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Every month the OTW hosts guest posts on our OTW News accounts to provide an outside perspective on the OTW or aspects of fandom. These posts express each individual’s personal views and do not necessarily reflect the views of the OTW or constitute OTW policy.
Vera Itkin (she/her) works in the corporate media world with her hands in production and post-production. She loves to contribute to fandom via transformative works such as fanvids, fanmixes, and fan… Opinion Having.
Katie Tocci (she/her) has a BFA in Cinema Studies from NYU, an MA in Media Studies from The New School, and a career in entertainment promotions strategy. You’re most likely to find her hiding her face behind a pillow, masking tears shed for tragic OTPs.
Livy Tarcov (she/her) works as a videographer and new media technician, but she loves old media too, especially when paperbound. She is currently querying an adult fantasy novel about flying people.
Today, Vera, Katie, and Livy talk about Xena: Warrior Podcast and how Xena’s fandom became essential to the show—and to their story.
How did you first find out about fandom and fanworks?
VERA: I was an impressionable freshman in the NYU film program, immersing myself in all things [Martin Scorsese voice] “CINEMA,” learning to edit film stock on an old Steenbeck table as well as digitally on a computer. In my spare time, I would search the internet for anything about my favorite show, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. One day, I stumbled upon a site that was full of these edited clips of Buffy set to music. I clicked on one and my mind was forever blown… I had just discovered fanvids! Vids changed my life and became my art from then on.
KATIE: Fandom feels like it’s always been in my life. My first TV obsession was Star Trek: The Next Generation, and I was in the official Trek fan club and attending conventions by age six (it helps when your dad is also a nerd). However, I didn’t discover fanworks until I had access to the internet. Not to date myself, but it was with Buffy the Vampire Slayer message boards and fanfiction websites that I first found fic in junior high. Wild to think that I didn’t see my first fanvid until college!
LIVY: The Phantom Menace broke many fans’ spirits, but it ignited mine. I trawled TheForce.net’s message boards for Attack of the Clones spoilers, and when I ran out of movie news, I strayed onto the fanfiction sub-board and never looked back. Rich with ideas but profoundly flawed, The Phantom Menace had a delicious tension between execution and possibility that made it a perfect source for fanworks. The TF.net authors were inventive, welcoming, and relentlessly positive—truly a more civilized age before the dark times, before the Empire.
What made you decide to create Xena: Warrior Podcast?
Vera had watched Xena as a kid and tried for years to get Katie and Livy to watch it too. When the show hit its 20th anniversary and a new generation of fans discovered it on Netflix, Katie and Livy finally succumbed. And they loved it!!! Vera was so vindicated. Afterwards, we got to talking—because none of us could understand how such a daring, nuanced show was never included on any pop culture lists. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a show we love, is constantly lauded as revolutionary. But much of what Buffy is credited for… Xena did it first! And that became our podcast’s mission statement. We wanted to showcase the brilliance of this syndicated ‘90s action hit, recontextualize it for the 21st century, and give it the credit it deserves.
The fandom’s presence is really felt throughout the podcast, much like in the show itself. What stands out to you about the interaction between fans and producers of Xena, and how did this influence your discussions of each episode?
The internet put Xena fans in direct contact with the producers—not a unique situation for the mid-90s, but still fairly new, with neither side carrying a lot of expectations or baggage. Xena‘s producers treated the fans with respect, incorporated their ideas into the show, and even hired a popular fanfic author, Missy Good, for the sixth season writers’ room. The show and its fandom became inextricable soulmates, and on our podcast, we couldn’t talk about one without the other. These days, most creators have a complicated, often fraught relationship with their fanbases, so it’s fascinating to see such a different dynamic with Xena.
What has been the most rewarding part of making this podcast?
Our listeners reached out to us early on, sharing their stories of how Xena changed their lives, how it was their gay awakening or helped them come out, and gave them community and acceptance. Understanding our listeners enriched our understanding of the show. As podcasters, we tried to make our analysis definitive and deep, joyful and fannish—true to the spirit of the show and the people who love it. We devoted so much of ourselves to the podcast that, at times, it seemed almost too daunting a task. But our listeners always saved us. We’ve received messages from folks all over the world who found the podcast just when they needed it most. They told us how it helped them through their darkest days and hardest journeys and, at times, literally saved their lives. There is no greater reward than that.
