Death From Above

https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/33676

In October, we continued our internationalization efforts to make AO3's interface and emails translatable. We also worked on usability improvements to a variety of site features, including clarified buttons for posting and editing works, improved password reset messages and forms, and more consistent redirects when logging in or out. Alongside these updates, we overhauled exchange participants' Assignments pages and smoothed out other smaller issues across the site.

Special thanks and welcome to first-time contributors Cole Kelling, Cubostar, John Pork, and Tani!

Credits

• Coders: Abhinav Gupta, anna, Bilka, Brian Austin, CJ Record, Cole Kelling, Connie Feng, Cubostar, dismayonnaise, Emily Wiegand, Ivedonestranger, Jake Faulkner, james_, John Pork, katieyang, marcus8448, nil-cipher (Wanda), Samridhi, Sarken, Scott, slavalamp, Tani, weeklies, Yanpei Wang
• Code reviewers: anna, Bilka, Brian Austin, Hamham6, james_, lydia-theda, redsummernight, Sarken, Scott, slavalamp, weeklies
• Testers: Allonautilus, Anh P, AuroraT, Bilka, Brian Austin, choux, Deniz, hvalrann, Keladry, killiane, Lute, lydia-theda, Meep Linger, megidola, ömer faruk, ­Pent, pk2317, Sarken, Scott, Teyris, therealmorticia

Details

0.9.433

On October 1, we deployed improvements around password changes and resets. We also made some other small security fixes all around the site.

• [AO3-2520] - We made it possible to delete comments with JavaScript disabled.
• [AO3-5640] - When a Policy & Abuse admin tries to leave notes on an account without selecting an action to connect those notes to (e.g., banning the user or just making notes), they will now get a sensible error message.
• [AO3-7023] - We fixed the invisible error you'd get if you tried to create a bookmark for an invalid external URL.
• [AO3-7125] - The site we linked on our "Session Expired" error page to explain how to clear your browser cache removed their tutorial, so we are now linking to a different site.
• [AO3-7127] - We bumped rexml from 3.4.1 to 3.4.2.
• [AO3-7136] - Since the 8tracks website no longer exists, we removed it from the list of allowed sources for embedded media and the Terms of Service FAQ.
• [AO3-7137] - We bumped the rack gem from 2.2.17 to 2.2.18 to deal with a security issue.
• [AO3-6139] - The series we created in our automated tests didn't always contain a work, which was confusing. We've updated them to always contain at least one work.
• [AO3-6968] - AO3's tag wranglers often need to access or post comments on tags, so we added links in the wrangling bins to make that easier to do.
• [AO3-7038] - We restricted the ability to grant all current users invitations to admins with certain roles.
• [AO3-7086] - We updated the wording and layout of the change password page (as well as some related error messages) to improve clarity and ease of use.
• [AO3-7112] - To assist users resetting their password, we updated the instructions in the password reset email.
• [AO3-7114] - We improved the error message you received when you tried to reset your password using an invalid or incorrect link so that it actually explains what went wrong.
• [AO3-7126] - We improved the wording of the most recent login information in the user history accessible to admins.

0.9.435

On October 3, we upgraded to Ruby 3.4 and it all went smoothly! Except that our release script skipped a version number again, but that's a very minor problem for a major upgrade.

• [AO3-7145] - We upgraded Ruby from version 3.2 to 3.4 in multiple slow steps.
• [AO3-7148] - To reduce deprecation errors with the Ruby 3.4 upgrade, we replaced the unmaintained unicode_utils gem with Ruby's built-in Unicode case folding.

0.9.436

On October 9, we overhauled the page where a user's challenge assignments are listed to make it easier to find incomplete assignments. We also fixed some style issues and did a lot of work for our ongoing project to internationalize the entire site!

