Archive of Our Own Release Notes

AO3 Tag Wranglers continue to test processes for wrangling canonical additional tags (tags that appear in the auto-complete) which don't belong to any particular fandom (also known as "No Fandom" tags). This post overviews some of these upcoming changes.

In this round of updates, we continued to adjust existing canonical "No Fandom" tags to add or remove new subtag and metatag relationships. We also continued to streamline creating new canonical tags, prioritizing more straightforward updates which would have less discussion compared to renaming current canonical tags or creating new canonical tags which touch on more complex topics. This method also reviews new tags on a regular basis, so check back on AO3 News for periodic "No Fandom" tag announcements.

None of these updates change the tags users have added to works. If a user-created tag is considered to have the same meaning as a new canonical, it will be made a synonym of one of these newly created canonical tags, and works with that user-created tag will appear when the canonical tag is selected.

In short, these changes only affect which tags appear in AO3's auto-complete and filters. You can and should continue to tag your works however you prefer.

New Canonicals

The following concepts have been made new canonical tags:

• Coronation Ceremonies
• Low Fantasy
• Menstrual Pain | Period Cramps
• PMS | Premenstrual Syndrome
• Menopause
• One-Sided Pining
• One Falls in Love First but the Other Falls in Love Harder
• Royal Weddings

Subtag/Metatag Revisions

Additionally, we continued to adjust existing canonical tags to add or remove new subtag and metatag relationships, which help users find related content and filter in/out content as they browse works on AO3.

• Female Anti-Hero is now a subtag of Anti-Hero
• Sloppy Makeouts is now a subtag of Making Out
• Manipulative Relationship is now a subtag of Manipulation
• Character Turned Into a Ghost is now a subtag of Ghosts

In Other Wrangling News

We recently held guideline discussions about how to handle the canonization of relationship tags associated with Original Nonbinary Character(s). You can view the changes made to wrangling guidelines in the section on Original Characters. As a result of this update, we have canonized and/or updated the following tags:

• Canon Nonbinary Character
• Original Nonbinary Character(s)
• Original Female Character(s)/Original Nonbinary Character(s)
• Original Male Character(s)/Original Nonbinary Character(s)
• Original Male Character(s) & Original Nonbinary Character(s)
• Original Female Character(s) & Original Nonbinary Character(s)
• Original Character(s)/Original Nonbinary Character(s)
• Original Nonbinary Character(s) & Original Nonbinary Character(s)
• Original Nonbinary Character(s)/Original Nonbinary Character(s)

In Conclusion

While some of these tags may be tags and concepts you're intimately familiar with, others may be concepts you've never heard of before. Fortunately, our fellow OTW volunteers at Fanlore may be able to help! As you may have seen in the comments sections of previous posts, Fanlore is a fantastic resource for learning more about these common fandom concepts, and about the history and lore of fandom in general. For the curious, here's a quick look at a few articles about concepts related to this month's new canonical tags:

• Fantasy
• Pining
• Trans Characters in Fandom

While we won't be announcing every change we make to No Fandom canonical tags, you can expect similar updates in the future about tags we believe will most affect users. If you're interested in the changes we'll be making, you can continue to check AO3 News or follow us on Bluesky @wranglers.archiveofourown.org or Tumblr @ao3org for future announcements.

You can also read previous updates on "No Fandom" tags as well as other wrangling updates, linked below:

• Past "No Fandom" Additional Tags Updates and 5 Things Said by Wrangling Volunteers
• Past Fandom-Specific and "No Fandom" Tag Wrangling Change Posts

For more information about AO3's tag system, check out our Tags FAQ.

In addition to providing technical help, AO3 Support also handles requests related to how tags are sorted and connected.​ If you have questions about specific tags, which were first used over a month ago and are unrelated to any of the new canonical tags listed above, please contact Support instead of leaving a comment on this post.

Please keep in mind that discussions about what tags to canonize and what format they should take are ongoing. As a result, not all related concepts will be canonized at the same time. This does not mean that related or similar concepts will not be canonized in the future or that we have chosen to canonize one specific concept in lieu of another, simply that we likely either haven't gotten to that related concept yet or that it needs further discussion and will take a bit longer for us to canonize it as a result. We appreciate your patience and understanding.

Lastly, we're still working on implementing changes and connecting relevant user-created tags to these new canonicals, so it'll be some time before these updates are complete. If you have questions about specific tags which should be connected to these new canonicals, please refrain from contacting Support about them until at least three months from now to give us adequate time to do so.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, OTW Legal Advocacy, and Transformative Works and Cultures. We are a fan-run, donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

In June and early July, we updated the AO3 Terms of Service FAQ and made improvements all around prompt memes and gift exchanges. We also improved skin previews and the AO3 admin area, along with a few other small fixes.

Special thanks to the first-time contributors charliewhiskee, Gardin233, gemmie, lynn, Naomi Liu, sagittaerys (Olamilekan Aremu), Smaran Jawalkar, Soaphbar, and varram. Thank you also to notpies for alerting us to a security issue!

Credits

Coders: Aya Sayadi, Bilka, bre-nana, caitlin, charliewhiskee, Danaël / Rever, David Bilsky/Ironskink, Gardin233, gemmie, KooShnoo, Ling-Yi, Luis Pabon, lydia-theda, lynn, Naomi Liu, nicolacleary, Pablo Monfort (VAIRIX), reader-dev-2026, sagittaerys (Olamilekan Aremu), Sarken, slavalamp, Smaran Jawalkar, Soaphbar

Code reviewers: Bilka, Brian Austin, james_, lydia-theda, marcus8448, redsummernight, Sarken, slavalamp

Testers: Bilka, Brian Austin, calamario, choux, Cocoa, Lute, lydia-theda, marcus8448, megidola, ömer-faruk, pk2317, Runt, slavalamp, therealmorticia

Details

0.9.482

Our June 8 deploy was themed around improvements to prompt memes and gift exchanges.

[AO3-5713] - There was a tag set option that would prevent participants in a challenge from offering or requesting characters outside the tag set. However, this would only apply to the autocomplete suggestions, and not actually prevent someone from entering a tag manually and submitting that sign-up. Now the sign-up is actually checked against the allowed tags!

[AO3-6084] - We now make sure no input is lost if you try and fail to submit prompts for a prompt challenge with a noncanonical tag. We also greatly improved the error message, so you can fix your prompts and try again!

[AO3-6876] - Some special characters wouldn't be displayed correctly in prompt titles; now everything is tidy again.

[AO3-7182] - If a prompt had fills that were restricted to logged-in AO3 users only, guests could still see the blurb containing information about the work, even if they couldn't access the work itself. Now everything is hidden from guests, as it should be.

[AO3-7243] - We prepared three help pop-ups related to creating a work for translation.

[AO3-7261] - It was previously possible to create a challenge with zero allowed fields for requests or offers, which would indeed make for quite a challenging sign-up process. If you try to do that now, we return an error message to ask for at least one allowed field.

[AO3-7379] - There were no delimiters in the stats listed in collection blurbs (e.g., the number of works or bookmarks in said collection). You now get more readable numbers such as 11,111 instead of 11111.

[AO3-7398], [AO3-7399] - The Challenge Sign-ups and Challenge Assignments pages now include your username in the browser page title.

[AO3-7406] - Moved the gift exchange mailers to a separate file.

[AO3-7407] - Added an anonymous CSS class to work, series, and bookmark blurbs of currently anonymous works and series.

[AO3-7494] - Work skins are only meant to apply to the section of the page containing a work, its title, and its notes, but certain combinations of styles sometimes allowed skins to break free of that area. We've made some adjustments to keep them contained.

0.9.483

On June 17, we deployed a Terms of Service FAQ update and made some improvements to skin previews as well as pages used by admins.

[AO3-4274] - If your work is a remix or translation of another work, and that work is deleted, the Notes section will now say, "Inspired by a deleted work." (You can edit your work to remove the association, if you want.)

[AO3-6218] - To help troubleshoot problems with challenges or assist in cases of abuse, AO3 admins from our Support and Policy & Abuse committees can now access pages in a collection that are usually only accessible to owners or mods of that collection.

[AO3-6765] - Made some changes to the message you get when previewing a site skin to make it more helpful!

[AO3-7397] - You used to be redirected to a random tag page to preview a skin. We've now designated a specific page for this preview, since redirecting to a random page can be unreliable.

[AO3-7366] - Changed which page AO3 admins use to edit work tags and language.

[AO3-7413] - The browser page title and the page heading for external bookmark creation now match.

[AO3-7456] - Updated the Terms of Service FAQ. You can view the differences here.

[AO3-7447] - We improved the wording of the Content Policy notice on the work posting form.

[AO3-7453], [AO3-7454], [AO3-7450] - Updated the Policy & Abuse Confidentiality Policy link in our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy, and added a link to the Fannish Next of Kin FAQ item to the Terms of Service.

[AO3-7474] - Updated the faraday gem to address a security issue.

[AO3-7476] - We fixed that text-only bylines sometimes contained raw HTML.

