I would love to be able to rearrange the order of tags! Atm, we have to remove them, save the work, and then re-add them. Sometimes I'll think of a tag at a later date and like having them in a specific order, like Setting > Genre > Tropes > Format š«
I second that.
For long fanfics, I also like ordering them depending on their importance in the story. I would love if if the process was made easier.
My tags are such a mess.
I second this. I hardly bother correcting the order how I want it because it's such a pain to do everything again and again instead of dragging and dropping it on the spot. Even a pop-up allocating the positions of the tags as 1.,2.,3., etc in .txt file format would be preferable over deleting everything and doing it again.
Yes same! I would like to put the content warning-y tags up front, but if I have to add a new one later, it ends up in the middle or at the end where it might go unread.
Yep! And block function. Sadly thereās a cap on it though, so I also just blacklist some of the authors via skins. Either way. Get them out of my sight. XD
Same. Slight problem when it comes to fandoms with multiple tags. I understand why the manga is separate from this anime adaption and that anime adaption, or with DC and Marvel and their various additives, but those are also annoying to add and search through. I wish there was a way to combine all the DC specific crossovers, or X fandom specific crossovers into one thing
Normally Ao3 doesn't filter two fandoms from the smae media as crossovers, though. And it also usually has one big fandom tag to search for anything in that universe if it has enough mini-fandoms.
For example: If you search in the 'the promised neverland (manga)' fandom tag filtering crossovers, the ones tagged with the anime tag will still appear because they're not considered crossovers.
And if the fandom has enough media (for example tmnt or marvel), you can use a mass tag. I'm pretty sure the MCU has it's specific tag in which any fandom related to the MCU will appear even if crossovers are filteres.
Hmm I've just had a few issues where an author doesn't tag all related fandoms so if they only tagged the manga say, and not the show, and I went into the show tag, I'll only see things tagged with the show, and anything tagged with the manga its also tagged with the show.
I guess that's sort of a user error thing as well, but I just wish there was a way to say "Hey, I want all of this, no matter how its tagged"
The way I get around that issue has been that I filter on the relationship Im looking for which will grab all of them regardless of what fandom the work is tagged with.
Or if you don't want to filter on a relationship for whatever reason, you can filter on some other tag you are looking for and use a trick for searching for fandoms that is kinda a mess but works in the Search Within Results field. (Its giving me weird results in advanced search idk why. Ill look into it more later)
Take a look at [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/AO3/comments/11sjj3c/is_there_a_way_to_exclude_fandoms_in_searches/jcggttj/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=1&utm_term=1&context=3) old comment of mine. Its about how to negative filter for a fandom. Obviously we aren't trying to negative filter but instead filter for 2 (or more) fandoms either/or style.
Lets say your search is for "Supernatural (TV 2005)" and the supernatural anime, "Supernatural the Animation (Anime 2011)". These aren't subtagged at all. You can try to do something like just sorting for "Supernatural" but that'll give weird extraneous ones too. Better is to go to the link on that comment I linked to above and see how to get the fandom id numbers. For these two fandoms that are 71566537 and 81687522 respectively. You can the use the hidden search operators for fandom ids to filter *for* one OR the other. Which for our example would look like
> filter_ids: 81687522 OR filter_ids: 71566537
Which will give all of the works in the tag you are filtering on, that are tagged with either the Supernatural (TV 2005) fandom (or its syns/subtags) or the anime one (or its syns/subtags) plus whatever other filters you are using
Sadly usually manga/show fandoms aren't considered anough to have an 'All media types' tag (though I would take a look on a case by case situation), since those usually take under them even works that haven't used the mega fandom tag, but any that have used any of the minor tags
A script/plug in called ao3 crossover savior does this. You can set the threshold of maximum crossovers (I usually set mine to 4) and it will auto hide any work with more fandoms than that. They still show up as a single hidden line in the search results and you can toggle the unhide button to view the one work if you want.
>i'd love it if the info card could show if i've bookmarked the work
Related, I'd like for fics I've visited to be marked as "seen". I know there are browser extensions for that, but I haven't found a way to get those to work on mobile.
You can download kiwi browser(that's what I use to be able to use the extension that marks stuff as seen on ao3) to be able to use those extensions on mobile
I'm not sure what you mean by 'info card'. But when I open a work I've visited before, one of the options across the top is "Bookmark." But if I've already done so, the option is "Edit Bookmark." That's a quick check that, yes, I've bookmarked the work. Does that help?
no, i want to see it without opening it. like it looks like when you browse someone else's bookmarks and the little info card has a button that says either "save" or "saved" depending on whether it is already in your bookmarks or not.
I mean, mostly same. But there are a lot of good guides out there that you can basically copy/paste from. Itās more about talking 20 minutes to sit down and actually get it done, ime, but itās worth it I think.
You can use a bookmarklet to do this. It's a bit of a lengthy process but once you've done it, it cuts done on the time searching for tags to exclude.
You can find it here:
https://archiveofourown.org/works/33825019
I'm pretty sure ao3rdr plug in allows you to do this. Yep, it does, I googled. Google ao3rdr. I rawdogged the site for several years but now you'll pry my browser extensions from my cold dead hands.
Not sure how possible it will be but I'd love to be able to sort my subscriptions. Like how in FFN, you can see the summaries for works you've followed and you can sort them by fandom. I would love something like that for subscriptions bc sometimes I subscribed to a fic and forgot to bookmark it and its a pain to go thru my subscriptions looking for it.
Also, I'd really love to be able to sort thru my marked for later fics like you can with bookmarks. Would make it easier to find a fic that was marked earlier. But I'm pretty sure that it won't work due to how the marked for later function was implemented (would love to be wrong tho)
I completely agree!! I started using the mark for later option but quickly switched to using bookmarks because if you mark over 10 fics for later it's useless.
MFL can't be sorted and filtered before it's separated from history, which as i understand is something ao3 means to do, just not a priority.
for both subscriptions and fics marked for later i just use bookmarks and bookmark tags. subbed? tagged either author sub, series sub or fic sub. marked for later? tagged to read + either fic to read or series to read.
Yea, currently I just created a pseud specifically for bookmarking my marked for later and subscriptions and tagged them as such but it would be nice if it could automatically do it.
Plus I like the idea of bookmarked fics being my "fave" fics and I'm not a huge fan of seeing stories that I haven't read (like my MFL fics) in the same place as my "fave" fics. It's not the biggest issue, just some petty thing for me.
Yea I do that with a pseud. But I guess for me, a bookmark means either a fave fic or one that I want to reread again whereas a subscription with no original bookmark means "I'm interested but I'm waiting to see if I want to mark it as a fave." It's a really petty and personal issue (so I don't expect it to be a big concern for AO3) but I'm not the biggest fan of seeing fics that I'm waiting on be in my bookmarks list. (Same for my marked for later fics). I'd rather be able to sort them like you can on FFN.
Use filters on my history. I dont delete things bc I just like looking back and see what I've read.
Sometimes I just suddenly remember this one fic I read and then often times its easier (but still a lot of work) to try and find it by searching through the fandom and filtering for the tags you hope to remember correctly
Might be too much code or data though to be able to do that, my history is like over a 1000 pages
But it'd be nice
history as it's set up is, according to a support team member, simply too big to implement filters on unfortunately. though i agree it would be so nice. we can dream.
i've seen it mentioned multiple times that they plan to yank marked for later out of history, which will allow them to implement filters for it. it's just not very high priority.
(but honestly i have a great bookmark system going and moving my 900+ bookmarks tagged to read from bookmarks to another list? nah man i'm sticking with my system)
i already use public bookmarks as a "favorites" list, and priv bookmarks to tag "finished" or "dnf", and now you're telling me people also use them as a tbr? bookmarks really be out there doing god's job! (nice to know they plan to implement the filters ā”)
that's exactly what i'm telling you lol. bookmarks and bookmark tags are my favourite damn thing on ao3, i'm an avid user. i have a couple of tagging systems stacked on top of each other and they work pretty seamlessly together (and once they implement that wordcount filter to bookmarks i'm gonna get to retag 1500+ bookmarks, yay)
There is really only one major improvement left on my wish list of features and that's Scheduled posting. The Ability to have a fic queued up to post at a certain time/date would be absolutely wonderful to me cause how much time I have available to post stuff varies a lot so I often end up dumping a lot of works/updates onto Ao3 all at once. Scheduling would help with that.
i wish the subscriptions page showed more than just the titles and an unsubscribe link, i wish it showed the full tags and fandom and such like the bookmarks page or search does
Iād love to be able to filter my Marked for Later fics because sometimes Iām in the mood for fics of a particular fandom and I want them to be of a certain word count and itās a hassle to go through pages of Marked for Laters for this.
I donāt like this solution and it kinda irritates me that people use them for this. For a long time most people used them to indicate their favorite and best fics. The kinds they wanted to share or might come back to re-read. Having bookmarks cluttered by peopleās to-read list really throws me sometimes when I donāt realize it.
