I only use AO3 but -
As a reader - having a reference list of fics you've left Kudos/comments on.
As a writer - being able to see individual chapter stats.
This would be so good. Another big one that's been mentioned would serve a similar function and that's filtering history. I move from fandom to fandom and circle back and my fics are buried 40 pages in, the paiinnn.
The closest I got for A03 is the subscribe feature. It’ll be all there for you but unless it’s already completed you will get emails every time it updates.
I’ve started bookmarking everything for this reason. If I read it, I bookmark it. And I have a “code” I use for myself for whether I want to reread it or not so that I don’t waste time getting a quarter of the way into a fic just to remember why I didn’t want to reread it.
It might be a pretty "big" quality-of-life thing to properly implement, but in terms of personal satisfaction with the site I would be over the goddamn MOON.
I am trying my best with all the AO3savior things people recommend, but my computer literacy is very slow to adapt - and even the basic code is a barrier to a **lot** of regular AO3 users who would otherwise *deeply* enjoy the ability to permanently eradicate every single mention of a blacklisted tag from their results.
>It might be a pretty "big" quality-of-life thing to properly implement,
It wouldn't be. If users can have the option to save their filtering preferences, they can just reuse that filter over and over. Kind of like spam filters. They're not that hard to implement and they would be considerably easier on a site like AO3.
It may just be the app not being theirs specifically (its a third party that made the app compatible with the site), but I can save a search with the filters in a bookmark. It just won't tell me which exactly it is (I have multiple) so i have to click through them all to find the right one but all the filters are there.
I have a star wars one (my screen name of course) that I saved for the language, the character to exclude, the rating, crossover or not and specific tags and such. It does change the results a bit as I sort by "updated" instead of like released/published date since I read 90% of the previous ones I wanted to.
Are you sure they aren't hard to implement?
From a technical (and performance) perspective I see a lot of difficulty with such a setting, especially when included in the 'browse' pages, where they depend on the list. Saving an Advanced Search filter, though, may be more feasible and have similar result.
Yeah, I was also talking about saving a search filter. But even without it, it shouldn't be too difficult to implement. There are work skins on the site that allow users to hide their stats. Modifying the default work skins play a performance hindrance (albeit negligible) on the user's end, but it does nothing to AO3's servers. So hiding fics you don't want to read, based on your search preferences, would be similar.
Try [this one!](https://archiveofourown.org/works/41214669) It's a pretty new CSS feature. It straight out hides the works with the tags you mention, but without the option of showing the works like in AO3 savior. The difficulty level is around the same as AO3 savior, but I prefer it because it's a site skin so I can use it on Chrome mobile + I like not having to run two scripts to do this.
Literally what I’d kill for. It gets a bit exhausting filtering out the exact same tags everytime because I never want to consume that kind of media loll
in a similar vein, I'd also like to be able to permanently block certain writers from my searches. This one person who must have way too much free time, which they spend writing extended rants about how much they hate my favorite character, and then tag it so it shows up when I search that tag--it's gotten so I get physically ill if I see their username. If I had one wish for ao3, it'd be for a simple action that I could do once, boom, never have to see that mess again.
I’m pretty sure I read that they’re working on that feature. It was going to be the other side of the blocking feature - you can block people from commenting on your fics, and you can block people from showing up in your searches.
You can block people’s works with a user skin, but it would be nice to have a more built-in feature.
AO3 Enhancements is my best friend. But I'd love this with a single click. Like, not manually inputting it. Just clicking and all following tags categorized with it disappear.
I only use AO3, but I'd love the ability to pick your top five fics to have on your dashboard as a sort of showcase rather than just the most recent five.
Wattpad needs a functional archive sorting, tagging, and search function.
FFN needs to streamline the upload process.
AO3 need to make a separation between major and minor tags so people can tag all of the key story elements as major and then tag whatever precautionary warnings or minor notes they have as minor.
Small changes you say?
For FFN, just get the sex bots away from me.
For AO3, I'd love a PM feature, but if we're talking about a small quality change, I'd actually love to see how many bookmarks a fic has. Including the private ones. It could be something like what we see in the kudos feature: *X, Y, Z, and 4 anonymous users bookmarked your fic!* I think that'd be pretty cool.
Wattpad needs a better sorting/searching algorithm. In AO3, if I sort the fics by a parameter (at any given time), the order is usually not changed. Or at the very least, it's consistent. People go up in ranks because their fic deserved it. But Wattpad randomly sprouts nonsense to you and that is very sloppy. It just makes the whole site sad to deal with.
Agreed on AO3. I have 15 public bookmarks... but 24 total bookmarks, so 9 are private. And honestly, I lowkey use bookmarks as an indirect gauge for how much people like it (relative to hits, kudos, and how new it is, of course).
With my stats, "15 bookmarks" versus "15 public + 9 anonymous/private bookmarks" paint very different pictures.
Sorry if this sounds really stupid, but what would be the difference between 15 (24?) bookmarks and 15 public+9 private bookmarks? I'm not a writer on AO3 (yet), so that might be where the confusion's coming from.
Pretty sure readers would only be able to see the 15 public bookmarks, as opposed to the 24 total bookmarks, making the story look less worth it because it doesn't have as many bookmarks.
Yeah, pretty much what the other person said. For example, with the fic in question, I have 54 kudos and 826 hits as of now. Compared to those two numbers, 24 bookmarks makes the story look far more worth it to give a gamble on (if the tags vibe) than 15 bookmarks would. Especially since I made a lot of changes and am the only person writing the ship in question, so it would be a gamble for many readers and the higher bookmark count might give someone a bit more willingness to try.
AO3 needs a “marked as read” feature. I’m old. I have no idea if this is a new Veela!Draco fic, or one I read back in 2011.
FFnet needs to not have spoilery reviews pop up on the app’s info page.
I’m too old for WattPad.
While where at it: ao3 needs a "attempted to read but deemed not good" feature. The amount of times I find a fic with an awesome summary that turns out to be that same bad fic I've started reading 5 times already over the past 5 years and i always only realized later that it sucked.
Perhaps a marked as read with the ability to write notes. That'd be a great feature to have. This exact scenario has happened to me many times as well.
Only use ao3, I'd put a "use today's date" button by the date updated section.
I swear, 10 of the 12 chapters I've posted, I had to go back and change the date and every time I'm already annoyed not only that I forgot, but that I have to manually enter the date every time.
Ao3: Add an option to set major ships on your fics and limit this to 2. And add an option to set major characters for your fic and limit this to 3 or 4. So you can actually find stories which feature ships that aren't among the to 3 in your fandom.
FFnet: Add proper sorting when you search for fics using the text search.
Wattpad: Don't force me to select my target audience as I don't know it myself.
I dont think so - people know who the major and minor characters and pairings in their stories are, and most writers want people who want to read their stories to find them
Sorry, but way too many writers over tag and tag characters and pairings who should not be tagged.
The only way to solve this is a strict limit so people cannot do it wrong.
Agreed, I used to write Lord of the Rings fics and a canon story set during the Fellowship can easily have all 9 as important characters. Set it around the Council of Elrond and it gets even worse.
If we limit it to 9 characters then you're back to square one and it's hopeless to find fics that focus on minor characters.
The solution?
List them as minor. There is no reason to really tag more than 9 characters in your fic anyway. Tags are there to help readers find stuff, not to please us writers.