[AO3-7488] - We no longer submit comments that are already deleted or considered spam to the spamchecker when manually marking comments as spam from the console.

[AO3-7478] - We made it impossible for admins to enable a language for our future translated interface if we don't already have some emails available in that language (since translated emails will come first).

0.9.484

The July 6 release included more improvements for AO3 admins, most notably the ability to preview and save drafts of news posts such as this one!

[AO3-2782] - We now make sure tag wranglers can't assign themselves non-canonical tags.

[AO3-4989] - Deleting a bookmark would redirect you to the first page of bookmarks, even when the deleted bookmark was on a different page, or you had applied filters to your bookmark listing. We now make sure you'll stay right where you are.

[AO3-5696] - We added another check before we send out subscription emails, which means people who are subscribed to the orphan_account will not receive a notification if a user adds a chapter to a work previously co-created with the orphan account.

[AO3-6779] - If a Policy & Abuse admin previously corrected the language on a work, that change would be recorded as tag edit in the admin area's activity logs. Now it is correctly considered a language edit!

[AO3-7250] - Conversely, an admin's cancelled or invalid attempt at editing a work's tags (such as trying to perform an operation that results in an error message) would be logged, even though the work remained unchanged. That's also fixed now.

[AO3-6960] - Admins with posting privileges can now preview a news post or save a draft, like it's long been possible for creative works on the Archive. Yay!

[AO3-7242] - We prepared four more work creation related help pop-ups for translation.

[AO3-7421] - We fixed that the CSV export of gift exchange sign-ups could contain unescaped special characters in the sign-up titles.

[AO3-7493] - In addition to checking an account's age (i.e. how long ago it was created) to determine how many comments that account can be allowed to leave in quick succession, we now also consider how many comments that user has left previously.

[AO3-7496] - We updated the net-imap gem to address some security advisories.

[AO3-7498] - We made sure that one of the dependencies of our automated tests can't update without our approval.

In May, updates to AO3 focused on improving skins, collections, and gift exchanges, boosting performance across AO3, and addressing several security issues. The Collections page now has options to sort by number of works and bookmarks, and we've added some improvements to tag set nominations and the matching process for gift exchanges. The month also included multiple security fixes for permission issues, strengthened URL import protections, and updated dependencies.

Shoutout to this month's first-time contributors gemmie and Mane Muradyan, and special thanks to notpies and Taxen99 who alerted us to security issues.

Credits

Coders: Aya Sayadi, Bilka, cayugulan, Céline Bertau, gemmie, Hunter Ada Smith, Jesse Malark, Julian Saxl, kiyazz, Lara Rodrigues, Ling-Yi, Luis Pabon, Mane Muradyan, marcus8448, mjec, Nate Berkopec, nicolacleary, Noah Bravo, Pablo Monfort (VAIRIX), Pearl, Respheal, sarken, Scott Venkataraman, slavalamp, wAO3rker, Yang, zrei

Code reviewers: Bilka, Brian Austin, james_, Ling-Yi, marcus8448, redsummernight, sarken, slavalamp

Testers: Bilka, Berix, Brian Austin, choux, Claire P. Baker, LilyP, lydia-theda, marcus8448, Nary, ömer faruk, pk2317, sarken, slavalamp, therealmorticia

Details

0.9.474

On May 1, we released a bunch of miscellaneous bug fixes and updated the text on several pages.

[AO3-3601] - Deleting a pseud and choosing "Transfer these bookmarks to the default pseud" wouldn't reliably update the default pseud's bookmark index, so the bookmarks appeared to be gone. But they weren't! And now they should show up under the default pseud without a big delay.

[AO3-4693] - It was previously impossible to delete a collection that contained a challenge (such as a gift exchange or a prompt meme). Now you can delete your collection no matter what.

[AO3-6348] - In the tag autocomplete, a stray semicolon would sneak into tags with ampersands (&) if those tags also contained a pipe (|). That's fixed now!

[AO3-7267] - We now serve 404 Not Found errors to users and site admins if they try to access a preferences page for a user that doesn't exist.

[AO3-7316] - Shuffled some CSS around in the code for site banners. Neater now!

[AO3-7320] - We now make sure a comment won't be sent to our spam checker for evaluation if it's already considered spam.

[AO3-7331] - A user's Marked for Later page now displays their username in the browser page title.

[AO3-7337] - The "Sign-up closes:" time in a collection's blurb now adjusts to the timezone selected by a user in their preferences.

[AO3-7353] - When you're on your Refused Gifts page, the navigation buttons now indicate that this is indeed the page you're on, and Accepted Gifts are just a click away.

[AO3-7362] - Updated our takedown policy to add guidance related to requests made under the Take It Down Act (TIDA).

[AO3-7375] - JavaScript would break in browsers with localStorage disabled or not supported. Now it shouldn't throw up errors anymore!

[AO3-7376] - We now display a helpful message when you try to delete a pseud you have already deleted (e.g. in another tab), instead of throwing an Error 500.

[AO3-7405] - We improved the performance of generating the RSS feeds for tags.

0.9.475

Our May 12 deploy focused on collection and challenge improvements. On our Collections page, you can now sort all collections by the number of works or bookmarks they contain. \o/

[AO3-3764] - It was previously impossible to see all tag set nominations awaiting review. If there were too many to fit on one page, you'd have to review some first to make room. We have now added pagination buttons, so you can access all nominated tags!

[AO3-6068] - Some code cleanup.

[AO3-5764] - The notifications we send when someone submits a prompt fill contained very little information about the submitted work. We now include the same information as in subscription emails, so the prompter can review tags and warnings before opening the work.

[AO3-6106] - Checking the "Approve" ticky for a filled assignment in a moderated gift exchange will now correctly let the submitted work into the collection and mark the assignment as completed.

[AO3-6277] - If you run matching on gift exchange sign-ups and get no potential matches back, the notification email and matching page will now contain helpful information about the status of your matches, and what to do about it.

[AO3-6978] - In an effort to speed up a background process during work imports, we created a new table to store the original URLs of imported works. Making sure we aren't adding duplicates to AO3 should be much faster in the future!

[AO3-7012] - Gift works locked to registered users were hidden from site admins (such as Policy & Abuse volunteers) on gift pages or in gift searches. Now they show up.

[AO3-7179] - The success message you get when updating someone's membership status in a collection (such as making them an owner, or removing them as a member) now contains their pseud and username, as it should.

[AO3-7188] - You can now sort collections by the number of collected works or bookmarks!

[AO3-7239], [AO3-7392] - We prepared several help popups related to posting a work, as well as a line in work-related email notifications, for translation.

[AO3-7356] - We improved the performance and reduced the load on our database servers when displaying a series.

[AO3-7400] - The browser page title for a user's Gifts page is now correctly formatted.

[AO3-7411] - The browser page title for a work now lists both fandoms if the work contains two, and says "Multifandom" for works with three or more fandom tags.

[AO3-7415] - In a user's Preferences, the site skin options included skins that were just created as a parent for other skins and weren't actually supposed to be used by themselves. That's fixed now.

[AO3-7422] - We updated the erb gem update to address a security issue.

0.9.476

Our May 15 release focused on security issues.

[AO3-7385] - Under certain circumstances, it was possible to use the parent skin option to access the title and CSS of a site skin belonging to another user. It was not possible to look for skins belonging to a specific user. If a user included a name in skin titles or CSS (e.g., Darth Vader skin), that name would be visible, but it would not be possible to confirm whether that skin was created by a specific user. We are unable to verify that all or any skins were accessed in that manner.

[AO3-7420] - We fixed an issue that made it possible to use a POST request to reorder works in series you didn't own.

[AO3-7443] - We have removed Google from our list of permitted audio embed sources as they discontinued their audio player a long time ago.

[AO3-7433], [AO3-7438], [AO3-7439] - We updated some gems to address some security issues.

0.9.477

We deployed multiple improvements to skins, including allowing some new properties, on May 20.

[AO3-6390] - It's now only possible to change the default look of AO3 if you have database access (and not if you're merely logged in as a site admin).

[AO3-7160] - The username autocomplete when trying to assign a pinch hitter to an assignment will no longer be cut off after the first username.

[AO3-7189] - If a user applies a site skin containing broken code that renders the site unusable (and prevents them from accessing the option to revert to a different skin), a Support admin can now reset the skin in the user's Preferences.

[AO3-7345] - We have made the success message for temporarily setting a new site skin more informative.

[AO3-7388] - Since it's impossible to use a skin that's set to be a "Parent Only", it's also impossible to generate a preview of what AO3 would look like with that skin. We now display an error message if you try.

[AO3-7390] - We now allow the fill, stroke, and stroke-width CSS properties in work and site skins.

[AO3-6198], [AO3-6454] - We switched the code library for talking to our spamchecker to our own code, because the library was no longer maintained.

[AO3-7391] - We fixed some incorrect selectors in some rarely used CSS.

[AO3-7427] - We changed how we define some config variables to make things easier when using the Rails console.

0.9.478

On May 27, we turned on a setting to hopefully improve overall website performance.