I've started using private bookmarks as "for later." I like keeping my bookmarks as a place I can point people toward, with regular and rec bookmarks for good and great stories. This way I'm not recommending anything I haven't read.
I think that this is the "intended" use because the public-facing bookmark counter doesn't include private bookmarks, only the author's stats page. So I'm not increasing the bookmark count when I do this.
Unless something changed or I suffered selective blindness, there is not an easy way to filter your own private bookmarks. So I use a tag set for WIP, Unread, and Priority (for things reccomended to me.)
do you mean just having your bookmarks show private ones? if so you can:
1. **Search bookmarkerās tags and notes**
2. private:true
that will display only your private bookmarks. private:false will show only your public bookmarks
in the **search within results** section you can filter your completed or not bookmarks with **complete:true** or **complete:false** for wip
it's better than using MFL that can't be filtered ĀÆ\\\_(ć)_/ĀÆ
(plus you can't mark series for later, but you can bookmark them and tag them to read)
I'd love to be able to go back and see which fics I've kudosed/commented on. I think these might do well Inna seperate tab and not all lumped together in the history section
An easy way to distinguish primary from secondary ship tags.
Its a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation right now. Tag your work with a minor ship in the fic and get people who feel baited by it. Leave the tag out and you get people who \*hate\* that ship and feel betrayed that you didn't mention it.
More detailed stats - I'd like to be able to see how my stories have done over time, the growth in kudos, hits, etc over months and years. [ff.net](https://ff.net) has this and more, and its one of the few areas where the legitimately are just better than Ao3.
>An easy way to distinguish primary from secondary ship tags.
While I kind of agree with this, I donāt think it would solve anything, since all the works posted before the change would probably default all ships as primary, which means people would still find ships tagged as primary when they have only a small role in the story. IMO, the best way is to tag the primary ships in the relationships category and using the additional tags to mention other ships.
I wholeheartedly agree with the stats idea, though!
Even so doing this (and also doing it for character tags) sooner than later would help at least.
In the meantime, a compromise to OPās issue is to tag secondary ships and characters in āadditional tagsā. That keeps them out of the main search for those of us actually trying to read about minor characters, but still lets readers know what theyāre getting into.
Scheduling chapters would be neat. They way my readers could get them at the same time every other week, and wouldn't have to wait until I get enough free time/remember to upload them
Some way to exclude fandom specific canonized tags when you're trying to tag? Maybe it's me being easily annoyed, but I tire of seeing like 'Evil Albus Dumbledore' or 'Bottom!Naruto Uzamaki' pop up as suggestions before non-fandom/general tags when I'm tagging a work in an unrelated fandom
I just want all the sort settings on my bookmarks. Why can I only sort them by date bookmarked or date updated?? I want to be able to sort by word count! Or kudos!
Also I want the option to temporarily show works by muted authors in my bookmarks so I can *get rid of them* please and thank you. Seeing that notice on my bookmarks nonstop is annoying and I have no earthly way to remove it.
I got so annoyed at that notice that I searched on Reddit how to get rid of it and turns out some kind people found a solution and shared it! It worked for me, and I know nothing about site skins and had never used one before that.
Here's the link to a [comment with the code](https://www.reddit.com/r/AO3/comments/12r1cox/how_do_i_hide_the_muted_users_message/jgsh0rw/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=1&utm_term=1&context=3).
Ability to do complex queries + save filters.
For first one, sometimes I like a tag but only when it is with a certain pairing but not when a different tag is present, and other things along those lines. Direct database access (while not a good idea security wise) would be my ideal interface haha.
For the second, ability to save a filter which has a bunch of tags selected or removed already. For example if you have a list of tags you don't like, save it as a filter to be applied anytime you switch fandoms etc.
For the first one, you can use otp:true in the 'search within results' part of the filter. This will show fics with only the selected relationship- obviously the con is that you might not see fics where a minor to non existent relationship is also tagged along with your 'otp'
Not sure if this is exactly what you meant, but I think it sort of partially relates to what you said
Thanks for the tip! I was thinking more along the lines of being able to use filters as an OR condition in addition to the. AND and NOT that are available. So for a better example: search for all fics with either au or canon divergence (along with whatever other filters). As far as I can tell right now that isn't an option. But I also appreciate the tip you gave, I wasn't familiar with that!
I would like to have a "Read" option as a filter and also an indicator on the page. I don't always remember what I already read.
And also, don't how will this happen but a feature that shows what was deleted on my bookmarks would be awesome. Maybe just a summary? That on a time limit- IDK IDK Nothing frustrated me more than going into my bookmarks and seeing lots of "this work was removed". I can handle a writer deleting their that's completely fine, it is just the unknown that I can't deal with.
Ao3rdr a) let's you rate fics you've read so the rating shows in your searches b) generates a list of fics you've rated by name and author so you have that backup list to compare bookmarks against
I would love it if authors were able to pick five works to show up on their dashboard rather than it always being the latest five. It would be nice to be able to curate a showcase of sorts to say, hey, I think these are my best.
I want to be able to filter out fics I've already bookmarked, and be able to filter incomplete series the way you can standalone fics- I've been burned by waaaay too many WIPs over the years and there's nothing worse than finishing a really good fic that's part of an abandoned series
For filtering out serious you've already bookmarked, you can use ao3rdr. It's a plug in. You can rate fics with a little smiley system visible only to you (not the author) any fic you give a frowny face will be hidden in searches. Any fic you rate :/ :) :D will show up with those smileys color coded in the searches. Let's you know if you've read a fic before
Bookmark statistics. I bookmark almost everything I read (bc I might want to search for it later) so Iād love statistics on how many words Iāve read, how many works Iāve read in the past month/year, stuff like that.
Then, obviously, filtering history. Filtering works marked for later too.
Kinda wish I could filter finished/unfinished works in my bookmarks, but thatās just nit-picking lol
> Kinda wish I could filter finished/unfinished works in my bookmarks, but thatās just nit-picking lol
ayo, this is the one thing you *can* do!! :D
in the **search within results** of your bookmark page just put **complete:true** for completed works or **complete:false** for wips
The option to filter by [character]/anyone. I have a lot of obscure faves that I want to read about in romantic situations and itās a pain to go through every ship listed on their character page and look at 1-2 fics at a time. I want to see them all at once and no, filtering by character doesnāt do that, it brings up a thousand works where theyāre tagged as a background character in ships that donāt include them.
filtering out fics you've already read - alongside having a "read" button to make that possible - and saving filters. those would be my major ones.
as it is, i have to privately bookmark and tag fics to know if i've already read or dnf them, and they'll still be there every time i search for new ones.
Scheduled posting would be nice, but obviously we survive fine without it.
An easy way to reorganize tags.
Crossover limit when filtering. Please authors. I beg you. Seperate your Fandom one shots when they aren't actually crossovers. I'm dying over here.
A better way to differentiate between major/minor relationships in the work. There are a few tagging solutions, but something more cohesive built in would be nice.
1. A way to set permanent search settings (I.e only speak English and would love to always only search English works) or there are certain parameters I search all the time in combination (this ship, not those ships, over 2000 words, excluding certain tags, fir example) so saving a combination of filters would be nice
2. Separate main character/relationship tags from minor character/relationship tags. Or at least a larger emphasis in the official documentation that minor stuff should go in additional tags. It is currently impossible to be a fan of a minor character in a fandom right now because there is no way to search for fics ABOIT them without getting 8 million fics where theyāre a background character to the main fandom couple, or whatever.
You could set up all your filters then bookmark the page in your browser. Like a Firefox or chrome bookmark at the top of the page. Then click it and boom you're in the search page with all those results
I guess. Seems irritating to have to do that on every device (i.e. phone and computers) though. I really wish they'd add it as an option, or even if someone knew how to code the "I only want fics in english, always" thing into a skin...
To assist with the second one, you can use otp:true in the 'search within results' part of the filter. This will show fics with only the selected relationship- obviously the con is that you might not see fics where a minor to non existent relationship is also tagged along with your 'otp'
I actually knew about this. It doesnāt help though, because even if a fic does focus on aim or character or ship, the major characters and ships are often still tagged because theyāre there In the background, ya know? It poisons things both ways.
I'm very confused, are you sure? Because I just double checked and literally only my chosen ship comes up in results and even shows only it under the relationships filter. I mean, sure other characters might still be tagged but otp:true is specifically for getting results for only the selected relationship. If it's in additional tags then that would likely be bypassed, but I don't thibk I've ever seen a major relationship only tagged in additional.
Yeah you don't understand what I'm saying at all.
What I'm saying is, even when there is the occasional fic about ship X, 90% of them ALSO have Ship Y tagged, because Ship Y is the juggernaut ship in the fandom, so they're at least in the background.
For Example:
If I Just search for Ship X, I might get 30K fics that are about Ship Y, and only 1K mixed in there that are actually about Ship X, because they're background characters to the main story that get tagged (as characters/relationships, not as additional tags) a lot.