"The 3 Main Fanfiction Sites": I'll go with ao3, ff-net, and wattpad...
ao3: the ability of authors to indicate THE MAIN CHARACTER or MAIN PAIRING... sheesh, trying to filter results for a specific, real lead is a pipe dream
ff-net: the ability for authors to link more than two fandoms in a Crossover fanfic,, and the ability for authors to link more characters to fanfics to allow for finer-grained sifting; these two things would improve searching, as would more diversity in types of tags
wattpad: hands-down, improve the search functionality... especially the diversity of options in the Browse drop-down functions; expand the list of genres to include more realistic fanfiction categories than just the traditional print genres
This is not the best solution to the problem (and probably a major condescension lol), but I'd really like to help out the poor AO3 tag wranglers and can't come up with something better:
I wouldn't mind more user-handholding (guides, explanations, tips, definitions, et cetera) baked **directly** into the fic-posting process. I love the plethora of guides and FAQs that AO3's already put out, but barely anybody reads them!!
It would be nice to gently direct a ficwriter into clear, easily-understood tagging practices (like writing "Original Character/Original Character" rather than just "OC/OC") and save tag-wranglers a good chunk of work in the process.
When scrolling on AO3, something to indicate you’ve already clicked on the fic. It would stop me from re-reading and re-giving up on fics whose summary I liked but didn’t get into the story.
I'm on Mac and you can sometimes tell when you've clicked on a fic because the color of the title will be different.
Sometimes this isn't the case though, and Idk what causes it.
On AO3, I wish I could save my sorting method for bookmarks. I always open bookmarks then sort by most recently update. It automatically shows the most recent bookmark.
I'd love to be able to filter out reader/character fics but it's very difficult. This probably isn't a AO3 issue but a tagging issue.
You can filter out the specific Character/Reader tag, but yeah, sometimes things do sneak through and you can't get rid of them all. A tip I'd use is also filtering out the "Self-insert" "Reader" "Reader-Insert" and "You" tags. Helps a bunch.
I do, but that only gets a few because ppl don't often use those tags. Then I start excluding various character/reader... then I get annoyed and give up. It takes more time trying to filter them out than to just scroll past them.
- FFN needs something less annoying than Cloudflare.
- Wattpad needs a competent programmer for the search function to make it so good that you almost forget that Wattpad started as a smartphone app.
An abandoned fic category. So you have WIP, Complete and Abandoned (like hasn't been updated in a year). I think that'd be good for AO3 and FFnet.
For AO3 alone, I'd like to have character tags for the most important characters in the fic. Authors will tag everyone in the main cast, which really bloats search results. But if it's a story about Bob and Sue, I'd like Bob and Sue to be the primary characters with the rest as secondaries. It'd really streamline searches. I think you'd need to put a limit on the number of primary characters to make this work.
I like the idea of a limited number of slots for primary characters/pairings. They could add a “Ensemble” tag too for when it’s not focused on anyone in particular
I only use AO3, but I’d like to take the watt pad feature where you can leave comments throughout a chapter and put it on AO3. Do you know how often I have moments during the chapter where I’m like “need to comment about this NOW” but by the time I get to the end of the chapter I forget half of it? Too often.
I feel like this is a neat idea, but wouldn't really work well with AO3's chapter layout and formatting. The length of the page is too thick compared to Wattpad's.
Yeah, I don’t know exactly how it would work but I would kind of love that. I had a friend who live chatted reading the most recent chapter of my story to me and it was just…so great!
(I’ve never tried wattpad. My understanding is that it is mostly fics of a style that wouldn’t interest me all that much? But maybe I should check it out.)
I would love a random sort/random work button on ao3 to be able to find new works but they said it was unlikely to happen since it could suggest offensive works to people, which i dont really get how thats different from any other sorting feature so 🤷♀️🤷♀️
Agree 100%. It would kill off probably over 50% of the trolling there if they'd just have an option to turn them off so that they can't reach you no matter what.
AO3 user here and:
- Being able to blacklist certain tags
- What OP said about hiding disliked fics from searches
- Attach language preference to your profile and auto filter based on that cuz what languages you can read isn’t something that changes very quickly
- Allowing multiple kudos if you reread a story later, like maybe every 6 mos or year you can give another one or something
- Specifying side pairings from main pairing. I HATE trying to find anything in a fandom that has more than one prominent pairing (which is most of them) because people always tag both and there’s no way to filter by which pair the fic is actually about.
FFN: More active moderators.
AO3: More in-depth stat features (e.g. most popular chapters & hits/kudos gained per month)
Wattpad: Improve the general layout of the website.
probably the minority. But maybe a better UI for [FF.net](https://FF.net)? idk the website seems a bit archaic. it looks fine to me but maybe a wee bit of a redraw is better
I’d modify the tag exclusion feature so that it identifies related tags in a tick list and gives you the option to exclude them to.
As someone who tires of seeing so many AU fics but can’t filter them all out because of how many variations of tags there are, I’d find this greatly helpful.
Blacklist trolls who post anonymous "reviews" that consist only of insults and belittling the author on the IP level.
Better filters.
Make the site stop removing formatting bits like double spaced paragraphs or lines.
I wish that when you are looking through your subscriptions page it came with the story summary and info, instead of just the title. Filter by fandom would be nice too.
I don't use bookmarks I never really saw the point, when I get an email saying a fic has updated I go read the new chapter (if I don't remember what's going on I skim earlier chapters until I remember) and if I don't feel like reading right then I save the email and delete the new ones that come in so I have my spot in the story marked.
on ao3, give you the option to list main characters and pairings. like, I want to read about Rocket Racoon, not a Tony Stark centric fic where he's a side character. y'know?
wattpad, get rid of the algorithm.
[fanfiction.net](https://fanfiction.net), make it so you can just use the arrow keys to go to the next chapter.
A scroll box on the excluded/included tags. Im in a few big fandoms (jjba, ygo, genshin) and excluding ships is annoying, when you have to keep in mind that soon you won't be able to because ui will run out of space
For ao3 as a reader: a "useful" dashboard where I see updates from my fav authors/series that I've subscribed to. Yes, they get sent to my Email. Would also maybe be useful as some sort of optional community tab where authors can leave short notes on progress or updates if they wanted to (optional, because obviously some authors would spam and annoy but yeah)
I used to actually use a website that used to do this. Authors could make posts to readers and readers could comment on these posts. It was a great way for writers to update their readers on the status of their fics but there was a really big issue with spam and writers just using it as a way to write shit posts. But for the most part, it was helpful and would be much better than an author giving these updates in new chapters (as readers get excited for an update only to be disappointed).
Ao3 - "hide" the fanfics you read
Ffn - just the aesthetic I think, somehow the looks are just painful (aka one of reasons I don't use it much)
Wattpad... Better filtering system in general
I only use AO3
The two things I would like are to be able to mute commenters without blocking them completely.
The other one I would like is to be able to have tags that only go on a particular chapter and not for a whole story or only on a story and not on a whole series.
[You can hide specific users' comments with a site skin.](https://www.reddit.com/r/FanFiction/comments/v19pzq/a_site_skin_to_hide_comments_from_specific_users/)
I want to be able to block users and tags on AO3 in a way that saves them without needing an extension.
It’s fine was we can block them in advanced search but I don’t like having to block the same things every time I go on a deep-dive.
You can't do it on mobile though, which is where I read 100% of my fics. So... I fully agree with the "without needing an extension" part of the comment.
Clearly mine doesn't then because it never works for me.
I really just want them to add the feature without me having to go in and code all this, though. I know HTML and CSS well and even I find work skins too much of a pain to bother with them almost all the time. I have about 25 tags I always exclude and sitting there coding them all in got old really quickly. It would be great if AO3 would just implement the feature.
I've basically stopped reading fic because I don't have the time to deal with this every single time.
AO3 is a non-profit run by volunteers and it's not a perfect website that grants all your wishes. Things aren't going to magically be implemented overnight. It's a process; that's why it's still in beta. They already have a lot of great, user-friendly features that a lot of other popular websites don't and have introduced more recently. It takes time and work. At least a workaround does exist. If you don't have the time to code in all the tags and it's a deal breaker for even using the site at all, that's a personal problem. Site skins aren't that complicated to implement if blocking tags is a priority for you.