[AO3-7465] - We enabled a Ruby setting which aims to improve performance of the whole site.

[AO3-7475] - We switched away from a GitHub Actions dependency that wasn't maintained.

0.9.479 & 0.9.481

On May 28 and May 31, we deployed security fixes for the work import form.

[AO3-7483], [AO3-7484] - When importing a work from a URL, some URL imports could bypass our proxy and access URLs within the internal AO3 network. We made sure they can't do that anymore.

I. AO3 SECURITY & PHISHING COMMENTS

In late July, Policy & Abuse (PAC) coordinated with Accessibility, Design & Technology and Systems to increase AO3 account security measures against logins with insecure passwords in response to an active phishing comment scam targeting thousands of users. PAC also worked with Communications and Support to publish several social media posts to help users secure their accounts and keep them informed.

We'd like to remind you that AO3 volunteers will never communicate with you about the status of your account through comments on your works. We will also never require payment from users to make an account or to "unlock" features. AO3 is and will always be free to use.

We recommend you verify that the email on your account is one that you have access to and that it is up to date. Please also make sure that your password is secure and unique to AO3. Read our update on insecure passwords for more information.

For general advice on how to keep your AO3 account secure, refer to World Password Day: Keeping Your Account Secure. If you need help changing your email or password, refer to our Archive FAQ questions on: How can I change the email associated with my account? and How do I change my password?

II. ARCHIVE OF OUR OWN

In July, AO3 surpassed 80,000 canonical fandoms! \o/

As of July 10, AO3 is officially on version 1.0. Accessibility, Design & Technology's releases have included internationalization work, documentation tweaks, gem updates, bug fixes, improvements to admin tools, and filters for user collection pages.

AO3 Documentation updated the Statistics FAQ and Your Account FAQ.

Open Doors announced that the Mass Effect Kink Meme will be imported to AO3, and they began importing the unfilled prompt challenges from Forging Ghost.

In June, Support received 3,556 tickets, while PAC received 4,254 tickets. As of July 31, PAC has consistently reduced their ticket backlog for the past six months in a row, and all PAC tickets submitted prior to January 2025 have been closed. User Response Translation received and completed 78 requests from PAC and Support.

Tag Wrangling published a July update on "No Fandom" tags. In June, they wrangled over 595,000 tags, or approximately 1,300 tags per wrangling volunteer.

III. ELSEWHERE AT THE OTW

Communications published an overview behind why AO3 doesn't have an official app and provided some alternatives for specific functionalities. They also formally said goodbye to the OTW's LiveJournal account as the automated cross-posting used for OTW News there is no longer supported.

Fanlore's themed month for July, Fandom in Color, was a big success! Their next editing challenge is Stub September—keep an eye on their social media (Bluesky, Twitter/X, and Tumblr) for announcements about the challenge!

TWC's production team is preparing the 49th issue of Transformative Works and Cultures which will be published September 15, 2026. Their editorial team continued work on the two special issues slated for 2027—Music Fandom and Latin American Fandoms—and their editorial board jury is finalizing the reviews for the 2026 Fans of Color Research Prize.

IV. GOVERNANCE

Elections announced the publication of the first batch of Q&As from candidates, focusing on the future direction of the OTW. They also shared that this year's synchronous candidate chat will be on August 8 at 4pm UTC (what time is that for me?). It will be held in the Elections Discord server.

Board spent July primarily focusing on internal projects and preparing for the public Board meeting which took place on August 1; minutes will be uploaded to the website soon.

Board Assistants Team completed the project to update the static content on the OTW website that they've been working on with Communications since 2024. All pages have been reviewed to ensure that they are up to date, clear, and consistent.

V. OUR VOLUNTEERS

Volunteers & Recruiting continued work on rolling out the updated Code of Conduct and conducted recruitment for five roles across Open Doors, Tag Wrangling, and Translation.

From June 23 to July 25, Volunteers & Recruiting received 321 new requests, and completed 294, leaving them with 55 open requests (including induction and removal tasks listed below). As of July 25, 2026, the OTW has 1,044 volunteers. \o/ Recent personnel movements are listed below.

New Committee Chairs/Leads: Lulu S (AO3 Documentation Chair)
New Communications Volunteers: 1 Chair Assistant and Aquilas (Social Media Moderator)
New Fanlore Volunteers: 1 Gardener
New Legal Volunteers: Amy R (Trademark Specialist)
New Open Doors Volunteers: ahcandy, Faye Wright, Gina-Nicole, GineSage87, Invariance, limethymes, Ro Koseki, and 6 other Import Assistants; Fly-dot-net, navy-yard-elle, TC, and 1 other Administrative Volunteer; and 1 Documentation Specialist
New Support Volunteers: 2 Support Volunteers
Departing Fanlore Volunteers: 1 Graphics Designer
Departing Open Doors Volunteers: Fly-dot-net and 1 other Import Assistant, and 1 Technical Volunteer
Departing Policy & Abuse Volunteers: Iolanthe and 2 other Volunteers
Departing Tag Wrangling Volunteers: Bette, lovemelikesunday, OldScoil, Paula, Potato, and 2 other Tag Wrangling Volunteers
Departing TWC Volunteers: 1 Copyeditor, 1 Outreach and Communications Editor, and 1 Symposium Editor
Departing User Response Translation Volunteers: 1 Translator

For more information about our committees and their regular activities, you can refer to the committee pages on our website.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, OTW Legal Advocacy, and Transformative Works and Cultures. We are a fan-run, donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

AO3 Tag Wranglers continue to test processes for wrangling canonical additional tags (tags that appear in the auto-complete) which don't belong to any particular fandom (also known as "No Fandom" tags). This post overviews some of these upcoming changes.

In this round of updates, we continued to adjust existing canonical "No Fandom" tags to add or remove new subtag and metatag relationships. We also continued to streamline creating new canonical tags, prioritizing more straightforward updates which would have less discussion compared to renaming current canonical tags or creating new canonical tags which touch on more complex topics. This method also reviews new tags on a regular basis, so check back on AO3 News for periodic "No Fandom" tag announcements.

None of these updates change the tags users have added to works. If a user-created tag is considered to have the same meaning as a new canonical, it will be made a synonym of one of these newly created canonical tags, and works with that user-created tag will appear when the canonical tag is selected.

In short, these changes only affect which tags appear in AO3's auto-complete and filters. You can and should continue to tag your works however you prefer.

New Canonicals

The following concepts have been made new canonical tags:

• 4+1 Things
• Aquarium Dates
• Coffee Dates
• Dinner Dates
• Movie Dates
• Picnic Dates
• Anger Issues
• ASMR | Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response
• Author is Projecting
• Canon - Book & TV Combination
• Complicated Feelings
• Concubines
• Courtesans
• Depersonalization
• Derealization
• Droit du Seigneur | Jus Primae Noctis | Lord's Right of the First Night
• Emotional Breakdowns
• Emotional Vulnerability
• Falling Out of Love
• Fibromyalgia
• Glasses Kink
• Medieval Fantasy
• No Mpreg | Male Pregnancy
• New Game Plus
• Piss Kink
• POTS | Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome
• Reassurance
• Self-Care
• Sex as a Coping Mechanism
• Sex as Self-Harm
• Sleep Paralysis
• Stimming
• Tattoo Artists

Subtag/Metatag Revisions

Additionally, we continued to adjust existing canonical tags to add or remove new subtag and metatag relationships, which help users find related content and filter in/out content as they browse works on AO3.

• Falling In Love is now a subtag of Love
• Uniform Kink has been removed as a metatag of Clothing Kink and is now a subtag instead
• Uniform Kink has been removed as a metatag of Uniforms and is now a subtag instead

In Conclusion

While some of these tags may be tags and concepts you're intimately familiar with, others may be concepts you've never heard of before. Fortunately, our fellow OTW volunteers at Fanlore may be able to help! As you may have seen in the comments sections of previous posts, Fanlore is a fantastic resource for learning more about these common fandom concepts, and about the history and lore of fandom in general. For the curious, here's a quick look at a few articles about concepts related to this month's new canonical tags:

• Coffee in Fanworks
• Stimming
• Yuri Aquarium Date

While we won't be announcing every change we make to No Fandom canonical tags, you can expect similar updates in the future about tags we believe will most affect users. If you're interested in the changes we'll be making, you can continue to check AO3 News or follow us on Bluesky @wranglers.archiveofourown.org or Tumblr @ao3org for future announcements.

You can also read previous updates on "No Fandom" tags as well as other wrangling updates, linked below:

• Past "No Fandom" Additional Tags Updates and 5 Things Said by Wrangling Volunteers
• Past Fandom-Specific and "No Fandom" Tag Wrangling Change Posts

For more information about AO3's tag system, check out our Tags FAQ.

In addition to providing technical help, AO3 Support also handles requests related to how tags are sorted and connected.​ If you have questions about specific tags, which were first used over a month ago and are unrelated to any of the new canonical tags listed above, please contact Support instead of leaving a comment on this post.

