Archive of Our Own ^beta

Over the past month, we rolled out behind-the-scenes upgrades and quality-of-life improvements across the site, including the addition of username links and chapter numbers to kudos and comment emails, respectively. We also made some major privacy and security enhancements, such as removing the email, birthday, and location fields from profiles and checking new passwords against known data breaches.

Special thanks and welcome to first-time contributors anna, Liz Watkins, Riya K, and theamandawang!

Credits

• Coders: Abhinav Gupta, anna, Amy Lee, Bilka, Brian Austin, Ceithir, Connie Feng, Domenic Denicola, EchoEkhi, Hamham6, kitbur, Liz Watkins, marcus8448, Riya K, sarken, Scott, slavalamp, talvalin, theamandawang, weeklies
• Code reviewers: Bilka, Brian Austin, Ceithir, HamHam6, james_, lydia-theda, marcus8448, redsummernight, sarken, Scott, weeklies
• Testers: Allonautilus, ana, Anh P, Aster, Bilka, Brian Austin, calamario, choux, Dre, Keladry, Lute, lydia-theda, Pent, redsummernight, Runt, Sanity, sarken, Teyris, therealmorticia, weeklies, wichard

Details

0.9.420

On July 15, we massively improved the user search used by admins.

• [AO3-6565] - We've improved the user search feature available to admins by moving it to Elasticsearch and adding the ability to search by past email addresses and usernames.
• [AO3-7042] - Instead of redirecting to the main Collections page, we now give a 404 error if you try to access the collections page for a nonexistent user, work, or collection.
• [AO3-7004] - We've added a database index to make it faster for database admins to search for comments using a specific guest name.

0.9.421

Following some email-related changes in our July 24 deploy, embedded images are now always stripped from comment emails, and usernames in kudos emails now link to the users' dashboards.

• [AO3-3154] - When you receive a kudos notification email, the names of users who have left kudos now link to the users' dashboards.
• [AO3-6060] - Even though they no longer had access to tag comment pages, former tag wranglers would still receive email and inbox notifications of replies to their old tag comments. This was both annoying and confusing, so we've stopped it from happening.
• [AO3-6746] - If you changed your username or pseud name and you had some chapters that you co-created with another user, the chapter bylines would not always get updated with your new name. We've changed this so the cache is refreshed more reliably.
• [AO3-6929] - The list of gift exchange sign-ups visible to collection maintainers now includes the pseud and username of signed-up users, instead of just their pseud.
• [AO3-7011] - Using the Tab key to navigate in desktop Safari used to select hidden inputs, causing the focus indicator to temporarily disappear. We've fixed it so only visible links and inputs receive focus.
• [AO3-7032] - If you tried to add your email to the invitation queue when it was already part of the queue, you would see two copies of the same error message. Now it only shows the error once.
• [AO3-7065] - We fixed some intermittent failures in the automated tests for the bookmark importing tool used by Open Doors.
• [AO3-7052] - We did a schema dump to capture what the current data structure looks like before we upgrade to Rails 7.2.
• [AO3-7053], [AO3-7054], [AO3-7067], [AO3-7068] - We updated a whole bunch of gems and GitHub actions: reviewdog/action-rubocop, awalsh128/cache-apt-pkgs-action, nokogiri, and thor.
• [AO3-5352] - We prepared the preface of work downloads that are attached to work deletion emails for translation.
• [AO3-7001] - As an anti-abuse measure, we now strip embedded images from comment notification emails even when image embeds are enabled on the site itself.

0.9.422 & 0.9.423

On July 28, we made a number of small improvements all around the site. There were some issues while deploying these changes, so we did another release to fix it all up on the same day.