• [AO3-7029] - The Low Vision Default skin was missing the links to skip to and from the filters; the links are now present.
• [AO3-7077] - We fixed some old, broken links tag wranglers saw when looking at the tag wrangling tools page.
• [AO3-5349] - When someone fills your prompt from a prompt meme, you get an email. We've prepared this email for translation.
• [AO3-6415] - To help gift exchange participants find assignments they need to fulfill, we've split Assignments pages into two pages: Unposted Assignments and Completed Assignments. Additionally, completed assignments are no longer counted in the sidebar, and all assignments are now listed in order of assignment date to ensure that your most pressing assignments are displayed first.
• [AO3-7005] - Some buttons in iOS Safari had bold text, so we unbolded them to match all the other buttons.
• [AO3-7020] - We've set up our work byline cache to be translatable without any risk of showing a cached translation to someone who isn't using that locale. This is an important first step in preparing more cached content for interface translation.
• [AO3-7043] - We migrated the filter taggings table, which helps keep track of which canonical tags apply to a work, so it can hold more rows and won't run out of room in the future.
• [AO3-7055] - We made the emails you get when someone leaves you a comment or edits it translatable.
• [AO3-7075] - We added some extra padding around the "Last visited" text on works in your history.
• [AO3-7103] - We updated the email you receive when Open Doors uploads a work of yours as part of importing an archive to AO3.
• [AO3-7105] - Similarly, we updated the email you get if you don't already have an AO3 account when Open Doors imports one of your works.

0.9.437

On October 13, we changed the buttons for posting, previewing, and editing a work to have clearer names and behave more consistently. We also fixed a number of small bugs.

• [AO3-4181] - We made it so that pressing "Cancel" while editing a work redirects you to the specific work you were editing, instead of the page with all your works.
• [AO3-6217] - We fixed the 500 error that occurred when an admin pressed "Cancel" on the page to edit a work's tags or language.
• [AO3-7018] - You will no longer receive a 500 error if you enter an invalid URL in a collection's custom header URL field. Instead you will get an error message telling you what the problem is.
• [AO3-7108] - We fixed a problem where the default skin could have the wrong attributes in development installs.
• [AO3-7124] - For chapters with custom titles, the chapter title in the work download wouldn't include the chapter number. We've added it now, so the chapter title always matches what you see on the website.
• [AO3-7154] - We fixed a bug that was preventing Policy & Abuse admins from adding a custom note when banning a spambot.
• [AO3-5996] - We're renaming a database column on comments to more accurately reflect its purpose. As part of that, we've now started recording data in the column with the new name.
• [AO3-7153] - We updated the rack gem from version 2.2.18 to 2.2.20 to address a security issue.
• [AO3-6644] - Collection header images used to allow .jpg files but not .jpeg files. Now we accept both formats, since they're the same type of image.
• [AO3-7085] - We added a "Save Draft" button to the form for posting a new work and updated all of the buttons at the bottom of the forms for posting, previewing, or editing a work to be more clear and consistent.
• [AO3-7096] - To make it easier to debug issues with collections' unrevealed and anonymous settings, we're now tracking when they were last updated. (Please note that this information is only intended for admins with database access and is not included on the site interface.)
• [AO3-7106] - We moved the code for editing your profile from the users controller to the more fitting profile controller.

0.9.438

On October 17, we deployed a large refactoring of how we handle redirects back to pages that you came from, which made redirects after logging in and out much more reliable and also fixed some redirect-related 500 errors when accessing AO3 through alternative URLs.

• [AO3-3011] - You will no longer get an error 404 if you hide a site banner and then log out.
• [AO3-3719] - If you open a restricted work while logged out and then log in from the page you are redirected to, you will now be redirected back to the work instead of to your user dashboard.
• [AO3-5842] - If you change your skin using the footer, you will stay on the page you were viewing with the correct skin applied, instead of being redirected to the page about the skin.
• [AO3-5913] - When you log in for the first time, you will now only get a message saying you've successfully logged in instead of a confusing message that says, "Your account has already been activated."
• [AO3-6402] - When you delete an account and log in to a different one, you will no longer be directed to the "Account deleted!" page, which would make you wrongly think you deleted the account you just logged into.
• [AO3-5949] - Across a variety of corners of AO3, we've changed where you get redirected to when you log in, log out, or cancel actions, so that it's generally more logical to what you're trying to do.

0.9.439

On October 20, we made several internationalization-related email updates and released a variety of smaller fixes.