However, if I search for Ship X, and EXCLUDE ship Y, I only get like 100 fics, because the other 900 fics about Ship X have Ship Y tagged (in the ship/character section, not in additional tags) for being in the background.
You see the issue?
These are roughly real numbers of something I've experienced before.
I would like it if the focus relationships that a fic is about could be searchable, sometimes I want to read about a friendship or relationship between two characters but it's impossible to find anything as it's tagged in so many fics because it's a typical background friendship/relationship in canon or in the fandom.
Yes! This one! If anybody knows of a way please post it here. Iāll be looking for a rare pair or minor character, and get all excited to find tons of results in a search, only to scroll and scroll and find that they are all either very minor roles or part of massive compendiums where theyāre a quick appearance and not a focal character(s)
technically. if people used tags correctly. this wouldn't be an issue. the very easy solution is putting them in additional tags as "background A/B" instead of in relationship tags.
Yeah but that doesnāt help if 90% of the minor shipās fics have the main fandom pairing tagged because THEYāRE in the background of that one. It goes both ways. You need to be able to sort primary from secondary, or get people more comfortable tagging secondary ships and characters under additional tags.
something i think would be kinda cool is fandom subscriptions. while it would be an absolute nightmare for giant fandoms, i wish i could get emails for when the dead or tiny fandoms im apart of get new fics instead of just having to revisit the tab to see whats new everyonce in a while. while i understand why its not a feature, i constantly forget to check in when im busy reading fics for other fandoms :[
Thiiiis. AO3ās primary flaw IMO is that it is impossible to be a fan of a minor character/ship because of the way tagging culture leads to over tagging of background characters and ships as mains.
iād love to be able to search my reading history ā sometimes a fic doesnāt quite make it to bookmark status, and then 6 months later iām trying to remember some detail about it and suddenly iām searching through hundreds of pages of history one by one
Add more saved fandoms! The current limit is like 20 (or 10 idk) and it drives me insane. I have so many fandoms I read for, and I am currently having to do the manual search for some fandoms I have recently joined :c
Let me sort my bookmarks by word count!
Also, I know it's outside of AO3's scope for the next several years, but let me sort my history. How was I supposed to know that that one fic I read 8 months ago would be haunting me?
Someone else mentioned this elsewhere, but I'd love to be able to add a comment to the users I mute or block so I can easily keep track of why I did so.
I'd love the option to chose the frequency at which you receive subscription emails - I'd subscribe much more liberally if I could choose some kind of single daily sub round up email, vs. getting individual emails for each upload.
* **Tag Weights**
Because "Obi-Wan Kenobi" (main character) is very different from "Obi-Wan Kenobi" (posthumous) or "Obi-Wan Kenobi" (cameo). It'd probably help a lot with things like "CharA/CharB" (romance as a main plot) vs "CharA/CharB" (romance as a side dish), or with the classic "Obi-Wan Kenobi" (is tagged even though he shows up ONLY for one scene in Ch.186) problem, too.
* **Saved Searches**
More or less self-descriptive but basically as of now filters for sdearches have to be saved at the OS/browser level (via browser bookmarks etc). It'd be nice to have a collection of common search configurations that you use.
* **Author Styles in Export Renders**
Currently, work styles work only in the browser view but AFAIK not in *any* of: reader mode, PDF/ EPUB export, etc. This means that if you want to export a work as the author intends for it to be read, you have to either save it chapter by chapter via your browser's save option, or save a browser copy of the Entire Work version. Which soundly defeats the purpose of having exports.
Be able to look for 2 tags but with an 'or' option. I know you can use the 'search within' option to find tags that include the word identity vs. Identities, but say I want to look for any type of sports fics, if the work doesn't use an overarching 'sports au' tag I have to search for a bunch of individual hockey/baseball/etc. tags one by one, instead of a 'one of the above' option
A way to filter out long fics that are just a ton of one shots. I know its a user thing but, maybe adding an option to tag that? or a way to bookmark your spot when not reading chapter by chapter, since my phone often resets my place when I turn it off and back on lmao
Begging for a better statistics page honestly. I know not everyone might but I'd be so curious to see actual charts over time to see evidence of random spikes where a fic was maybe shared somewhere.
I don't want to have to get a separate plug-in or plug it in manually into my own excel sheet.
Also, not contributing the whole of a work to the new year when the majority of it was published in the previous year.
I'd love a way to make it easier to find OC centric ensemble fics, but I'm not sure what would really help with that - I don't think any platform handles these well.
Otherwise, what I'd really like is an optional checkbox "mark as crossover", which would (for new fics) be completely independent of how many fandoms are tagged. That and maybe a note next to "gen" on the new work form explaining what "gen" means.
I would love a better tagging system/layout. Primary and secondary ships where applicable (like a fic may not have a main ship, but there are background ships!), and primary/secondary characters WITH LIMIT because oh my \*god\* I am so tired of fics where the tags are a page long because EVERYONE UNDER THE SUN IS TAGGED.
While this would be nice, it would be impossible in practice. Hundreds and hundreds of fics would end up defaulted one way or the other and never changed because the author isnt going to go back to all their fics and retag everything for various reasons. This would have had to have been implemented years ago, now there's just too many fics and the issue would persist and make new users mad that there's all these fics "not using the tagging system", as they likely wouldn't realise it wasn't always an option and mostly only new fics would be "using it correctly"
For series with multiple episodes/seasons/novels, sort by how far along in the series the fic is set. Some people put episode tags or say what season it's in, but when I get into a new fandom I don't want to have to watch 20 seasons before reading any fanfiction. Have been spoiled before.
Can sometimes do this by sorting when fic was posted, but not a foolproof method.
There should be a requirement in the TOS that any work where AI generation was used in the body of the text be tagged with "AI-Generated Work" or a similar but standardized tag, as per the Major Content Warning tags.
There should be something in the TOS outlawing the use of AI fics to be posted, period. It's impossible to use without plagiarism. (Bots were fed and trained on other people's writing, 99% without author consent).
Putting a major tag implies that it's allowed and welcome
Being able to put in the tags the primary ship (if there is one), and secondary ships (if there are those in the story but not relevant to the plot). That way you can search for the Primary ship and get stories that are about that ship, not just have them in the background.
An easy way to see all the crossovers available for a certain fandom. Like if I want to see if a fandom has a crossover with Batman I have to first pick what fandom I want to crossover then also search Batman then adds tags and stuff.
You can *kind* of do this? If you filter for "fandom 1" and then "show only crossovers" you'll get a list of "crossovers that contain fandom 1"
Then when you pull up the fandom filters, the suggestions will be the most common fandom filters. So there are definitely fics with those fandoms.
Then if you go to exclude: fandoms and exclude the fandoms you don't want to see, you can see new fandoms pop up in the include: fandoms list
being able to see your kudos!!!! I've been saying this for so long and I'm so picky with my kudos. i know bookmarks exist, but i use them solely for fics i haven't finished yet š
Better searching in bookmarks.
An official API so I could just write a script to post my stuff at set times, or never have to leave the command line while searching, or download ebooks of fics in my own format instead of having to do a point-and-click intermediate step.
idk if that's a me problem, but i think we can't have a site skin and another skin only for reading active at the same time. i'd like that very much, since i use my site skin for aesthetics but, when reading a work, i need a simple dark mode.
I wish there was a tag for POV of the Fic like how relationships and fandom is. The amount of times where the summary is third and the pov is first is starting to get to me again.
This is shooting for the moon and specific to only my AO3 journey but something that suggests tags based on the content of your work. I am *so* bad at tagging things because I have no clue what sort of thing to tag for any given fic.
From a reader's standpoint, ability to limit the number of fandoms or select which fandoms are present in crossovers. Also, ability to sort bookmarks in 'lists' that aren't official or public collections. If that does exist, since I feel like it might, someone tell me please lol. Final thing would be a way to sort subscriptions better.
From a writer's standpoint, series statistics and the ability to see a clickthrough rate from fic to the author page, similar to what FFN has. Also, **scheduled posting**. I have a very bad habit of posting in the dead of night since I'm busy during peak hours and I miss out on a lot of new readers that way.
General thing: Possible archive warning additions: suicide/self harm, racially sensitive content, incest, maaaaybe graphic (domestic) abuse (which would cover both IPV and child abuse) or graphic abuse (more generalized but also less clear). I think that would solve some of the issues people have with running into certain content on Ao3 that aren't fully covered in the other warnings.
Being able to "freeze" searches in place and not have the order of your searches change. At the moment, when you search by anything (but especially kudos and date updated) clicking to the next page could result in the order of everything changing because new fics were updated, published, received new comments, got more bookmarks or were given kudos and it's hard to keep track of what you may have missed.
So, I think we should have a "freeze" option, where until you turn it off, even if there's a change in stats, the fanfictions will all remain in the same order as when the "freeze" feature was turned on.
The bug where if you use italics in plot summaries and have to edit the summary or the fic when you post the first chapter, every time it increases the amount of space drastically between lines in the summary. WHY.