• [AO3-5609] - We stopped sending subscription notifications for works hidden by admins, since hidden works are inaccessible to other users.
• [AO3-7006] - When a comment contains an HTML list, the list numbers or bullet points no longer overlap with the commenter's icon.
• [AO3-7024] - You'll no longer get an incorrect success message if you mark items in your inbox as read without selecting any comments.
• [AO3-5476] - We cleaned up some unused code in the works controller.
• [AO3-7064] - We updated the gems we use for automated testing.
• [AO3-7072] - We updated the unicode gem to solve some issues with developing the AO3 software on Macs with Apple Silicon chips.
• [AO3-5346] - Collection maintainers get an email notification when matches in a gift exchange have finished generating. We've improved the text of this email and prepared it for translation.
• [AO3-6484] - We made a small change to the code that generates the HTML class names we use for hiding work blurbs by muted users. We were hoping this tweak would improve performance, but unfortunately it had no effect, so we'll have to try again.
• [AO3-6997] - If an Open Doors archivist tries to leave kudos while logged in to an archivist account, they'll get an error message telling them to log in with their personal account instead.
• [AO3-7015] - Work blurbs now contain an invisible code comment with the work's update date, to make it easier for developers of third-party tools to automate downloads from index pages like tags, bookmarks, and search result listings.
• [AO3-7021] - To make it easier to filter or search using work languages, we've added the language codes on the Languages page.
• [AO3-7057] - We now provide any applicable error messages when an admin attempts to send an invitation directly to an email and something goes wrong.

0.9.424

On August 5, we deployed another batch of miscellaneous fixes.

• [AO3-5025] - The Tag Wrangling committee can now use the Rich Text editor to edit the Wrangling Guidelines pages.
• [AO3-7076] - We fixed some unwanted shadows that Chrome was adding to radio buttons and checkboxes.
• [AO3-7088] - We fixed some flaky automated tests related to importing works from LiveJournal.
• [AO3-7074] - We removed some unused CSS from our default site skin.
• [AO3-6580] - We updated the account creation confirmation page's title from "Create Registration" to "Account Created" so that it's clearer you've successfully made an account.
• [AO3-6818] - When an admin bans an email from being used for guest comments, that email is now also banned from requesting invitations.
• [AO3-7026] - When we run a spam check on edited comments by new users, we now tell the spam checker that it's an edit.
• [AO3-7046] - We migrated the subscriptions table so it can hold more rows and we won't run out of room in the future.

0.9.425

On August 19, we deployed an important change to account security that checks new AO3 passwords to see if they've been part of a known data breach. We also began allowing CSS variables in site skins.

• [AO3-7073] - To better protect users' privacy, we've removed the preferences and fields to display emails, birthdays, and locations on user profiles.
• [AO3-7091] - We stopped using fixtures in our integration tests.
• [AO3-7098] - We updated cache-apt-pkgs-action again.
• [AO3-7099] - We bumped the version of actions/checkout – a utility that helps run automated tests on our code – from version 4 to version 5.
• [AO3-3071] - Comment emails now include the chapter number, so you don't have to follow the comment link to know where exactly it was left.
• [AO3-7087] - To improve account security, we updated our password change process to prevent users from choosing passwords that are known to be compromised on other sites. (If you missed our post back on World Password Day, we also have some tips for keeping your AO3 account secure!)
• [AO3-7090] - We changed links in emails to be HTTPS instead of HTTP.
• [AO3-7093] - We added an automated test to make sure the fixtures used for seeding development databases result in valid records.
• [AO3-7094] - We now allow limited use of CSS custom properties in site skins! You can find more information in the skins help text.

0.9.426

We upgraded to Rails 7.2 on August 26.

• [AO3-7058] - We updated our version of Rails from 7.1 to 7.2.
• [AO3-7095] - We added more example admin and user accounts with a greater variety of roles to our basic development dataset, which will make it easier for coders to work on things that require specific access levels.

Over the past few weeks, we completed several important infrastructure updates including upgrading to Elasticsearch 8, finishing the transition to Rails 7.1, and migrating the bookmarks table to create room for more bookmarks.

We also made some user-facing improvements, such as fixing various access and display bugs; clarifying some error messages, form labels, and page titles; and adding chapter numbers to comments in your inbox.

Special thanks and welcome to first-time contributors Abhinav Gupta, hk-contribs, TemperedPetals, and Vemmy RM! We'd also like to thank Dhiraj Mishra for reporting a security issue.

Credits

• Coders: Abhinav Gupta, AliceLsr, Bilka, Brian Austin, calm, ceithir, Connie Feng, EchoEkhi, Hamham6, hk-contribs, kitbur, sarken, slavalamp, TemperedPetals, Vemmy RM, weeklies
• Code reviewers: Bilka, Brian Austin, ceithir, Coding-Hen, Hamham6, sarken, weeklies
• Testers: Bilka, Booksarelife, Brian Austin, Caitlynne, calamario, choux, Deniz, Keladry, LilyP, Lute, lydia-theda, Sam Johnsson, Sanity, Teyris, therealmorticia, wichard

Details

0.9.414

In the process of installing the new Elasticsearch servers, we upgraded to Elasticsearch 8 on June 24!