How did you hear about the OTW and what do you see its role as?
In the late 2000s, we started attending VividCon—a fan-run convention about fanvids and vidding. Vidders at the time were especially interested in the topics of copyright and fair use of DVDs as a higher-quality source for vidding. So it was big news at the 2012 VividCon when Francesca Coppa, Rebecca Tushnet, and Tisha Turk testified before the Library of Congress in a continuing effort that ensured vidders the right to make our art freely. We’re forever grateful for the hard work and sleepless nights that still go into fighting the good fight on behalf of everyone in fandom.
What fandom things have inspired you the most?
VERA: The VividCon vidders of the late 2000s are my artistic foundations. Two names that immediately spring to mind are obsessive24 and Bradcpu. Their vids are so skillfully crafted that they’ve pushed my creativity beyond the limit for years. They made me a better vidder.
KATIE: It was really Vera getting into vidding that inspired me most, as without that influence and encouragement, I probably wouldn’t have started editing on my own. Attending VividCon showed me how I could use this art form to express my own feelings, ideas, and critical interpretations of all my favorite stories and relationships.
LIVY: My foundational fics are “The Penitent” by FernWithy, Jedi Skysong, & BelleBayard; “The Very Secret Diary” by Arabella; and “Doctor Who Season 4” by Aria. For fanvids, “The Glass” by thingswithwings; “Starships” by bironic; and “I Swear” by dualbunny, greensilver, & sweetestdrain. Watch that last one immediately—you won’t be sorry.
We encourage suggestions from fans for future guest posts, so contact us if you have someone in mind! Or you can visit our Pinboard account to catch up on earlier guest posts.
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scruloose can make pretty easily when coming home from work).The critical thing, of course, is that I did indeed get the lemon ice cream. I'd initially decided to go all in and get the lemon sundae, which IIRC also involved lemon curd sauce (I'm pretty sure that was the phrasing, and I don't really know why "curd sauce") and some sort of crunchy lemony thing, but one or both of those toppings was out of stock, so the sundae wasn't on offer.
The ice cream itself was tasty and I'm glad to have gotten it, but I didn't fall in love. (Just as well, really, since it was a temporary thing. I'm not good at ephemeral joys.) The flavor wasn't terribly intense, I think? But it was a delicious thing on a hot day.
The absolutely ridiculous thing I bought was this Hallowe'en figure from Michael's, which I saw go by on Bluesky a few days ago and for which I felt an immediate mighty need. It's very small and very inexpensive and is genuinely cute in person. It's presumably meant to be a Sphynx cat, but still looks enough like Sinha that I feel gleeful just looking at it. It may have to be a bit of year-round decor. ( other things that came home )
( and lo, we have a tomato plant! And...a rodent in the garden? o_o )
- Mood:
tired
Every month in OTW Signal, we take a look at stories that connect to the OTW’s mission and projects, including issues related to legal matters, technology, academia, fannish history and preservation issues of fandom, fan culture, and transformative works.
In the News
A recently published study in Nature Humanities and Social Sciences Communications finds that fanfiction readers are more likely to click on stories that feel familiar, but they enjoy those stories more when there is something novel about them.
Balance theory, a widely accepted theory in psychology, suggests that for a creative work to be successful (widely enjoyed), it needs to find the middle ground between feeling comfortable and familiar, yet be novel enough to still be interesting.
Using Archive of Our Own (AO3) as their primary source, researchers analyzed metadata from over 670,000 fanworks across 23 fandoms. They measured a story’s novelty by comparing its content against other stories in the same fandom and measured success primarily with a ratio of hits to kudos, then compared the two datasets.
Researchers found that contrary to balance theory, the middle ground between familiar and novel does not guarantee success for fanfiction. Their research shows that stories that were more familiar tended to get more clicks, but it was stories with more novelty that had a higher hit to kudos ratio.
