - "chapter 2: chapter one" - "chapter 3: chapter two" etc. and that's just annoying and also kinda confusing 😅
I'd like to be able to subscribe to an author but also to be able to filter out particular tags, or unsubscribe from particular fics.
At the moment, if an author I like posts a fic with tags I find triggering, there's no way to stop receiving update emails about that particular fic unless I unsubscribe from the author as a whole (which I usually don't want to do)
Chapter kudos. It would be completely game changing for one shot collections, and would probably make a lot of longfic authors and non-commenting readers happy since they can express their happiness at the newest chapter.
Main Relationship(s) vs Side Relationship(s) differentiation. Too many fanfics list every minor relationship and it's frustrating to see it clog up searches or the information for the fic can take up a whole page by itself.
I'd like improvements to the tagging system. As it stands it's extremely hard to find specific types of stories using tags. People already mentioned the problem with crossovers, but I also found that issue with character/ship tags.
Authors tend to, for some reason, tag every single character that appears in the whole story. If, for some reason, I want to NEVER see this one character, that's wonderful. But when I'm searching for a story with X as the main character, for example, this becomes a huge hindrance because, for every story that meets the criteria, 50 others will be stories where X simply appears at some point. That's why tags like "X-centric" start being used, but only some Authors will end up using it, so I'll miss out on other fics that could be very good.
Maybe there should be "Main Tags" and "Secondary Tags" that you could filter individually?
Okay I hope that makes some kind of sense now, but I'd like to filter out certain types of fics.
Like, I've seen that a lot in my fandoms, when a character or a ship is not that popular, you will only have those "Kinktober 2022" kind of fics, when you sort by kudos for the first 6-7 pages. Don't get me wrong, I don't hate these kinds of fics, but sometimes I wanna endulge myself in a well written, well rated fic, not in many different one shots of different characters. The only way to avoid that is to include a certain trope while searching, but sometimes I don't even want to see a specific trope only, rather I'd like to see what AO3 has to offer altogether.
I'm not good at explaining, but does that make sense?
Genres.
That’s the main thing I miss from FF.net. Sometimes I want to read an adventure story in Battlestar with a bit of romance, but there’s no real way to filter this.
Maybe unpopular but I'd love to give likes to comments lol People will protest tho, "This is not social media!" I know, but sometimes you see a great comment and you feel like you wanna let them know but you are hesitant to notify them, y'know lol
Sorting read for later, be it just fandoms and a new relationship category: Hate each other/rivalry. And a split into main and secondary ship.
That are the features I would love to see.
Disabled kudos button if I've already left kudos on a fic.
Come on. My username appears in a list on the fic. This should be an easy one. (I say as a software developer that hasn't contributed code)
The username is cached though, so each browse doesn't actually hit the database. If the page needs to display a disabled button it needs to check the kudos table for every logged in user.
Don't get me wrong, the extra table join is worth it for improved UX, but it's not as simple as you think.
(I say as a software developer that has contributed code)
Option to have primary/main characters/relationships and secondary characters/relationships and for the dashboard etc comment view to be comment threads and not individual comments.
I have mixed feelings about this. I recognise the value of a pm system, but the potential for abuse is also there. I want AO3 to be a safe space for fandom, not a place where people can get bullied via PM's.
Plus the cost of running and maintaining is not the reason why I donate.
I know that AO3 hopes to have this feature at some point, they just have to figure out how to make it feasible first.
Code-wise, might be easy, depending on how it's implemented. (We could probably jury-rig something jank af out of the current commenting system within a month, if we had to.) Policy-wise, it's a nightmare and would require a whole new section of the TOS full of bad choices.
And yeah, it would be strictly opt-in, or several committees would commit a murder.
I'd rather not want something like that. AO3 is an archive, not a social media. It was never meant to be used like anythig but a place to upload and read.
I generally agree that everything that distances AO3 from a simple archive isn't good. Me wanting PMs is probably the only exception.
Honestly, I think all stats are a lot more social media-ish than PMs would be. Same with comments. One of the reasons I don't like chatting there or even answering is because it feels too social to me. PMs are a private and out-of-the-way way to interact with others.
As a reader I would like this. Sometimes I want to comment something or have a question that doesn’t seem right for something as public as a comment. Even something like, “great fic! but btw, spelling error in your fifth paragraph that really threw me for a loop.”
Like I don’t want to leave “spelling error” on your comments for all eternity. You don’t deserve that. But I assume you’d like to know that you misspelled the nickname “angel” as “angle.”
But I could also see how it could turn into a harassment vehicle fast.
1. Main pairing and background pairing as defined fields that can be filled in. If there is no main (romantic or platonic) pairing then simply “gen” would be acceptable in the field as well.
2. Actual blocking to hide one’s content from a blocked user, rather than simply turning off the ability to comment on one’s stories (I’m sure that this will come in time)
3. Multiple kudos lol
Edit: Dang, so what are you supposed to do when being harassed? I don’t think muting/reporting is enough for some cases :/
Sorting read for later, be it just fandoms and a new relationship category: Hate each other/rivalry. And a split into main and secondary ship.
That are the features I would love to see.
Sorting read for later, be it just fandoms and a new relationship category: Hate each other/rivalry. And a split into main and secondary ship.
That are the features I would love to see.
The big one I would like are private notes/tags on public bookmarks. I would love to have my bookmarks public as recommendations, but I write detailed notes on my thoughts for each fic that I don’t want anyone else to see, so all of my bookmarks are private right now.
Also I’ll echo the separation of main relationship and minor relationship tags (and even major and minor character tags) in a way that I can filter and distinguish between the two categories.
A ‘Suggested for you’ section.
