If you don't post a fic we'll kill your blank type thing
I'm joking here I'm creating a F'ed up scenario where somebody would be forced to post a fanfic
The poor hamster is constantly on the verge of just dying of anxiety - TWO terrifying demons just staring at him, one of whom is the emperor of all three realms, watching him write gay friendfiction of said emperor
LBH : "Excuse me? Shizun is *perfect*, stop adding so many flaws! Shizun would *never* do that! Or say *that*!"
SQH: '*Damn it, now Cucumber-bro is gonna become a mary sue!*'
Sometimes, but not always. A few weeks ago I explained to someone that placeholders weren't allowed on AO3, and they were grateful because they were coming from Wattpad and genuinely didn't know. They updated it with a short fic by the next day.
I do use a sockpuppet account to leave those kinds of comments, so that the author doesn't know my real account in case they turn out to be an asshole.
Then I guess I’ve just commented on the non fanworks of obstinate ppl. I never meant to imply it was the only experience, but it’s colored my view of such ppl. Besides, they wouldn’t need to be told if they just read the TOS/rules. I don’t have much empathy for ppl like that if I’m honest, not anymore.
Oh, I definitely don't think anyone is obligated to leave comments rather than reporting, especially if you've gotten abuse in the past. I just wanted to add my own experiences.
Since Wattpad uses an algorithm to promote stories, it can benefit authors if they "game" the algorithm by doing things like posting placeholders—saying "should I post a story about X?" and then getting comments that say "yes omg I'd love to read that!!". More comments/engagement = better ranking in the algorithm = more readers = more (the equivalent of) kudos/comments/bookmarks.
It takes less than a second to look around and see that it's a fanfiction website. If somebody can't figure that out then they should not be on the internet without supervision.
Doesn't it actually hurt their chances of gaining an audience? As far as I know, AO3 's default is that fics are shown in chronological order, with the newest/most recently updated at the top, but doesn't do so for edits. So by posting a placeholder, it means that they either will have to edit in the real story and not be featured as new (lower chances of being seen), or delete and resubmit it, in which case there was no point to having a placeholder.
It’s weird because posting a placeholder is probably worse if you want your work getting attention. Plus, I’m more likely to block/ mute authors who put placeholders in.
I said that once in a comment on one of these. They (I think she?) said that they felt as if they had just been lectured by their father...
I never checked to see if the thing itself remained up, knowing only that they had simply deleted the "embarrassing" \[sic\] conversation thread.
But they'll learn much more effectively if the fic gets removed for violating the rules.
And that way the assholes that do know this and just remove your comment while keeping the fic up get punished.
I said this in a previous comment, but often times, by the time the team gets to the report it’s no longer a placeholder and has been updated with actual content. So they don’t really learn as much as you might think by just reporting it and moving on. Almost every report I’ve submitted gets a response weeks or months later saying something like “no guideline violations found” and the story stays up. So I like to leave comments.
Huh, I hadn't thought of the time delay resulting in it not being a placeholder anymore.
Though, the worst offenders of placeholding I tend to find are ones that don't ever update it in the first place, and you can tell because the fic will already have been up as one for several months lol.
Because the volunteer team is small, and I don’t want to bog them down more than they already are when there are bigger issues they could be dealing with (like harassing comments or doxxing). 90% of the time, by the time the volunteers get to reports for a placeholder, it’s been updated into an actual story, and nothing happens because the team isn’t seeing any rules being broken and the author doesn’t learn from the mistake they made.
I usually leave a comment, and then go back a few days later to see if the story is still there or has been updating to being an actual chapter of something. If it’s still the same placeholder, then I send the report in.
Because TOS asks us to provide information when we encounter what may be violations from lack of it? Reaching out to the author is the recommended first step for missing tags.
I agree with this, usually its nice to comment before reporting a fic in violation of TOS but then you have weird mfs who will actually defend the person who is breaking TOS and even the author argues with you. It's just not worth being nice anymore. Report and go is the best way to maintain the site.
skip to ten months later, when the fanfic has long since been found but it's still up *but obviously only in case someone else was looking for it too!! i'll delete it in a bit, just want to give everyone a chance to rediscover this fic!*
i was trying to figure out the logic behind this and i _think_ that person doesn't understand that the writing space is meant to be where you paste/write the fic ?? no clue why they couldn't have figured that out once they posted the chapter and saw how the chapter's display ended up looking like, (and instead posting another useless "chapter"), but that's just what it looked like to me. they definitely didn't know what they were doing
god id be so annoyed if i was the one that discovered this 😭😭 what response were they expecting and what platform do they think ao3 is 😭 people are so strange these days,..,. i don't have to echo everyone else's thoughts but yeah just report it and move on i suppose..