“Although high-novelty works tend to be read by fewer people, those who read are more likely to express their enjoyment.”
This study highlights that in fandom spaces, success isn’t completely defined by reach or popularity. A fic that is deeply enjoyed by a small audience can still be meaningful and impactful.
In “The K-popification of F1”, Teen Vogue looks at how a new wave of Formula 1 fans are reshaping the fandom. What was once considered to be a niche, male-dominated sport has become home to fan practices typically found in K-Pop communities. From fashion to fanvids, fans are engaging with the drivers and teams in a novel way:
In many ways, F1 has evolved from a legacy motorsport into something that feels more like a multimedia pop franchise. F1 drivers are no longer just elite athletes behind the wheel; they’re fashion muses, meme material, and, in the eyes of a growing Gen Z fanbase, idols. It’s no surprise the sport has drawn fans from other hyper-engaged fandoms.
Many fans in this new wave were introduced to Formula 1 through digital platforms like TikTok, YouTube, and Netflix’s Drive to Survive, rather than traditional sports media. These platforms offer a behind-the-scenes look at the sport’s personalities, drawing in fans who may have never watched a race otherwise. These fans are bringing with them expectations shaped by K-pop fandom culture. They seek direct access to the drivers beyond the track, emotional narratives, and authentic representation.
This push for greater inclusion and visibility has helped lead to initiatives like the F1 Academy, an all-women racing series that reflects the changing face of the sport’s audience. It shows that the sport is starting to recognize how important diversity and representation are to its future.
These fans aren’t just redefining what it means to be an F1 supporter. They’re showing that fandom can be a powerful, intentional force that helps reshape the media it connects with.
OTW Tips
AO3 embraces the richness and diversity of fan-created content. Whether works include ship names, inside jokes, or niche tropes, the OTW values the creative freedom of its users while maintaining a commitment to ensuring AO3 remains a welcoming and navigable space. AO3’s Content Policy is designed with maximum inclusiveness of fanwork content and user safety in mind. Violations of the Terms of Service, including the Content Policy, are administered by the Policy and Abuse committee, which handles reports and concerns in accordance with AO3’s Terms of Service (TOS).
For more information on how our Terms of Service is applied, check out the Terms of Service Spotlight series or refer to the TOS FAQ.
We want your suggestions for the next OTW Signal post! If you know of an essay, video, article, podcast, or news story you think we should know about, send us a link. We are looking for content in all languages! Submitting a link doesn’t guarantee that it will be included in an OTW post, and inclusion of a link doesn’t mean that it is endorsed by the OTW.
These icons:
icon one - Lone Star icon with water effect
This is the cap (open or download the image to see at full size):
1. I used this texture:
2. and applied a motion blur filter with an angle of (more or less) -15 degrees and a distance of 19 pixels:
-> 
3. and desaturated it:
-> 
4. then I masked the two subjects out of the original cap and sharpened them and put them above the background:
+ 
-> 
5. they were too dark, so I duplicated them and set the second layer to Linear Dodge (Add) (100% because they were *that* dark):
->
6. they were still too dark, so I duplicated the layer again, inverted it (black background only for visualization purposes), and set it to Soft Light 100%:
-> 
Now they're light enough not to get overshadowed by the background! \o/
7. On to the text. The color is a light, almost grey shade of blue (#a0adb5) that I picked out of the background, and the font is Tarzan at 10pt with a kerning of 180 (black background only for visualization purposes):
8. Then I distorted the layer with the wave function. For that you have to rasterize the layer. (I duplicated it so I would still have the text layer later. The original text layer I set to invisible.) I have no idea what settings I used, I usually click randomize until I like the result:
-> 
-> 
I put the distorted text layer behind the subjects.
