I have no idea what either Wattpad or AO3 is.
this post was submitted on 24 Jun 2024
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Both are creative writing sites with large/primary focuses on fanfiction. AO3 (Archive Of Our Own) allows for works depicting rape, incest, and pedophilia. IIRC Wattpad never did.
I'd describe it as Ao3 has a broader set of terms of service and permits a far wider range of stories to be told
Would you also describe Johnny Sins as an experienced, award winning actor whos played a wide array of roles? Cuz its true but...
Do you think awards should be limited to The Academy?
That only pearl clutching, blue haired old women should get to tell us what is acceptable in our society?
Before the pedants and so on start asking if I want to legalise child porn and snuff films, no.
But this is a fictional site where people write stories. They don't act out stories and they don't make films of the stories (at least not on the site), and I am not advocating for that.
If people don't want to read them, they can go back to story time with mother. But that doesn't mean they get to tell me what I can and cannot read.
Also, if Johnny Sims wants to make his money entertaining people, then yeah - I say more power to him. It's more honest than some of the actors in Hollywood.
pearl clutching
blue haired
In my experience these have been two pretty distinct groups with almost zero intersection.
Who am I thinking of then?
Oh! Blue rinse!
I know there was a blue involved somewhere :)
(And not just the films that Johnny Sims was in. Fnar!!!)
You were right though, ladies with blue rinse are often called "blue haired" ❤️
Older women with gray hair are sometimes referred to as "blue haired" https://uponbeauty.com/why-do-so-many-old-ladies-have-blue-hair/
peanut gallery here but I love this.
But what? Why wouldn't that describe his career?
AO3 is ArchiveOfOurOwn.org. They're both fic hosting sites.
Imagine fictional stories being illegal at all.
Ironically, I would imagine that would make a good story.
Unfortunately, many countries ban media that they view as glorifying bad things
Sounds dystopian af
part of the impetus for creating ao3 was a series of content purges intended to hit bad evil content also hitting, for instance, support groups for survivors, and g rated content if it was also gay.
its code is open source so i genuinely think people with their own ideas about moderation should take advantage of that or anything else (wordpress?) to make an archive. if there are good stories on it, i'll visit. There should be more archives in general.
I use AO3 daily but wish there was a way to set tag preferences for the whole site so I dont have to manually filter out smut and rape
There are some scripts that might help? https://openuserjs.org/scripts/sarken/Blurb_Blocker https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/3578-ao3-saved-filters But it would be nice if it was easier.
Thanks!
This is going to be a controversial opinion, but I really wish we had gatekept AO3 from the portion of the Twitter fandom crowd that keeps getting all the manga/anime/game/tv piracy sites taken down by blasting it all on social media.
Not everything has to be for everyone, and also if you don't know what "Dead Dove: Do Not Eat" is or don't know how to Google it...maybe the website isn't for you.
Wait, am I not understanding what AO3 is? I thought it was a site for fanfiction. This makes it sound like it's something more than that?
What are the policies that AO3 is enforcing that Wattpad doesn't? I honestly have so little context here.
I don't know shit about either of the sites other than that there's fanfic there, but my reading of the post is the other way around. I'm pretty sure they're saying that:
- Wattpad enforced stricter standards than AO3
- Presumably Wattpad's userbase diminished as a result
- Now that Wattpad has died or something, the people that supported Wattpad's stricter standards have moved to AO3
- Those people now demand that AO3 enforced Wattpad's standards
my reading of the post is the other way around
To be honest, one of my sources of confusion is that the second paragraph suggests Wattpad users are trying to make AO3 allow their type of content, but the third paragraph/second post implies AO3 is too permissive for Wattpad users. The two messages seem opposite each other in what they get across.
One possibility that had occured to me was that AO3 is too permissive for Wattpad users in terms of classification, but that AO3 was a fanfiction site and Wattpad maybe has a mix of fanfiction and OC and that they were annoyed at the OC not being allowed. That would seem to reconcile the mixed messages. But honestly there's nowhere near the evidence from these posts and what little I already knew about the sites to be even remotely confident in that conclusion.
There's a long history of wider fandom spaces becoming profit driven and then purging "problematic" content in order to appeal to advertisers. Someone can write a story with rape because they think it's hot, and someone else can write a story with rape as a way to help process personal trauma, but both are removed because the content restrictions boil down to "all rape stories are bad." This type of policy also tends to affect stuff with queer themes disproportionately.
Sounds like Wattpad has just gone the way of LiveJournal, FF.net, & others by implementing sweeping content policies.
AO3 was created by a fan-run non-profit to be a written works archive with very minimal restrictions on content, but younger folks coming from these algorithm-based platforms aren't used to having to curate their own experiences via filtering tags & warnings. It's the old have your cake and eat it, too problem.
tags
As a very inexperienced AO3 user, tha tags are a nightmare. There's like millions of them and no real rhyme or reason to them it feels like. Plus, people use tags as a joke the same way people did on Tumblr. So it's hard to know which tags are jokey one-off tags and which are tags you should actually sort by.
But, I also understand that for the true users of AO3 (I only ever go there to read stuff people send me) it works good enough and I'm not suggesting they should change it.
Ehh, I'd say it depends on what you're looking for. I definitely get it being overwhelming starting out.
Tagging quality varies a lot, but most weird tags that are fandom, character, or content get consolidated under a broader parent tag. If you're looking for a specific trope or vibe, it might be easier to view works under that parent tag, then filter down by fandom/characters/ship, etc. Also helps to sort by bookmarks or kudos (likes); there's usually a pretty good overlap of popularity & quality.
But I'm a browser & pretty content to just see what comes up, so YMMV. For more specific stuff, the advanced search is also very robust, especially using search operators. There's guides out there on how to get the most out of it.
There's also bookmarks and collections, if you're wanting stuff vetted by another person. I tend to figure if someone wrote fics I like, they probably read other fics I'd like, so it's usually worth a look.
parent tag
Ahhhh, okay. I didn't know that was a thing. That's exactly the sort of thing that would help though. Tha is for telling me. In Stack Overflow (not that I'm suggesting a technology Q&A site and fan fiction site need similar functions) tagging is much more strict. They can even change tags and combine them thus affecting all related questions. But it sounds like AO3 has something somewhat similar but I wasn't aware.
Haha, yeah it's a neverending process. There's a bunch of volunteer positions behind the scenes; tags are managed by 'tag wranglers', so it can take a while for some of the odder ones to get classified as it's human people doing the classifying. It's a tricky balance of functionality & maintaining the community culture/flavor. I think they do alright, but I've also been using the site for years, so definitely biased.
When was this wattpad purge?