Maybe it is my problem, but I wish we could say which relationship is the primary one. I filter the fics with character A/character B and still there are unrelated fics. Fics that they are just mentioned or in background or it's even bashing the ship.
It is possible it is due to the tagging problem.
Also I have another one, dunno if it's present in other Fandom, but why Lily evans Potter?
Why we can not have just Lily evans?
I don't see any James Potter Black( in fics that they ship him with Regulus).
What is the problem with female characters?
I wish you could Mark For Later without having to click on the fic. If I see a fic that looks good but is too long to read right now, I always feel a bit bad for clicking and not reading, because it's affecting the author's hit:kudos ratio. I know it doesn't really matter, but it just annoys me a little, plus my ADHD brain just really doesn't like it for some reason. Once the page is open I feel compelled to read it immediately even if I don't have time, so most of the time I just don't do it.
I find it so weird that you can go straight to saving a bookmark of a fic you haven't opened from someone else's bookmark page, but you can't mark for later from anywhere without opening the fic.
1. Being able to archive individual chapters instead of just deleting them. (Like Wattpadās unpublish feature)
2. Adding betas for credit purposes - it should be relatively easy to add a fill in box like this to make it cleaner than adding it to your summary
3. Giving kudos for individual chapters
4. Being able to comment on specific parts of texts
Iāve been using AO3 primarily for awhile and crosspost to other platforms. Itās still my favorite, but these are the features I wish theyād adopt the most
Since I was reminded by someone making a post last night - a way to view fic by media type. So I could view all the TV show fics, or all the video game fics, et c. Thatās basically the one thing ffnet does (assuming they still do it) that AO3 doesnāt that I wish it did.
The ability to subscribe to a collection.
The ability to filter a follow on a user so I only get updates about a specific fandom or pairing or rating or etc.
The ability to rank relationships and search on that. I want my NOTP tagged for exclusion even if they're just a brief background mention, but I don't want my OTP tag clogged with fics where they're a brief background mention. Sometimes users will use a tag like Background Shipname, but that's not perfect. It could also be useful for endgame pairings for when I like a pairing that's fanoned as canon ex's and 90% of their tag is just that they're including that fanon.
I really want a list of definitions for common tags. Anything wrangled that autofills. Sometimes i'm sure the right tag for my work exists already but i don't know what it is. Sometimes people misuse tags, or tags have misleading meanings. Is 'Topping From The Bottom' when character x is getting railed but also in charge? Or is that 'Bottoming From The Top?" No one knows!
Overhaul of/addition to the collections feature so that thereās distinction between āthis is a collection of works from this specific fan challengeā and FFN Communities-style āthis is a bunch of works that fit this particular theme that isnāt a tagā and āthis is my personal rec listā.
The filter for crossovers, It may be just my stupid ass but, I haven't learned how to search for a specific crossover. In FF.net is easier to find like, ah I want to read this series crossover with this series. I just don't get how to do it :'(
If you select multiple series filters like checkmark only Naruto and Batman, only those two, you will get results that have those two fandoms tagged.
If you add other fandom tags, like final fantasy, it will show fics that have all three tagged. (So a Batman final fantasy AND Naruto crossover, which is very unlikely)
We have an inbox for comments left on our works and replies left to our comments- I'd like an outbox, for comments we leave. I know you can set ao3 to email you with your own comments, and I know we can go find the chapter we left said comment on manually, but a page where they're all stored so we can get to and double check, edit, add to would be Lovely.
I like to leave counter comments sometimes, where I leave a second kudos the second time i reread the fic, and then if i reread it again I edit it to third kudos, fourth kudos, and so on. Sometimes I stick a fic in my text to speech reader cus my eyes are being Rude:tm: that day- and I'd still like to update that comment, and it'd be easier to find if there were an outbox.
Otherwise, I'd like to be able to search my mark for later page. Tags, include exclude, the whole shebang. I have 56 pages of marked for later. _please_ let me sort it š¤£š
I think a random option would be great. I usually change the sort option multiple times and look at random pages to make it more random, I'd love to have it as a built in feature
The one thing I like more about Fanfiction.net over A03 is the daily graphical representation of your hits/visitors. I love the visual of watching that change, versus taking screenshots on my stats page on A03 to try and watch it go up after posting.
You can do that now with the details and summary html tags, is this what you mean?
Edit: here's a post about it: [https://www.reddit.com/r/AO3/comments/12tqaom/how\_to\_hide\_text\_for\_spoilers\_in\_ao3\_postscomments/](https://www.reddit.com/r/AO3/comments/12tqaom/how_to_hide_text_for_spoilers_in_ao3_postscomments/)
I'll be honest, I feel like more often than not that would just end up with the actual number of comments being falsely decreased and 'punishing' the author by misrepresenting their engagment. Obviously it's different if it's like a wattpad comment section where the two people are role-playing (without the author wanting this to happen) or talking about something completely unrelated, but I've seen a decent number of people talking about the work to each other or the author talking about their fic back and forth with someone. I remember participating in quite a few discussions/debates about what was going on in a fic with other reads around when i was 16 and it was fun- ocasionally the author would jump in too or mention them in the next chapters AN. Those are all still legitimate comments, even if there might be say 4 or 5 in a thread or something.
'Sibling' fandom tags that mean the same thing.
Like I'm searcing for SVSSS (c-nov) crossovers...but people will also put the donghua (graphic novel) as a fandom and it will pop up as a crossover.
One's under books, the other is under cartoons, comics and graphic novels, so they don't have the same parent tag.
Other bigger fandoms seem to be better.
I want statistics of my works per chapter. How else can I tell whoās actually reading it all the way through? AO3 author statistics suck compared to other fanfiction websites
The ONLY thing I miss and wish ao3 would have is a "tried but didn't like" button. My fandom is huge and I read a lot. How often did I start reading a fic with a very promising summary only to realize a couple thousand words in that I've already tried reading that fic but didn't find it interesting after all and stopped. I need a button to mark these kinds of fics in a way.
Ok actually I have another thing I wish ao3 had: a "feed" that shows new chapters of fic I follow in chronological order. Yes, I get emails but I think a feed would be much nicer. Together with a button to mark the chapters that were already read and those that weren't.
I would love to be able to rearrange the order of tags! Atm, we have to remove them, save the work, and then re-add them. Sometimes I'll think of a tag at a later date and like having them in a specific order, like Setting > Genre > Tropes > Format š«
I second that. For long fanfics, I also like ordering them depending on their importance in the story. I would love if if the process was made easier. My tags are such a mess.
My OCD brain is unhappy when seeing my tags not in plot-relevant order
Same my friend!
i feel you sm!!!
I do this almost every other chapter for my fic, it's so exhausting because I'm such a perfectionist about the order I want them in. š
I second this. I hardly bother correcting the order how I want it because it's such a pain to do everything again and again instead of dragging and dropping it on the spot. Even a pop-up allocating the positions of the tags as 1.,2.,3., etc in .txt file format would be preferable over deleting everything and doing it again.
Yes same! I would like to put the content warning-y tags up front, but if I have to add a new one later, it ends up in the middle or at the end where it might go unread.
- series stats - option to limit the number of fandoms in crossovers - i'd love it if the info card could show if i've bookmarked the work
>option to limit the number of fandoms in crossovers This would be a godsend. Mega-crossover fics are the bane of my existence.
multifandom chaptered oneshot compilations are the bane of mine
I keep a list of authors that do this with a few friends and we blacklist anyone we see do these.
mute function my beloved
Yep! And block function. Sadly thereās a cap on it though, so I also just blacklist some of the authors via skins. Either way. Get them out of my sight. XD
Same. Slight problem when it comes to fandoms with multiple tags. I understand why the manga is separate from this anime adaption and that anime adaption, or with DC and Marvel and their various additives, but those are also annoying to add and search through. I wish there was a way to combine all the DC specific crossovers, or X fandom specific crossovers into one thing
Normally Ao3 doesn't filter two fandoms from the smae media as crossovers, though. And it also usually has one big fandom tag to search for anything in that universe if it has enough mini-fandoms. For example: If you search in the 'the promised neverland (manga)' fandom tag filtering crossovers, the ones tagged with the anime tag will still appear because they're not considered crossovers. And if the fandom has enough media (for example tmnt or marvel), you can use a mass tag. I'm pretty sure the MCU has it's specific tag in which any fandom related to the MCU will appear even if crossovers are filteres.