9. I still thought it was too dark, so I took this texture by dragonslayer, desaturated it, and set it to Hard Light 32% above all other layers:
-> 
-> 
10. Now for the final touch of the watery look, I wanted some water effects in front of them, too, so I painted a few lines with the same color I used for the font into an empty layer (black just for visualization), and masked away some of it in front of their skin so it wouldn't turn blue:
11. I duplicated that painted layer and stretched it out (I usually use Free Transform for everything):
12. I set the first one to Color 100% and the second one to Color Dodge 26%, to get the effect of a water ripple reflecting on their bodies, and that's it! Final layer palette and result:
- icon two - sleepwalking Fitz
The important part in this icon is to make the person stand out and to clean up the background. I always make sure not to leave any distracting details in icons.
This is the cap of Fitz sleepwalking through St Pierre in his pyjama pants (open or download the image to see at full size):
1. First I cropped it so he's in the middle:
2. Then I removed the raised flower bed (or whatever that is) in the lower left corner. I don't remember how exactly I did this, but I suspect I painted over it with the clone brush with the empty street from his other side:
3. Then I made him stand out more by masking away everything apart from his body. As you can tell I just did this haphazardly with a small hard brush. Then I set this layer to Linear Dodge (Add) 100% :
-> 
4. I thought his pants were still too dark, so I copied the layer again and removed the mask for his upper body. I set this to Linear Dodge (Add) 100% as well:
-> 
Yay, now he's lighter than the background!
5. Now for coloring. I wanted the background to be more uniform and also warmer. So I added a plain brown color layer (#9a725a) on Overlay 100%. I put this layer in front of the background layers but behind the subject layers from steps 4/5:
-> 
6. I liked the way the street lights illuminate the scene from the far back, so I added more colors to enhance this (but not too much, he has to stay in focus). The colors are yellow on top (#ffcf16) and orange on the bottom (#ff8937). The middle is transparent - I only added a white background here to make it easier to see for the tutorial. I used the same mask I had already made for his body, just inverted, so his body wouldn't get affected by the colors. The layer is then set to Multiply 100%:
+ 
-> 
7. I thought he still wasn't standing out well enough yet, so I added a bit of black behind him. I used the same mask as before and set it to Multiply 63%:
+
-> 
8. Textwork! I couldn't think of anything good to say, so I just added the words "sleep" and "walk". I put each on their own layer. I used the font Franklin Gothic Condensed BT at 18 and 12 pixels, the colors are yellow (#ffde00) and orange(#ff6600). I set both layers to Color Dodge, around 70% opacity:
-> 
9. I thought the top half could also use some text, so I duplicated the text layers and moved them around. I didn't change size or color. I set those three all to Color Dodge 61%:
-> 
I then decided that the text at the top wasn't well readable and detracted from the depth of the street background, so I did not use that layer group after all. So I set those to invisible and called it done! Final layers and result:
- I enjoyed writing these up, I hope you enjoy reading them! <3
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We're going to try blocking this month! Use any rectangular shape to cut off/obscure/divide your icon. Text is roughly a rectangular shape, too, so it counts. You don't have to use more than one image to achieve blocking. Textures or even single color shapes can be used to great effect.
This is a free inspirational challenge.
( Some inspirational material under here )
* You can make as many icons as you like (if you need a goal, five is a good number :))
* There is no minimum, 1 icon is enough to enter this activity
* Please submit your icons (and URLs!) to this post, all in one comment (if possible)
* Everyone can participate, you don't have to be a member of this community
* I will collect all the icons from the comments and make a result post
* Everyone can leave comments on the inspiration and activity result posts
* There is no voting
Deadline: Saturday, August 23rd, your end-of-day
scruloose and I are now maybe two-thirds through the All Systems Red audiobook.Other than that, I read Antonia Hodgson's The Raven Scholar, which went on sale in ebook right after I heard it mentioned by a couple of different people. (It may still be on sale! Worth checking!) It was a really good read that surprised me quite a few times via some great redirects. The main downside is that it's very recent and is the first of a...trilogy, I think? Hope I'll be able to remember what happened in this book, because it was a LOT. (Also, I assume this was a deliberate style choice, but it's rather a cascade of comma splices.)