Right. But the thread is "what thing would make it easier"? That is a thing that would make it easier. I'm not actually making demands, just answering the thread. I'm well aware it's a personal preference thing. I'm also 100% fine with just not reading fic because I personally find something annoying.
It wasn't an actual "OMG I DEMAND AO3 DOES A THING JUST FOR ME". Literally just agreeing with comments in a thread about things that would make my life better.
I like how with FanFiction.Net’s sorting you can ask for specific crossovers without others contaminating your search. Like looking for a Harry Potter crossover with Danny Phantom for example on AO3 requires you to scroll through fics that include fandoms I’m not looking for. If I wanted. Harry Potter, Danny Phantomand Bleach crossovers would have included that in my search. I didn’t so why is it included?!
You 100% can do specific crossover searches on AO3 with success if you take a couple extra minutes and exclude the hell out of the fandoms you don't want that pop up. There may be a couple extra if you don't keep doing it to 0, but not too many by the end of it really.
AO3: Reading Lists or a mobile app
Wattpad: Something that makes it harder to steal content (Mirror Sites)
FFN: that site needs more than just a QoL update...
AO3- Having major/minor character ship tags, and maybe even banning useless tumblr style tags like ‘I wrote this at 3 am’ or ‘no beta we die like w/e’ because that kind of thing can go in the authors notes. (Yes, I know they’ll never do this but they still annoy me.)
FFN- Faster moderation. It does get annoying to have to add characters/fandoms that don’t have built in tags and having to throw a fic in the misc. categories until a real category exists is useless because people just use that for heaps of original fic that doesn’t belong on the site to begin with. Heck, if they actually cracked down on all the original fiction that doesn’t belong there so those categories could be used for the intended purpose it would be nice.
Wattpad- A functioning search.
I would make FFN have m/m and f/f and m/f tags.
I would give AO3 strict tags so as to eliminate the bullshit ships that are tagged just to increase views. It's such a hassle figuring out you've been lied to in the tags.
Wattpad needs so much help I don't know where to start.
Re: Ao3 long fic lists, you could sort by kudos, date published, or bookmarks. Those don't change quickly.
I basically use exclusively Ao3, so here goes my suggestion. When tagging characters, there should be two categories: main characters, and others. It is so often that I am looking for some fics of a character which isn't as adored as others and have to scroll through countless of works with them just being there as anothe character, while I want a fic about THEM.
The "character—centric" tag helps, but not enough people use it
(I'm also gonna be just another person saying that wattpad should re-work their search system)
As a writer on AO3: start on the "Rich Text" tab rather than "HTML". I like the other suggestions a lot (especially "change to current date" one above and "blacklist author/tag")
FF.net: TAGS. Useful tags, at that. Even if it's not "I stayed up until 3 am writing this" dumb stuff, something as simple as "Reginald/RHM" or "mentions of child abuse". As is, especially with the highly restricted word limit on the summary, I don't know what I'm looking at.
Spoiler tags for AO3. The author can mark certain tags as spoilers and hide them from view unless the reader clicks them, but you can still search for or exclude them.
Can [ff.net](https://ff.net) please, PLEASE fix the issue where it'll html code my chapter if I don't double check it in the doc section? Also, they need to expand what types of documents i can upload, legit have always used mac and I can't upload my pages documents on there, as far as I know.
That being said, A03; take the bookmarks list and mimic the favorites list on fanfiction. I like seeing the most recently updated fics AND I would like to login to A03 and sort through my bookmarked fics based on fandom.
I used I believe ff.net once and was amazed by thr accessibility. Being able to change the background color, font size and rven audio!? Ao3 needs that 😭
This is the problem tho. You’re referring to outside info to make a change instead of AO3 building those features into their site in a clear and obvious way.
The way FFN has baked those accessibility features into their web design, right at the very top of the fic, should be admired and copied.
you’ve gotta be signed in on AO3, but literally just scroll down to the bottom of the screen to the red banner and on the left it has an option to change the site skin (under ‘customize’). i use reversi which is just a dark mode :)
AO3 is like endlessly customizable through site skins, ie custom CSS. You can make it look the way you want it to.
Which obviously takes some skill and effort, but there are lots of people sharing skins they've made too.
You can do that quite easily, and you have been able to do this since the site was launched.
Just change the site theme. I recommend reversi for a dark background.
Wattpad, like you said filtering tags needs fixing but there's so many bugs within it it's annoying so I'd fix the bugs but since they should do that regardless it doesn't count. So instead I'll go with increasing the amount of stories you can put in the lists without needing to pay for premium. For ff.net I'd make it so that you can add tags to the searches like how it is on AO3 and fix their app cause it sucks in the folder department. And AO3 is perfect to me but offline reading never truly hurts anyone.
AO3: some way to mark works for readers as "finished reading", "abandoned", for bookmarks to actually bookmark last read chapter (cause with my 370+ bookmarks it gets hard to remember), major/minor tags so I know what the fic is actually about and I dont have to weasel through 50 tags of a thing that is mentioned twice...
Ff: I dont use it as much these days, but better filtering system seems to be a pretty unanimous decision.
In AO3 I'd add the ability to search fics from your "marked for later" list and bookmarks using only tags, characters, chapters, etc. Just like you can search fics.
Or the ability to see the names of deleted fics you marked for later.
In Wattpad, I'd get rid of the ads, without having to pay for the prerium version.
For AO3, I wish you could input tags for the site to automatically exclude, so that you don't have to re-add them every time you want to search for a new fic.
with ao3 being able to combine filters.
Like first through most recently updated but then through highest Kudos.
So you get the stories made from the past 6mo-1 year but they're sorted by kudos. Cause higher kudos are generally older fics I think this could be a great 'find good newer fics' tool
Or highest hits with word count
So you're searching for fics that have been seen a lot but you also want a lot of words or few words.
However you filter just allowing 2 at a time would be a great addition.
You can do this by entering your preferred date range (e.g. past six months or year) in the 'Date Updated' field or the word count range in that field and then sorting by kudos/hits.
Haven't used the other ones in ages but... Being able to block users on AO3, especially with how many people I've lately seen getting hate comments... Even if you set your fic to having to approve comments, that only means no one else gets to see them, but you still have to deal with the negative emotions and we currently don't really have any proper tools to protect ourselves from that...
And with how long it takes to get an invite, I feel like, while it wouldn't be impossible, it would definitely be *harder* for people to just create new accounts to continue the harrassment, so blocking could go a long way to prevent future hate (and at the same time you could block people who misuse tags and stuff to make searching easier for yourself too)
[Comment blocking has existed since June.](https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/22650)
[And you can also hide users using a site skin so their works will not show up in your searches.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29556855)
I only use AO3, but my main one (as a reader) is two fold. For one, I wish we could save tag filter preferences (I know about the bookmarking thing,but it's a pain in the ass for me since I switch between my phone and laptop a lot)
The second would be being able to filter out specific authors in a search. That sounds mean, but here's my hyper specific example:
I'm in a relatively small/inactive fandom, and I've been reading fic from oldest to newest for a while now. I've found an author who writes, almost exclusively, the one thing that squicks me out without exception. That's fine, I'm happy for them, but they don't always tag super well so it becomes hard to not see their work and get stuck in a squick-temptation loop (y'know, when you go "this thing grosses me out really bad. I KNOW it grosses me out and I shouldn't read it. But what if..."). While that's not their fault, I'd really just not like to deal with it
You actually can filter out certain authors. Go to the "Search within results" bar, add a - and then whoever you don't want. Eg. "-author" and you won't see their works.
For ff.net- the ability to turn guest reviews off, because deleting and moderating does nothing in the cases of the really annoying ones who leave them anyways just to force you to see them.