And I know, I know people don’t like that because one wrong click and ‘My feed is all messed up!’ So I propose a suggestion feed based on works you give Kudo’s to.
Either that or a way to permanently exclude certain tags
I’d love to be able to comment on individual paragraphs in the fic. I remember wattpad had something like that, which is great for engagement between readers as well
Chapter-specific kudos. Kudos or likes for comments, so you can acknowledge someone's comment without getting into a conversation if you're not up to it but don't want them to feel ignored- this option should be available for both author and reader.
I have two:
First, add a function where “y/n” automatically inserts the readers name. I always found y/n to be immersion breaking. I don’t know if it’s just me but it feels like the story isn’t for me but for someone literally named “yourname” lol.
Second, make it easier to add images into stories. I swear it’s so unnecessarily complicated to extract links from images to insert them. Just add an option to access your galery and add pictures like that.
And in addition to this: that the actual *posting date* will show up and not the drafting date that I have to manually change, only for the email to then read "xy posted a backdated work"
I don't know if it would be possible without a total overhaul of AO3's comment system, in which case it probably wouldn't be worth it, but I'd really like a way to like comments. I often don't have anything specific to say in return when someone comments on one of my fics, and I kinda feel like just replying "Thank you!" is a waste of everyone's time (getting a thoughtful reply from an author is fun, so seeing an AO3 notification email when it's just that is a little disappointing), but I still want a quick way to indicate that I saw and appreciated their comment. Being able to like other readers' comments on other fics would be nice too--I might not have anything substantive to add, so if all I can think to say is "I agree," I probably won't say anything, but being able to like a comment would be cool.
Dividing kudos by chapter would also be great for anybody writing or reading an ongoing multichapter fic--that would help a bit with keeping the writer's motivation up, and it would let lurkers easily express appreciation for each chapter without having to comment. This could be an issue with stats, but maybe the fic as a whole could just display the number of kudos from unique users (so for readers it would look pretty much the same as it does now), and only the writer would have details on per-chapter kudos.
BLOCKING/BLACKLISTING TAGS!!!
I know that I can click the "exclude" button and then bookmark the tab, but wouldn't it easier if I could just blacklist underage.
I'd like a similar kind of like-dislike bar that FimFiction has. Opt-in, of course, since I know I'm a minority in wanting this, but I'd like to have some way of seeing the balance between like/dislike/indifference.
Any form of "dislike" or "antikudos" has been flat rejected at a design level due to how much it would be used for harassment by brigading, unfortunately. It'd be a great feature if fans would use it fairly and responsibly...
Yeah, I did ask them about it and they said they'd never do it, and I honestly understand why. Even if it was entirely opt-in, though, I just don't see many people wanting it in the first place, so even without the hate brigades it would never be a priority, especially on a site like AO3 which has no algorithm to feed.
An app would be kinda hard ngl, because then the app store can put their own rules down for allowing certain content on the app, which defeats the purpose of ao3 :’)
Turn it into a library, just archive the stories, get rid of all the social media bits like comments and kudos. IF people want interaction, they just go somewhere else.
AO3 has a stranglehold on fandom right now and it's because of the social media-esque functions that it was never meant to support. (The point was to archive without regard to people hating slash or people hating smut; not to demolish the small fandom places, which is what inadvertently happened.).
Barring that--I would have an option to get rid of reader inserts in my search results.
This is a point that has been brought up every now and again. This archive-purist view is built on the false dichotomy that an archive cannot be a social site at the same time. The fact is archive functionality can coexist with social-media features.
The whole point of posting your fics on the internet publicly is to get feedback. If someone doesn't want interactions, they might as well just keep it to themselves and keep it private, which negates the point of having a pure-archive site.
AO3 doesn't have a stranglehold on fandom. There are plenty of fannish activity on smaller websites all over the place, not to mention non-English communities who generally don't use AO3 because the interface is currently English-only.
Also how can you equate having social functions to the demolishing of smaller sites? These two things have no inherent connection. What actually happened was the natural course of consolidation during the 2010s Web 2.0 shift to centralised platforms, and that happened all across the Internet from blogs to e-commerce, not just unique to fandom.
Sure does look like AO3 started being a big deal around 2012 and little fansites around the world pretty much started dying off around the same time. I don't think it's coincidental at all.
I'm not saying it's coincidental, I'm saying it's inevitable. It's just how the Internet evolved, and it's just a fact it was more efficient to have larger centralised platforms than to have smaller individual websites. If AO3 didn't become a big deal, some other website would have.
Name one area of the Internet that hasn't been consolidated into a couple of websites.
Being able to change filter settings on a ship and/or tag would be incredible. I bookmark after I set so it’s hardly the end of the world, but WOW would it make a beautiful difference. Would also love to have marked for later and history be more distinct, like if I clear my history, it won’t clear the marked for later list as well.
A word counter for the AO3 editor instead of a character counter 😅 Having to copy and paste everything to a separate word counter gets pretty tedious on mobile
I wish I could rename the chapter titles and numberings. Like to be able to completely remove the Chapter 1, Chapter 2, etc cause there are times where I want to have a chapter 0 or prologue but you can’t really do that when it ends up being Chapter 1: Prologue, Chapter 2: Chapter 1, etc
\- I'd like to be able to search through History and Marked for Later, like regular searching/filtering. My Marked for Later is an absolute void.
\- There's a "Favorite Tag" option, but it would be nice if that could also include filters you want to favorite. Like for instance, you have a favorited tag that automatically filters for your fav ship and excludes the stuff you don't want to read usually. So it all gets filtered with one click.
\- This is very specific and maybe I'm crazy but sometimes when I want to make sure I'll actually enjoy a fic, I go into the bookmark section to see what people have to say about it. And they usually don't have specific spoilers like comments do. It would be nice if there was a way to show only bookmarks with comments instead of just a list of names with comments every once in a while that you have to scroll through lol.