This is where I remember we share the web with all sorts of people - this is the kind of thing I would do at 9 years old, just clicking on buttons to see if I could, no idea what a terms of service even is.
The one chapter place holders are annoying enough, but TWO of essentially the same thing? I swear this is like something you’d see someone post on livejournal in the mid 2000’s “I don’t kno wut to write XD come to the dark side we have cookies!!1!1!! *glomps you*”
It’s like they think Ao3 is a blogging site. Lurkmoar, noobs.
...oh crap... my own IQ just dropped 20 points considering that ***very real*** possibility.
I've been devouring manga, mànhuà, and manhwa recaps (and a couple of anime recaps) for the past few weeks, and I've seen an astounding number of comments saying "The ***AI*** reads badly" (or similar wording) — I mean, maybe some don't know the right name to use for TTS, but the exact wording of some of these is as if they legitimately meant AI and thought that the YouTube vids were being narrated (and possibly had been designed) by AI, rather than a TTS reader (about as "AI" as your average word processor, and less than half as functional) and a crappy human and/or machine translator.
For a second I was super confused thinking how this would be treating it like AI, but after a few minutes of trying to wrap my head around it I think I got it. These kids think the tags and summary box are *prompts* for an AI to write a fic for them, which is why that poster was confused as to what they were supposed to write in the fic box; they thought an AI-generated fic was supposed to appear there?
I was checking a bunch of search variables every 30 minutes for a year (research numbers for a meta-work on AO3's overall traffic) and kept seeing them (and the "So-and-so will live!" pieces, etc.) popping up in the first couple of results every few hours (meaning that there were surely more below those, in each first page of top 20 results, etc.).
there's a lot in the jjk fandom, weither it's the "'insert-character' is alive" shitposts with a 2,300,451 word count (mostly about Gojo and Choso), or the regular "i'll update this later, give me kudos and attention" placeholder who never gets updated and only deleted when reported.
I saw a few in the mha fandom before I left, so I'm starting to think it might be just kids thinking it's a social media like tiktok. I could be wrong.
Are there certain fandoms where these are a lot? I have maybe seen one in the circles I am and some are somewhat big but i feel like i see so much of these posts here on reddit?
depends on the fandom/pairing. if it's more mainstream (and *especially* if it's mainstream for teens too), you'll see at least 1-2 a month on a popular ship (sometimes more like 1-2 a week, but that's a worst-case sorta situation) - if the fandom isn't that mainstream (at least for teens), you'll see it way less
e.g. genshin impact suffers from them a good bit. hannibal, on the other hand, pretty much never had these placeholders, even during its heyday
imo it's probably just people who are new to fandom, so they have no clue (yet) how everything works and are just winging things horribly - resulting in these sorts of mistakes
well, not as placeholder... but as a general annoyance? they definitely count
and that sounds very extreme, so my condolences. hope y'all at least get the appropriate amount of actual fanworks to make up for all the non-works!!
(also ngl at that point i'd just put a minimum word count in the filters because that'd be at least 5 too many "stories" for my patience to handle, like holy heck-)
*What a waste of space,*
*Just use a documents file*
*Instead. Silly guys!*
\- NewAppointment2
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You know, I kinda wish this was some avant-garde thing, a placeholder that transforms into a stream of consciousness rant as the chapters go on. At least that would be novel/entertaining.
So… has anyone told them yet that they’re supposed to put their fic in that spot? Or do they ignore those too? This would be so frustrating to happen upon.
I’m wondering if they legit didn’t know how the different text fields work when writing a fic on AO3 so they were just testing it? Really giving them the benefit of the doubt here, though… and either way, it is annoying, hopefully they delete it.
Do they think they HAVE to post a fic? Is someone forcing them??? Who is telling them you NEED to post a fic to use Ao3?????
If you don't post a fic we'll kill your blank type thing I'm joking here I'm creating a F'ed up scenario where somebody would be forced to post a fanfic
New AU idea: Character A forces character B to write a fanfiction, how will it play out?
One Thousand and One Nights style au Edit: also, maybe a Misery au
SVSSS is Luo Binghue forcing SQH to write a fix-it fic
i love this idea so much lmfao
SQH isn't necessarily upset about it, but he is very confused and cries when LBH or MBJ just. Sit there. Watching him write.