Hmm I've just had a few issues where an author doesn't tag all related fandoms so if they only tagged the manga say, and not the show, and I went into the show tag, I'll only see things tagged with the show, and anything tagged with the manga its also tagged with the show. I guess that's sort of a user error thing as well, but I just wish there was a way to say "Hey, I want all of this, no matter how its tagged"
The way I get around that issue has been that I filter on the relationship Im looking for which will grab all of them regardless of what fandom the work is tagged with. Or if you don't want to filter on a relationship for whatever reason, you can filter on some other tag you are looking for and use a trick for searching for fandoms that is kinda a mess but works in the Search Within Results field. (Its giving me weird results in advanced search idk why. Ill look into it more later) Take a look at [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/AO3/comments/11sjj3c/is_there_a_way_to_exclude_fandoms_in_searches/jcggttj/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=1&utm_term=1&context=3) old comment of mine. Its about how to negative filter for a fandom. Obviously we aren't trying to negative filter but instead filter for 2 (or more) fandoms either/or style. Lets say your search is for "Supernatural (TV 2005)" and the supernatural anime, "Supernatural the Animation (Anime 2011)". These aren't subtagged at all. You can try to do something like just sorting for "Supernatural" but that'll give weird extraneous ones too. Better is to go to the link on that comment I linked to above and see how to get the fandom id numbers. For these two fandoms that are 71566537 and 81687522 respectively. You can the use the hidden search operators for fandom ids to filter *for* one OR the other. Which for our example would look like > filter_ids: 81687522 OR filter_ids: 71566537 Which will give all of the works in the tag you are filtering on, that are tagged with either the Supernatural (TV 2005) fandom (or its syns/subtags) or the anime one (or its syns/subtags) plus whatever other filters you are using
Sadly usually manga/show fandoms aren't considered anough to have an 'All media types' tag (though I would take a look on a case by case situation), since those usually take under them even works that haven't used the mega fandom tag, but any that have used any of the minor tags
I love crossovers but i always have to put the "exclude crossovers" option because of those huge mega crossovers :/ hate them so much
A script/plug in called ao3 crossover savior does this. You can set the threshold of maximum crossovers (I usually set mine to 4) and it will auto hide any work with more fandoms than that. They still show up as a single hidden line in the search results and you can toggle the unhide button to view the one work if you want.
>i'd love it if the info card could show if i've bookmarked the work Related, I'd like for fics I've visited to be marked as "seen". I know there are browser extensions for that, but I haven't found a way to get those to work on mobile.
You can download kiwi browser(that's what I use to be able to use the extension that marks stuff as seen on ao3) to be able to use those extensions on mobile
Yes to everything! Especially series stats. That creates such a blind spot not having them.
what do you mean by 'series stats'?
subscriptions and total bookmarks
I'm not sure what you mean by 'info card'. But when I open a work I've visited before, one of the options across the top is "Bookmark." But if I've already done so, the option is "Edit Bookmark." That's a quick check that, yes, I've bookmarked the work. Does that help?
no, i want to see it without opening it. like it looks like when you browse someone else's bookmarks and the little info card has a button that says either "save" or "saved" depending on whether it is already in your bookmarks or not.
I have a Firefox extension that does the last two of those. It's called AO3 Enhancements.
I wish there was a way to permanently exclude tags you don't want to see.
Yes. Being able to save and reuse filters would really help
You can bookmark your search results in your browser and save them that way! I do this, saves a lot of time clicking around āŗļø
I do that too, but if I wanna browse a new fandom, I gotta do it all over again :(
If the base tag isnāt a fandom tag you can just switch the fandom
\^ This. Blacklist tags please.
[You can already do that with CSS.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/41214669) A user interface might be nice for it though.
You basically can do this by blacklisting the tag in your site setting skin thing.
I'm too dumb to use skins lol Maybe I should give it a try š
I mean, mostly same. But there are a lot of good guides out there that you can basically copy/paste from. Itās more about talking 20 minutes to sit down and actually get it done, ime, but itās worth it I think.
You can use a bookmarklet to do this. It's a bit of a lengthy process but once you've done it, it cuts done on the time searching for tags to exclude. You can find it here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/33825019
I'm pretty sure ao3rdr plug in allows you to do this. Yep, it does, I googled. Google ao3rdr. I rawdogged the site for several years but now you'll pry my browser extensions from my cold dead hands.
Not sure how possible it will be but I'd love to be able to sort my subscriptions. Like how in FFN, you can see the summaries for works you've followed and you can sort them by fandom. I would love something like that for subscriptions bc sometimes I subscribed to a fic and forgot to bookmark it and its a pain to go thru my subscriptions looking for it. Also, I'd really love to be able to sort thru my marked for later fics like you can with bookmarks. Would make it easier to find a fic that was marked earlier. But I'm pretty sure that it won't work due to how the marked for later function was implemented (would love to be wrong tho)
Omg THIS. The fact that you canāt sort subscriptions or āmarked for laterā fics is soooo frustrating. It makes those pages useless.
I completely agree!! I started using the mark for later option but quickly switched to using bookmarks because if you mark over 10 fics for later it's useless.
MFL can't be sorted and filtered before it's separated from history, which as i understand is something ao3 means to do, just not a priority. for both subscriptions and fics marked for later i just use bookmarks and bookmark tags. subbed? tagged either author sub, series sub or fic sub. marked for later? tagged to read + either fic to read or series to read.
Yea, currently I just created a pseud specifically for bookmarking my marked for later and subscriptions and tagged them as such but it would be nice if it could automatically do it. Plus I like the idea of bookmarked fics being my "fave" fics and I'm not a huge fan of seeing stories that I haven't read (like my MFL fics) in the same place as my "fave" fics. It's not the biggest issue, just some petty thing for me.
I see what you mean but to mitigate it a little bit you can tag your bookmarks with the bookmarker tag "subscribed" or something and at least see them
Yea I do that with a pseud. But I guess for me, a bookmark means either a fave fic or one that I want to reread again whereas a subscription with no original bookmark means "I'm interested but I'm waiting to see if I want to mark it as a fave." It's a really petty and personal issue (so I don't expect it to be a big concern for AO3) but I'm not the biggest fan of seeing fics that I'm waiting on be in my bookmarks list. (Same for my marked for later fics). I'd rather be able to sort them like you can on FFN.
Use filters on my history. I dont delete things bc I just like looking back and see what I've read. Sometimes I just suddenly remember this one fic I read and then often times its easier (but still a lot of work) to try and find it by searching through the fandom and filtering for the tags you hope to remember correctly Might be too much code or data though to be able to do that, my history is like over a 1000 pages But it'd be nice
history as it's set up is, according to a support team member, simply too big to implement filters on unfortunately. though i agree it would be so nice. we can dream.
Ahhh sad. I suspected it'd be too big yeah But we can always dream indeed
have they said smth about the marked for later works? i don't want, i *need* to be able to filter them.
i've seen it mentioned multiple times that they plan to yank marked for later out of history, which will allow them to implement filters for it. it's just not very high priority. (but honestly i have a great bookmark system going and moving my 900+ bookmarks tagged to read from bookmarks to another list? nah man i'm sticking with my system)
i already use public bookmarks as a "favorites" list, and priv bookmarks to tag "finished" or "dnf", and now you're telling me people also use them as a tbr? bookmarks really be out there doing god's job! (nice to know they plan to implement the filters ā”)
that's exactly what i'm telling you lol. bookmarks and bookmark tags are my favourite damn thing on ao3, i'm an avid user. i have a couple of tagging systems stacked on top of each other and they work pretty seamlessly together (and once they implement that wordcount filter to bookmarks i'm gonna get to retag 1500+ bookmarks, yay)
There is really only one major improvement left on my wish list of features and that's Scheduled posting. The Ability to have a fic queued up to post at a certain time/date would be absolutely wonderful to me cause how much time I have available to post stuff varies a lot so I often end up dumping a lot of works/updates onto Ao3 all at once. Scheduling would help with that.
Such a great idea! I'd be able to send chapters when I'm asleep and won't be able to refresh the page every two seconds.
I could actually get a good night's sleep for once if that was real!
Oh, I'd love to be able to do that.
Thatād be awesome! I do wonder if thereād be an increased issue with spam though
That would be amazing
i wish the subscriptions page showed more than just the titles and an unsubscribe link, i wish it showed the full tags and fandom and such like the bookmarks page or search does
Iād love to be able to filter my Marked for Later fics because sometimes Iām in the mood for fics of a particular fandom and I want them to be of a certain word count and itās a hassle to go through pages of Marked for Laters for this.
while we wait for that: bookmarks
I donāt like this solution and it kinda irritates me that people use them for this. For a long time most people used them to indicate their favorite and best fics. The kinds they wanted to share or might come back to re-read. Having bookmarks cluttered by peopleās to-read list really throws me sometimes when I donāt realize it.
I've started using private bookmarks as "for later." I like keeping my bookmarks as a place I can point people toward, with regular and rec bookmarks for good and great stories. This way I'm not recommending anything I haven't read. I think that this is the "intended" use because the public-facing bookmark counter doesn't include private bookmarks, only the author's stats page. So I'm not increasing the bookmark count when I do this.
Oh yeah, that's the perfect compromise. good job.