Please keep in mind that discussions about what tags to canonize and what format they should take are ongoing. As a result, not all related concepts will be canonized at the same time. This does not mean that related or similar concepts will not be canonized in the future or that we have chosen to canonize one specific concept in lieu of another, simply that we likely either haven't gotten to that related concept yet or that it needs further discussion and will take a bit longer for us to canonize it as a result. We appreciate your patience and understanding.

We're still working on implementing changes and connecting relevant user-created tags to these new canonicals, so it'll be some time before these updates are complete. If you have questions about specific tags which should be connected to these new canonicals, please refrain from contacting Support about them until at least three months from now to give us adequate time to do so.

Lastly, we'd also like to celebrate a major milestone this month with the creation of our 80,000th canonical fandom on AO3, The Grand Deception of Benedict Blackmoor - Gaia Tate. To give a brief overview of the growth of fandoms on AO3, there were 5,000 fandoms canonized around New Year's Day 2010, around 20,000 fandoms around December 2015, and about 40,000 fandoms canonized in November 2020. We look forward to continuing to share and celebrate future tagging milestones with all of you in the months and years to come. \o/

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, OTW Legal Advocacy, and Transformative Works and Cultures. We are a fan-run, donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

We're excited to announce that we've crossed another milestone: AO3 now has more than 18 million fanworks! A big Thank You to everyone who contributed to that success, whether you're a fanwork creator yourself, or cheering on your favorite creators with kudos and comments.

Of those 18 million fanworks, a lot live in collections. A collection is a group of works and/or bookmarks compiled together under one theme. You can, for example, group together works for a specific trope or relationship. Prompt Meme and Gift Exchange challenges for specific events are also hosted within collections!

Did you know we recently rolled out some changes adding new features to collections (fairly) recently? Our Accessibility, Design, & Technology committee published a post on it last September, if you want to check it out!

Some of the most important updates were:

• giving collection owners the ability to add up to 10 tags to the collection that show up in the collection blurb
• a "Multifandom" filter for collections containing works from more than one fandom
• the automatic addition of fandom tags to collections as the feature went live (or the "Multifandom" tag for collections with works/bookmarks from many fandoms)

Some additional changes that were rolled out with the tag-feature as well: for example, the Open Challenges page (including the Open Gift Exchange and Open Prompt Memes pages) now shows collections that are closing soonest at the top of the page!

To try out the new features for yourself, you can head on over to the Collections page by selecting "Browse → Collections". Once there you can filter collections either by a specific tag, or include or exclude collections with the "Multifandom" tag. By selecting "Open Challenges" on the top right, you can browse currently open challenges. And if you want to learn more about how to navigate, create, or administrate collections, check out our Collections FAQ!

Thanks again for your continued support, time, and passion for fandom! We hope to celebrate many more milestones with you in the future.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan-run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

I. OTW CODE OF CONDUCT

On June 7, 2026, Board approved a new OTW Code of Conduct. This policy comes as the result of months of collaboration between Board Assistants Team, Organizational Culture Roadmap, and Volunteers & Recruiting (including their Internal Complaint and Conflict Resolution subcommittee).

This policy update was a goal on the internal culture roadmap created and announced in 2024. As part of the update process, the policy underwent several rounds of review, including one by all OTW volunteers. Thank you to all OTW volunteers who provided feedback!

Volunteers & Recruiting is now at work rolling out the updated policy and getting agreements from all OTW volunteers.

II. ARCHIVE OF OUR OWN

In June, we celebrated AO3 reaching 11 million registered users. \o/

Accessibility, Design & Technology (AD&T) deployed several bug fixes, including quality-of-life and security improvements. They've also continued to make progress on their ongoing work to internationalize AO3.

Open Doors announced that Kraith Collected, a collection of Star Trek zines set in the Kraith universe, will be added to AO3. This month, their import assistants also finished importing all unfilled prompts from the Library of Moria!

In May, Policy & Abuse (PAC) received 4,814 tickets; Support received 4,125 tickets; and User Response Translation completed 77 requests from PAC and Support.

In June, Policy & Abuse worked with AD&T to publish updates to the Terms of Service FAQ, which includes new answers to common questions like how to find out what's allowed on AO3. You can view the differences here! We hope you find it helpful!

Tag Wrangling wrangled over 650,000 tags in May, or approximately 1,400 tags per wrangling volunteer. They also collaborated with Communications to publish a Tumblr post about updates to the Assassin's Creed fandom tree and a news post announcement of "No Fandom" changes, including 23 new canonicals.

III. ELSEWHERE AT THE OTW

Communications also established an OTW RedNote (小红书) account in June. This will be a second platform for us to connect with Chinese-speaking fandom (along with our existing Weibo account). If you use RedNote or know anyone who'd be interested in OTW announcements in Chinese on the platform, pass it along!

At the end of May, Fanlore wrapped up their Public Do-May, a public domain fandoms-themed month. They also ran their annual Bingo Challenge with tasty pastry-themed badges for editors to collect.

On June 15, 2026, TWC released Issue 48, a special issue on "Disability and Fandom" guest edited by Olivia Johnston Riley and Lauren Rouse. The essays in this issue focus on disability both as a marginalized identity and as a critical scholarly approach to fandom and fan studies.

IV. GOVERNANCE

Elections announced candidates for the 2026 OTW Board. This year's election will be uncontested, as there are three candidates running for four open seats. Platforms for each candidate can be viewed on the Elections website. They also provided the public an opportunity to submit questions to the candidates which will be published soon, refer to the Elections Timeline page for specific dates. Translation is working alongside Elections to make election-⁠related content available in as many languages as possible.

Meanwhile, Development & Membership has begun working on premiums for the October Membership Drive.

Board, Board Assistants Team, and Organizational Culture Roadmap also continued to collaborate on developing procedures to handle compromised volunteer accounts and other situations that necessitate urgent access removal.

Board also approved signing-on to a letter opposing the overbroad NO FAKES Act, which could negatively impact fan art and artists.

V. OUR VOLUNTEERS

From May 24 to June 22, Volunteers & Recruiting received 204 new requests and completed 189, leaving them with 87 open requests (including induction and removal tasks listed below). As of June 22, 2026, the OTW has 1,037 volunteers. \o/ Recent personnel movements are listed below.

New AD&T Volunteers: marcus8448 (Senior Software Developer)

New Communications Volunteers: Caitlynne, callmeri, and 4 other Posting Volunteers, belana, Bianca Sevidal, and Xiao Yi (Social Media Moderators)

New Elections Volunteers: Jahnavi and 1 other Communications Specialist, 1 Candidate Liaison, and 1 Chair Track Volunteer

New Fanlore Volunteers: Hobgirl, Minty, and 2 other Chair Track Volunteers

New Legal Volunteers: asatistic (Paralegal) and Kat M (Trademark Specialist)

New Open Doors Volunteers: elusivefalsehoods (Import Assistant)

New Policy & Abuse Volunteers: Anam (Volunteer)

New Tag Wrangling Volunteers: Beth B, Lululu, and tomurai (Supervisors)

New Translation Volunteers: artemissmythe, Karasu, madinator, and 3 other Volunteer Managers, and 1 Translator

Departing AD&T Volunteers: marcus8448 (Software Developer)

Departing Communications Volunteers: Aditi Paul, Caitlynne, callmeri, and 2 other Media Outreach Volunteers, 1 Chair Assistant, 1 Posting Specialist, 1 Report Writer, and 1 Social Media Moderator

Departing Communications News Post Moderation Volunteers: 1 News Post Moderator

Departing Fanlore Volunteers: 1 Policy & Admin

Departing Open Doors Volunteers: 2 Technical Volunteers and 3 Import Assistants

Departing Policy & Abuse Volunteers: 1 Chair Assistant

Departing Tag Wrangling Volunteers: Erica L., Wond3rland, and 4 other Tag Wranglers

Departing Translation Volunteers: 1 Translation Volunteer Manager, Alisé, and 3 other Translators

Departing User Response Translation Volunteers: Kseniia and 1 other Translator

Departing Volunteers & Recruiting Volunteers: 2 Volunteers

For more information about our committees and their regular activities, you can refer to the committee pages on our website.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, OTW Legal Advocacy, and Transformative Works and Cultures. We are a fan-run, donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

In April, we deployed improvements to tag search and several security fixes. We also made some progress on making more parts of AO3 translatable. And of course, AO3 officially exited open beta in April as well!

In addition to the milestones above, we also had several new contributors to the AO3 codebase this month. Thanks and welcome to Aya Sayadi, bre-nana, Jesse Malark, kinnerapriyap, Kylie, and Ling-Yi!

Credits

Coders: Aya Sayadi, Bilka, bre-nana, Brian Austin, caitlin, Danaël / Rever, EchoEkhi, Jesse Malark, kinnerapriyap, Kylie, Ling-Yi, marcus8448, not-varram, ömer faruk, sarken, Scott Venkataraman, Tom Milligan, Xiang Rassul Li

Code reviewers: Bilka, Brian Austin, james_, marcus8448, redsummernight

Testers: Berix, Bilka, Brian Austin, C. Ryan Smith, calamario, choux, Dre, james_, lydia-theda, marcus8448, megidola, mumble, ömer faruk, pk2317, Tal, therealmorticia, TinaOe

Details

0.9.469

On April 2, we removed the "beta" note from our site header! End of an era.