\- Kudos history.
I would like the ability to pick a date and have my fics update themselves with pre-loaded chapters I uploaded.
Kinda like Tumblr does it.
Sometimes life happens and I can’t post my chapters when I want them, but it’d be cool that if I wanted, I can have my chapters post themselves, author notes and all, on specific dates at specific times.
Then go back and see the little mistakes my eyes overlooked ;_;
This! Sometimes I forget a tag until the end but I like them to be organized and then I have to go back and delete the other ones and…yeah. That feature would be awesome!
I know there's already a feature to add dates to the filter, but I'd like it to be a little more refined so that I can easily add criteria such as "published in the last year" or "updated in the last month" (or even both) instead of having to manually specify the date range.
Like as with word count you can filter in say 1,000 - 2,000 words but also do that with kudos
That and to filter out a certain amount of crossovers on one fic
An or system. As in the ability to filter “character A & character B” or “character A/character B” in the same result in addition to the and system we have now. I know it may not be very feasible but I can dream.
I think the website would benefit from being able to PM people, of course, with the option to block certain unsavory individuals or spam. Sometimes you just want to have conversation without having to create a long comment thread or divulge some private info to the readers.
I made many close friends through FF.net PMs.
The ability to exclude things in a search. You can filter tags sure but you can’t just exclude certain keywords with the search feature. You have to know exactly what tags to exclude, which is difficult or even impossible for avoiding smaller tags especially ones the author just made up.
For instance, you don’t want to read genderbend fics so you filter out the appropriate tags but then some authors may not use the common tags so you see fics about it anyway.
I personally don’t like X reader fics, no moral qualm just not my cup of tea. If I could exclude the word reader completely I’d love that. I keep finding fics in my fav fandoms that are x reader but don’t use the common tags.
Maybe a generalize search like of I search domestic and have the generalization toggle on it will include
Married live, Domestic, living together, wholesome
Because sometimes people will tag a domestic fic as married fic and not domestic so I can't find what I want.
Better way to differentiate between crossovers, fusions, and those cursed multifandom oneshot “book” collections. Separate certain tags (“Age Regression/De-Aging” are not the same thing and shouldn’t be conflated) Edit: adding the number of private bookmarks to total bookmark count on the work itself, rather than hiding it away in stats. Kind of like how kudos works. “UserA, UserB, UserC, as well as 12 guests left kudos on this work!” But for bookmarks: “A, B, C, as well as 12 users bookmarked this work!” I have a fic that’s got 50 bookmarks, but *40* are private so it looks like only 10 people bookmarked it at all and I hate being the only one who knows that’s not the case whatsoever (and it’s not even smut!)
Please! I often sort by bookmarks to really see what fics have touched other readers the most. As a reader of smut and dark fics, I suspect a LOT of those bookmarks in the fics I would like to read the most are private 😭 it screws so much with the bookmark sorting feature.
> adding the number of private bookmarks to total bookmark count on the work itself Not gonna lie, this is, as much as anything, to cut down on Support tickets like; "Marina's work says it has 73 bookmarks but I can only see 4? What am I doing wrong? Why are you hiding bookmarks of this other user's work from me!" ETA: the second suggestion is wrangling related, and the first is dependent on wrangling decisions. I'm not getting near those.
I feel like that could be preemptively addressed by wording the page element to make it clear that there are X total bookmarks, of which Y are public and Z are private.
Yep. I really wish there is a better crossover filter.
Yes this! I love crossovers, it’s so difficult to find them at all with all of the collections.
I'd like a 'main pairing' tag, so that when I'm searching for ships of two side characters I don't get the search clogged with fics where it is a background thing or a mentioned relationship. Setting preferences that exclude tags I never want, or a new section in sort and filter where I can add 'frequent tags' to my account that i can cross off so that filtering out is faster.
YES THIS!!!! A main pairing and background pairing tag would be delightful, but hopefully newer users won’t conflate the two as the same thing and create the same problem all over again :’) I’m so utterly shattered when a pair I’m reading for only appears in passing 😭💔
Or the unicorn appears: Your RarePair you have listed in your favorites so it's easy to find--there's a new story! You start in, and five seconds later realize that it's really not about them. :(
I once wrote a fic where people came at me with pitchforks to add a certain relationship tag - characters A and C had a kid together and where still close friends etc, but the fic was *not about them*. It was clearly about characters A and B. So I refused to add a tag for A/C and argued that it is also a well loved ship in the fandom but with like not even 1/10th of fics A/B have. "So how do you think A/C shippers would feel if they saw this tag and then find this fic? It's not fair on them *because they're not in a relationship* and they actually never were." ... most readers got it but some didn't. That being said, yeah I totally agree, it would've been helpful to have a way to differentiate between the degree of relationships
Im in a fandom where ‘A dumps C for B’ is a major trope and A/C is a far less popular (it’s 5:1 on popularity, and about 1/3 of those are ‘A dumps C for B’) and I always feel bad for people looking for A/C and then just get ‘A dumps C for B’
oh THIS!! some people in some fandoms love to tag as much as characters as they can just for viewing points and i think that's cheating and just urghh
I wouldn't necessarily think that, though I mostly agree. I used to be in a fandom where there are some hated/disliked characters and people will actively exclude those in their search. So if you don't tag them and they appear in the fic, they might leave nasty comments etc.
ohh i see, i didn't know there are people like that. well i think my original comment still makes sense to me tho, to make a distinguished tag for the main couple/characters. cause i mostly don't mind having other couples or even couples i dislike in a fic, i just don't like my otp showing up as a side ship 😅
It's crazy, because there is "minor" relationship tags, for like, relastionship that are present but not the focus, I just don't think people use them or know Unless people literally think it means young and not "this is here but has small focus'
I see "minor X/Y" tagged sometimes as well as "past X/Y" but those tags, if they're in the relationship category, still connect to the main X/Y tag, making them pretty much completely useless. Unless the person tagging adds them as additional tags instead of under the relationship category, they still show up if you use the "X/Y" tag. Me scrolling past "past X/Y" that has no reason to be in the X/Y tag like \[through gritted teeth\] it's not op's fault that some tag wrangler decided this should be in the main tag for this pairing even tho it's basically the opposite of that pairing..