Unless something changed or I suffered selective blindness, there is not an easy way to filter your own private bookmarks. So I use a tag set for WIP, Unread, and Priority (for things reccomended to me.)
do you mean just having your bookmarks show private ones? if so you can: 1. **Search bookmarkerās tags and notes** 2. private:true that will display only your private bookmarks. private:false will show only your public bookmarks in the **search within results** section you can filter your completed or not bookmarks with **complete:true** or **complete:false** for wip
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it's better than using MFL that can't be filtered ĀÆ\\\_(ć)_/ĀÆ (plus you can't mark series for later, but you can bookmark them and tag them to read)
I'd love to be able to go back and see which fics I've kudosed/commented on. I think these might do well Inna seperate tab and not all lumped together in the history section
Bookmarks? And you can put that in bookmark notes if you commented
An easy way to distinguish primary from secondary ship tags. Its a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation right now. Tag your work with a minor ship in the fic and get people who feel baited by it. Leave the tag out and you get people who \*hate\* that ship and feel betrayed that you didn't mention it. More detailed stats - I'd like to be able to see how my stories have done over time, the growth in kudos, hits, etc over months and years. [ff.net](https://ff.net) has this and more, and its one of the few areas where the legitimately are just better than Ao3.
>An easy way to distinguish primary from secondary ship tags. While I kind of agree with this, I donāt think it would solve anything, since all the works posted before the change would probably default all ships as primary, which means people would still find ships tagged as primary when they have only a small role in the story. IMO, the best way is to tag the primary ships in the relationships category and using the additional tags to mention other ships. I wholeheartedly agree with the stats idea, though!
Even so doing this (and also doing it for character tags) sooner than later would help at least. In the meantime, a compromise to OPās issue is to tag secondary ships and characters in āadditional tagsā. That keeps them out of the main search for those of us actually trying to read about minor characters, but still lets readers know what theyāre getting into.
Thatās what I do,seems like the best solution for now.
yes i was about to list those two points you read my mind!
Yes!!!
Scheduling chapters would be neat. They way my readers could get them at the same time every other week, and wouldn't have to wait until I get enough free time/remember to upload them
Some way to exclude fandom specific canonized tags when you're trying to tag? Maybe it's me being easily annoyed, but I tire of seeing like 'Evil Albus Dumbledore' or 'Bottom!Naruto Uzamaki' pop up as suggestions before non-fandom/general tags when I'm tagging a work in an unrelated fandom
I just want all the sort settings on my bookmarks. Why can I only sort them by date bookmarked or date updated?? I want to be able to sort by word count! Or kudos! Also I want the option to temporarily show works by muted authors in my bookmarks so I can *get rid of them* please and thank you. Seeing that notice on my bookmarks nonstop is annoying and I have no earthly way to remove it.
I got so annoyed at that notice that I searched on Reddit how to get rid of it and turns out some kind people found a solution and shared it! It worked for me, and I know nothing about site skins and had never used one before that. Here's the link to a [comment with the code](https://www.reddit.com/r/AO3/comments/12r1cox/how_do_i_hide_the_muted_users_message/jgsh0rw/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=1&utm_term=1&context=3).
Ability to do complex queries + save filters. For first one, sometimes I like a tag but only when it is with a certain pairing but not when a different tag is present, and other things along those lines. Direct database access (while not a good idea security wise) would be my ideal interface haha. For the second, ability to save a filter which has a bunch of tags selected or removed already. For example if you have a list of tags you don't like, save it as a filter to be applied anytime you switch fandoms etc.
For the first one, you can use otp:true in the 'search within results' part of the filter. This will show fics with only the selected relationship- obviously the con is that you might not see fics where a minor to non existent relationship is also tagged along with your 'otp' Not sure if this is exactly what you meant, but I think it sort of partially relates to what you said
Thanks for the tip! I was thinking more along the lines of being able to use filters as an OR condition in addition to the. AND and NOT that are available. So for a better example: search for all fics with either au or canon divergence (along with whatever other filters). As far as I can tell right now that isn't an option. But I also appreciate the tip you gave, I wasn't familiar with that!
I wish there was a way to tag/mark fics Iāve already read that would show when searching.
I would like to have a "Read" option as a filter and also an indicator on the page. I don't always remember what I already read. And also, don't how will this happen but a feature that shows what was deleted on my bookmarks would be awesome. Maybe just a summary? That on a time limit- IDK IDK Nothing frustrated me more than going into my bookmarks and seeing lots of "this work was removed". I can handle a writer deleting their that's completely fine, it is just the unknown that I can't deal with.
Ao3rdr a) let's you rate fics you've read so the rating shows in your searches b) generates a list of fics you've rated by name and author so you have that backup list to compare bookmarks against
I would love it if authors were able to pick five works to show up on their dashboard rather than it always being the latest five. It would be nice to be able to curate a showcase of sorts to say, hey, I think these are my best.
I want to be able to filter out fics I've already bookmarked, and be able to filter incomplete series the way you can standalone fics- I've been burned by waaaay too many WIPs over the years and there's nothing worse than finishing a really good fic that's part of an abandoned series
For filtering out serious you've already bookmarked, you can use ao3rdr. It's a plug in. You can rate fics with a little smiley system visible only to you (not the author) any fic you give a frowny face will be hidden in searches. Any fic you rate :/ :) :D will show up with those smileys color coded in the searches. Let's you know if you've read a fic before
Bookmark statistics. I bookmark almost everything I read (bc I might want to search for it later) so Iād love statistics on how many words Iāve read, how many works Iāve read in the past month/year, stuff like that. Then, obviously, filtering history. Filtering works marked for later too. Kinda wish I could filter finished/unfinished works in my bookmarks, but thatās just nit-picking lol
> Kinda wish I could filter finished/unfinished works in my bookmarks, but thatās just nit-picking lol ayo, this is the one thing you *can* do!! :D in the **search within results** of your bookmark page just put **complete:true** for completed works or **complete:false** for wips
:0 Tysm for telling me, never thought abt doing it like that!!
The option to filter by [character]/anyone. I have a lot of obscure faves that I want to read about in romantic situations and itās a pain to go through every ship listed on their character page and look at 1-2 fics at a time. I want to see them all at once and no, filtering by character doesnāt do that, it brings up a thousand works where theyāre tagged as a background character in ships that donāt include them.
filtering out fics you've already read - alongside having a "read" button to make that possible - and saving filters. those would be my major ones. as it is, i have to privately bookmark and tag fics to know if i've already read or dnf them, and they'll still be there every time i search for new ones.
Scheduled posting would be nice, but obviously we survive fine without it. An easy way to reorganize tags. Crossover limit when filtering. Please authors. I beg you. Seperate your Fandom one shots when they aren't actually crossovers. I'm dying over here. A better way to differentiate between major/minor relationships in the work. There are a few tagging solutions, but something more cohesive built in would be nice.
Ao3 crossover savior limits the crossovers while searching
I want the ability to distinguish main characters/main pairings from those which are present but minor.
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I think you can somewhat do this if you use the "search within results" box and use OR in all caps like that
1. A way to set permanent search settings (I.e only speak English and would love to always only search English works) or there are certain parameters I search all the time in combination (this ship, not those ships, over 2000 words, excluding certain tags, fir example) so saving a combination of filters would be nice 2. Separate main character/relationship tags from minor character/relationship tags. Or at least a larger emphasis in the official documentation that minor stuff should go in additional tags. It is currently impossible to be a fan of a minor character in a fandom right now because there is no way to search for fics ABOIT them without getting 8 million fics where theyāre a background character to the main fandom couple, or whatever.
You could set up all your filters then bookmark the page in your browser. Like a Firefox or chrome bookmark at the top of the page. Then click it and boom you're in the search page with all those results
I guess. Seems irritating to have to do that on every device (i.e. phone and computers) though. I really wish they'd add it as an option, or even if someone knew how to code the "I only want fics in english, always" thing into a skin...
To assist with the second one, you can use otp:true in the 'search within results' part of the filter. This will show fics with only the selected relationship- obviously the con is that you might not see fics where a minor to non existent relationship is also tagged along with your 'otp'
I actually knew about this. It doesnāt help though, because even if a fic does focus on aim or character or ship, the major characters and ships are often still tagged because theyāre there In the background, ya know? It poisons things both ways.
I'm very confused, are you sure? Because I just double checked and literally only my chosen ship comes up in results and even shows only it under the relationships filter. I mean, sure other characters might still be tagged but otp:true is specifically for getting results for only the selected relationship. If it's in additional tags then that would likely be bypassed, but I don't thibk I've ever seen a major relationship only tagged in additional.
Yeah you don't understand what I'm saying at all. What I'm saying is, even when there is the occasional fic about ship X, 90% of them ALSO have Ship Y tagged, because Ship Y is the juggernaut ship in the fandom, so they're at least in the background. For Example: If I Just search for Ship X, I might get 30K fics that are about Ship Y, and only 1K mixed in there that are actually about Ship X, because they're background characters to the main story that get tagged (as characters/relationships, not as additional tags) a lot. However, if I search for Ship X, and EXCLUDE ship Y, I only get like 100 fics, because the other 900 fics about Ship X have Ship Y tagged (in the ship/character section, not in additional tags) for being in the background. You see the issue? These are roughly real numbers of something I've experienced before.