• [AO3-4309] - We prepared the subscription email for translation, which involved some complicated localization and caching problems all at once!
• [AO3-5804] - Together with preparing the subscription email for translation, we also changed it to only show a chapter's byline if it is different from the already listed work byline.
• [AO3-5805] - And while we were at it, we also made sure the chapter byline in the subscription email really is the chapter byline, and not the work byline.
• [AO3-7128] - We prevented collection maintainers with differing roles on a parent and subcollection from being listed twice in subcollection blurbs and profiles.
• [AO3-7163] - We fixed a bug that prevented the live validation error messages for the fields on the edit profile page from showing up.
• [AO3-7173] - We fixed an error 500 when you updated your filtered inbox (such as marking a comment as read) while accessing AO3 via an alternative URL.
• [AO3-7162] - We upgraded the version of github/codeql-action from 3 to 4.
• [AO3-7172] - We upgraded the redis gem from version 3.3 to 4.8.
• [AO3-6733] - If a work or user has been reported to Policy & Abuse, AO3 won't let you report them again for a period to prevent duplicate reports. We've made this period configurable so that it can be adjusted as needed.
• [AO3-7063] - We prevented Safari on iOS from assuming that random numbers were phone numbers and turning them into links to call those numbers.
• [AO3-7069] - To assist with testing, we made it possible to display specific works in our email previews.
• [AO3-7113] - We updated the form for changing your password as part of a password reset to more closely match the form you see if you're changing your password while logged in.
• [AO3-7155] - We added a missing space between the text and the arrow on the "Previous Chapter" link at the bottom of multichapter works.

https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/33676

https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/33671

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

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

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

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

New Canonicals

The following concepts have been made new canonical tags:

• Accidental Child Acquisition
• Alternate Universe - YouTubers
• Aunt/Niece Incest
• Grandfather/Grandson Incest
• Mother/Daughter Incest
• Bathing Together
• Showering Together
• Ball Gags
• Cervix Penetration
• Penetrative Sex
• Coming Inside Someone
• Consensual Blood Drinking
• Dark Romance
• Discussions of Death
• Erectile Dysfunction
• Good Parenting
• Implied/Referenced Cannibalism
• Instagram
• Oh. OH. | Italicized Oh Moment
• Lovers to Enemies to Lovers
• Rivals to Friends to Lovers
• The Mortifying Ordeal of Being Known
• Non-Sexual Nudity
• No Pregnancy
• Nuzzling
• Parasocial Relationships
• Partially Canon Compliant
• Past Suicide Attempts
• Pet Play
• Pillow Princesses
• Piss Drinking
• Pissing Inside Someone
• Reverse Harem
• Shock Collars
• Situationships
• Trauma Recovery
• Texting Fic
• Wound Fucking
• Y/N Used for Reader-Insert

In Conclusion

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

• Accidental Baby Acquistion
• Y/N
• Dark Romance
• Incest
• “Oh”
• Parasocial Relationship
• Reverse Harem
• Texting Fic
• Watersports

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

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

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

Got Questions?

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

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

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

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

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

https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/33671

https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/33561

Are you fluent in a language other than English? Do you have graphic design skills and enjoy creating social media content? Are you interested in the rescue and preservation of fanworks? Are you fluent in a language other than English, passionate about AO3, and want to help us better reply to users all around the world? The Organization for Transformative Works is recruiting!

We're excited to announce the opening of applications for:

• Translation Translators - closing 29 October 2025 at 23:59 UTC
• Fanlore Graphics Designer Volunteer - closing 29 October 2025 at 23:59 UTC or after 40 applications
• Open Doors Import Assistant - closing 29 October 2025 at 23:59 UTC or after 50 applications
• User Response Translation Translators - closing 29 October 2025 at 23:59 UTC

We have included more information on each role below. Open roles and applications will always be available at the volunteering page. If you don't see a role that fits with your skills and interests now, keep an eye on the listings. We plan to put up new applications every few weeks, and we will also publicize new roles as they become available.

All applications generate a confirmation page and an auto-reply to your e-mail address. We encourage you to read the confirmation page and to whitelist our email address in your e-mail client. If you do not receive the auto-reply within 24 hours, please check your spam filters and then contact us.

If you have questions regarding volunteering for the OTW, check out our Volunteering FAQ.

Translation Translators

If you enjoy working collaboratively, if you're fluent in a language other than English, if you’re passionate about the OTW and its projects, and want to help us reach more fans all around the world, working with Translation might be for you!

Translation volunteers help make the OTW and its projects accessible to a wider global audience. We work on translating content by the OTW and its projects from English to other languages, such as site pages, news posts, AO3 FAQs and AO3 Support emails. (However, we do not translate fanworks.)

We really need volunteers who speak Afrikaans, Arabic, Bengali, Bulgarian, Catalan, Estonian, Filipino, Galician, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Irish, Japanese, Korean, Latvian, Macedonian, Malay, Marathi, Norwegian, Persian, European Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Thai, Turkish, Vietnamese and Welsh—but help with other languages would be much appreciated. If you're interested in starting a team for a language we don't have yet, you're very welcome to!