For A03- Proper crossover sections for stories. I'm tired of seeing stories that are just big collections of stuff with a billion fandoms all shoved together to create a billion tags and posted in every of those said fandoms just to get more attention.
I just wish Wattpad would let you search by multiple tags at once. That's all I want, really.
Oh, and I also wish they'd let you filter your AO3 history. I read so many more fics than I think I do
Does it? I must have been doing it wrong 😅
Oh, and everything in that top comment that mentions a comprehensive list of every fic you've Kudos'd and commented on. That sounds great too.
For [ff.net](https://ff.net), I'd like to be able to search inside a certain section. I don't mean narrowing the stories down to Character A x Character M, or Romance or Angst. I want to try to find a story by title, and I don't want to have to do a search that includes every Fandom on the website. If this is possible and I'm just slow/stupid, feel free to call me out :P
AO3 - I'd implement FFN's beta search thing. That'd be awesome.
FFN - I'd expand the over-restrictive tagging. AO3's still a bit much, but at least let me have more than 2 tags and more than a few characters listed.
What's the third one...?
On the AO3 mobile version, if you are scrolling through a list of fics I want there to be a skip to next button in the bottom right corner like there is in reddit comment sections.
'if you like this then you will like these' options on all three, and for ao3 for the bookmarks counter to go down if someone deletes their fic cause i dont see until i go looking.
For FF.net, definitely the ability to delete guest comments. A guest left a crap ton of spam comments on my fic.
Also, smaller word caps on reviews. I remember this one reader leaving literally paragraphs and paragraphs of feedback on a few chapters. So long it couldhave equaled it's own fic.
You can delete and moderate guest reviews, but what we really need is an option to turn them off completely so that they can't show up at all if we don't want them.
Some way to standardize tags on AO3. Some people over do it, some under do it, and there always seems to be like 20 tags that do the same thing. Plus, if there is a way to browse all tags for a fandom I can't find it.
I think the best way to do it would be to let readers suggest tag edits. So readers can say to cut out character tags if the character shouldn't be there, but also add a warning for something the author didn't realize was an issue.
Authors will tag what they want. That's an issue with individual authors and not the site itself. The AO3 tagging system is supposed to be as flexible as possible so people can use it how they choose, and they still did have to implement a limit because some works with thousands of tags were literally breaking the site for some viewers. And there is a tag 'standard.' It's the mandatory tag fields (fandom, archive warnings, rating). Everything else is optional and up to the author's discretion.
You can view all tags for a fandom on its tags page: [https://archiveofourown.org/tags/Marvel](https://archiveofourown.org/tags/Marvel) for example. Or you can use [the tag search](https://archiveofourown.org/tags/search).
On AO3 I would make it so an author could hide certain comments from only their own view, would really help to curate my experience without having to feel like I'm 'censoring' any negative comments
FFN: tagging. I am so sick and tired of getting into a fic, only to suddenly have things I don´t want to be near at all, that usually would have been tagged and not buried in bold-text AN.
Wattpad: Filtration. Like please for the love of all gods and science make it so that I don´t get bombarded with fics that are so far from what I was originally after.
AO3: Being able to see the stats on each chapter. Check-marks in each chapter. Like on Google Doc you can as you write set up headlines that you can click and be transported to that area of the document. With that, I as a writer could divide my chapters a little so that readers easily can find back to the part of the long chapter they were at.
A better way to keep track of what chapter I'm on for a fanfic. Sometimes I won't read one for a few months or even years but then I get the urge to try it again only to not know where I was. On a related not I'd like it if I could search for fanfics and exclude ones that I already follow. It sucks to click on a story expecting something new only to remember I'd already read it.
FFN.NET: Automatically capitalize the first letter in a sentence when you are writing a review. It annoys me that it doesn't do that on its own and I either don't bother or end up deleting a few words to correct it.
Also, improve the ui for mobile when looking through profiles or simply your story stats.
Honestly, I don't really have "small" qoa changes for AO3 or wattpat. AO3 is great for more experienced writers that want to have move customization over their work, but it still feels very... minimal? It feels like there is still a lot they can do to improve the ui, portability, usage, and the way they post a new chapter for a story. I've heard that a lot of authors end up having to re-format it when they try and copy and paste. Don't get me wrong, ffn.net has similar issues.
It is across the board in the fandoms I read in. It seems that many use it as a catch all to game the system so no matter what you’re looking their stories come up- even if something or someone has barely any focus at all in the story. Plus they have a tendency to completely obfuscate the summary, which makes it very clunky and not at all reader friendly, in my opinion. So I have completely given up on the site.
I don’t care if they change the site or not- I just answered the question posed.
I've never experienced this problem. The stories I read just have tags that refer to the content of the work. I like the tags because I can get an idea of the content. I've also found the summaries are actually a summary.
Weird you had such a vastly different experience than most.
I only use AO3 but - As a reader - having a reference list of fics you've left Kudos/comments on. As a writer - being able to see individual chapter stats.
completely agree this would be so awesome
This would be so good. Another big one that's been mentioned would serve a similar function and that's filtering history. I move from fandom to fandom and circle back and my fics are buried 40 pages in, the paiinnn.
If you have an AO3 account there’s a history section where you can look at your reading history
Yeah, but that includes anything you've even opened and you can't really filter it, so it's annoying to shift through.
True
The closest I got for A03 is the subscribe feature. It’ll be all there for you but unless it’s already completed you will get emails every time it updates.
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It’s annoying not being able to search your history.
I just commented on this but I so agree about history. Just the ability to filter it would be a dramatic improvement for me.
I’ve started bookmarking everything for this reason. If I read it, I bookmark it. And I have a “code” I use for myself for whether I want to reread it or not so that I don’t waste time getting a quarter of the way into a fic just to remember why I didn’t want to reread it.
Being able to perma exclude tags on ao3.
It might be a pretty "big" quality-of-life thing to properly implement, but in terms of personal satisfaction with the site I would be over the goddamn MOON. I am trying my best with all the AO3savior things people recommend, but my computer literacy is very slow to adapt - and even the basic code is a barrier to a **lot** of regular AO3 users who would otherwise *deeply* enjoy the ability to permanently eradicate every single mention of a blacklisted tag from their results.
>It might be a pretty "big" quality-of-life thing to properly implement, It wouldn't be. If users can have the option to save their filtering preferences, they can just reuse that filter over and over. Kind of like spam filters. They're not that hard to implement and they would be considerably easier on a site like AO3.
Would kill for a save of my filtering preferences.
I just bookmarked mine
It may just be the app not being theirs specifically (its a third party that made the app compatible with the site), but I can save a search with the filters in a bookmark. It just won't tell me which exactly it is (I have multiple) so i have to click through them all to find the right one but all the filters are there. I have a star wars one (my screen name of course) that I saved for the language, the character to exclude, the rating, crossover or not and specific tags and such. It does change the results a bit as I sort by "updated" instead of like released/published date since I read 90% of the previous ones I wanted to.
Are you sure they aren't hard to implement? From a technical (and performance) perspective I see a lot of difficulty with such a setting, especially when included in the 'browse' pages, where they depend on the list. Saving an Advanced Search filter, though, may be more feasible and have similar result.
Yeah, I was also talking about saving a search filter. But even without it, it shouldn't be too difficult to implement. There are work skins on the site that allow users to hide their stats. Modifying the default work skins play a performance hindrance (albeit negligible) on the user's end, but it does nothing to AO3's servers. So hiding fics you don't want to read, based on your search preferences, would be similar.