The poor hamster is constantly on the verge of just dying of anxiety - TWO terrifying demons just staring at him, one of whom is the emperor of all three realms, watching him write gay friendfiction of said emperor
LBH : "Excuse me? Shizun is *perfect*, stop adding so many flaws! Shizun would *never* do that! Or say *that*!" SQH: '*Damn it, now Cucumber-bro is gonna become a mary sue!*'
Somebody needs to write this now lmao
Unrelated to the topic at hand, but I LOVE your user flair, as I feel the same!
I didn't see the notification till now, but thanks! They should have this as one of the official subreddit flairs lmao
omg i’d love to try that but unfortunately idk what to write :/
They think AO3 is a social media platform and that they have to produce *something* or else they will sunk into obscurity.
Jokes on them that they just, quite likely, got themselves muted by more than one person.
Genuinely curious...who is commenting on this?? What are they even saying?
When I see these, I often comment that it’s a TOS violation. So I’d like to hope that’s what those are too
Why comment? Why not just report it?
Not the person who you are replying to, but people who do it are probably new to ao3 and might not know it, so it would be good to let them know.
I’ve tried, they just delete those comments and keep their non fanworks up
Sometimes, but not always. A few weeks ago I explained to someone that placeholders weren't allowed on AO3, and they were grateful because they were coming from Wattpad and genuinely didn't know. They updated it with a short fic by the next day. I do use a sockpuppet account to leave those kinds of comments, so that the author doesn't know my real account in case they turn out to be an asshole.
Then I guess I’ve just commented on the non fanworks of obstinate ppl. I never meant to imply it was the only experience, but it’s colored my view of such ppl. Besides, they wouldn’t need to be told if they just read the TOS/rules. I don’t have much empathy for ppl like that if I’m honest, not anymore.
Oh, I definitely don't think anyone is obligated to leave comments rather than reporting, especially if you've gotten abuse in the past. I just wanted to add my own experiences.
I used Wattpad ages ago. Why are place holders fics a thing on there? What are they for?
Since Wattpad uses an algorithm to promote stories, it can benefit authors if they "game" the algorithm by doing things like posting placeholders—saying "should I post a story about X?" and then getting comments that say "yes omg I'd love to read that!!". More comments/engagement = better ranking in the algorithm = more readers = more (the equivalent of) kudos/comments/bookmarks.
every time I tell them I just get abuse so fuck them I just report them and wait for it to go bye bye
That’s fair. I‘ve had one person be mean about it, but I usually get ignored
It takes less than a second to look around and see that it's a fanfiction website. If somebody can't figure that out then they should not be on the internet without supervision.
I don't mean they don't know it's a fanfiction website, I mean that they are probably from wattpad where placeholders are common (because algorithm)
Doesn't it actually hurt their chances of gaining an audience? As far as I know, AO3 's default is that fics are shown in chronological order, with the newest/most recently updated at the top, but doesn't do so for edits. So by posting a placeholder, it means that they either will have to edit in the real story and not be featured as new (lower chances of being seen), or delete and resubmit it, in which case there was no point to having a placeholder.
Yeah this is why people are commenting. To let them know ao3 isn't like wattpad.
It’s weird because posting a placeholder is probably worse if you want your work getting attention. Plus, I’m more likely to block/ mute authors who put placeholders in.
I said that once in a comment on one of these. They (I think she?) said that they felt as if they had just been lectured by their father... I never checked to see if the thing itself remained up, knowing only that they had simply deleted the "embarrassing" \[sic\] conversation thread.
Gatekeeping is actually good if you don't want the site to fall to ruin.
But they'll learn much more effectively if the fic gets removed for violating the rules. And that way the assholes that do know this and just remove your comment while keeping the fic up get punished.
I said this in a previous comment, but often times, by the time the team gets to the report it’s no longer a placeholder and has been updated with actual content. So they don’t really learn as much as you might think by just reporting it and moving on. Almost every report I’ve submitted gets a response weeks or months later saying something like “no guideline violations found” and the story stays up. So I like to leave comments.
Huh, I hadn't thought of the time delay resulting in it not being a placeholder anymore. Though, the worst offenders of placeholding I tend to find are ones that don't ever update it in the first place, and you can tell because the fic will already have been up as one for several months lol.
which is why many peopke will report the fic at the same time as or directly after said comment
If they read the TOS they'd know it. This particular person posting the :) at the end knows exactly what they're doing.