I've just barely started Sky on Fire, E.K. Johnston's second book of the summer. In the leadup to its release I repeatedly forgot and was reminded that it's a sequel to Aetherbound, which I read when it came out in 2021. In this case my memory is a bit fuzzy on what came before, but this book is set a fair bit later and (I think) recapped the major plot outcomes from Aetherbound, so here's hoping I do okay! ^_^ (A definite downside to ebooks--if I had a hard copy I could pretty easily flip through it, but I find that a huge pain with ebooks, and between that and how infrequently I reread anything, sequels can be tricky for me. >.<)
Watching: Minimal.
scruloose and I watched episode 1 of the The Summer Hikaru Died anime, which is only a few episodes along so far. I know almost nothing about the manga (and don't know how long [this season of?] the anime is expected to be or how faithful it is so far), but ep. 1 seemed like a good start.Cooking/Baking: Berries continue to be gloriously available, and I hear the first early peaches have been glimpsed in at least one of the local-produce stores. (It's so lovely to have several of those!) We once again made it to the corner market and came home with raspberries, blueberries, and cherries; strawberries are still around, and I enjoy them, but I don't love them the way I love raspberries and I find them harder than blueberries to eat quickly enough.
Mid-week we made Smitten Kitchen's Strawberry Summer Sheet Cake to use up a whole heap of strawberries and froze most of the cake (*ritual but intensely heartfelt grumble about needing to eke it out in the name of sugar intake etc.*); the slices we took out to thaw this afternoon are the first previously-frozen ones, so we'll see how it does with this treatment.
Planning: It's been a good chunk of time since the last time we both took the day off to run errands on a weekday, so we're planning to do that in a couple of days. Apparently the day we've chosen is going to be a scorcher (which is a bit awkward since, while we've booked a car for the erranding, AC in vehicles usually nauseates me pretty badly but will be necessary so we don't completely melt. Here's hoping proactive gravol does the trick). (Could we do it another day? Well...yes. But the core inspiration for doing it at all is that there's a local ice creamery that does weekly feature flavors and has legendary lineups, and I've never actually had their ice cream and this week's flavor is lemon. Hopefully going midday on a weekday will mean the line isn't too horrendous when we go on lemon's final day in rotation.)
At this time, all members of the OTW who are eligible to vote should have received an email linking to the voting instructions for 2025. The subject line was “Voting Instructions for Organization for Transformative Works (OTW) Board Election”. Please note that anyone who didn’t receive this email is not on the voter rolls this year and will not receive a ballot.
The voting instructions email contains a link to a test version of the ballot. Please follow that link to make sure that the page displays correctly and the candidates are visible. If not, please ensure you are not blocking JavaScript from ajax.googleapis.com, bootstrapcdn.com, and/or opavote.com.
If you are an OTW member and didn’t receive this email, please do the following:
- Check your spam folder.
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- If the email is marked as spam, unmark it. Otherwise, you will not receive your ballot, as it will end up in spam as well.
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- To vote in this election, your receipt must be dated between July 1, 2024, and June 30, 2025, inclusive of both dates. Receipts are dated in UTC. Please check your receipt for the date of your donation. You won’t be eligible to vote if your donation was made after midnight UTC on July 1.
- If you paid by check, your membership is measured by the arrival date of the check.
- If your donation was made during the eligible time period, make sure you checked the box to become a member. Membership is voluntary for those who donate at least $10; only members can vote.
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- If you donated at least $10 during the eligible period and you checked the box to become a member, please fill out the Elections Contact Form and select the topic “Is my membership current/Am I eligible to vote?” Make sure to include the email you used when donating.
- Membership has no connection to being a user of AO3 or Fanlore. Please don’t give us your AO3 or Fanlore username – we have no way of knowing who that name belongs to, and we don’t want to know.
Most importantly, if your voting instructions email bounces, gets marked as spam, or you opt out, you will not receive a ballot for this year’s election, and you may not receive a ballot next year. Similarly, if any of those things happened to last year’s election emails, you will not receive a ballot this year. Therefore, if you previously opted out of OTW emails or marked them as spam and would like to vote, fill out the Elections Contact Form and select the topic “Is my membership current/Am I eligible to vote?”