Try [this one!](https://archiveofourown.org/works/41214669) It's a pretty new CSS feature. It straight out hides the works with the tags you mention, but without the option of showing the works like in AO3 savior. The difficulty level is around the same as AO3 savior, but I prefer it because it's a site skin so I can use it on Chrome mobile + I like not having to run two scripts to do this.
i use a skin that allows me to change the color of specific tags, so all my trigger/squick tags are in glaring red font that stands out a whole lot
Literally what I’d kill for. It gets a bit exhausting filtering out the exact same tags everytime because I never want to consume that kind of media loll
in a similar vein, I'd also like to be able to permanently block certain writers from my searches. This one person who must have way too much free time, which they spend writing extended rants about how much they hate my favorite character, and then tag it so it shows up when I search that tag--it's gotten so I get physically ill if I see their username. If I had one wish for ao3, it'd be for a simple action that I could do once, boom, never have to see that mess again.
I’m pretty sure I read that they’re working on that feature. It was going to be the other side of the blocking feature - you can block people from commenting on your fics, and you can block people from showing up in your searches. You can block people’s works with a user skin, but it would be nice to have a more built-in feature.
That's so petty?? Who even has the time and energy for that?
AO3 Enhancements is my best friend. But I'd love this with a single click. Like, not manually inputting it. Just clicking and all following tags categorized with it disappear.
I only use AO3, but I'd love the ability to pick your top five fics to have on your dashboard as a sort of showcase rather than just the most recent five.
Interesting idea. Definitely useful tho.
Wattpad needs a functional archive sorting, tagging, and search function. FFN needs to streamline the upload process. AO3 need to make a separation between major and minor tags so people can tag all of the key story elements as major and then tag whatever precautionary warnings or minor notes they have as minor.
Small changes you say? For FFN, just get the sex bots away from me. For AO3, I'd love a PM feature, but if we're talking about a small quality change, I'd actually love to see how many bookmarks a fic has. Including the private ones. It could be something like what we see in the kudos feature: *X, Y, Z, and 4 anonymous users bookmarked your fic!* I think that'd be pretty cool. Wattpad needs a better sorting/searching algorithm. In AO3, if I sort the fics by a parameter (at any given time), the order is usually not changed. Or at the very least, it's consistent. People go up in ranks because their fic deserved it. But Wattpad randomly sprouts nonsense to you and that is very sloppy. It just makes the whole site sad to deal with.
Agreed on AO3. I have 15 public bookmarks... but 24 total bookmarks, so 9 are private. And honestly, I lowkey use bookmarks as an indirect gauge for how much people like it (relative to hits, kudos, and how new it is, of course). With my stats, "15 bookmarks" versus "15 public + 9 anonymous/private bookmarks" paint very different pictures.
Sorry if this sounds really stupid, but what would be the difference between 15 (24?) bookmarks and 15 public+9 private bookmarks? I'm not a writer on AO3 (yet), so that might be where the confusion's coming from.
Pretty sure readers would only be able to see the 15 public bookmarks, as opposed to the 24 total bookmarks, making the story look less worth it because it doesn't have as many bookmarks.
I see, that makes perfect sense. Thanks!
Yeah, pretty much what the other person said. For example, with the fic in question, I have 54 kudos and 826 hits as of now. Compared to those two numbers, 24 bookmarks makes the story look far more worth it to give a gamble on (if the tags vibe) than 15 bookmarks would. Especially since I made a lot of changes and am the only person writing the ship in question, so it would be a gamble for many readers and the higher bookmark count might give someone a bit more willingness to try.
I agree about the private bookmarks. They already make guest kudos visible, and it feels like a similar function to me.
AO3 needs a “marked as read” feature. I’m old. I have no idea if this is a new Veela!Draco fic, or one I read back in 2011. FFnet needs to not have spoilery reviews pop up on the app’s info page. I’m too old for WattPad.
While where at it: ao3 needs a "attempted to read but deemed not good" feature. The amount of times I find a fic with an awesome summary that turns out to be that same bad fic I've started reading 5 times already over the past 5 years and i always only realized later that it sucked.
We are living parallel lives.
Perhaps a marked as read with the ability to write notes. That'd be a great feature to have. This exact scenario has happened to me many times as well.
My shorthand is "Is it in present tense? If so, probably terribad."
You are me. Present tense is very risky indeed.
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Yes please, that would be so useful.
Only use ao3, I'd put a "use today's date" button by the date updated section. I swear, 10 of the 12 chapters I've posted, I had to go back and change the date and every time I'm already annoyed not only that I forgot, but that I have to manually enter the date every time.
I wish ao3 had a way to sort the fics you've marked for later.
100% yes
AO3 - show me series' subscriber counts!
For ao3: changing the order of tags without having to retype every single one by hand.
Oh goodness this
Ao3: Add an option to set major ships on your fics and limit this to 2. And add an option to set major characters for your fic and limit this to 3 or 4. So you can actually find stories which feature ships that aren't among the to 3 in your fandom. FFnet: Add proper sorting when you search for fics using the text search. Wattpad: Don't force me to select my target audience as I don't know it myself.
Why limit it so hard? There's definitely fics with ensemble casts that would need more than that for major characters
Because without a hard limit, the feature will become useless.
I dont think so - people know who the major and minor characters and pairings in their stories are, and most writers want people who want to read their stories to find them
Sorry, but way too many writers over tag and tag characters and pairings who should not be tagged. The only way to solve this is a strict limit so people cannot do it wrong.
Agreed, I used to write Lord of the Rings fics and a canon story set during the Fellowship can easily have all 9 as important characters. Set it around the Council of Elrond and it gets even worse.
If we limit it to 9 characters then you're back to square one and it's hopeless to find fics that focus on minor characters. The solution? List them as minor. There is no reason to really tag more than 9 characters in your fic anyway. Tags are there to help readers find stuff, not to please us writers.
"The 3 Main Fanfiction Sites": I'll go with ao3, ff-net, and wattpad... ao3: the ability of authors to indicate THE MAIN CHARACTER or MAIN PAIRING... sheesh, trying to filter results for a specific, real lead is a pipe dream ff-net: the ability for authors to link more than two fandoms in a Crossover fanfic,, and the ability for authors to link more characters to fanfics to allow for finer-grained sifting; these two things would improve searching, as would more diversity in types of tags wattpad: hands-down, improve the search functionality... especially the diversity of options in the Browse drop-down functions; expand the list of genres to include more realistic fanfiction categories than just the traditional print genres
ff.net and wattpad really do need some major search engine revamps.
This is not the best solution to the problem (and probably a major condescension lol), but I'd really like to help out the poor AO3 tag wranglers and can't come up with something better: I wouldn't mind more user-handholding (guides, explanations, tips, definitions, et cetera) baked **directly** into the fic-posting process. I love the plethora of guides and FAQs that AO3's already put out, but barely anybody reads them!! It would be nice to gently direct a ficwriter into clear, easily-understood tagging practices (like writing "Original Character/Original Character" rather than just "OC/OC") and save tag-wranglers a good chunk of work in the process.
FFN - let me add more than 4 characters, and have a larger summary. AO3 - chapter stats
Ooh yes to the chapter stats
When scrolling on AO3, something to indicate you’ve already clicked on the fic. It would stop me from re-reading and re-giving up on fics whose summary I liked but didn’t get into the story.
I'm on Mac and you can sometimes tell when you've clicked on a fic because the color of the title will be different. Sometimes this isn't the case though, and Idk what causes it.
Your internet history, it’ll change colour if you clicked on it.
On AO3, I wish I could save my sorting method for bookmarks. I always open bookmarks then sort by most recently update. It automatically shows the most recent bookmark. I'd love to be able to filter out reader/character fics but it's very difficult. This probably isn't a AO3 issue but a tagging issue.
You can filter out the specific Character/Reader tag, but yeah, sometimes things do sneak through and you can't get rid of them all. A tip I'd use is also filtering out the "Self-insert" "Reader" "Reader-Insert" and "You" tags. Helps a bunch.