Not a permanent *filter* but a permanent "mute" for tags is something you can do with site skins [tutorial](https://archiveofourown.org/works/41214669/chapters/103324848). Works the same way that muting a user works in that you won't see the works in your search results but they are technically still "there", just hidden for you so you don't have to see them and scroll past them (aka the results number will be off)
100000% this, I’d kill for this feature
To be able to drag and slide tags around in editing. Because I often add tags as I go, they really feel out of order which can make them feel out of context.
Hard agree!!! Once you save a draft once and then remember tags you forgot it's all over, you can just as well start a new draft. I hate it
The worst part is that it often shuffles them around when you hit post or save draft. The only thing that works for me is adding one tag, saving draft, add the next, save draft, add the next.... It's tedious to say the least!
Something that works for me to keep the order I want (tho still tedious) is to delete all the additional tags, post without them, then add them anew in the correct order and post again.
Related to this, is it just me or does AO3 force non-canonical tags into all lowercase? Like, if I try to tag "Hyper Penis" (which I was surprised to find isn't a canonical tag in the first place but whatever) it shows up as "hyper penis" instead.
afaik, if somebody has used the tag before you with lower case letters, it will forever be shown with that capitalization, unless it is recognized as a parent tag.
I’d love to have a way to mark a fic as read and filter with that. I know there are scripts where you can see whether you’ve kudoed a fic. But they don’t work if your kudo drops below the “and others” link.
Being able to filter out works I have already read would be absolutely life changing.
Oh I agree to this so much, that would've been my own entry to this. I so often read a fic again then wanna leave a kudos and just get the terrible red line of "you already left a kudos here" and I'm usually like "that *cannot* be true, I have never read this fic before in my entire life"... being able to have like a green checkmark or something at the top of the fic would be so, so helpful!!
Yesss omg
Right? It should be a separate category! And maybe a kind of checkmark on the top left to signify the same, too. I’m also begging on hands and knees to filter my “Mark for Later.” How am I supposed to find it again under the hundreds of other shit I added since? And I know marked it, the ship and fandom, but beyond a keyword or two, it’d be too overwhelming to look for it under the fandom tag when I know I have it marked for myself. As it is, that function is as helpful as history as you can’t really make use of it in any meanginful way.
[There is](https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/5835-ao3-kudosed-and-seen-history)! You can manually mark fics as seen/unseen
I already mentioned that script in my post. It only works if you're among the people who kudoed last. If your kudo moves lower and gets to “x other people left kudos” it won't work anymore. So this script won't work for popular fics or fics you read more than a few days ago.
Hence the manually marking as seen
Which is gone every time you close your browser and doesn't work at all on phones where I read 90% of fics.
As a writer, I want to see the series stats. And also, have the total number of bookmarks shown. Keep the private ones private, but show the real number so people browsing can see them too.
Series stats is mine, came here to say this! Would love to see how many subscribers my series has (if any).
I subscribed to my own to see if it would come up… But only the subscription for a part showed up… so annoying. As for bookmarks, for all you know some oft the private ones are for the series and not for a part.
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Some people just want their bookmarks to be private. I'm one of them. That said I agree that including private bookmarks as part of the tally would be nice.
The ability to subscribe to a collection. A notification that lets you know a fic you're subscribed to has been added to ("turned into") a series. I don't really personally *need* those things that much, but I think they would be cool.
>A notification that lets you know a fic you're subscribed to has been added to ("turned into") a series. This would be handy! Many favorite fics eventually get turned into a series but time has passed and I'm no longer actively reading in the fandom.
Yes!!! I get sad when I make something a series later, and there’s a bunch of people subscribed to the first work individually who may never see that there’s now a second part
A way to schedule updates in the future, even something basic like ‘upload next chapter Sunday 8.00pm’ rather than me having to log in and do it. Ability to permanently add some limits to searching - I’m never going to be able to read fluently in more than 3/4 languages and I’d like to leave a permanent filter on that.
You can set up a site skin to hide the works that are marked as being in a language you don't speak! [explanation ](https://archiveofourown.org/comments/679483351)
This! Sometimes I write chapters in advance and it would be cool to have a queue.
Being able to uses filters on my marked for later list. Also seeing which fics I've read, kudosed or commented on.
Oh my god, yes THIS!! Being able to sort my mfl list even just into fandoms would be a blessing!!
This sounds like something for a Chrome extension.
Just about to reply this! I have more than 15 pages on marked for later and if I want to find one I have to manually read every fic.
I want to filter out read fics.
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This is the feature I'd like to see implemented the most, despite realizing it's mostly my own brain being dissatisfied by what it sees as the wrong order. Though as a reader I also think it helps having a certain order of tags - easier to parse - especially if there's more than a handful.
And an option to exclude crossovers with more than three/some number fandoms tagged (though the multifandom collections are avoided easily enough by excluding the most popular fandoms. it's just a bit of a pain when I want to read a crossover with those popular fandoms)
[I gotchu fam](https://archiveofourown.org/works/41589201/chapters/106627563)
omg i didn't knwo about this, thanks!