• [AO3-6259] - We upgraded the Elasticsearch gem to version 8.18.0.

0.9.415

On June 25, we finished off the last remaining parts of the update to Rails 7.1.

• [AO3-6894] - We flipped the remaining configuration values to use the new defaults from Rails 7.1.

0.9.416

Our deploy on July 1 updated older language on the work search and filtering forms from "Author/Artist" to "Creator" and added chapter numbers to comments in your inbox, among other improvements.

• [AO3-6050] - When accessing the Tag Wrangling page showing all relationship tags related to a character, tags would always be shown in alphabetical order, regardless of sort order. Now, tag wranglers can additionally sort through the tags by how many times they were used or by creation date.
• [AO3-6273] - Sometimes, when you used the "Post Draft" button on a draft, the word count of the publicly posted work would be blank. It should now always be the correct number.
• [AO3-6373] - If you blocked a user who had previously commented on your work, you could no longer freeze their comment. We fixed this, so you can now block users and freeze their comment threads in any order without problems.
• [AO3-6735] - We fixed that when you left a comment on a news posts with comment moderation enabled, the resulting comment email would incorrectly tell you that the comment was on a work with moderated comments.
• [AO3-6936] - We changed the browser page title on subscriptions pages to a format that matches other user pages: "username - Subscriptions | Archive of Our Own."
• [AO3-6971] - We fixed an error that occurred if the "No Fandom" tag didn't exist, for example in a development installation of the Archive.
• [AO3-7010] - Trying to access the chapter index of a work that's both in an unrevealed collection and hidden by an admin used to result in an error 500. We've fixed that so it now results in a normal permission error.
• [AO3-7017] - If you knew the ID of a draft work or a work restricted to logged in users, you could access a few subpages of the work that revealed its title and blurb. Since that information isn't meant to be public, we've once again restricted access to these pages.
• [AO3-7016] - We updated the gem we use to run database schema migrations of large tables.
• [AO3-5345] - Collection maintainers get an email notification if they run matching in a gift exchange and the sign-ups are invalid. We've improved the text of this email and prepared it for translation.
• [AO3-6541] - We changed the works search and the sorting and filtering options to use "Creator" instead of "Author/Artist" to match the terminology used by the rest of the site.
• [AO3-6750] - Comments in your inbox now include the chapter number, so you don't have to follow the comment link to know where exactly it was left.
• [AO3-6807] - If you tried to use an invalid URL for an external work or in your collection sign-up, you would sometimes get a 500 error. We fixed that so now you will always get a proper error message telling you that the URL is invalid.
• [AO3-6999] - We removed some duplicate code for sending comment emails to admins.

0.9.417 & 0.9.418

On July 3 and July 4, we ran out of rows in the database table that stores bookmarks, so we had to move them to a larger table that can hold them all! Now you can once again add your own bookmarks to the 647 million we already have.

• [AO3-7031] - We migrated the bookmarks table to be able to hold more rows and then migrated all other table columns that refer to bookmarks to also support the larger bookmark IDs.

0.9.419

On July 12, we deployed an assortment of minor changes that included allowing the accent-color property in skins and clarifying some error messages.

• [AO3-6795] - When you were excluding a tag in a search and then made a syntax error when trying to filter those results, you'd get a 500 error. We've fixed this so it instead tells you that your query has a syntax error.
• [AO3-6989] - If you tried to view the pseuds list for a user who didn't exist, you'd get redirected to the People Search page. That made sense in a way, but wasn't terribly consistent with other nonexistent pages. Now you'll get a 404 error instead, which makes it easier to check for typos in the URL you entered.
• [AO3-7007] - We fixed a 500 error when a guest tried to add a work to a collection by directly going to the "Add To Collection" URL.
• [AO3-7025] - We fixed a typo in one of the CSS properties in the Creating a Skin help pop-up.
• [AO3-7022] - We changed the default comment setting for news posts to "Only registered users can comment."
• [AO3-5344] - We prepared the email that you get when your work is invited to a collection for translation.
• [AO3-7019] - You will now get an informative error message if you try to change your username to the same name as you currently have, instead of it silently doing nothing.
• [AO3-7033] - When you access a skin, the skin title is now part of the browser page title.
• [AO3-7041] - You can now use the accent-color property in site and work skins!
• [AO3-6852] - We removed some old unused scripts for testing gift exchange matching.