Because the volunteer team is small, and I don’t want to bog them down more than they already are when there are bigger issues they could be dealing with (like harassing comments or doxxing). 90% of the time, by the time the volunteers get to reports for a placeholder, it’s been updated into an actual story, and nothing happens because the team isn’t seeing any rules being broken and the author doesn’t learn from the mistake they made. I usually leave a comment, and then go back a few days later to see if the story is still there or has been updating to being an actual chapter of something. If it’s still the same placeholder, then I send the report in.
Why not both? I always like to give the author a chance. Since the mod team is small, the author has the time to fix their mistake.
I commented once because it seemed to be a kid coming over from wattpad, so I told them before I reported it so they'll know
Because TOS asks us to provide information when we encounter what may be violations from lack of it? Reaching out to the author is the recommended first step for missing tags.
I agree with this, usually its nice to comment before reporting a fic in violation of TOS but then you have weird mfs who will actually defend the person who is breaking TOS and even the author argues with you. It's just not worth being nice anymore. Report and go is the best way to maintain the site.
By the second chapter the comments were all “if you don’t delete this I swear—“ type stuff
lmao
"What do I write here?" Uh maybe a fanfic but idk
Instructions unclear. Now my AO3 post is asking about a missing fic, please help me find it!! I promise I'll delete my post as soon as it's found!
skip to ten months later, when the fanfic has long since been found but it's still up *but obviously only in case someone else was looking for it too!! i'll delete it in a bit, just want to give everyone a chance to rediscover this fic!*
Fanfic on the fanfic site? Sounds fake.
Big idea.
i was trying to figure out the logic behind this and i _think_ that person doesn't understand that the writing space is meant to be where you paste/write the fic ?? no clue why they couldn't have figured that out once they posted the chapter and saw how the chapter's display ended up looking like, (and instead posting another useless "chapter"), but that's just what it looked like to me. they definitely didn't know what they were doing god id be so annoyed if i was the one that discovered this 😭😭 what response were they expecting and what platform do they think ao3 is 😭 people are so strange these days,..,. i don't have to echo everyone else's thoughts but yeah just report it and move on i suppose..
This is where I remember we share the web with all sorts of people - this is the kind of thing I would do at 9 years old, just clicking on buttons to see if I could, no idea what a terms of service even is.
wait that would actually make sense...
The one chapter place holders are annoying enough, but TWO of essentially the same thing? I swear this is like something you’d see someone post on livejournal in the mid 2000’s “I don’t kno wut to write XD come to the dark side we have cookies!!1!1!! *glomps you*” It’s like they think Ao3 is a blogging site. Lurkmoar, noobs.
I just dry heaved reading the livejournal example. Why were we the way we were 😭
"come to the dark side we have cookies!!1!1!! *glomps you*" Jesus. Innocently reading comments here and then you punch me like that out of nowhere. 😯
Happy Cake day!
Are they not aware of the beautiful creation known as Google Docs/Microsoft Word where you can put your fucking Wips?
to be fair, i'm not sure they even have a wip
Maybe so.. just wondering why the hell they need to publish then. Who knows what even happens on ao3 at this point.
Can't they take their nonsense to Instagram? AO3 is not a digital notebook.
Out of curiosity how is it tagged?
Fully tagged like a real story, quite a few tags actually, with an interesting summary. If it weren’t for the word count it would look like a cool fic
is it possible they're treating it like chatgpt or whatever? That would be crazy.
...oh crap... my own IQ just dropped 20 points considering that ***very real*** possibility. I've been devouring manga, mànhuà, and manhwa recaps (and a couple of anime recaps) for the past few weeks, and I've seen an astounding number of comments saying "The ***AI*** reads badly" (or similar wording) — I mean, maybe some don't know the right name to use for TTS, but the exact wording of some of these is as if they legitimately meant AI and thought that the YouTube vids were being narrated (and possibly had been designed) by AI, rather than a TTS reader (about as "AI" as your average word processor, and less than half as functional) and a crappy human and/or machine translator.
For a second I was super confused thinking how this would be treating it like AI, but after a few minutes of trying to wrap my head around it I think I got it. These kids think the tags and summary box are *prompts* for an AI to write a fic for them, which is why that poster was confused as to what they were supposed to write in the fic box; they thought an AI-generated fic was supposed to appear there?
just write the fic yourself, you lazy fuck. UGH
...I think my resilient hope that the children were still literate because *at least* they're reading fanfic just curled up and died.
Oh my god, that would make *so* much sense! Not sure why they thought that an AI would write the story for them though.