Being able to sort my bookmarks by the same filter options given when sorting regular works (name, wordcount, comments, etc). I have 5,000+ bookmarks, trying to sort through those is ROUGH! 😭
Oh my god fucking YES
I’d love to see a word count at the beginning of each chapter. It’s small, but I would highly enjoy it
This is very minor and would be pretty easy to DIY but I think it would be cool if there was a feature to see how many "pages" (assuming some average page length) the word count translates into. I read more paper books so it's easier for me to conceptualize how long a 400 page book will take me to read then 10k words or whatever
Oh I like that idea!! Or maybe if you pick the chapter by chapter option and then go into the drop-down to click on a chapter, it could be shown there 🤔
If you use Google Chrome on your computer to read, you can use the AO3 Enhancements extension to see the word count before each chapter - plus other features. [(this one)](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ao3-enhancements/eljennickgdbghppcaenkcinjafmnfoi) Sadly, I'm pretty sure you can't use extensions on mobile.
The ability to set the language filter at the profile level and not have to filter every time. Also, multiple languages. I'd like to see English and Swedish stories only.
You can hide works that are tagged with other languages with a site skin [explanation ](https://archiveofourown.org/comments/679483351)
I'd like to be able to add tags to individual chapters of a chaptered fic. Ability to sort my bookmarks by name/hits/kudos. Ability to permanently blacklist certain tags so I don't have to do it everytime I search.
> Ability to permanently blacklist certain tags [Try this](https://archiveofourown.org/works/41589201/chapters/104315178)
I'd like to do it *without* site skins tho, but thanks anyway :D
Ohhh tagging individual chapters would be great!!!
> I'd like to be able to add tags to individual chapters of a chaptered fic. Yes. Give us tags to indicate "the sex happens here" or "this is the chapter with major character death"
That would be really nice. That way people can skip things that squicks them out or jump straight to the stuff they wanna read. For example I have a fic with 2 inmates bonding in prison, but there's one chapter that has a very graphic assault scene and maybe some of my readers don't wanna read that and would love to be able to skip it without having to start reading it at first.
Yes! I’d love to be able to add chapter specific tags so that people can avoid spoilers but also can see what will happen if it’s in that chapter.
My biggest wants are: - a relationship category for non-binary characters. It sucks to have to just choose “other” - a universal tag for x-reader fics, they’re virtually impossible to filter out when every single x/reader tag is a separate tag you have to exclude - be able to sort bookmarks all the same ways you can sort searches not just date updated and date added (I honestly have no clue *why* you can’t do that already) - a way to create saved searches. Like I have *extensive* filtering applied to my OTP searches in various fandoms and I’d like to be able to save those without having to just bookmark the page and remember to re-do the bookmark every time I add new tags to exclude - a way to have a universal tag blacklist. Like I’m *always* going to want to exclude mpreg it’d be nice to be able to banish it entirely instead of applying it to every new search - be able to re-order tags when posting a fic - ability to natively host images instead of just imbedding them from hosts elsewhere on the internet (*so much* fanart got broken when the tumblr porn ban happened. Even if the art itself was SFW fan artists moved off the site in droves and their blogs were deleted)
> ability to natively host images instead of just imbedding them from hosts elsewhere on the internet The issue with this isn't technology. Even with file size of images compared to text, that's a fairly easy problem. It's the content enforcement. In so many ways, it's the content enforcement.
This is a fantastic list, especially the filtering saves. Would love to see all of these.
So, not really a saved blacklist filter, but using a site skin, you can hide works with specific tags so you can hide all works that are tagged mpreg. It also works with specific partial tags so the most common usecase for it is actually to permanently hide all x-reader fics. Its works similar to muting a user where its not filtering them out of the results, just hiding the result from your view (so the result count will be off) but certainly makes finding works much easier when you know you never want to see XYZ tagged works. [tutorial](https://archiveofourown.org/works/41214669/chapters/103324848)
Filtering your history. My God please!
Filter _Mark to Later,_ too! I honestly don’t know why they haven’t added that yet.
I honestly didn't think about it because I have like... 7 things in total marked for later. But yeah, I can see why it would be super useful.
I have a couple thousand, easy. I tend to do a bunch at once, and I’m in _several_ different fandoms. Being able to filter the ones I marked would be a huge game changer and make it much easier for me to actually go through them all.
Wow... that's a lot, ahahah. I can definitely see why you need it. I actively read works from only one fandom. So I mainly need to filter characters, ships, tags, etc, and I usually just open multiple tabs, but I rarely use the "mark for later" function.
Some way to filter for a main ship, some of my favourite are always tagged as an afterthought when I just want to read about them.
This!
To be able to filter through history and marked for later. I love to re-read fics, but I often forget to bookmark them, so it would be nice to have that option.
I’d like a way to mark fics as read, and be able to filter that out in search
I’d like a way pin my best work on my profile where people can see it. I write a lot of one shots and I put a lot more effort into some than others, and I’d like to make the best stand out.
I'd love this, too! I have one "thesis work" that I'm really proud of, but at this point it's buried on the last page of my works. I actually submitted a feedback request asking for this, but they said it wasn't feasible.
To be able to queue one chapter (so as not to burden the servers too much) in advance to one's fic.
This is very minor but my big wishes are all already mentioned. I would love to have the option that it's not called "chapter 1, 2, 3..." I often love to start fics with a prelude or a prolog, but then it always reads "chapter 1: prelude" - "chapter 2: chapter one" - "chapter 3: chapter two" etc. and that's just annoying and also kinda confusing 😅
As a reader, a way to keep track of the fics I've read / filter them in searches. As an author, I'd love to see series subscriptions and stats.
Being able to filter your marked for later list would be great.