In May and June, we made some security additions for user accounts by adding email notifications when an account's username or password is changed. We also made some improvements around tag sets and challenge signups. As one more security change, we also permanently disabled image embedding in guest comments.

A special thank you to our new contributors Ashley Tan, dismayonnaise, Grayson von Goetz, Jen Mann, kitbur, and ryelle!

Credits

• Coders: Ashley Tan, Bilka, Brian Austin, Ceithir, Connie Feng, dismayonnaise, EchoEkhi, Grayson von Goetz, Hamham6, Jen Mann, kitbur, marcus8448, ryelle, Sarken, Scott, slavalamp, weeklies
• Code reviewers: Bilka, Brian Austin, Ceithir, james_, lydia-theda, redsummernight, slavalamp, Sarken, weeklies
• Testers: Bilka, Brian Austin, choux, Deniz, Eskici, LilyP, Lute, lydia-theda, Maine, megidola, Runt, Sam Johnsson, Sarken, Scott, Tal, Teyris, therealmorticia, wichard

Details

0.9.409

On May 11, we deployed some improvements to tag sets and added an email notification whenever the username on your account is changed.

• [AO3-5513] - Admins can now successfully create and rename media tags without running into 500 errors or caching issues.
• [AO3-5714] - When a canonical fandom and a non-canonical character or relationship were added to the same tag set, the non-canonical tags were automatically listed under the fandom. However, this is just how the tags were displayed in the tag set. They weren't really connected to the fandom, which meant they weren't included in autocompletes and couldn't be used in challenge sign-ups. We've stopped automatically listing the non-canonical tags under the fandom and will instead only do it if the tag set moderators set up an association (which will also make the non-canonical tags usable in sign-ups and help ensure they appear in the autocomplete).
• [AO3-5919] - We updated the code for kudos emails to avoid using a method that wasn't particularly efficient.
• [AO3-6757] - When an admin hides a comment, any embedded images in the hidden comment will now be replaced with the image URLs.
• [AO3-6844] - We fixed a whole bunch of display and page structure issues on pages that list the tags in a tag set.
• [AO3-6977] - We've started spam checking edits to comments from new users and stopped spam checking any comments a work creator leaves on their own work.
• [AO3-6981] - To improve account security, we now send you an email when you (or someone logged in to your account) change your username.
• [AO3-6984] - Our dependency updater bumped our version of net-imap to 0.5.7. It's not something we use, but keeping dependencies up to date is good.
• [AO3-6988] - We started caching the package installs involved in our automated tests, making each test run faster.
• [AO3-6990] - We bumped our version of the rack gem to 2.2.14 to get the latest security fix.

0.9.410

On May 16, we added an email notification whenever the password of your account is changed. We also made a number of small improvements all around the site.

• [AO3-5712] - Under certain circumstances, it was possible to sign up for a challenge using a character or relationship that wasn't permitted by the challenge's tag set. Now you'll get an error if you try to do that.
• [AO3-6267] - If a draft chapter was added to a work in your History, your History would lie to you and say an update to the work was available. Now it will only tell you an update is available if a new chapter has been published since you last accessed the work.
• [AO3-6627] - Whenever a site admin tried to update the roles for a user who already had roles outside the admin's purview, those existing roles would be removed. (For example, when a Tag Wrangling admin gave the tag wrangler role to a user who had the Open Doors archivist role, the user would lose their archivist role.) We've fixed it so any existing roles will stay in place.
• [AO3-6994] - We fixed an issue that was causing our spam checker to run on comments from accounts with recently changed email addresses.
• [AO3-6005] - We used feature tests somewhere we should've been using unit tests, so we changed them over.
• [AO3-6975] - At some point the admin setting for how long to keep around unactivated accounts had become disconnected from the code it was meant to control. We fixed this so the setting once again affects the right piece of code.
• [AO3-6970] - When the Policy & Abuse committee hides a work, you get an automatic email to notify you. To prepare for some future changes, we've updated the email text to allow for multiple works in the same email.
• [AO3-6973] - Another account security enhancement: you'll now get an email when you (or someone accessing your account) change or reset your password.

0.9.411

On May 24, we deployed an improvement to word counts for multichapter works on the Statistics page. We also took steps to fight abuse in guest comments by preventing them from ever displaying embedded images.