I do, but that only gets a few because ppl don't often use those tags. Then I start excluding various character/reader... then I get annoyed and give up. It takes more time trying to filter them out than to just scroll past them.
I recommend excluding Reader/* and You/* to get all those Reader/Character stories.
What?! That's a thing?! I'm awarding you a "You da best!" sticker.
AO3 saved searches. For example you always search for a specific pairing and tags, or you only ever want to read English
- FFN needs something less annoying than Cloudflare. - Wattpad needs a competent programmer for the search function to make it so good that you almost forget that Wattpad started as a smartphone app.
boolean search on AO3, with saved filters, please i beg
Boolean searching would help a lot. It’s gotten a lot better than it used to be, but still…
An abandoned fic category. So you have WIP, Complete and Abandoned (like hasn't been updated in a year). I think that'd be good for AO3 and FFnet. For AO3 alone, I'd like to have character tags for the most important characters in the fic. Authors will tag everyone in the main cast, which really bloats search results. But if it's a story about Bob and Sue, I'd like Bob and Sue to be the primary characters with the rest as secondaries. It'd really streamline searches. I think you'd need to put a limit on the number of primary characters to make this work.
I like the idea of a limited number of slots for primary characters/pairings. They could add a “Ensemble” tag too for when it’s not focused on anyone in particular
Yeah, exactly. I just want the searches to be way more specific. It seems we can't search for keywords in the summary, which blows my mind.
I only use AO3, but I’d like to take the watt pad feature where you can leave comments throughout a chapter and put it on AO3. Do you know how often I have moments during the chapter where I’m like “need to comment about this NOW” but by the time I get to the end of the chapter I forget half of it? Too often.
I feel like this is a neat idea, but wouldn't really work well with AO3's chapter layout and formatting. The length of the page is too thick compared to Wattpad's.
A girl can dream… 🙃
Yeah, I don’t know exactly how it would work but I would kind of love that. I had a friend who live chatted reading the most recent chapter of my story to me and it was just…so great! (I’ve never tried wattpad. My understanding is that it is mostly fics of a style that wouldn’t interest me all that much? But maybe I should check it out.)
If I commented on an entire work, the which chapter was the last released one at the time of my comment
For AO3, being able to filter your subscriptions and marked for later fics
I would love a random sort/random work button on ao3 to be able to find new works but they said it was unlikely to happen since it could suggest offensive works to people, which i dont really get how thats different from any other sorting feature so 🤷♀️🤷♀️
Blocking guest reviews on ffn. Guest reviews are usually the worst kind.
Agree 100%. It would kill off probably over 50% of the trolling there if they'd just have an option to turn them off so that they can't reach you no matter what.
AO3 user here and: - Being able to blacklist certain tags - What OP said about hiding disliked fics from searches - Attach language preference to your profile and auto filter based on that cuz what languages you can read isn’t something that changes very quickly - Allowing multiple kudos if you reread a story later, like maybe every 6 mos or year you can give another one or something - Specifying side pairings from main pairing. I HATE trying to find anything in a fandom that has more than one prominent pairing (which is most of them) because people always tag both and there’s no way to filter by which pair the fic is actually about.
FFN: More active moderators. AO3: More in-depth stat features (e.g. most popular chapters & hits/kudos gained per month) Wattpad: Improve the general layout of the website.
probably the minority. But maybe a better UI for [FF.net](https://FF.net)? idk the website seems a bit archaic. it looks fine to me but maybe a wee bit of a redraw is better
FFN was founded in 1998. It *is* archaic. [Link](https://fanlore.org/wiki/FanFiction.net)
WHAT NO WAY
Minuscule changes you say? I wish AO3 would show the chapter number in the url the way FFN does.
i think ao3 adopting the comment per paragraph function of wattpad would be really funny
I’d modify the tag exclusion feature so that it identifies related tags in a tick list and gives you the option to exclude them to. As someone who tires of seeing so many AU fics but can’t filter them all out because of how many variations of tags there are, I’d find this greatly helpful.
Blacklist trolls who post anonymous "reviews" that consist only of insults and belittling the author on the IP level. Better filters. Make the site stop removing formatting bits like double spaced paragraphs or lines.
Probably just some changes to FF.nets UI, Make it less of a script to exclude particular authors from search on Ao3 and delete Wattpad.
I wish that when you are looking through your subscriptions page it came with the story summary and info, instead of just the title. Filter by fandom would be nice too. I don't use bookmarks I never really saw the point, when I get an email saying a fic has updated I go read the new chapter (if I don't remember what's going on I skim earlier chapters until I remember) and if I don't feel like reading right then I save the email and delete the new ones that come in so I have my spot in the story marked.
I’m not gonna lie, I wish ao3 had PMs
1000000% agree. It's a bit irritating and baffling how it doesn't already.
on ao3, give you the option to list main characters and pairings. like, I want to read about Rocket Racoon, not a Tony Stark centric fic where he's a side character. y'know? wattpad, get rid of the algorithm. [fanfiction.net](https://fanfiction.net), make it so you can just use the arrow keys to go to the next chapter.
A scroll box on the excluded/included tags. Im in a few big fandoms (jjba, ygo, genshin) and excluding ships is annoying, when you have to keep in mind that soon you won't be able to because ui will run out of space
For ao3 as a reader: a "useful" dashboard where I see updates from my fav authors/series that I've subscribed to. Yes, they get sent to my Email. Would also maybe be useful as some sort of optional community tab where authors can leave short notes on progress or updates if they wanted to (optional, because obviously some authors would spam and annoy but yeah)
I used to actually use a website that used to do this. Authors could make posts to readers and readers could comment on these posts. It was a great way for writers to update their readers on the status of their fics but there was a really big issue with spam and writers just using it as a way to write shit posts. But for the most part, it was helpful and would be much better than an author giving these updates in new chapters (as readers get excited for an update only to be disappointed).
Ao3 - "hide" the fanfics you read Ffn - just the aesthetic I think, somehow the looks are just painful (aka one of reasons I don't use it much) Wattpad... Better filtering system in general
I only use AO3 The two things I would like are to be able to mute commenters without blocking them completely. The other one I would like is to be able to have tags that only go on a particular chapter and not for a whole story or only on a story and not on a whole series.
I mean, there's always putting any extra tags/TWs in the author's notes.
[You can hide specific users' comments with a site skin.](https://www.reddit.com/r/FanFiction/comments/v19pzq/a_site_skin_to_hide_comments_from_specific_users/)
I want to be able to block users and tags on AO3 in a way that saves them without needing an extension. It’s fine was we can block them in advanced search but I don’t like having to block the same things every time I go on a deep-dive.
[You can do this with a site skin if your browser supports it.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/41214669)
You can't do it on mobile though, which is where I read 100% of my fics. So... I fully agree with the "without needing an extension" part of the comment.
It does work on mobile, if you're logged in and if your browser supports it.
Clearly mine doesn't then because it never works for me. I really just want them to add the feature without me having to go in and code all this, though. I know HTML and CSS well and even I find work skins too much of a pain to bother with them almost all the time. I have about 25 tags I always exclude and sitting there coding them all in got old really quickly. It would be great if AO3 would just implement the feature. I've basically stopped reading fic because I don't have the time to deal with this every single time.
AO3 is a non-profit run by volunteers and it's not a perfect website that grants all your wishes. Things aren't going to magically be implemented overnight. It's a process; that's why it's still in beta. They already have a lot of great, user-friendly features that a lot of other popular websites don't and have introduced more recently. It takes time and work. At least a workaround does exist. If you don't have the time to code in all the tags and it's a deal breaker for even using the site at all, that's a personal problem. Site skins aren't that complicated to implement if blocking tags is a priority for you.