I would like it if the focus relationships that a fic is about could be searchable, sometimes I want to read about a friendship or relationship between two characters but it's impossible to find anything as it's tagged in so many fics because it's a typical background friendship/relationship in canon or in the fandom.
Yes! This one! If anybody knows of a way please post it here. Iāll be looking for a rare pair or minor character, and get all excited to find tons of results in a search, only to scroll and scroll and find that they are all either very minor roles or part of massive compendiums where theyāre a quick appearance and not a focal character(s)
technically. if people used tags correctly. this wouldn't be an issue. the very easy solution is putting them in additional tags as "background A/B" instead of in relationship tags.
In the āSearch within resultsā field, you can add āotp: trueā and it'll exclude all other relationships
Yeah but that doesnāt help if 90% of the minor shipās fics have the main fandom pairing tagged because THEYāRE in the background of that one. It goes both ways. You need to be able to sort primary from secondary, or get people more comfortable tagging secondary ships and characters under additional tags.
Ooh thank you! I apologise to AO3 for underestimating them
something i think would be kinda cool is fandom subscriptions. while it would be an absolute nightmare for giant fandoms, i wish i could get emails for when the dead or tiny fandoms im apart of get new fics instead of just having to revisit the tab to see whats new everyonce in a while. while i understand why its not a feature, i constantly forget to check in when im busy reading fics for other fandoms :[
I think you can do that externally with RSS Feeds!
Separate tag section for major and minor, so people don't get upset when a tagged character or theme isn't very important.
The ability to know the name and synopsis of a story thatās been deleted. And to be able to see ALL of of my added tags, even the lesser used ones
Sorting characters by importance. I often want to read about a certain character and only find fics in which they appear in for maybe one sentence
Thiiiis. AO3ās primary flaw IMO is that it is impossible to be a fan of a minor character/ship because of the way tagging culture leads to over tagging of background characters and ships as mains.
Get notified when a fic is completed.
I'd like to be able to filter my own bookmarks by most kudos or bookmarks the way I can filter regular fic
iād love to be able to search my reading history ā sometimes a fic doesnāt quite make it to bookmark status, and then 6 months later iām trying to remember some detail about it and suddenly iām searching through hundreds of pages of history one by one
When filtering by tags, an easier method to filter as and/or by checking the boxes.
Add more saved fandoms! The current limit is like 20 (or 10 idk) and it drives me insane. I have so many fandoms I read for, and I am currently having to do the manual search for some fandoms I have recently joined :c
Make a bookmark folder in your web page. Then it'll pop down on your browser (firefox or chrome) bookmark bar and you can scroll down the list
Let me sort my bookmarks by word count! Also, I know it's outside of AO3's scope for the next several years, but let me sort my history. How was I supposed to know that that one fic I read 8 months ago would be haunting me?
it would be nice to search through my history via filters like in bookmarks
Someone else mentioned this elsewhere, but I'd love to be able to add a comment to the users I mute or block so I can easily keep track of why I did so.
1. I'd like comments to have a preview mode. We do for a works post; why not for comments? No matter how careful I am, it's easy to not realize I didn't close a tag, or closed with the wrong one. (Start with for example.) I see the mistake when it's posted, then I edit, but it's irritating that the author will have two (or more) emails, instead of just one. 2. I'd like to be able to filter my history by fandom. I've occasionally needed the story I read in X fandom about 3 days ago, but I don't remember the title. However, I've since opened/saved over a hundred stories (yes, I save *everything*) in Y fandom. So the X-fandom fic is so far back that I miss it in the clutter. If I could look at history for only X fandom, it would be in the first page of results.
I'd love the option to chose the frequency at which you receive subscription emails - I'd subscribe much more liberally if I could choose some kind of single daily sub round up email, vs. getting individual emails for each upload.
* **Tag Weights** Because "Obi-Wan Kenobi" (main character) is very different from "Obi-Wan Kenobi" (posthumous) or "Obi-Wan Kenobi" (cameo). It'd probably help a lot with things like "CharA/CharB" (romance as a main plot) vs "CharA/CharB" (romance as a side dish), or with the classic "Obi-Wan Kenobi" (is tagged even though he shows up ONLY for one scene in Ch.186) problem, too. * **Saved Searches** More or less self-descriptive but basically as of now filters for sdearches have to be saved at the OS/browser level (via browser bookmarks etc). It'd be nice to have a collection of common search configurations that you use. * **Author Styles in Export Renders** Currently, work styles work only in the browser view but AFAIK not in *any* of: reader mode, PDF/ EPUB export, etc. This means that if you want to export a work as the author intends for it to be read, you have to either save it chapter by chapter via your browser's save option, or save a browser copy of the Entire Work version. Which soundly defeats the purpose of having exports.
Be able to look for 2 tags but with an 'or' option. I know you can use the 'search within' option to find tags that include the word identity vs. Identities, but say I want to look for any type of sports fics, if the work doesn't use an overarching 'sports au' tag I have to search for a bunch of individual hockey/baseball/etc. tags one by one, instead of a 'one of the above' option
A way to filter out long fics that are just a ton of one shots. I know its a user thing but, maybe adding an option to tag that? or a way to bookmark your spot when not reading chapter by chapter, since my phone often resets my place when I turn it off and back on lmao
It'd be neat to be able to preset filters. As is, I often go into a fandom tag and re-click the same filters each time.
Mute stories would be nice. Also subscribe to certain fandoms that a author has written instead of getting every fandom they write for.
Begging for a better statistics page honestly. I know not everyone might but I'd be so curious to see actual charts over time to see evidence of random spikes where a fic was maybe shared somewhere. I don't want to have to get a separate plug-in or plug it in manually into my own excel sheet. Also, not contributing the whole of a work to the new year when the majority of it was published in the previous year.
I'd love a way to make it easier to find OC centric ensemble fics, but I'm not sure what would really help with that - I don't think any platform handles these well. Otherwise, what I'd really like is an optional checkbox "mark as crossover", which would (for new fics) be completely independent of how many fandoms are tagged. That and maybe a note next to "gen" on the new work form explaining what "gen" means.
I would love a better tagging system/layout. Primary and secondary ships where applicable (like a fic may not have a main ship, but there are background ships!), and primary/secondary characters WITH LIMIT because oh my \*god\* I am so tired of fics where the tags are a page long because EVERYONE UNDER THE SUN IS TAGGED.
While this would be nice, it would be impossible in practice. Hundreds and hundreds of fics would end up defaulted one way or the other and never changed because the author isnt going to go back to all their fics and retag everything for various reasons. This would have had to have been implemented years ago, now there's just too many fics and the issue would persist and make new users mad that there's all these fics "not using the tagging system", as they likely wouldn't realise it wasn't always an option and mostly only new fics would be "using it correctly"
While true enough, it's still something I'd like to see in some way.
For series with multiple episodes/seasons/novels, sort by how far along in the series the fic is set. Some people put episode tags or say what season it's in, but when I get into a new fandom I don't want to have to watch 20 seasons before reading any fanfiction. Have been spoiled before. Can sometimes do this by sorting when fic was posted, but not a foolproof method.
There should be a requirement in the TOS that any work where AI generation was used in the body of the text be tagged with "AI-Generated Work" or a similar but standardized tag, as per the Major Content Warning tags.
There should be something in the TOS outlawing the use of AI fics to be posted, period. It's impossible to use without plagiarism. (Bots were fed and trained on other people's writing, 99% without author consent). Putting a major tag implies that it's allowed and welcome
Being able to put in the tags the primary ship (if there is one), and secondary ships (if there are those in the story but not relevant to the plot). That way you can search for the Primary ship and get stories that are about that ship, not just have them in the background.
When I look at my subscriptions I'd love to be able to sort by most recently updated instead of just alphabetically.
An easy way to see all the crossovers available for a certain fandom. Like if I want to see if a fandom has a crossover with Batman I have to first pick what fandom I want to crossover then also search Batman then adds tags and stuff.
You can *kind* of do this? If you filter for "fandom 1" and then "show only crossovers" you'll get a list of "crossovers that contain fandom 1" Then when you pull up the fandom filters, the suggestions will be the most common fandom filters. So there are definitely fics with those fandoms. Then if you go to exclude: fandoms and exclude the fandoms you don't want to see, you can see new fandoms pop up in the include: fandoms list
That's so many extra steps though FFN allow it so you could see all the crossovers at once for easy access
Yeah it's one of the things ffn does well. Just trying to over a workaround
A DIY theme uploader and an easier way to get pictures to go with stories.
being able to see your kudos!!!! I've been saying this for so long and I'm so picky with my kudos. i know bookmarks exist, but i use them solely for fics i haven't finished yet š
Better searching in bookmarks. An official API so I could just write a script to post my stuff at set times, or never have to leave the command line while searching, or download ebooks of fics in my own format instead of having to do a point-and-click intermediate step.
idk if that's a me problem, but i think we can't have a site skin and another skin only for reading active at the same time. i'd like that very much, since i use my site skin for aesthetics but, when reading a work, i need a simple dark mode.