• [AO3-3818] - On some specific browsers on certain devices, leaving comments or submitting support tickets would result in an error. We've now fixed that.
• [AO3-4190] - Every time invitations were sent, the log on the site settings page updated to say the settings had been modified. We've fixed it so it will only say the settings have been updated when an admin updates them.
• [AO3-7000] - One of the external links in the Creating a Skin help pop-up pointed to a site that had been taken over by a crypto magazine, so we've replaced it with a new resource for learning about CSS.
• [AO3-6995] - In a previous release, we tried to drop an unused database column. Unfortunately, we had to put it back when it turned out Rails was still looking for the column due to caching. We've now made a code change that will let us drop the column for real after a future release.
• [AO3-5270] - The yearly word counts on your Statistics page will now only count words written in chapters posted in that year. That means if you add a chapter to a WIP you started last year, the words you wrote last year will still count toward 2024's total instead of being added to 2025's total.
• [AO3-5347] - The notification you get when someone cites your work as a related work has now been prepared for translation.
• [AO3-6092] - A while ago, we unintentionally fixed a bug where the chapter title didn't display in Entire Work mode if the work only had one posted chapter. Now we've added an automated test to make sure we don't unintentionally break it again.
• [AO3-6684] - The close button on the banner we use for sitewide announcements uses an ×, which typically makes sense if you're looking at the page, but which gets read as "multiplication sign" if you're using a screen reader. That was confusing, so we've made sure screen readers will now say "hide banner" instead.
• [AO3-6967] - We've added a second save button to the top of tag edit pages to make things a little more convenient when the page is long and a wrangler is just changing something at the top of the form.
• [AO3-6987] - Under certain circumstances, we strip embedded images from certain fields. We used to just show the image URL when we did that, but now we show all of the HTML.
• [AO3-6991] - As a safety measure, guest comments with embedded images will always show the HTML instead of embedded images. (This includes existing guest comments.)

0.9.412

On June 5, we deployed a small release with some bug fixes.

• [AO3-6166] - If you knew the ID of an unrevealed work you could access a few subpages of the work, such as the collections page, and find out the title of the work that way. Since that's meant to be unrevealed, we've changed these pages so you can no longer access them if the work is unrevealed.
• [AO3-6937] - We changed the browser page title on inbox pages to a format that matches other user pages: "username - Inbox | Archive of Our Own."
• [AO3-6953] - We made sure you'll get an error message if you attempt to clear your History and it fails.
• [AO3-6993] - The Edit Multiple Works page will no longer display a bunch of unusable options when you don't have any works. Instead, it will simply tell you you don't have any works.
• [AO3-6550] - When displaying work titles, we used to call a function on them that had already been called. We've stopped doing that since it's redundant.
• [AO3-6948] - We added some code to enable us to monitor the performance of the job that sends invitations to people in the invitation queue.

0.9.413

Our June 16 deploy added the ability to embed media from audio.com in works.

• [AO3-6515] - We fixed an error 500 that occured when a work with end notes was marked as published, but only had draft chapters.
• [AO3-6912] - We changed the browser page title for unrevealed works to include the site name at the end.
• [AO3-6437] - We removed some unused database tables.
• [AO3-6996] - We finally dropped that unused database column and removed the code we added to make that go smoothly.
• [AO3-6235] - Admins from the Policy & Abuse committee can now turn invitation requests on and off from the site settings page.
• [AO3-6588] - Admins from the Open Doors and Support committees can now give users the role that disables password reset emails for their account.
• [AO3-7003] - You can now add embeds from audio.com to your works.

April came with a lot of smaller changes and fixes to AO3. We also made a few bigger improvements, such as fixing gif icons that weren't animating and updating the way we send invitations to new users. On top of that, we added a confirmation email to the email change process and created a button to delete all your subscriptions. We also made a number of changes to make the work of our Policy & Abuse committee easier as they continue to tackle a wave of spam.

Special thanks and welcome to first-time contributors Emily Wiegand, Hamham6, Laura, melo, Michelle Tanoto, niic, and Tom Li!

