@jackwolfes (@tumblr.com)
thinking about that post of people assuming ao3 has an algorithm and also about how bonkers persistent the view is that ao3 is social media lite. like with startling regularity I get comments saying something along the lines of “it’s probably weird to comment on a fic this old–” no it isn’t!!!! this is an archive I am literally just assuming you searched for a selection of specific tags or sorted by kudos or looked back on my pseud or any other number of completely normal ways to use an archive site ?? kill the tiktok ghost in your brain and comment on old stuff it’s NOT weird
@naryrising (@tumblr.com)
Guess how many people contact us regularly to ASK for us to have an algorithm, go ahead. Because it’s many. And I always take a little bit of enjoyment in explaining that no, we’re not going to build a system to recommend fics to you based on your kudos, because for one thing that would be extra work, and for another thing that would require us to be tracking and using a lot more of your data than we want to. We actually do not want to monitor that people who liked Fic A also liked Fic B, or that people who like the tag “butt plugs” might also enjoy the tag “anal fisting”, or whatever other nonsense seems to be the expectation these days. I already know enough (more than I’d love, in a perfect world!) about people’s reading habits, and I don’t want to have that knowledge deployed via algorithms on the Archive just because someone really wants an automated conveyer belt of content being streamed directly into their feed based on us extrapolating from their most commonly used tags or their most frequently visited works or whatever.
(I also do not want to imagine how many people would contact us to yell at us the second they got a ‘bad’ recommended fic. “I can’t believe that you recommended this to me, you monsters!”)
Anyway here’s my favourite sentence to include in my answers: “We hope instead that users will take control of their own experience using the Archive, and choose for themselves what works they wish to view or not view.” Apparently a novel view in this day and age.
@elljayvee (@tumblr.com)
The thing that’s become clear to me over the past few years is that many people are not good at constructing searches. Recently, someone in a fandom I don’t even know was trying to find a particular thing and coming up with no fic; in less than 20 seconds I was able to hand over a list of more than 100 of that thing. This is not a stupid person! this is someone without a particular skill that I have, probably because for me it’s a job skill – it’s something I do a lot. Not on ao3, obviously, but constructing effective searches is transferable.
I think a LOT of people don’t have this skill. I always boost ao3 search tutorials when I see them for this reason! And if you DON’T have this skill, The Algorithm is so helpful. It’s doing a lot of the heavy lifting for you. I get the appeal of that.
But ao3 is never gonna be that place, so instead I shall recommend: find some ao3 search tutorials, bookmark them, they will save your reading life many times. Also bookmark your favorite searches.
@lierdumoa (@tumblr.com)
Speaking of people not knowing how to use AO3, take a look at this post I reblogged a little while ago: https://www.tumblr.com/lierdumoa/741225032412512256/
The OP posted this poll:
What is your favorite tag on AO3?
Angst
Fluff
Hurt/Comfort
Sexual Content/Smut
Romance
Humor/Crack
Slow Burn
Violence
Friendship
Family
Sports
Other
To be blunt, If you are looking for fic on AO3 using these tags … you probably aren’t very good at finding fic.
99% of AO3 authors who write romance do not put a #romance tag on their fanfic. They will instead tag it with the ship and with the specific romantic tropes that appear in the fic. If you search for romance this way, you are missing out on the vast majority of the romance fic on the archive.
99.9% of AO3 authors who write sports fic do not put a #Sports tag on their fanfic. They will put the name of the specific sport, in the context of an AU tag like #Alternate Universe - Football, or you will find sports fic under a specific sports fandom like #Hockey RPF. Maybe this has changed, but last I checked, the AO3 tag wranglers have not made #Sports an umbrella tag that shows results for all sports related tags.
If this is how you search for fic, you’re missing out on a lot of great fic that fits these categories, but doesn’t use these tagging conventions.
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Upon seeing this, I decided to add my own poll to the post, that I think better reflects how AO3’s tagging system actually works.What is your favorite type of tag for filtering search results on AO3 (excluding the obvious #ship name #fandom title)?
canon denial tags like #fix-it or #[character name] lives
porn kinks i.e. #tentacles #glory hole #dacryphilia
plot tropes i.e. #amnesia #body swap #fake dating
worldbuilding tropes i.e. #a/b/o #urban fantasy #AU: mafia #AU: soulmates
label!character tags i.e. “trans!Jaskier” “bottom!Loki” “human!Lestat”
tags indicating when the fic takes place i.e. #book 4 #season/series
tags for hate-reading like #Riley bashing or #John Winchester’s A+ Parenting
fanfic genres like those listed in OP’s poll
more conventional genres like #horror #action/adventure #tragedy
I don’t look for anything specific; I just exclude tags I *don’t* want to see
there’s a category of tags you forgot to include!
show results
As you can see, I listed the kind of tags that I’ve actually seen authors reliably use.
I don’t just assume that all the romance fic will have a romance tag on it. I look through a ship tag. When I find stories I like, I pay attention to what kinds of tags authors are actually using, and I use those tags to find similar fic.
Some fandoms have tagging conventions that only exist within those fandoms. For example, virtually every AO3 BtVS fanfic author who writes a fic set in season 6 puts a #Season/Series 6 tag on the fic. That’s just BtVS. In other fandom communities, authors don’t consider this a thing worth tagging. You just have to read fic summaries looking for phrases like “right after Dean got pulled out of hell” to figure out what season the story takes place in.
In the Transformers fandom, all most of the smut authors tag their smut #Sticky Sexual Interfacing, or sometimes just #Sticky (for sex between robots; I don’t know how sex between a robot and a human is tagged in that fandom as it’s a lot less common/popular than sex between robots). I have no idea why they call it that. All I know is you’ll find more Transformers porn using this tag than you will using a tag like #porn or #smut.
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TL&DR You can’t assume that people will categorize things the way you like to categorize things.
You have to actually learn a fandom community’s preferred method of categorization, and then search according to their method, not your own. Otherwise, you’re going to have a really hard time finding what you’re looking for.