Early summer is always a quiet time, but we had four makers bravely tumble down the waterfall!
( 35 icons by 4 makers )
Feel free to comment here or on each maker's threads linked next to their name.
Our next activity will be coming up later today.
p.s.: if you're a maker who still has to answer a question, take your time! I'll make Ask Your Maker roundup post only when you're all done.
The election season is in full swing! As part of the election season, we have a chat with our candidates coming up soon. You can also find links to the candidates’ answers to your questions at the bottom of this post.
Chats
There will be one public chat with all three candidates that will last 90 minutes. Chats will take place in our public chatroom (Discord).
It is scheduled for:
- Saturday, August 2, from 21:00 UTC to 22:30 UTC – Live chat with all candidates (What time is the Candidate Chat where I live?)
During this chat, chat attendees will have the opportunity to ask the candidates questions not already covered in their platforms, bios, and Q&A, as well as to ask individual questions of specific candidates. New questions will only be accepted for the first hour of the scheduled chat time to make sure candidates have time to finish them all.
We hope that you can join us for this chat!
Please note that though the link to the public chatroom is already active, chatting capabilities will not be enabled until approximately half an hour before the chat begins.
Read on to learn more about using Discord.
- On the login page, you’ll need to provide a screen name.
- Once you enter the server, you’ll find a list of users on the right and a list of chat rooms on the left. Settings are available via the gear icon on the lower left, near your screen name; there you can choose, among other options, whether you prefer a dark or light chat room appearance.
- There are three rooms available to chat attendees who are not candidates or Elections Committee volunteers: general, candidate_chats, and open_chat.
- General is where you’ll find a list of rules for the chats. Please read through these carefully before entering the other two rooms.
- Candidate_chats is where the candidates will answer questions and debate amongst themselves. Only the candidates and moderator will be able to chat in this room.
- Open_chat is where all attendees can participate and talk to each other. We ask that you try to stay on topics related to the election. A moderator will be in the room, so if you have a question for the candidates, you can signal the moderator with o/, the candidate’s name, and the question. Use o// if it’s a follow-up question to the current discussion.
Q&A
When we posted the Board candidates’ bios and platforms, we asked the public to submit additional questions for them. Once again, our sincere thanks to everyone who did so! We have already posted candidate answers to Q&A questions.
To navigate answers by individual candidate, please use the links below:
Over the past few weeks, we completed several important infrastructure updates including upgrading to Elasticsearch 8, finishing the transition to Rails 7.1, and migrating the bookmarks table to create room for more bookmarks. We also made some user-facing improvements, such as fixing various access and display bugs; clarifying some error messages, form labels, and page titles; and adding chapter numbers to comments in your inbox. Special thanks and welcome to first-time contributors Abhinav Gupta, hk-contribs, TemperedPetals, and Vemmy RM! We’d also like to thank Dhiraj Mishra for reporting a security issue.
Credits
- Coders: Abhinav Gupta, AliceLsr, Bilka, Brian Austin, calm, ceithir, Connie Feng, EchoEkhi, Hamham6, hk-contribs, kitbur, sarken, slavalamp, TemperedPetals, Vemmy RM, weeklies
- Code reviewers: Bilka, Brian Austin, ceithir, Coding-Hen, Hamham6, sarken, weeklies
- Testers: Bilka, Booksarelife, Brian Austin, Caitlynne, calamario, choux, Deniz, Keladry, LilyP, Lute, lydia-theda, Sam Johnsson, Sanity, Teyris, therealmorticia, wichard
Details
0.9.414
In the process of installing the new Elasticsearch servers, we upgraded to Elasticsearch 8 on June 24!
- [AO3-6259] – We upgraded the Elasticsearch gem to version 8.18.0.
0.9.415
On June 25, we finished off the last remaining parts of the update to Rails 7.1.
- [AO3-6894] – We flipped the remaining configuration values to use the new defaults from Rails 7.1.
0.9.416
Our deploy on July 1 updated older language on the work search and filtering forms from “Author/Artist” to “Creator” and added chapter numbers to comments in your inbox, among other improvements.