Credits

• Coders: Amy Lee, Bilka, Brian Austin, EchoEkhi, Emily Wiegand, Hamham6, irrationalpie, Isabel Nunes, Laura, lydia-theda, marcus8448, melo, Metallicity, Michelle Tanoto, niic, sarken, slavalamp, Tom Li, unsafe-deref
• Code reviewers: Bilka, Brian Austin, ceithir, EchoEkhi, Hamham6, lydia-theda, redsummernight, sarken
• Testers: Aster, Bilka, Brian Austin, calamario, choux, Deniz, Jennifer D2, Lute, lydia-theda, megidola, Rachel Linton, Ridicully, Runt, Sanity, sarken, Scott, Teyris, therealmorticia, wichard

Details

0.9.404

On April 2, we fixed gif icons which weren't animating and deployed a number of small changes all around the site.

• [AO3-5596] - When the boxes on the All Fandoms page were of unequal heights, we'd sometimes end up with a box jumping over to the wrong side of the page and creating a big empty space where it should've been. We've fixed it so the boxes should now stack up in the correct columns no matter how tall they are.
• [AO3-6751] - When a fandom tag had a period in its name, the "Relationships by Character" link on its tag landing page would give a 404 error. We've fixed that by properly escaping the periods in the link.
• [AO3-6939] - We've added more information to the browser page title for various collection pages, so now they include which page you're on in addition to the collection title (e.g., "Collection Title - Profile" or "Collection Title - Fandoms").
• [AO3-6942] - The page where a Policy & Abuse admin confirms the deletion of a spammer's works and comments had the browser page title "Confirm Delete User Creations Admin User." This was computer-generated gobbledygook, so we changed it to "Confirm Deletion of User Creations," which is at least marginally better.
• [AO3-6955] - When we changed the code library we use for icons across the site, animated gif icons stopped being animated. We've fixed this so gif icons, including icons uploaded before this release, are now animated again.
• [AO3-6799] - Our Support and Policy & Abuse committees needed to move some things around in their ticket trackers, so we moved some things around in the code to make sure ticket information still ends up in the right place.
• [AO3-5744] - If the URL you entered when importing a work redirected you to a different URL, you'd get a 500 error. We've fixed it so the work will still get imported.
• [AO3-6949] - We bumped our version of the nokogiri gem from 1.18.3 to 1.18.4.

0.9.405

On April 11, we deployed some improvements for the Policy & Abuse committee. We also made a number of display fixes and increased the reliability of sending invitations from the invitation queue.

• [AO3-5573] - If you tried to change the sort order on your Works in Collections page, the works stubbornly remained sorted by their updated date no matter which option you chose. We've fixed it so now they'll actually be sorted in the desired order.
• [AO3-6597] - We were making some changes around invitation pages, so we took the opportunity to prepare those pages for future translation.
• [AO3-6877] - When you fill a prompt in a prompt meme, we automatically add some text to the work notes linking back to the prompt meme. We've updated this text so it will now use the collection's display title rather than its name, which is primarily intended for the URL. (Please note that this will not affect notes on existing works.)
• [AO3-6957] - We improved the look of the error highlighting when you try to leave an invalid comment, such as an exact duplicate of a comment you previously left in the same place.
• [AO3-6961] - We made caution notices, such as the text informing you what will happen if you change your username, more readable in the Reversi skin.
• [AO3-6672] - When a Policy & Abuse admin needed to change someone's username to a generic one, they used to need help from someone with database access. Now they can press a button and the username will be automatically changed.
• [AO3-6830] - When someone reports a work to our Policy & Abuse committee, we now automatically add a list of the work's creators to the ticket PAC receives.
• [AO3-6913] - Admins can now control how often invitations are sent by specifying the frequency in hours instead of days. This helps improve the stability of sending emails by letting us spread the load out over the course of a day instead of doing all the work at once.
• [AO3-6952] - When a Policy & Abuse admin bans a spammer, we no longer submit comments that are marked as deleted to our spam checker.

0.9.406

On April 17, we added an option to delete all your subscriptions to the Subscriptions page. Additionally, we improved error messages all around the site to be more informative and made some other small changes.