[AO3-7364] - Removal of references to the AO3 being in beta.

[AO3-7361], [AO3-7365] - Gem updates.

0.9.470

On April 3, we deployed a quick security fix.

[AO3-7372] - We made sure that when removing images from comments we didn't leave potentially dangerous HTML in their placeholders.

0.9.471

We deployed a couple more fixes related to image embeds on April 4.

[AO3-7373], [AO3-7374] - We made sure that when we disable embedded images in comments, the restrictions can't be bypassed with creative HTML.

0.9.472

Our April 13 deploy included an improvement to our tag search and a bunch of other miscellaneous fixes.

[AO3-7244] - We prepared the help pop-ups about our rich text editor and HTML mode for translation.

[AO3-7283] - We added a configuration option for the number of shards that Elasticsearch data for pseuds and tags is stored in.

[AO3-7293] - We added two more options to the Wrangling Status section of our Tag Search.

[AO3-7326], [AO3-7327] - Your statistics page and your preferences page now have your username in the browser's page title!

[AO3-7339] - The way we'd structured the translatable portions of our password reset emails wasn't compatible with future translation work, so we made sure the wording will work in different languages.

[AO3-7348] - We removed the word "Archive" from the success message "You are now using the default Archive skin again!"

[AO3-7355] - To build the dropdown menu for each user, we now only query the database once if the user has special permissions that require another menu item, and then save that information. Much nicer to the database servers!

[AO3-7359] - When a site admin is viewing their two-step verification backup codes, there is now a button at the bottom of the page to copy the codes to the clipboard.

[AO3-7360] - Updated a link on our Privacy Policy page.

[AO3-7368], [AO3-7369] - The browser page title now reflects whether you're on the page listing our public site skins or public work skins.

[AO3-7370], [AO3-7371] - Gem updates.

0.9.473

Another grab bag of fixes and improvements went out on April 24.

[AO3-6229] - We now make sure the 404 Page Not Found error always looks like it's part of AO3, and not just a blank white page.

[AO3-6281] - On pages listing gifts for recipients without an AO3 account, apostrophes in a recipient's name wouldn't be properly displayed. Now it all looks tidy.

[AO3-6531] - On some works, if there were replies to a now-deleted comment, the whole comment section wouldn't load. We fixed the way we handle deleted comments in a thread, so everything should display as expected.

[AO3-6604] - Admins can create banners (the informative blue, red, or yellow text boxes at the top of all pages) and save them for later, or delete outdated ones. It's now impossible to accidentally delete the banner currently in use.

[AO3-7080] - If an account was suspended, we now make sure the email address associated with that account can't be used to leave guest comments.

[AO3-7140] - When creating a draft work to eventually fulfill an assignment, the page listing your assignments would display some contradictory information about the status of your work. (Is it a draft? Was it accidentally posted?) The work title now contains the word "(Draft)" and we display the date it was created.

[AO3-7165] - We now make sure you can pick a different site skin from the list of options in the footer even if you have disabled JavaScript.

[AO3-7295] - We cleaned up some old code that would be unsafe to rerun now.

[AO3-7322] - When a tag wrangler visits the tag wrangling assignment page, the filter selection now defaults to their name.

[AO3-7333] - The page listing your challenge claims now has your username in the browser's page title!

[AO3-7351] - If a character or relationship tag belonged to several fandoms (such as the book and the movie version of a franchise), and you entered all the applicable fandoms when posting your work, the character or relationship would show up several times in the autocomplete suggestions. The autocomplete has now calmed down a bit and won't show you duplicates of the same tag anymore.

[AO3-7377], [AO3-7381] - Gem updates.

New Canonicals

AO3 Tag Wranglers continue to test processes for wrangling canonical additional tags (tags that appear in the auto-complete) which don't belong to any particular fandom (also known as "No Fandom" tags). This post overviews some of these upcoming changes.

In this round of updates, we continued to adjust existing canonical "No Fandom" tags to add or remove new subtag and metatag relationships. We also continued to streamline creating new canonical tags, prioritizing more straightforward updates which would have less discussion compared to renaming current canonical tags or creating new canonical tags which touch on more complex topics. This method also reviews new tags on a regular basis, so check back on AO3 News for periodic "No Fandom" tag announcements.

None of these updates change the tags users have added to works. If a user-created tag is considered to have the same meaning as a new canonical, it will be made a synonym of one of these newly created canonical tags, and works with that user-created tag will appear when the canonical tag is selected.

In short, these changes only affect which tags appear in AO3's auto-complete and filters. You can and should continue to tag your works however you prefer.

The following concepts have been made new canonical tags:

• Academic Rivalry
• AO3 Skins
• AO3 Site Skins
• AO3 Work Skins
• Birth Control Tampering
• Brat Taming
• Burping Kink
• Off-Screen Character Death
• Graphic Depictions of Childbirth
• Non-Graphic Depictions of Childbirth
• Implied/Referenced Childbirth
• Cover Art Welcome
• Fanart Welcome
• Podfic Cover Art Welcome
• Translations Welcome
• Dark Fluff
• Past Dubious Consent
• Implied/Referenced Eating Disorders
• Groveling
• Hypnosis Kink
• Graphic Depiction of Injuries
• Non-Graphic Depiction of Injuries
• Guided Masturbation | Masturbation Instructions
• Male Characters Masturbating
• Female Characters Receiving Oral Sex
• Male Characters Receiving Oral Sex
• Pregnancy Reveal
• Polycules
• Porn With Some Plot
• Canon-Typical Racism
• Reproductive Coercion
• Locker Room Sex
• Masked Sex
• Stealthing | Non-Consensual Condom Removal
• Stressed Characters
• Malesub | Male Submissive Characters
• Submissive Top Characters
• Title from a Song

Subtag/Metatag Revisions

Additionally, we continued to adjust existing canonical tags to add or remove new subtag and metatag relationships, which help users find related content and filter in/out content as they browse works on AO3.

• Angst and Drama is now a subtag of both Angst and Drama
• Family Drama is now a subtag of Drama
• Not Wearing Underwear has been removed as a subtag from Underwear
• Painful Sex is now a subtag of Pain

In Conclusion

While some of these tags may be tags and concepts you're intimately familiar with, others may be concepts you've never heard of before. Fortunately, our fellow OTW volunteers at Fanlore may be able to help! As you may have seen in the comments sections of previous posts, Fanlore is a fantastic resource for learning more about these common fandom concepts, and about the history and lore of fandom in general. For the curious, here's a quick look at a few articles about concepts related to this month's new canonical tags:

• AO3 Skins
• Cover Art
• Fanart
• Masturbation
• Oral Sex
• Polyamory
• Pregnancy

While we won't be announcing every change we make to No Fandom canonical tags, you can expect similar updates in the future about tags we believe will most affect users. If you're interested in the changes we'll be making, you can continue to check AO3 News or follow us on Bluesky @wranglers.archiveofourown.org or Tumblr @ao3org for future announcements.

You can also read previous updates on "No Fandom" tags as well as other wrangling updates, linked below:

• Past "No Fandom" Additional Tags Updates and 5 Things Said by Wrangling Volunteers
• Past Fandom-Specific and "No Fandom" Tag Wrangling Change Posts

For more information about AO3's tag system, check out our Tags FAQ.

In addition to providing technical help, AO3 Support also handles requests related to how tags are sorted and connected.​ If you have questions about specific tags, which were first used over a month ago and are unrelated to any of the new canonical tags listed above, please contact Support instead of leaving a comment on this post.

Please keep in mind that discussions about what tags to canonize and what format they should take are ongoing. As a result, not all related concepts will be canonized at the same time. This does not mean that related or similar concepts will not be canonized in the future or that we have chosen to canonize one specific concept in lieu of another, simply that we likely either haven't gotten to that related concept yet or that it needs further discussion and will take a bit longer for us to canonize it as a result. We appreciate your patience and understanding.

Lastly, we're still working on implementing changes and connecting relevant user-created tags to these new canonicals, so it'll be some time before these updates are complete. If you have questions about specific tags which should be connected to these new canonicals, please refrain from contacting Support about them until at least three months from now to give us adequate time to do so.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, OTW Legal Advocacy, and Transformative Works and Cultures. We are a fan-run, donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

I. SPOTLIGHT ON OPEN DOORS

Open Doors is preparing to import ArtisticAlley, the last FictionAlley house. Unfortunately, they've only been able to retrieve thumbnail versions of the artworks. They're currently asking creators if they can provide copies of the full versions. If you're an ArtisticAlley creator and can provide your full artworks—or would like Open Doors to do anything other than import the thumbnail copies—please check your emails and reply, or get in touch with Open Doors directly. They will begin importing after 30 June.