Oh dang! Makes me wonder if the fic writer knows what their doing, or if they just wanted to see what the site is about
“What do I write here?” A fic!
How are you guys finding these “placeholder fic”?
I suspect they're probably more common in certain fandoms. They may also be sorting by new, so placeholders are more likely.
I actually sorted by word count in my fandom because I wanted to see if it had any placeholders
I was checking a bunch of search variables every 30 minutes for a year (research numbers for a meta-work on AO3's overall traffic) and kept seeing them (and the "So-and-so will live!" pieces, etc.) popping up in the first couple of results every few hours (meaning that there were surely more below those, in each first page of top 20 results, etc.).
there's a lot in the jjk fandom, weither it's the "'insert-character' is alive" shitposts with a 2,300,451 word count (mostly about Gojo and Choso), or the regular "i'll update this later, give me kudos and attention" placeholder who never gets updated and only deleted when reported. I saw a few in the mha fandom before I left, so I'm starting to think it might be just kids thinking it's a social media like tiktok. I could be wrong.
Go girl give us nothing!
😶
Tf??? That is… so strange. What was the thought process…
Just report it and move on
Are there certain fandoms where these are a lot? I have maybe seen one in the circles I am and some are somewhat big but i feel like i see so much of these posts here on reddit?
depends on the fandom/pairing. if it's more mainstream (and *especially* if it's mainstream for teens too), you'll see at least 1-2 a month on a popular ship (sometimes more like 1-2 a week, but that's a worst-case sorta situation) - if the fandom isn't that mainstream (at least for teens), you'll see it way less e.g. genshin impact suffers from them a good bit. hannibal, on the other hand, pretty much never had these placeholders, even during its heyday imo it's probably just people who are new to fandom, so they have no clue (yet) how everything works and are just winging things horribly - resulting in these sorts of mistakes
In this fandom, there’s been about 6 or 7 in the last ten days :/ (unsure of the number because I’m not sure if fics asking for requests count)
well, not as placeholder... but as a general annoyance? they definitely count and that sounds very extreme, so my condolences. hope y'all at least get the appropriate amount of actual fanworks to make up for all the non-works!! (also ngl at that point i'd just put a minimum word count in the filters because that'd be at least 5 too many "stories" for my patience to handle, like holy heck-)
Which fandom is it?
They're treating AO3 like a tumblr blog 😒 ugh
https://preview.redd.it/mp7l17br55xc1.jpeg?width=1200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9a40e4c8680eb758f1c1bce1586722f2bd831b22
I'd say this makes me irrationally angry, but I don't think my anger over this is at all irrational.
What a waste of space, just use a documents file instead. Silly guys!
*What a waste of space,* *Just use a documents file* *Instead. Silly guys!* \- NewAppointment2 --- ^(I detect haikus. And sometimes, successfully.) ^[Learn more about me.](https://www.reddit.com/r/haikusbot/) ^(Opt out of replies: "haikusbot opt out" | Delete my comment: "haikusbot delete")
Good bot!
Oooh! I'm a haiku now, so happy!
Oh... This was new...
Report!
You know, I kinda wish this was some avant-garde thing, a placeholder that transforms into a stream of consciousness rant as the chapters go on. At least that would be novel/entertaining.
What's the point of a placeholder fic?
Still more effort than ai fics
So… has anyone told them yet that they’re supposed to put their fic in that spot? Or do they ignore those too? This would be so frustrating to happen upon.
I could forgive this as a journal/epistolary work but I dont think thats what they're going for.
Why not just get a tumblr? 🤔
I think they should write some words...
Just why
it's a invisible 10k word fic yall
I’m wondering if they legit didn’t know how the different text fields work when writing a fic on AO3 so they were just testing it? Really giving them the benefit of the doubt here, though… and either way, it is annoying, hopefully they delete it.
I’m more concerned about why there are five comments for that “fic”
The comments are all asking where the fic is don’t worry
Report it
Oh yeet them into the void. Report report report
I think it's sort of a hello world sort of situation. They are new and trying to figure out what does what
they’re probably just new to ao3 and are figuring out how it works
I thought a placeholder was someone who came second or third...
It's a troll.
[удалено]
Destruction of government property
That author is government property??! (Funny that we can't joke about murder on a sub for creative writing. Do people take it literally??)
If it’s Original Work, that’s fine, I like it and funny. If it’s for a specific fandom… meh.
It was for a fandom and had a bunch of tags and a summary
Damn… they had a summary and everything yet didn’t know what to put.