• [AO3-6578] - If you marked a work as inspired by a work not hosted on AO3, the ratings in the blurb for the inspiration would overlap the text informing you that the work is not posted on the Archive. We've moved the text so it's now completely readable.
• [AO3-6896] - We've made it so long usernames in the kudos section of a work will wrap across lines instead of running off the side of the page on small screens.
• [AO3-6935] - Trying to create a skin with a title that matched an existing skin's title in every way but capitalization used to result in a 500 error, but now it will give a nicer error telling you the skin title must be unique.
• [AO3-6956] - We reworded the error message you get when you try to make duplicate comments in the exact same spot (for example, submitting the same comment twice in a row on the same work).
• [AO3-6965] - We optimized some of our automated tests by spending less time on posting works.
• [AO3-3524] - We adjusted our HTML parser so you can now use media embeds from 4shared.com in your works.
• [AO3-6401] - If an OTW volunteer tries to leave kudos while logged in to their committee's official account, they'll get an error message telling them to log in with their personal account instead.
• [AO3-6711] - Your subscriptions page now has an option to delete all of your subscriptions. (You can also delete all subscriptions of a certain type, such as work subscriptions, by going to the page listing that kind of subscription.) Don't worry, all of these buttons come with a separate confirmation page.
• [AO3-6849] - To make testing and translation easier, we made a preview of the email users receive when they are gifted a work.
• [AO3-6911] - When a page takes too long to respond, you will now be redirected to a more informative error page.
• [AO3-6945] - When you were entering a tag with a pipe (|) in a field, the autocomplete would return unexpected results if you didn't surround the pipe with spaces. We've fixed that and also sped up the autocomplete search for tags with pipes.

0.9.407

In our deploy from April 24, we improved account security by adding a confirmation email that will be sent to your new email address when you attempt to change the email address of your account.

• [AO3-6113] - Previously, the autocomplete dropdown for tag fields would sometimes stay open after you selected a result from it. It should now always close as expected.
• [AO3-6938] - We updated the browser page title on the Related Works page to include the username of the page's owner.
• [AO3-6962] - When reviewing nominated tags for tag sets, the tags were unreadable in the Reversi skin. We fixed this and also adjusted the Snow Blue skin to address an issue with hover styles on that page.
• [AO3-6972] - Our dependency updater bumped our code style checker from version 2.21.2 to 2.21.3.
• [AO3-5350] - We updated the email that is sent to you when your work is hidden as spam, so that the email can be translated in the future.
• [AO3-6388] - To help keep your AO3 account secure, we've changed the process for updating your account's email address. We already made you enter your new email address twice to reduce the risk of typos, but now you'll need to confirm the new address is correct one more time before we start processing the request. You'll still receive a notification at your old email address, but now we'll also send a confirmation link to your new email address. Your email address will officially be changed only if you log in and use the confirmation link within seven days.

0.9.408

On April 29, we deployed some improvements to our automated tests and fixed a few bugs on the archive.

• [AO3-5053] - When you updated your username or pseud, the blurbs for your bookmarks would continue to show the old name for some time. We've changed this so they will now update immediately.
• [AO3-6136] - Admins can now see the timestamp when a user successfully reset their password in the user's account history.
• [AO3-6813] - When translated emails were enabled but an admin disabled translations for a specific locale, emails would continue to be sent in that locale. Since that's not what the admin intended when disabling the translations, we've fixed this behavior.
• [AO3-6845] - When an admin searched for invitations sent to a particular email, the result would be displayed in a different format if there was only one invitation. That format was inconvenient, so we've changed it to display the same way as a search result of multiple invitations.
• [AO3-6963] - Some normally invisible line breaks in the page title would result in awkward AO3 link previews on other sites. We removed the extra whitespace, so the title in the link preview now looks nicer.
• [AO3-5862] - Back in 2018, we created a migration to remove a column from the database, and then promptly forgot to run it. We've updated the migration and didn't forget about it this time.
• [AO3-6982] - We fixed some automated tests that were randomly failing.
• [AO3-6031] - The file for our automated comment tests was getting quite large and unmanageable, so we split it up into several smaller files.
• [AO3-6980] - One of our automated tests started failing because it was accessing a website that no longer exists. We changed the test to use a mock website instead.
• [AO3-6974] - We bumped our version of the nokogiri gem again, this time to 1.18.8.

March brought a handful of noteworthy changes to AO3 in addition to the usual assortment of bug fixes and enhancements: we increased the maximum tag length from 100 to 150 characters, expanded the wrangling status options in tag search, and added the ability to have your invitation resent if it didn't arrive. Then we wrapped up the month with some changes to help combat an increase in spam, including spam checks on new users' comments and a rate limit on comments from all logged-in users. Thank you and welcome to first-time contributor Metallicity!