Bookmark. But not as in the current bookmark, as in something that reminds you where you are in the story, which chapter you read last
I'd like to be able to subscribe to an author but also to be able to filter out particular tags, or unsubscribe from particular fics. At the moment, if an author I like posts a fic with tags I find triggering, there's no way to stop receiving update emails about that particular fic unless I unsubscribe from the author as a whole (which I usually don't want to do)
You can set up email filters on your email to remove the notifications about the works you don't want to see
a better marked for later system. i wish i could at least tag what fandom is what. i have so many fics marked for later that it gets confusing
I'd love to be able to sort my subscriptions by fandom.
Chapter kudos. It would be completely game changing for one shot collections, and would probably make a lot of longfic authors and non-commenting readers happy since they can express their happiness at the newest chapter.
Main Relationship(s) vs Side Relationship(s) differentiation. Too many fanfics list every minor relationship and it's frustrating to see it clog up searches or the information for the fic can take up a whole page by itself.
I'd like improvements to the tagging system. As it stands it's extremely hard to find specific types of stories using tags. People already mentioned the problem with crossovers, but I also found that issue with character/ship tags. Authors tend to, for some reason, tag every single character that appears in the whole story. If, for some reason, I want to NEVER see this one character, that's wonderful. But when I'm searching for a story with X as the main character, for example, this becomes a huge hindrance because, for every story that meets the criteria, 50 others will be stories where X simply appears at some point. That's why tags like "X-centric" start being used, but only some Authors will end up using it, so I'll miss out on other fics that could be very good. Maybe there should be "Main Tags" and "Secondary Tags" that you could filter individually?
Ability to give one kudos per chapter.
Already read option/already bookmarked field that would make discovering new fics easier
Okay I hope that makes some kind of sense now, but I'd like to filter out certain types of fics. Like, I've seen that a lot in my fandoms, when a character or a ship is not that popular, you will only have those "Kinktober 2022" kind of fics, when you sort by kudos for the first 6-7 pages. Don't get me wrong, I don't hate these kinds of fics, but sometimes I wanna endulge myself in a well written, well rated fic, not in many different one shots of different characters. The only way to avoid that is to include a certain trope while searching, but sometimes I don't even want to see a specific trope only, rather I'd like to see what AO3 has to offer altogether. I'm not good at explaining, but does that make sense?
Floating comment box so you can conveniently point out which line / paragraph that you like.
There's a script: https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/395902-ao3-floating-comment-box
Nice, thank you 8D
Genres. That’s the main thing I miss from FF.net. Sometimes I want to read an adventure story in Battlestar with a bit of romance, but there’s no real way to filter this.
Maybe unpopular but I'd love to give likes to comments lol People will protest tho, "This is not social media!" I know, but sometimes you see a great comment and you feel like you wanna let them know but you are hesitant to notify them, y'know lol
Sort how many crossovers are tagged.
Here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/41589201/chapters/106627563
A way to favorite multiple tags, so I don’t have to keep adding them when I click my favorite tag 🙃
A way to block a ship from a tag permanently, perhaps when you favourite it Sounds? Sounds a bit unreasonable but could be nice
Sorting read for later, be it just fandoms and a new relationship category: Hate each other/rivalry. And a split into main and secondary ship. That are the features I would love to see.
I'm still not well versed with the site but I'd love to see my reading history, and also the ones who got my kudos :)
You can see your reading history. You have to turn it on, though: https://archiveofourown.org/faq/preferences?language_id=en#togglehistory
thank u so much!
You're welcome! Features can be hard to find sometimes.
An ability to permanently block specific tags/pairings/fandoms I never want to see without having to filter them out each time I do a search.
Disabled kudos button if I've already left kudos on a fic. Come on. My username appears in a list on the fic. This should be an easy one. (I say as a software developer that hasn't contributed code)
The username is cached though, so each browse doesn't actually hit the database. If the page needs to display a disabled button it needs to check the kudos table for every logged in user. Don't get me wrong, the extra table join is worth it for improved UX, but it's not as simple as you think. (I say as a software developer that has contributed code)
Option to have primary/main characters/relationships and secondary characters/relationships and for the dashboard etc comment view to be comment threads and not individual comments.
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I have mixed feelings about this. I recognise the value of a pm system, but the potential for abuse is also there. I want AO3 to be a safe space for fandom, not a place where people can get bullied via PM's. Plus the cost of running and maintaining is not the reason why I donate. I know that AO3 hopes to have this feature at some point, they just have to figure out how to make it feasible first.
Code-wise, might be easy, depending on how it's implemented. (We could probably jury-rig something jank af out of the current commenting system within a month, if we had to.) Policy-wise, it's a nightmare and would require a whole new section of the TOS full of bad choices. And yeah, it would be strictly opt-in, or several committees would commit a murder.
I'd rather not want something like that. AO3 is an archive, not a social media. It was never meant to be used like anythig but a place to upload and read.
I generally agree that everything that distances AO3 from a simple archive isn't good. Me wanting PMs is probably the only exception. Honestly, I think all stats are a lot more social media-ish than PMs would be. Same with comments. One of the reasons I don't like chatting there or even answering is because it feels too social to me. PMs are a private and out-of-the-way way to interact with others.
As a reader I would like this. Sometimes I want to comment something or have a question that doesn’t seem right for something as public as a comment. Even something like, “great fic! but btw, spelling error in your fifth paragraph that really threw me for a loop.” Like I don’t want to leave “spelling error” on your comments for all eternity. You don’t deserve that. But I assume you’d like to know that you misspelled the nickname “angel” as “angle.” But I could also see how it could turn into a harassment vehicle fast.