In May, Open Doors also announced the import of multifandom fanfiction archive Mediafans and its hosted Duncan/Methos zine Futures Without End. They also completed the semi-automated portion of the import of HBO Oz archive Unit B, with more works being imported manually in the coming months. These additional works comprise Big Bang fics, the Unit B Yahoo Group, and the Cellblock 5 Yahoo Group. Thank you to everyone on Open Doors' technical and administrative teams who contributed!

II. ARCHIVE OF OUR OWN

Accessibility, Design & Technology worked on more security updates as well as quality-of-life bug fixes and AO3 internationalization work. Thank you to the coders for those fixes and to the testers for helping with swift releases! They also published release notes for March.

In April, Policy & Abuse (PAC) received 4,358 tickets. PAC also worked with Communications to publish a news post spotlighting ways to keep your AO3 account secure as part of World Password Day. Also in April, Support received 4,325 tickets. User Response Translation completed 77 requests from PAC and Support.

Tag Wrangling wrangled over 638,000 tags in April, or approximately 1,300 tags per wrangling volunteer. They also collaborated with Communications to publish a Tumblr post about a new Avatar: The Last Airbender fandom metatag and a news post announcement of 21 new "No Fandom" tags.

III. ELSEWHERE AT THE OTW

Fanlore celebrated Public Domain Fandoms, or Public DoMay, on their socials all throughout the month! Check out their Bluesky, Tumblr, and Twitter/X for fun featured articles and posts.

Their annual Bingo Challenge also will begin on June 16 and will end June 29! It's open to new and experienced editors alike, and everyone is encouraged to join in!

Legal continues to answer internal and external questions and monitor the changing legal situation for privacy and free speech.

TWC continued to work on their planned issues related to Music Fandom and Latin American Fandoms. May was the deadline for nominations for the Fans of Color Research Prize, which recognizes the best article about fans and/or fandoms of color published in TWC. The next issue will be a general issue published in September.

IV. GOVERNANCE

Elections continues to prepare for the 2026 OTW Board of Directors election, which will fill four seats (three full term seats and one partial term seat).

If you'd like to vote this year, you must become an OTW member by June 30. To become a member, you must donate at least $10 USD in one donation and check the yes circle under "Do you want to be an OTW member?" on the donation form.

Board, Board Assistants Team, and Organizational Culture Roadmap spent the month collaborating on projects, including sharing the Code of Conduct draft for review from OTW volunteers and working on tasks related to closing out the OTW Crisis Management Plan project.

Finance completed the audit of the OTW's 2024 financials and began preparing our 2025 financials to be audited.

Development & Membership worked on wrap up from the April Membership Drive and began thinking ahead to the next one in October.

V. OUR VOLUNTEERS

In May, Volunteers & Recruiting opened recruitment for four roles for the Fanlore, Communications, and Open Doors committees.

From April 22 to May 23, Volunteers & Recruiting received 202 new requests, and completed 177, leaving them with 70 open requests. As of May 23, 2026, the OTW has 1,040 volunteers. \o/ Recent personnel movements are listed below.

New Communications Volunteers: 2 Event Coordinators and 1 Fanhackers Volunteer

New Open Doors Volunteers: 1 Senior Technical Advisor and 1 Digital Collections Intern

New Policy & Abuse Volunteers: Arashi, Bellis, Citrine, lazyredheeler, Rika G, SaltDove, ZoeT, and 3 other Volunteers

New User Response Translation Volunteers: 1 Translator

Departing Committee Chairs/Leads: 1 Policy & Abuse Chair and 1 Organizational Culture Roadmap Head

Departing Communications Volunteers: 1 Fanhackers Lead and 2 Convention Specialists

Departing Fanlore Volunteers: 1 Gardener

Departing Finance Volunteers: 1 Financial Analyst

Departing Open Doors Volunteers: 1 Senior Technical Volunteer and 1 Import Assistant

Departing Policy & Abuse Volunteers: 1 Volunteer

Departing Tag Wrangling Volunteers: Allonym and 15 other Tag Wrangling Volunteers

Departing Translation Volunteers: Katarina Hjarpe and 1 other Translator

Departing Volunteers & Recruiting Volunteers: 1 Volunteer

For more information about our committees and their regular activities, you can refer to the committee pages on our website.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, OTW Legal Advocacy, and Transformative Works and Cultures. We are a fan-run, donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

New Canonicals

AO3 Tag Wranglers continue to test processes for wrangling canonical additional tags (tags that appear in the auto-complete) which don't belong to any particular fandom (also known as "No Fandom" tags). This post overviews some of these upcoming changes.

In this round of updates, we continued to adjust existing canonical "No Fandom" tags to add or remove new subtag and metatag relationships. We also continued to streamline creating new canonical tags, prioritizing more straightforward updates which would have less discussion compared to renaming current canonical tags or creating new canonical tags which touch on more complex topics. This method also reviews new tags on a regular basis, so check back on AO3 News for periodic "No Fandom" tag announcements.

None of these updates change the tags users have added to works. If a user-created tag is considered to have the same meaning as a new canonical, it will be made a synonym of one of these newly created canonical tags, and works with that user-created tag will appear when the canonical tag is selected.

In short, these changes only affect which tags appear in AO3's auto-complete and filters. You can and should continue to tag your works however you prefer.

The following concepts have been made new canonical tags:

• All Characters Are Adults
• Anal Hooks
• Anal Prolapse
• Prolapse
• Vaginal Prolapse
• Baby Trapping
• Burping
• Cooking Together
• Coprophagia | Eating Feces
• Feces | Poop
• Cryptic Pregnancy | Character Didn't Know They Were Pregnant
• Developing Feelings
• Drug-Induced Heat
• Forced Heat
• Induced Heat
• Heat Suppressants
• Scent Blockers
• Implied/Referenced Suicide Attempts
• Inferiority Complex
• Sexual Trauma
• Sports Injuries
• Stubbornness
• TBI | Traumatic Brain Injury

Subtag/Metatag Revisions

Additionally, we continued to adjust existing canonical tags to add or remove new subtag and metatag relationships, which help users find related content and filter in/out content as they browse works on AO3.

• Alternate Universe - Radio is now a subtag of Radio
• Power Bottom is now a subtag of Bottoming
• Service Top is now a subtag of Topping
• Corsetry has been removed as a subtag from Clothing Kink
• Latino Character has been removed as a subtag from Hispanic Character

In Conclusion

While we won't be announcing every change we make to No Fandom canonical tags, you can expect similar updates in the future about tags we believe will most affect users. If you're interested in the changes we'll be making, you can continue to check AO3 News or follow us on Bluesky @wranglers.archiveofourown.org or Tumblr @ao3org for future announcements.

You can also read previous updates on "No Fandom" tags as well as other wrangling updates, linked below:

• Past "No Fandom" Additional Tags Updates and 5 Things Said by Wrangling Volunteers
• Past Fandom-Specific and "No Fandom" Tag Wrangling Change Posts

For more information about AO3's tag system, check out our Tags FAQ.

In addition to providing technical help, AO3 Support also handles requests related to how tags are sorted and connected. If you have questions about specific tags, which were first used over a month ago and are unrelated to any of the new canonical tags listed above, please contact Support instead of leaving a comment on this post.

Please keep in mind that discussions about what tags to canonize and what format they should take are ongoing. As a result, not all related concepts will be canonized at the same time. This does not mean that related or similar concepts will not be canonized in the future or that we have chosen to canonize one specific concept in lieu of another, simply that we likely either haven’t gotten to that related concept yet or that it needs further discussion and will take a bit longer for us to canonize it as a result. We appreciate your patience and understanding.

Lastly, we're still working on implementing changes and connecting relevant user-created tags to these new canonicals, so it’ll be some time before these updates are complete. If you have questions about specific tags which should be connected to these new canonicals, please refrain from contacting Support about them until at least three months from now to give us adequate time to do so.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, OTW Legal Advocacy, and Transformative Works and Cultures. We are a fan-run, donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

Manacles Press, publisher of various fanzines including Nudge Nudge Wink Wink (Professionals), McPikus Interruptus (Wiseguy), and Consupiscence (multifandom), is importing the zines’ fanworks to the Archive of Our Own (AO3).

In this post:

• A bit of background explanation
• What this means for creators who had work(s) in Manacles Press’s fanzines
• And what to do if you still have questions

Background explanation

Manacles Press was run by Megan Kent and Charlotte C. Hill in the 1990’s, publishing both anthology and novel zines. Megan and Charlotte are happy to archive these works in an effort to preserve fannish history and to keep the fanworks available and free.