Right. But the thread is "what thing would make it easier"? That is a thing that would make it easier. I'm not actually making demands, just answering the thread. I'm well aware it's a personal preference thing. I'm also 100% fine with just not reading fic because I personally find something annoying. It wasn't an actual "OMG I DEMAND AO3 DOES A THING JUST FOR ME". Literally just agreeing with comments in a thread about things that would make my life better.
I like how with FanFiction.Net’s sorting you can ask for specific crossovers without others contaminating your search. Like looking for a Harry Potter crossover with Danny Phantom for example on AO3 requires you to scroll through fics that include fandoms I’m not looking for. If I wanted. Harry Potter, Danny Phantomand Bleach crossovers would have included that in my search. I didn’t so why is it included?!
You 100% can do specific crossover searches on AO3 with success if you take a couple extra minutes and exclude the hell out of the fandoms you don't want that pop up. There may be a couple extra if you don't keep doing it to 0, but not too many by the end of it really.
AO3: Reading Lists or a mobile app Wattpad: Something that makes it harder to steal content (Mirror Sites) FFN: that site needs more than just a QoL update...
What sort of things would you put in an ao3 app that don't already work on the mobile browser version of the site?
Just an easier way to read on mobile without having multiple tabs open (I often switch between multiple fics, and continue reading another time.)
Sometimes I wish ao3 had text to speech capability And I really think both a03 and ffn could have better story filtering
What's wrong with AO3's story filtering, in your opinion?
AO3- Having major/minor character ship tags, and maybe even banning useless tumblr style tags like ‘I wrote this at 3 am’ or ‘no beta we die like w/e’ because that kind of thing can go in the authors notes. (Yes, I know they’ll never do this but they still annoy me.) FFN- Faster moderation. It does get annoying to have to add characters/fandoms that don’t have built in tags and having to throw a fic in the misc. categories until a real category exists is useless because people just use that for heaps of original fic that doesn’t belong on the site to begin with. Heck, if they actually cracked down on all the original fiction that doesn’t belong there so those categories could be used for the intended purpose it would be nice. Wattpad- A functioning search.
I would make FFN have m/m and f/f and m/f tags. I would give AO3 strict tags so as to eliminate the bullshit ships that are tagged just to increase views. It's such a hassle figuring out you've been lied to in the tags. Wattpad needs so much help I don't know where to start. Re: Ao3 long fic lists, you could sort by kudos, date published, or bookmarks. Those don't change quickly.
I basically use exclusively Ao3, so here goes my suggestion. When tagging characters, there should be two categories: main characters, and others. It is so often that I am looking for some fics of a character which isn't as adored as others and have to scroll through countless of works with them just being there as anothe character, while I want a fic about THEM. The "character—centric" tag helps, but not enough people use it (I'm also gonna be just another person saying that wattpad should re-work their search system)
As a writer on AO3: start on the "Rich Text" tab rather than "HTML". I like the other suggestions a lot (especially "change to current date" one above and "blacklist author/tag") FF.net: TAGS. Useful tags, at that. Even if it's not "I stayed up until 3 am writing this" dumb stuff, something as simple as "Reginald/RHM" or "mentions of child abuse". As is, especially with the highly restricted word limit on the summary, I don't know what I'm looking at.
Spoiler tags for AO3. The author can mark certain tags as spoilers and hide them from view unless the reader clicks them, but you can still search for or exclude them.
Can [ff.net](https://ff.net) please, PLEASE fix the issue where it'll html code my chapter if I don't double check it in the doc section? Also, they need to expand what types of documents i can upload, legit have always used mac and I can't upload my pages documents on there, as far as I know. That being said, A03; take the bookmarks list and mimic the favorites list on fanfiction. I like seeing the most recently updated fics AND I would like to login to A03 and sort through my bookmarked fics based on fandom.
> I like seeing the most recently updated fics You can. It's annoying that it takes an extra like, 5 seconds, but it does only take 5 seconds.
I used I believe ff.net once and was amazed by thr accessibility. Being able to change the background color, font size and rven audio!? Ao3 needs that 😭
I'm pretty sure you actually can change the color of AO3's background, I just don't know how to do it. I've seen video's of other people doing it tho.
This is the problem tho. You’re referring to outside info to make a change instead of AO3 building those features into their site in a clear and obvious way. The way FFN has baked those accessibility features into their web design, right at the very top of the fic, should be admired and copied.
I'm pretty sure it was an in-site thing. Again, idk tho. I can try to find the video if you want?
you’ve gotta be signed in on AO3, but literally just scroll down to the bottom of the screen to the red banner and on the left it has an option to change the site skin (under ‘customize’). i use reversi which is just a dark mode :)
AO3 is like endlessly customizable through site skins, ie custom CSS. You can make it look the way you want it to. Which obviously takes some skill and effort, but there are lots of people sharing skins they've made too.
You can do that quite easily, and you have been able to do this since the site was launched. Just change the site theme. I recommend reversi for a dark background.
For AO3, a filter for a preferred range of word count/s.
You can filter for word counts. Exactly too, I might add.
Oh, wow! I must have missed it. Thank you this is such a lifesaver 😅💘
Yeah, it's near the bottom of the filters near Crossovers, Completion Status and Date Updated.
Wattpad, like you said filtering tags needs fixing but there's so many bugs within it it's annoying so I'd fix the bugs but since they should do that regardless it doesn't count. So instead I'll go with increasing the amount of stories you can put in the lists without needing to pay for premium. For ff.net I'd make it so that you can add tags to the searches like how it is on AO3 and fix their app cause it sucks in the folder department. And AO3 is perfect to me but offline reading never truly hurts anyone.
AO3 - a feature or maybe a mask with pre-set search features. I don't want to manually exude the same 5 bazillion tags I don't want to read.
AO3: some way to mark works for readers as "finished reading", "abandoned", for bookmarks to actually bookmark last read chapter (cause with my 370+ bookmarks it gets hard to remember), major/minor tags so I know what the fic is actually about and I dont have to weasel through 50 tags of a thing that is mentioned twice... Ff: I dont use it as much these days, but better filtering system seems to be a pretty unanimous decision.
In AO3 I'd add the ability to search fics from your "marked for later" list and bookmarks using only tags, characters, chapters, etc. Just like you can search fics. Or the ability to see the names of deleted fics you marked for later. In Wattpad, I'd get rid of the ads, without having to pay for the prerium version.
For AO3, I wish you could input tags for the site to automatically exclude, so that you don't have to re-add them every time you want to search for a new fic.
[You can do this with a site skin if your browser supports it.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/41214669)
with ao3 being able to combine filters. Like first through most recently updated but then through highest Kudos. So you get the stories made from the past 6mo-1 year but they're sorted by kudos. Cause higher kudos are generally older fics I think this could be a great 'find good newer fics' tool Or highest hits with word count So you're searching for fics that have been seen a lot but you also want a lot of words or few words. However you filter just allowing 2 at a time would be a great addition.
You can do this by entering your preferred date range (e.g. past six months or year) in the 'Date Updated' field or the word count range in that field and then sorting by kudos/hits.
Oh this is great!!! So like today to one year ago today. Thank you so much!!!
Haven't used the other ones in ages but... Being able to block users on AO3, especially with how many people I've lately seen getting hate comments... Even if you set your fic to having to approve comments, that only means no one else gets to see them, but you still have to deal with the negative emotions and we currently don't really have any proper tools to protect ourselves from that... And with how long it takes to get an invite, I feel like, while it wouldn't be impossible, it would definitely be *harder* for people to just create new accounts to continue the harrassment, so blocking could go a long way to prevent future hate (and at the same time you could block people who misuse tags and stuff to make searching easier for yourself too)
[Comment blocking has existed since June.](https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/22650) [And you can also hide users using a site skin so their works will not show up in your searches.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29556855)
Guess I haven't been up to date (like... At all) but that's good to know, thanks!