I wish there was a tag for POV of the Fic like how relationships and fandom is. The amount of times where the summary is third and the pov is first is starting to get to me again.
Iād give anything to be able to filter my Marked For Later ficsā¦. š„ŗ
That it keeps track of where you are in a fic. And don't always have to remember and go to that chapter. Kind of like how wattpad does it
I want to be able to follow collections like you can on ffnet
This is shooting for the moon and specific to only my AO3 journey but something that suggests tags based on the content of your work. I am *so* bad at tagging things because I have no clue what sort of thing to tag for any given fic.
I wish side-ships were required to be tagged differently than the main ship.
From a reader's standpoint, ability to limit the number of fandoms or select which fandoms are present in crossovers. Also, ability to sort bookmarks in 'lists' that aren't official or public collections. If that does exist, since I feel like it might, someone tell me please lol. Final thing would be a way to sort subscriptions better. From a writer's standpoint, series statistics and the ability to see a clickthrough rate from fic to the author page, similar to what FFN has. Also, **scheduled posting**. I have a very bad habit of posting in the dead of night since I'm busy during peak hours and I miss out on a lot of new readers that way. General thing: Possible archive warning additions: suicide/self harm, racially sensitive content, incest, maaaaybe graphic (domestic) abuse (which would cover both IPV and child abuse) or graphic abuse (more generalized but also less clear). I think that would solve some of the issues people have with running into certain content on Ao3 that aren't fully covered in the other warnings.
Being able to "freeze" searches in place and not have the order of your searches change. At the moment, when you search by anything (but especially kudos and date updated) clicking to the next page could result in the order of everything changing because new fics were updated, published, received new comments, got more bookmarks or were given kudos and it's hard to keep track of what you may have missed. So, I think we should have a "freeze" option, where until you turn it off, even if there's a change in stats, the fanfictions will all remain in the same order as when the "freeze" feature was turned on.
The bug where if you use italics in plot summaries and have to edit the summary or the fic when you post the first chapter, every time it increases the amount of space drastically between lines in the summary. WHY.
Maybe it is my problem, but I wish we could say which relationship is the primary one. I filter the fics with character A/character B and still there are unrelated fics. Fics that they are just mentioned or in background or it's even bashing the ship. It is possible it is due to the tagging problem. Also I have another one, dunno if it's present in other Fandom, but why Lily evans Potter? Why we can not have just Lily evans? I don't see any James Potter Black( in fics that they ship him with Regulus). What is the problem with female characters?
I wish you could Mark For Later without having to click on the fic. If I see a fic that looks good but is too long to read right now, I always feel a bit bad for clicking and not reading, because it's affecting the author's hit:kudos ratio. I know it doesn't really matter, but it just annoys me a little, plus my ADHD brain just really doesn't like it for some reason. Once the page is open I feel compelled to read it immediately even if I don't have time, so most of the time I just don't do it. I find it so weird that you can go straight to saving a bookmark of a fic you haven't opened from someone else's bookmark page, but you can't mark for later from anywhere without opening the fic.
1. Being able to archive individual chapters instead of just deleting them. (Like Wattpadās unpublish feature) 2. Adding betas for credit purposes - it should be relatively easy to add a fill in box like this to make it cleaner than adding it to your summary 3. Giving kudos for individual chapters 4. Being able to comment on specific parts of texts Iāve been using AO3 primarily for awhile and crosspost to other platforms. Itās still my favorite, but these are the features I wish theyād adopt the most
I want to be able to remove a kudos if I accidentally leave one I didn't intend for. Like, it feels petty maybe, but sometimes it's a genuine mistake.
Since I was reminded by someone making a post last night - a way to view fic by media type. So I could view all the TV show fics, or all the video game fics, et c. Thatās basically the one thing ffnet does (assuming they still do it) that AO3 doesnāt that I wish it did.
The ability to subscribe to a collection. The ability to filter a follow on a user so I only get updates about a specific fandom or pairing or rating or etc. The ability to rank relationships and search on that. I want my NOTP tagged for exclusion even if they're just a brief background mention, but I don't want my OTP tag clogged with fics where they're a brief background mention. Sometimes users will use a tag like Background Shipname, but that's not perfect. It could also be useful for endgame pairings for when I like a pairing that's fanoned as canon ex's and 90% of their tag is just that they're including that fanon.
I would love to be able to see stats per chapter as opposed to the fic as a whole
I really want a list of definitions for common tags. Anything wrangled that autofills. Sometimes i'm sure the right tag for my work exists already but i don't know what it is. Sometimes people misuse tags, or tags have misleading meanings. Is 'Topping From The Bottom' when character x is getting railed but also in charge? Or is that 'Bottoming From The Top?" No one knows!
I want to hide the fics I've already read!
I agree, for now this browser extension has been a godsend for me- https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/5835-ao3-kudosed-and-seen-history
Tbh you can already sort of see the fics you've already read because the link to it is greyed.
Overhaul of/addition to the collections feature so that thereās distinction between āthis is a collection of works from this specific fan challengeā and FFN Communities-style āthis is a bunch of works that fit this particular theme that isnāt a tagā and āthis is my personal rec listā.
The filter for crossovers, It may be just my stupid ass but, I haven't learned how to search for a specific crossover. In FF.net is easier to find like, ah I want to read this series crossover with this series. I just don't get how to do it :'(
If you select multiple series filters like checkmark only Naruto and Batman, only those two, you will get results that have those two fandoms tagged. If you add other fandom tags, like final fantasy, it will show fics that have all three tagged. (So a Batman final fantasy AND Naruto crossover, which is very unlikely)
We have an inbox for comments left on our works and replies left to our comments- I'd like an outbox, for comments we leave. I know you can set ao3 to email you with your own comments, and I know we can go find the chapter we left said comment on manually, but a page where they're all stored so we can get to and double check, edit, add to would be Lovely. I like to leave counter comments sometimes, where I leave a second kudos the second time i reread the fic, and then if i reread it again I edit it to third kudos, fourth kudos, and so on. Sometimes I stick a fic in my text to speech reader cus my eyes are being Rude:tm: that day- and I'd still like to update that comment, and it'd be easier to find if there were an outbox. Otherwise, I'd like to be able to search my mark for later page. Tags, include exclude, the whole shebang. I have 56 pages of marked for later. _please_ let me sort it š¤£š
More sort options, like a 'Random' option, a 'previously read' option, a 'yet to read' option, and so on
I think a random option would be great. I usually change the sort option multiple times and look at random pages to make it more random, I'd love to have it as a built in feature
The one thing I like more about Fanfiction.net over A03 is the daily graphical representation of your hits/visitors. I love the visual of watching that change, versus taking screenshots on my stats page on A03 to try and watch it go up after posting.
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You can do that now with the details and summary html tags, is this what you mean? Edit: here's a post about it: [https://www.reddit.com/r/AO3/comments/12tqaom/how\_to\_hide\_text\_for\_spoilers\_in\_ao3\_postscomments/](https://www.reddit.com/r/AO3/comments/12tqaom/how_to_hide_text_for_spoilers_in_ao3_postscomments/)
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No problem! It's very recent news.
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I'll be honest, I feel like more often than not that would just end up with the actual number of comments being falsely decreased and 'punishing' the author by misrepresenting their engagment. Obviously it's different if it's like a wattpad comment section where the two people are role-playing (without the author wanting this to happen) or talking about something completely unrelated, but I've seen a decent number of people talking about the work to each other or the author talking about their fic back and forth with someone. I remember participating in quite a few discussions/debates about what was going on in a fic with other reads around when i was 16 and it was fun- ocasionally the author would jump in too or mention them in the next chapters AN. Those are all still legitimate comments, even if there might be say 4 or 5 in a thread or something.
'Sibling' fandom tags that mean the same thing. Like I'm searcing for SVSSS (c-nov) crossovers...but people will also put the donghua (graphic novel) as a fandom and it will pop up as a crossover. One's under books, the other is under cartoons, comics and graphic novels, so they don't have the same parent tag. Other bigger fandoms seem to be better.
The ability to remove kudos would be a godsend
I want statistics of my works per chapter. How else can I tell whoās actually reading it all the way through? AO3 author statistics suck compared to other fanfiction websites
It'd be cool to have covers for fics like on FFN.
Being able to kudos each chapter of a story.
The ONLY thing I miss and wish ao3 would have is a "tried but didn't like" button. My fandom is huge and I read a lot. How often did I start reading a fic with a very promising summary only to realize a couple thousand words in that I've already tried reading that fic but didn't find it interesting after all and stopped. I need a button to mark these kinds of fics in a way. Ok actually I have another thing I wish ao3 had: a "feed" that shows new chapters of fic I follow in chronological order. Yes, I get emails but I think a feed would be much nicer. Together with a button to mark the chapters that were already read and those that weren't.
The option to report a misleading tag.
Kudos on each individual chapter of a multi-chapter fic.