The fanzines to be imported are:

• Arabian Nights: Fanlore page and AO3 collection
• Chains of Being: Fanlore page and AO3 collection
• Concupiscence: Fanlore page and AO3 collection
• McPikus Interruptus: Fanlore page and AO3 collection
• Never Let Me Down: Fanlore page and AO3 collection
• Nudge Nudge Wink Wink: Fanlore page and AO3 collection
• Outrider: Fanlore page and AO3 collection
• Professional Dreamer: Fanlore page and AO3 collection
• Walking Distance: Fanlore page and AO3 collection
• What If…: Fanlore page and AO3 collection
• Whisper of a Kill: Fanlore page and AO3 collection

The purpose of the Open Doors Committee’s AO3 Fanzine Scan Hosting Project (FSHP) is to assist publishers of fanzines to incorporate the fanworks from those fanzines into the Archive of Our Own. It is extremely important to Open Doors that we work in collaboration with publishers who want to import their fanzines and that we fully credit creators, giving them as much control as possible over their fanworks. Open Doors will be working with Manacles Press to import the fanzines listed above into separate, searchable collections on the Archive of Our Own. As part of preserving the fanzines in their entirety, all art in the fanzines will be hosted on the OTW's servers and embedded in their own AO3 work pages.

We will begin importing works from Manacles Press’s fanzines to the AO3 after June 2026. However, the import may not take place for several months or even years, depending on the size and complexity of the task. Creators are always welcome to import their own works and add them to the collections in the meantime.

What does this mean for creators who had work(s) in Manacles Press’s fanzines?

We will send an import notification to the email address we have for each creator. We'll do our best to check for an existing copy of any works before importing. If we find a copy already on the AO3, we will add it to the collection instead of importing it. All works archived on behalf of a creator will include their name in the byline or the summary of the work.

All imported works will be set to be viewable only by logged-in AO3 users. Once you claim your works, you can make them publicly-viewable if you choose. After 30 days, all unclaimed imported works will be made visible to all visitors.

Please contact Open Doors with your creator pseud(s) and email address(es), if:

• You'd like us to import your works, but you need the notification sent to a different email address than the publisher has a record of.
• You already have an AO3 account and have imported your works already yourself.
• You’d like to import your works yourself (including if you don’t have an AO3 account yet).
• You would NOT like your works moved to the AO3, or would NOT like your works added to the fanzine collections.
• You are happy for us to preserve your works on the AO3, but would like us to remove your name.
• You have any other questions we can help you with.

Please include the name of the publisher or fanzine in the subject heading of your email. If you no longer have access to the email account the publisher has a record of, please contact Open Doors and we'll help you out. (If you've posted the works elsewhere, or have an easy way to verify that they're yours, that's great; if not, we will work with Manacles Press to confirm your claims.)

Please see the Open Doors website for instructions on:

• importing your works to the AO3
• adding your works to the new collections listed above

If you still have questions...

If you have further questions, visit the Open Doors FAQ, or contact the Open Doors committee.

We'd also love it if fans could help us preserve the story of Manacles Press and its fanzines on Fanlore. If you're new to wiki editing, no worries! Check out the new visitor portal, or ask the Fanlore Gardeners for tips.

We're excited to be able to help preserve Manacles Press’s fanzines!

• The Open Doors team, Megan and Charlotte

Commenting on this post will be disabled in 14 days. If you have any questions, concerns, or comments regarding this import after that date, please contact Open Doors.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, OTW Legal Advocacy, and Transformative Works and Cultures. We are a fan-run, donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

Our releases in March included a slew of collection, bookmark, and history bug fixes, as well as several improvements for site admins.

Special thanks to first-time contributors charliewhiskee, Dobe, goose, Lubczi, Marianna, mellowmarsach, Nathan Cunningham, nghz, Oyon Ganguli (0ce10tsgit), and Xiang Rassul Li!

Credits

Coders: Bilka, Brian Austin, calm, charliewhiskee, Cubostar, Daniel Haven, Danaël / Rever, Dobe, EchoEkhi, FlyingFalcon, goose, Lubczi, Mae Light, Marianna, mellowmarsach, Nathan Cunningham, nghz, ömer faruk, Oyon Ganguli (0ce10tsgit), Richard Hajek, sarken, Scott Venkataraman, varram, Yi Fang, Xiang Rassul Li

Code reviewers: Bilka, Daniel Haven, marcus8448, redsummernight, sarken, Scott Venkataraman, slavalamp

Testers: Berix, Bilka, Brian Austin, calamario, choux, EchoEkhi, hvalrann, Lute, lydia-theda, marcus8448, pk2317, therealmorticia, Ven, wichard

Details

0.9.462

On March 2, we deployed a patch for the gem we use to manage authentication (to address a performance issue related to the March 2026 Downtime).

[AO3-7306] - Devise patch to prevent an excessive amount of strain on the database.

0.9.463

Our March 6 deploy included a few gem updates.

[AO3-6916] - Migrated from Gitpod/Ona to devcontainers for our development needs, as Gitpod was no longer suitable.

[AO3-7271] - Updated which data is included when comments are sent to our spam checker for evaluation.

[AO3-7305] - We updated the internationalization of some emails based on feedback from translators.

[AO3-7227], [AO3-7304], [AO3-7308] - Code cleanup and gem updates.

0.9.464

On March 12, we released a whole bunch of bug fixes.

[AO3-6359] - In some rare cases it was possible to delete the pseud that corresponds with your username. We fixed this edge case.

[AO3-6688] - In order to prevent tragic accidents, we've made it harder to delete your entire History. Instead of a small "Are you sure?" popup, you are now directed to a confirmation page that requires another button click.

[AO3-7214], [AO3-7215] - On a page with several bookmarks, closing and opening the "Edit" or "Save" functions on several bookmarks would get the popup form all confused which bookmark you wanted to edit or save. Or, in some cases, the buttons would just disappear on you! We've now sorted out the underlying JavaScript to let you save, or indeed edit, the bookmark you clicked on last.

[AO3-7273] - When an account is banned for posting spam, we now also automatically delete all its profile contents, including any icons and alt text.

[AO3-7285] - The user ID was missing from a page accessible to Policy & Abuse volunteers; we've added it now.

[AO3-7290] - When you access AO3 without being logged in, you might be able to scroll down the page a bit, but then a popup will inevitably ask you to agree to our Terms of Service before you can continue. We now take you back to your scroll position once you click the button.

[AO3-7314] - We've fixed the draft deletion to make sure it adheres to the correct deletion dates even for drafts created in the short month of February.

[AO3-5683] - We fixed some security warnings pointed out by the helpful Brakeman tool.

[AO3-7302] - We changed the code for displaying work meta-information so it accesses the work in one unified way.

0.9.465

On March 18, we released a bunch of bookmark, admin, and accessibility fixes.

[AO3-5937] - On some pages, the "Save" button on bookmarks was visible to logged-out users, not that clicking it would do anything. Now it's only there when you're logged into your account.

[AO3-6203] - On tag pages, we display a list of tags associated with the one you're browsing, e.g. the characters or relationships for a fandom (with a limit of 300 tags per type). For large fandoms, for example, that would put a considerable strain on the database. We have now moved to getting this data from our search engine, so retrieving the associated tags doesn't hammer the database servers anymore.

[AO3-7030] - When we introduced Archive skins, we envisioned a system where users could create custom CSS to change the appearance of AO3, and then apply to make the code available to other users with a button click. This was never a sustainable idea, so we've been working on phasing it out. Now only official accounts, e.g. those belonging to the AO3 development team, can apply to have their skin reviewed for general usage. (All users can still create skins for themselves and make the code available in other ways, e.g. on GitHub or Tumblr or as a fanwork on AO3.)

[AO3-7131] - The text used by screen readers to announce a help link was confusing, reading out the question mark we use to indicate the availability of the help popup. We've cleaned up the way we generate the text, which should be easier to follow now.

[AO3-7256] - We've added a limit to how many times a specific bookmark can be submitted to the Policy & Abuse team for review.

[AO3-7272] - When accessing a comment via the "Reply to this comment" link, some buttons would be gone for site admins or logged-out users that they'd normally be able to use, e.g. if viewing a single comment thread. Now the buttons are always there!

[AO3-7303] - On your Statistics page, the tool-tip you get when hovering over a graph would flicker if it popped up right under your cursor. That's fixed now, so it should be easier to read.

[AO3-7317], [AO3-7318] - We removed an incorrect ARIA attribute from some HTML.

[AO3-7319] - If a site admin bans an account for posting spam, they are now redirected to the admin dashboard for that account (after the successful deletion of all the spam).

[AO3-7335] - We fixed that running all the tests in one sitting would leave extra files and models behind.

0.9.466

We upgraded to Rails 8.1 on March 20.

[AO3-7328] - We updated Rails, the framework the AO3 runs on, to the next major version.

[AO3-7346] - Updated a gem used by our search engine to address a security issue.

0.9.467

For our penultimate March release, we deployed several display fixes and small site improvements on March 25.

[AO3-5866] - The links to work creators in our RSS feeds were broken; now they're fixed!

[AO3-6138] - Leaving kudos on a work with JavaScript disabled would previously knock you back to the top of the page. You can now see the success message (or the friendly hint that you've already left kudos) without having to scroll down to it.

[AO3-6385] - On the page displaying all prompts in a prompt meme, or all requests in a gift exchange, the page content would overlap the sorting buttons at the top if viewed on a small screen. Now everything looks tidy.