(Please note that our Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Indonesian, Italian, Lithuanian, Polish, Brazilian Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, and Ukrainian teams are not accepting new members at this time. If you are fluent in one of these languages and interested in volunteering, please consider volunteering for another team within the organization instead. The User Response Translation Committee is currently recruiting for the following languages: Brazilian Portuguese, Spanish, and Chinese, as well as Russian. For more information, please refer to the Volunteering page.)

Applicants will be asked to translate and correct short text samples and will be invited to a chatroom interview as part of the selection process. More information about us can be found on the Translation committee page.

Applications are due 29 October 2025.

Apply to be a Translation Committee Translator at the volunteering page! If you have further questions, please contact us.

Fanlore Graphics Designer

Would you like to help Fanlore reach more fans and get new editors? Do you have graphic design skills and enjoy creating social media content? If so, we need your help! The Fanlore team needs designers to create graphics and banners for social media posts, editing challenges and other outreach projects to help us reach more fans and potential editors. We have a lot of amazing fan history and fandom content, but we need you to help others find out about it. If you think you might enjoy that, come and join us!

If you’re interested, please prepare a portfolio of your work to submit with your application. As part of our design review process, applicants will also be asked to create a sample graphic for Fanlore. Further directions will be given upon applying.

Applications are due 29 October 2025 or after 40 applications.

Apply to be a Fanlore Graphics Designer at the volunteering page! If you have further questions, please contact us.

Open Doors Import Assistant

Do you enjoy spreadsheets, self-paced projects, and helping protect fanworks from getting lost over time? Are you interested in the rescue and preservation of fanworks? Do you still guiltily--or not so guiltily--love the first fanwork that opened your eyes to fandom?

Open Doors is a committee dedicated to preserving fanworks in their many formats, and we’re looking for volunteers to support this goal. The work we do preserves fan history, love, and dedication to fandom: we keep fanworks from offline and at-risk archives from being lost, divert fanzines from the trash, and more.

Our import assistants contribute to our goal by:

• Importing works to AO3 from rescued digital archives and fanzines
• Searching AO3 for existing copies of works that creators have already uploaded themselves (to prevent us from importing duplicate versions when we import an archive)
• Compiling and correcting spreadsheets of works from an archive to be imported and/or tags to use on those works
• Copyediting/proofreading works from fanzines that have been scanned from PDFs (to ensure that the scanned works were transcribed properly by the software we used)

The training is self-directed, and so is the work for the most part, though we also have weekly working meetings/parties for people to all chip in and work on tasks together! Import assistants can generally alternate the types of tasks they work on. At any one time, we usually have several tasks of different types available.

To apply for this role, you must be at least 18 years old and legally of age to open explicit fanworks in your local jurisdiction.

If you're interested, click on through for a longer description of what we're looking for and the time commitment. For your application to be considered, you will be required to complete a short task within 3 days of submitting your application.

Applications are due 29 October 2025 or after 50 applications.

Apply to be an Open Doors Import Assistant at the volunteering page! If you have further questions, please contact us.

User Response Translation Translators

Are you fluent in Brazilian Portuguese, Mandarin Chinese, Russian, or Spanish, and want to help us better communicate with AO3 users all over the world?

User Response Translation (URT) volunteers help AO3 committees to correspond with users in other languages. URT translators will assist the Policy & Abuse and Support committees by translating correspondence between these committees and AO3 users into specific languages. URT does not translate AO3 or OTW site pages, news posts, or fanworks.

We are looking for volunteers who are at least 18 years old and fluent in Brazilian Portuguese, Mandarin Chinese, Russian, or Spanish. Applicants will be asked to translate and beta (edit) short text samples as part of the selection process.

(If you are fluent in languages that are not listed above and interested in volunteering, please consider volunteering for another team within the organization instead. The Translation Committee is currently recruiting for the following languages: Afrikaans, Arabic, Bengali, Bulgarian, Catalan, Estonian, Filipino, Galician, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Irish, Japanese, Korean, Latvian, Macedonian, Malay, Marathi, Norwegian, Persian, European Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Thai, Turkish, Vietnamese and Welsh. For more information, please refer to the Volunteering page.)

Applications are due 29 October 2025.

Apply to be a User Response Translation Translator at the volunteering page! If you have further questions, please contact us.

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

https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/33561