- [AO3-6050] – When accessing the Tag Wrangling page showing all relationship tags related to a character, tags would always be shown in alphabetical order, regardless of sort order. Now, tag wranglers can additionally sort through the tags by how many times they were used or by creation date.
- [AO3-6273] – Sometimes, when you used the “Post Draft” button on a draft, the word count of the publicly posted work would be blank. It should now always be the correct number.
- [AO3-6373] – If you blocked a user who had previously commented on your work, you could no longer freeze their comment. We fixed this, so you can now block users and freeze their comment threads in any order without problems.
- [AO3-6735] – We fixed that when you left a comment on an news posts with comment moderation enabled, the resulting comment email would incorrectly tell you that the comment was on a work with moderated comments.
- [AO3-6936] – We changed the browser page title on subscriptions pages to a format that matches other user pages: “username – Subscriptions | Archive of Our Own.”
- [AO3-6971] – We fixed an error that occurred if the “No Fandom” tag didn’t exist, for example in a development installation of the Archive.
- [AO3-7010] – Trying to access the chapter index of a work that’s both in an unrevealed collection and hidden by an admin used to result in an error 500. We’ve fixed that so it now results in a normal permission error.
- [AO3-7017] – If you knew the ID of a draft work or a work restricted to logged in users, you could access a few subpages of the work that revealed its title and blurb. Since that information isn’t meant to be public, we’ve once again restricted access to these pages.
- [AO3-7016] – We updated the gem we use to run database schema migrations of large tables.
- [AO3-5345] – Collection maintainers get an email notification if they run matching in a gift exchange and the sign-ups are invalid. We’ve improved the text of this email and prepared it for translation.
- [AO3-6541] – We changed the works search and the sorting and filtering options to use “Creator” instead of “Author/Artist” to match the terminology used by the rest of the site.
- [AO3-6750] – Comments in your inbox now include the chapter number, so you don’t have to follow the comment link to know where exactly it was left.
- [AO3-6807] – If you tried to use an invalid URL for an external work or in your collection sign-up, you would sometimes get a 500 error. We fixed that so now you will always get a proper error message telling you that the URL is invalid.
- [AO3-6999] – We removed some duplicate code for sending comment emails to admins.
0.9.417 & 0.9.418
On July 3 and July 4, we ran out of rows in the database table that stores bookmarks, so we had to move them to a larger table that can hold them all! Now you can once again add your own bookmarks to the 647 million we already have.
- [AO3-7031] – We migrated the bookmarks table to be able to hold more rows and then migrated all other table columns that refer to bookmarks to also support the larger bookmark IDs.
0.9.419
On July 12, we deployed an assortment of minor changes that included allowing the accent-color property in skins and clarifying some error messages.
- [AO3-6795] – When you were excluding a tag in a search and then made a syntax error when trying to filter those results, you’d get a 500 error. We’ve fixed this so it instead tells you that your query has a syntax error.
- [AO3-6989] – If you tried to view the pseuds list for a user who didn’t exist, you’d get redirected to the People Search page. That made sense in a way, but wasn’t terribly consistent with other nonexistent pages. Now you’ll get a 404 error instead, which makes it easier to check for typos in the URL you entered.
- [AO3-7007] – We fixed a 500 error when a guest tried to add a work to a collection by directly going to the “Add To Collection” URL.
- [AO3-7025] – We fixed a typo in one of the CSS properties in the Creating a Skin help pop-up.
- [AO3-7022] – We changed the default comment setting for news posts to “Only registered users can comment.”
- [AO3-5344] – We prepared the email that you get when your work is invited to a collection for translation.
- [AO3-7019] – You will now get an informative error message if you try to change your username to the same name as you currently have, instead of it silently doing nothing.
- [AO3-7033] – When you access a skin, the skin title is now part of the browser page title.
- [AO3-7041] – You can now use the accent-color property in site and work skins!
- [AO3-6852] – We removed some old unused scripts for testing gift exchange matching.
chasethestars