[AO3-6498] - To assist in abuse cases involving our gifting feature, members of the Policy & Abuse team can now access a user's refused gifts page.

[AO3-7059] - We will now display a warning message if the password you're using to log into AO3 was found in a data breach documented on HaveIBeenPwned.

[AO3-7255] - We've added a limit to how many times a specific series can be submitted to the Policy & Abuse team for review.

[AO3-7268] - If you try to navigate to the inbox for a nonexistent user, you will now get an Error 404, since, like the user, the inbox does not exist.

[AO3-7280] - Creating a multi-chapter draft and then hitting "Post" on the first chapter would indeed post that chapter, but treat the work as a whole still as a draft. It now publishes the work, with the first chapter, leaving any other chapters alone so you can post them later.

[AO3-7315] - Members of the Policy & Abuse team can now edit and save a work's tags, e.g. to change the selected language, even if it has more than 75 tags. (As a regular user, you'd be prompted to remove tags from your work until you're below the limit.)

[AO3-7323] - We updated the introductory text on our homepage.

[AO3-7352] - Our previous fix making help text links more accessible for screen readers unfortunately prevented some content in work blurbs (e.g. warnings and ratings) from being read out loud. This has now been fixed!

[AO3-7329], [AO3-7330] - Your History page and the page listing your blocked users now have your username in the browser's page title, as they always should have.

[AO3-6906] - Updating the autocomplete for users and pseuds no longer depends on an unmaintained library!

[AO3-7120] - In the rare case that the admin search results for a user are outdated, admins can now manually mark the search to be updated.

[AO3-7338] - We recently changed how we cache bylines, and now all that new code is organized neatly in its own file.

[AO3-7354] - We updated Rails to 8.1.2.1 for some security fixes.

0.9.468

On March 31, we deployed another batch of miscellaneous fixes and performance improvements.

[AO3-6998] - Trying to search all signups in a gift exchange by pseud would cause an Error 500; now it returns the signup you were looking for!

[AO3-7062] - AO3 site admins can now view all work blurbs on a user's "Works in Collections" page.

[AO3-7223] - We prepared the help pop-ups on the Preferences page for translation.

[AO3-7284] - When we rebuild our Elasticsearch indexes, we batch multiple objects together into one reindexing operation. We can now easily configure how large those batches are.

[AO3-7292] - On the page for managing wranglers assigned to fandoms, the button to remove a wrangler only had a small clickable area around the X. Now the whole button does what it's supposed to do.

[AO3-7311] - When a collection's settings were changed, e.g. from moderated to unmoderated, that information wasn't fully reflected everywhere. Now we make sure that listings and search results are updated immediately.

[AO3-7321] - If you subscribe to a work that is then added to an unrevealed collection, we now display a "Mystery Work" placeholder on your subscriptions page until and unless the work is revealed again.

[AO3-7332] - The page listing your muted users now has your username in the browser's page title!

[AO3-7341] - If old jobs are still running on the development environment when a coder pushes changes to their branch of the Archive software, those jobs will now be stopped to save resources.

[AO3-7347] - We cleaned up an unused method related to prompts.

[AO3-7350] - We improved the performance of the History page by reducing the number of queries required to show each page.

Today is World Password Day, and we'd like to take this opportunity to remind everyone of some best practices to keep your accounts secure.

Last year, AO3 saw a rise in users who lost access to their AO3 accounts due to reused or insecure passwords that were found in data breaches from other sites. In response, our Policy & Abuse committee alongside our Accessibility, Design, & Technology, and Systems committees took steps to recover, secure, and notify the owners of over 10,000 at-risk accounts.

Over the past year, we released many new features to proactively make AO3 accounts more secure, including:

• Automatic confirmation emails notifying you when your username, password, or email has been changed
• Adding a verification step to the process for changing the email associated with your account
• Notifying you if your current or new password matches a password that was discovered in a data breach from another site
• Preventing users from choosing new passwords that are extremely short
• Increasing the maximum password length from 40 to 72 characters
• Requiring you to provide the email address associated with your account in order to reset your password
• Updating the layout and wording of how you change or reset your password

How To Protect Your AO3 Account

The best thing you can do to protect yourself on AO3 and other sites is ensure your passwords are strong, unique, and secure. In general, for both AO3 and elsewhere, we recommend that you:

• Regularly check haveibeenpwned.com to see if your emails, passwords, or other information has been exposed in data breaches or whether your passwords have appeared in known data breaches.
• Change your passwords for any breached websites and any accounts on other sites where you may have used the same password.
• Set a unique, secure password for each and every one of your accounts on all platforms.
• Use a password manager. This will help you to set unique, secure passwords for each of your accounts without worrying about forgetting them. Many browsers have a free, built-in password manager if you would prefer to avoid third-party software.
• Make sure to check your email regularly. Don't use a temporary, school, or work email for any personal accounts. (If you need to update the email associated with your AO3 account, go to your Preferences page and click on the "Change Email" button in the top right. Follow the instructions on that page to update your email address.)
• Keep your antivirus software and operating system up to date, and set them to scan for malware regularly.
• Log out when you've finished using devices that others have access to, and don't share your personal devices with other people.
• Never reuse passwords or share your passwords with anyone for any reason.

Future Changes

Keeping AO3 safe for all our users is one of our highest priorities. We continue to remain on the lookout for other ways we can help you protect your account.

We encourage you to follow us on our official platforms and sign up for OTW News by Email to keep track of important announcements and updates to AO3. If you're specifically interested in learning about new features, security updates, and bug fixes, we recommend that you pay attention to our release notes.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, OTW Legal Advocacy, and Transformative Works and Cultures. We are a fan-run, donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

Mediafans, a multifandom fanfiction archive, and Futures Without End, a Duncan/Methos zine it hosted, are being imported to the Archive of Our Own (AO3).

In this post:

• A bit of background explanation
• What this means for creators who had work(s) on Mediafans or in Futures Without End
• And what to do if you still have questions

Background explanation

Mediafans was a personal fanworks archive for creators Rachael Sabotini and Melina, as well as several other creators. It also hosted the Highlander zine Futures Without End, which was started by Melina and Maygra de Rhema and ran for four issues. Mediafans went offline in 2013, taking digital access to Futures Without End with it.

The purpose of the Open Doors Committee’s Online Archive Rescue Project is to assist moderators of archives to incorporate the fanworks from those archives into the Archive of Our Own. Open Doors works with moderators to import their archives when the moderators lack the funds, time, or other resources to continue to maintain their archives independently. It is extremely important to Open Doors that we work in collaboration with moderators who want to import their archives and that we fully credit creators, giving them as much control as possible over their fanworks. Open Doors will be working with Melina to import Mediafans and Futures Without End into separate, searchable collections on the Archive of Our Own. As part of preserving the archives in their entirety, all fanfiction and fanart currently in the archive and zine will be hosted on the OTW's servers, and embedded in their own AO3 work pages.

We will begin importing works from Mediafans and Futures Without End to AO3 after May. However, the import may not take place for several months or even years, depending on the size and complexity of the archive. Creators are always welcome to import their own works and add them to the collection in the meantime.

What does this mean for creators who had work(s) on Mediafans or in Futures Without End?

We will send an import notification to the email address we have for each creator. We'll do our best to check for an existing copy of any works before importing. If we find a copy already on AO3, we will add it to the collection instead of importing it. All works archived on behalf of a creator will include their name in the byline or the summary of the work.

All imported works will be set to be viewable only by logged-in AO3 users. Once you claim your works, you can make them publicly-viewable if you choose. After 30 days, all unclaimed imported works will be made visible to all visitors.

Please contact Open Doors with your Mediafans or Futures Without End pseud(s) and email address(es), if:

• You'd like us to import your works, but you need the notification sent to a different email address than you used on the original archives.
• You already have an AO3 account and have imported your works already yourself.
• You’d like to import your works yourself (including if you don’t have an AO3 account yet).
• You would NOT like your works moved to AO3, or would NOT like your works added to the archive collection.
• You are happy for us to preserve your works on AO3, but would like us to remove your name.
• You have any other questions we can help you with.

Please include the name of the archive in the subject heading of your email. If you no longer have access to the email account associated with Mediafans or Futures Without End, please contact Open Doors and we'll help you out. (If you've posted the works elsewhere, or have an easy way to verify that they're yours, that's great; if not, we will work with Melina to confirm your claims.)

Please see the Open Doors Website for instructions on:

• importing your works to AO3
• adding your works to the new collections Mediafans or Futures Without End

If you still have questions...

If you have further questions, visit the Open Doors FAQ, or contact the Open Doors committee.

We'd also love it if fans could help us preserve the story of Mediafans and Futures Without End on Fanlore. If you're new to wiki editing, no worries! Check out the new visitor portal, or ask the Fanlore Gardeners for tips.

We're excited to be able to help preserve Mediafans and Futures Without End!

• The Open Doors team and Melina

Commenting on this post will be disabled in 14 days. If you have any questions, concerns, or comments regarding this import after that date, please contact Open Doors.