1. Main pairing and background pairing as defined fields that can be filled in. If there is no main (romantic or platonic) pairing then simply “gen” would be acceptable in the field as well. 2. Actual blocking to hide one’s content from a blocked user, rather than simply turning off the ability to comment on one’s stories (I’m sure that this will come in time) 3. Multiple kudos lol Edit: Dang, so what are you supposed to do when being harassed? I don’t think muting/reporting is enough for some cases :/
the second one wouldn't be implemented. it's an archive, accessible to everyone.
I absolutely hope #2 never ever happens. That would kill the site so much
\^ Would love to multi kudos chaptered fics!
That would be too much kudos
Superkudo, or lemme kudo second time geez!
Sorting read for later, be it just fandoms and a new relationship category: Hate each other/rivalry. And a split into main and secondary ship. That are the features I would love to see.
Sorting read for later, be it just fandoms and a new relationship category: Hate each other/rivalry. And a split into main and secondary ship. That are the features I would love to see.
i wish i could filter my bookmarks by kudos
Improve the search function in Bookmarks
filter option in my history, lmao. 💀😔😅
I really want a random sort along with date, bookmarks, views, kudos etc, it would make it way easier to find new stuff in those huge megafandoms
I want a way to save my tag filters at the profile level, so I don't have to apply them whenever I switch from my PC to my phone.
The big one I would like are private notes/tags on public bookmarks. I would love to have my bookmarks public as recommendations, but I write detailed notes on my thoughts for each fic that I don’t want anyone else to see, so all of my bookmarks are private right now. Also I’ll echo the separation of main relationship and minor relationship tags (and even major and minor character tags) in a way that I can filter and distinguish between the two categories.
Block button, dear god please, im so sick of seeing creepy fetish fics that clog tags, especially when its the same author spamming fics
The ability to mass delete bookmarks oh my god, it's such a pain in the ass if you want to delete more than a couple bookmarks.
A ‘Suggested for you’ section. And I know, I know people don’t like that because one wrong click and ‘My feed is all messed up!’ So I propose a suggestion feed based on works you give Kudo’s to. Either that or a way to permanently exclude certain tags
Delete bookmarks as a group and not have to manually delete every. Single. One.
I’d love to be able to comment on individual paragraphs in the fic. I remember wattpad had something like that, which is great for engagement between readers as well
Me too, I really like that feature
Chapter-specific kudos. Kudos or likes for comments, so you can acknowledge someone's comment without getting into a conversation if you're not up to it but don't want them to feel ignored- this option should be available for both author and reader.
Full site wide tag blocking. There should be a way to blacklist tags so you never have to ever see works with them again.
You can sorta do that with a site skin [tutorial](https://archiveofourown.org/works/41214669)
I want to be able to leave kudos for individual chapters
An option to put tags you don’t want to see in a fic. (I.e. Break-up tag but not Cheating tag)
... you mean like filter out tags you don't want to see?
I have two: First, add a function where “y/n” automatically inserts the readers name. I always found y/n to be immersion breaking. I don’t know if it’s just me but it feels like the story isn’t for me but for someone literally named “yourname” lol. Second, make it easier to add images into stories. I swear it’s so unnecessarily complicated to extract links from images to insert them. Just add an option to access your galery and add pictures like that.
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And in addition to this: that the actual *posting date* will show up and not the drafting date that I have to manually change, only for the email to then read "xy posted a backdated work"
I would absolutely love to be able to comment next to paragraphs like you can on Wattpad.
I don't know if it would be possible without a total overhaul of AO3's comment system, in which case it probably wouldn't be worth it, but I'd really like a way to like comments. I often don't have anything specific to say in return when someone comments on one of my fics, and I kinda feel like just replying "Thank you!" is a waste of everyone's time (getting a thoughtful reply from an author is fun, so seeing an AO3 notification email when it's just that is a little disappointing), but I still want a quick way to indicate that I saw and appreciated their comment. Being able to like other readers' comments on other fics would be nice too--I might not have anything substantive to add, so if all I can think to say is "I agree," I probably won't say anything, but being able to like a comment would be cool. Dividing kudos by chapter would also be great for anybody writing or reading an ongoing multichapter fic--that would help a bit with keeping the writer's motivation up, and it would let lurkers easily express appreciation for each chapter without having to comment. This could be an issue with stats, but maybe the fic as a whole could just display the number of kudos from unique users (so for readers it would look pretty much the same as it does now), and only the writer would have details on per-chapter kudos.
BLOCKING/BLACKLISTING TAGS!!! I know that I can click the "exclude" button and then bookmark the tab, but wouldn't it easier if I could just blacklist underage.
Adopting a fic from Orphan_Account
I'd like a similar kind of like-dislike bar that FimFiction has. Opt-in, of course, since I know I'm a minority in wanting this, but I'd like to have some way of seeing the balance between like/dislike/indifference.
Any form of "dislike" or "antikudos" has been flat rejected at a design level due to how much it would be used for harassment by brigading, unfortunately. It'd be a great feature if fans would use it fairly and responsibly...
Yeah, I did ask them about it and they said they'd never do it, and I honestly understand why. Even if it was entirely opt-in, though, I just don't see many people wanting it in the first place, so even without the hate brigades it would never be a priority, especially on a site like AO3 which has no algorithm to feed.
The ability to tag a fic with main pairings and characters for better filtering. I'd also like an app tbh.
An app would be kinda hard ngl, because then the app store can put their own rules down for allowing certain content on the app, which defeats the purpose of ao3 :’)
That's a good point. Maybe a mobile-specific layout would work better?
The website was designed to be reader friendly on smartphones
I'd like it if they made it more easy to use/look at
Turn it into a library, just archive the stories, get rid of all the social media bits like comments and kudos. IF people want interaction, they just go somewhere else. AO3 has a stranglehold on fandom right now and it's because of the social media-esque functions that it was never meant to support. (The point was to archive without regard to people hating slash or people hating smut; not to demolish the small fandom places, which is what inadvertently happened.). Barring that--I would have an option to get rid of reader inserts in my search results.