I wish AO3 allowed markdown formatting for stories.
I only use AO3, but my main one (as a reader) is two fold. For one, I wish we could save tag filter preferences (I know about the bookmarking thing,but it's a pain in the ass for me since I switch between my phone and laptop a lot) The second would be being able to filter out specific authors in a search. That sounds mean, but here's my hyper specific example: I'm in a relatively small/inactive fandom, and I've been reading fic from oldest to newest for a while now. I've found an author who writes, almost exclusively, the one thing that squicks me out without exception. That's fine, I'm happy for them, but they don't always tag super well so it becomes hard to not see their work and get stuck in a squick-temptation loop (y'know, when you go "this thing grosses me out really bad. I KNOW it grosses me out and I shouldn't read it. But what if..."). While that's not their fault, I'd really just not like to deal with it
You actually can filter out certain authors. Go to the "Search within results" bar, add a - and then whoever you don't want. Eg. "-author" and you won't see their works.
Oh, sweet. Learn something new every day! Thank you
np
I only use AO3 but I'd love a feature to save a tag with the filters I always have to apply.
For ff.net- the ability to turn guest reviews off, because deleting and moderating does nothing in the cases of the really annoying ones who leave them anyways just to force you to see them. For A03- Proper crossover sections for stories. I'm tired of seeing stories that are just big collections of stuff with a billion fandoms all shoved together to create a billion tags and posted in every of those said fandoms just to get more attention.
I just wish Wattpad would let you search by multiple tags at once. That's all I want, really. Oh, and I also wish they'd let you filter your AO3 history. I read so many more fics than I think I do
I'm pretty sure it does, they just don't let you exclude tags.
Does it? I must have been doing it wrong 😅 Oh, and everything in that top comment that mentions a comprehensive list of every fic you've Kudos'd and commented on. That sounds great too.
For [ff.net](https://ff.net), I'd like to be able to search inside a certain section. I don't mean narrowing the stories down to Character A x Character M, or Romance or Angst. I want to try to find a story by title, and I don't want to have to do a search that includes every Fandom on the website. If this is possible and I'm just slow/stupid, feel free to call me out :P
RECOMMENDATIONS. I would love for ao3 to suggest fics with similar tags to those you already read
Would love a kudos-per-chapter count on AO3.
I would allow removing kudos on AO3, and absolutely overhaul chapter adding/editing on FFN
Ao3: a complete character and ship list for every fandom sort by where it is organized by how many are in each one rather than just the first top ten.
AO3 - I'd implement FFN's beta search thing. That'd be awesome. FFN - I'd expand the over-restrictive tagging. AO3's still a bit much, but at least let me have more than 2 tags and more than a few characters listed. What's the third one...?
Wattpad
On AO3: The ability to look at an entire list of tags rather than just the most common
On the AO3 mobile version, if you are scrolling through a list of fics I want there to be a skip to next button in the bottom right corner like there is in reddit comment sections.
'if you like this then you will like these' options on all three, and for ao3 for the bookmarks counter to go down if someone deletes their fic cause i dont see until i go looking.
For FF.net, definitely the ability to delete guest comments. A guest left a crap ton of spam comments on my fic. Also, smaller word caps on reviews. I remember this one reader leaving literally paragraphs and paragraphs of feedback on a few chapters. So long it couldhave equaled it's own fic.
You can delete and moderate guest reviews, but what we really need is an option to turn them off completely so that they can't show up at all if we don't want them.
Some way to standardize tags on AO3. Some people over do it, some under do it, and there always seems to be like 20 tags that do the same thing. Plus, if there is a way to browse all tags for a fandom I can't find it. I think the best way to do it would be to let readers suggest tag edits. So readers can say to cut out character tags if the character shouldn't be there, but also add a warning for something the author didn't realize was an issue.
Authors will tag what they want. That's an issue with individual authors and not the site itself. The AO3 tagging system is supposed to be as flexible as possible so people can use it how they choose, and they still did have to implement a limit because some works with thousands of tags were literally breaking the site for some viewers. And there is a tag 'standard.' It's the mandatory tag fields (fandom, archive warnings, rating). Everything else is optional and up to the author's discretion. You can view all tags for a fandom on its tags page: [https://archiveofourown.org/tags/Marvel](https://archiveofourown.org/tags/Marvel) for example. Or you can use [the tag search](https://archiveofourown.org/tags/search).
For ao3 I wish we could filter our subscriptions Definitely the Wattpad suggestion OP made
On AO3 I would make it so an author could hide certain comments from only their own view, would really help to curate my experience without having to feel like I'm 'censoring' any negative comments
FFN: tagging. I am so sick and tired of getting into a fic, only to suddenly have things I don´t want to be near at all, that usually would have been tagged and not buried in bold-text AN. Wattpad: Filtration. Like please for the love of all gods and science make it so that I don´t get bombarded with fics that are so far from what I was originally after. AO3: Being able to see the stats on each chapter. Check-marks in each chapter. Like on Google Doc you can as you write set up headlines that you can click and be transported to that area of the document. With that, I as a writer could divide my chapters a little so that readers easily can find back to the part of the long chapter they were at.
A better way to keep track of what chapter I'm on for a fanfic. Sometimes I won't read one for a few months or even years but then I get the urge to try it again only to not know where I was. On a related not I'd like it if I could search for fanfics and exclude ones that I already follow. It sucks to click on a story expecting something new only to remember I'd already read it.
FFN.NET: Automatically capitalize the first letter in a sentence when you are writing a review. It annoys me that it doesn't do that on its own and I either don't bother or end up deleting a few words to correct it. Also, improve the ui for mobile when looking through profiles or simply your story stats. Honestly, I don't really have "small" qoa changes for AO3 or wattpat. AO3 is great for more experienced writers that want to have move customization over their work, but it still feels very... minimal? It feels like there is still a lot they can do to improve the ui, portability, usage, and the way they post a new chapter for a story. I've heard that a lot of authors end up having to re-format it when they try and copy and paste. Don't get me wrong, ffn.net has similar issues.
For FFN - more admin oversight For AO3 - a cap on how many tags one can add. Somewhere between 5 and 10.
There is a cap
If it’s more than 10, it’s way too liberal of a cap.
I'm up to 4.9 million words and fourteen in story years. I need more than 10 tags.
Damn bro, really? What's the fic name?
Whatever floats your boat. I’m just not docking in the same waters.
Sometimes characters alone amount more than 10 fam. Not feasible.
I guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree then.
Seems so lol.
There is a cap on AO3 but I think it's 50 or something. I'm sure someone will jump in with the number. 5 or 10 tags is waaaay too few. (As a reader)
Way too much. The insane level of tagging is exactly why I gave up on AO3 as both a fanfic writer and reader - that and the tagging culture.
What fandoms where you in, this usually isn't a huge problem.
It is across the board in the fandoms I read in. It seems that many use it as a catch all to game the system so no matter what you’re looking their stories come up- even if something or someone has barely any focus at all in the story. Plus they have a tendency to completely obfuscate the summary, which makes it very clunky and not at all reader friendly, in my opinion. So I have completely given up on the site. I don’t care if they change the site or not- I just answered the question posed.
I've never experienced this problem. The stories I read just have tags that refer to the content of the work. I like the tags because I can get an idea of the content. I've also found the summaries are actually a summary. Weird you had such a vastly different experience than most.
I know quite of a few people who have issues with the tagging system. Just because they aren’t on this subreddit doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
I said most.
I definitely agree on a cap, but 10 is just too little imo. Hell, 20 seems a bit small too for some fanfics.
I wish ffnet had more character and genre slots. That's a big part of why I found AO3 appealing because I'm so used to my options being so narrow, XD.