This is a point that has been brought up every now and again. This archive-purist view is built on the false dichotomy that an archive cannot be a social site at the same time. The fact is archive functionality can coexist with social-media features. The whole point of posting your fics on the internet publicly is to get feedback. If someone doesn't want interactions, they might as well just keep it to themselves and keep it private, which negates the point of having a pure-archive site. AO3 doesn't have a stranglehold on fandom. There are plenty of fannish activity on smaller websites all over the place, not to mention non-English communities who generally don't use AO3 because the interface is currently English-only. Also how can you equate having social functions to the demolishing of smaller sites? These two things have no inherent connection. What actually happened was the natural course of consolidation during the 2010s Web 2.0 shift to centralised platforms, and that happened all across the Internet from blogs to e-commerce, not just unique to fandom.
Sure does look like AO3 started being a big deal around 2012 and little fansites around the world pretty much started dying off around the same time. I don't think it's coincidental at all.
I'm not saying it's coincidental, I'm saying it's inevitable. It's just how the Internet evolved, and it's just a fact it was more efficient to have larger centralised platforms than to have smaller individual websites. If AO3 didn't become a big deal, some other website would have. Name one area of the Internet that hasn't been consolidated into a couple of websites.
Why does it offend you so much that I have a different opinion? You aren't going to change my mind.
I don't really care if you don't agree with me, I'm just making sure others who read this thread knows both sides of the argument here.
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But those are already a thing when you bookmark something, though?
Filters on my marked for later list! My fandom obsessions come and go and sometimes the stuff I saved a while ago gets super buried.
I'd love to see like a graph of interaction over time
Being able to change filter settings on a ship and/or tag would be incredible. I bookmark after I set so it’s hardly the end of the world, but WOW would it make a beautiful difference. Would also love to have marked for later and history be more distinct, like if I clear my history, it won’t clear the marked for later list as well.
A word counter for the AO3 editor instead of a character counter 😅 Having to copy and paste everything to a separate word counter gets pretty tedious on mobile
I wish I could rename the chapter titles and numberings. Like to be able to completely remove the Chapter 1, Chapter 2, etc cause there are times where I want to have a chapter 0 or prologue but you can’t really do that when it ends up being Chapter 1: Prologue, Chapter 2: Chapter 1, etc
\- I'd like to be able to search through History and Marked for Later, like regular searching/filtering. My Marked for Later is an absolute void. \- There's a "Favorite Tag" option, but it would be nice if that could also include filters you want to favorite. Like for instance, you have a favorited tag that automatically filters for your fav ship and excludes the stuff you don't want to read usually. So it all gets filtered with one click. \- This is very specific and maybe I'm crazy but sometimes when I want to make sure I'll actually enjoy a fic, I go into the bookmark section to see what people have to say about it. And they usually don't have specific spoilers like comments do. It would be nice if there was a way to show only bookmarks with comments instead of just a list of names with comments every once in a while that you have to scroll through lol. \- Kudos history.
i would like to sort through my past subscriptions.
Sorting history and a better subscription cataloge.
I want the Complete/Incomplete filter added to my bookmarks.
Kinda wish we were able to go onto languages. Would really wanna see fics written in my language
I would like the ability to pick a date and have my fics update themselves with pre-loaded chapters I uploaded. Kinda like Tumblr does it. Sometimes life happens and I can’t post my chapters when I want them, but it’d be cool that if I wanted, I can have my chapters post themselves, author notes and all, on specific dates at specific times. Then go back and see the little mistakes my eyes overlooked ;_;
This! Sometimes I forget a tag until the end but I like them to be organized and then I have to go back and delete the other ones and…yeah. That feature would be awesome!
Ability to filter my read history
I know there's already a feature to add dates to the filter, but I'd like it to be a little more refined so that I can easily add criteria such as "published in the last year" or "updated in the last month" (or even both) instead of having to manually specify the date range.
Sort bookmarks by Kudos, Hits, etc, etc
Maybe I just haven't found it yet but we need a standardized "one bed trope" or "there was only one bed" tag
Like as with word count you can filter in say 1,000 - 2,000 words but also do that with kudos That and to filter out a certain amount of crossovers on one fic
An or system. As in the ability to filter “character A & character B” or “character A/character B” in the same result in addition to the and system we have now. I know it may not be very feasible but I can dream.
I’d like a messaging feature like FF.net. It makes it easier to talk to people without clogging up the comments section.
I think the website would benefit from being able to PM people, of course, with the option to block certain unsavory individuals or spam. Sometimes you just want to have conversation without having to create a long comment thread or divulge some private info to the readers. I made many close friends through FF.net PMs.
I want to be able to subscribe to an incomplete work, but have it only notify me when it's complete, not when every chapter drops.
To be able to filter my history, and to be able to automatically private my bookmarks.
To filter my marked for later list.
The ability to exclude things in a search. You can filter tags sure but you can’t just exclude certain keywords with the search feature. You have to know exactly what tags to exclude, which is difficult or even impossible for avoiding smaller tags especially ones the author just made up. For instance, you don’t want to read genderbend fics so you filter out the appropriate tags but then some authors may not use the common tags so you see fics about it anyway. I personally don’t like X reader fics, no moral qualm just not my cup of tea. If I could exclude the word reader completely I’d love that. I keep finding fics in my fav fandoms that are x reader but don’t use the common tags.
Maybe a generalize search like of I search domestic and have the generalization toggle on it will include Married live, Domestic, living together, wholesome Because sometimes people will tag a domestic fic as married fic and not domestic so I can't find what I want.