Credits

• Coders: Bilka, Brian Austin, EchoEkhi, Indes, james_, lou, lydia-theda, Metallicity, Sarken, slavalamp, warlockmel, weeklies
• Code reviewers: Bilka, Brian Austin, james_, redsummernight, Sarken, slavalamp
• Testers: Bilka, Brian Austin, C. Ryan Smith, calamario, choux, Claire P. Baker, Deniz, Dre, Lute, lydia-theda, Rhine, Runt, Sam Johnsson, Sanity, Sarken, spacegandalf, Tal, Teyris, therealmorticia, Vio, wichard

Details

0.9.399

On March 7, we increased the maximum length of tags from 100 to 150 characters and made it possible to resend unused invitations, among some other smaller fixes.

• [AO3-3945] - Tag landing pages now list subtags in alphabetical order. (They used to be ordered by the date they were subtagged.)
• [AO3-6712] - In January 2024, we tried to make it so checking the status of your invitation would give you the option of having it resent to you, assuming you hadn't used it yet and it was sent more than 24 hours ago. Unfortunately, we ran into a performance issue and had to remove the feature. We've fixed the performance problem and now you can resend your invitations for real!
• [AO3-6737] - On the bookmark pages for tags and collections, the section containing the bookmarker's notes and other information was too narrow. We made it fill the available space.
• [AO3-6748] - When using the Low Vision Default skin, the stats in the work meta would be very long and cause horizontal scrolling on narrow screens. We've changed the stats to wrap onto the next line instead.
• [AO3-6791] - Admins used to get a 500 error when trying to access the pseud edit page for a user that didn't exist. Nonexistent pages should give 404 errors, not 500 errors (which occur when there's a bug or other problem), so we fixed the bug and started giving the right error.
• [AO3-6836] - To make testing and translation easier, we made a preview of the email users receive when one of their works has been deleted by an admin.
• [AO3-6867] - Tags can now be 150 characters long instead of 100. That's 50% more tag!
• [AO3-6915] - Our dependency updater bumped our version of nokogiri from 1.18.2 to 1.18.3.

0.9.400

On March 17, we deployed a number of small fixes and improvements for admins. Additionally, we expanded the tag search with a few more wrangling status options.

• [AO3-6544] - To improve our spam checker's accuracy, we've started telling it whether the data we're sending it is from a user or a guest, and what sort of data it is (e.g., a support request or a comment on a news post).
• [AO3-6934] - We updated one of our dependencies to incorporate a security fix.
• [AO3-931] - When someone used an invitation and then later deleted their account, the invitation would have a confusingly empty "Redeemed by" field. Now it correctly says that a deleted user redeemed the invitation.
• [AO3-5498] - When an admin views an invitation, the "Redeemed by" field now conveniently links to the redeemer's account administration page.
• [AO3-6129] - We've added a very low rate limit to the login page for admins for a little extra security. (We haven't had any issues, but it's good to be prepared just in case.)
• [AO3-6313] - The FAQ pages used to tell an admin when the FAQ category was last updated. A reasonable person would think that meant when questions in that category were updated, but it actually only tracked when something like the category's name or position changed. Since this was pretty confusing, we've stopped including that information.
• [AO3-6775] - We now have a handy preview for the email a user receives when they (or their co-creator) delete a work.
• [AO3-6875] - We added three new options to tag search, so now you can filter for tags that are (or are not) synonyms of another tag.
• [AO3-6922] - We updated the Policy Questions & Abuse Reports page to better align with the November 2024 Terms of Service update.
• [AO3-6923] - We updated our DMCA Policy to include an extra link to the Terms of Service FAQ.
• [AO3-6204] - Sometimes, users orphan works with their pseuds attached and later wish they hadn't. We've made it easier for certain admins to remove the identifying pseuds.
• [AO3-6943] - We fixed some automated tests that were failing half the time, which was just plain annoying.

0.9.401

On March 20, we finished off the last part of the Rails 7 upgrade by deploying a single change.

• [AO3-6687] - After we changed cookies to a more modern format in November, we now removed the support for the old format.

0.9.402

On March 24, we implemented comment rate limits for logged-in AO3 users to address an increase in spam comments.

• [AO3-6926] - We changed our rate limiting code to make it possible to specify rate limits per user.

0.9.403

On March 28, we deployed spam checking for comments posted by newly registered users to further combat the spam comments.

• [AO3-6439] - We changed how the code accesses the currently logged-in user to make our automatic tests behave more consistently.
• [AO3-6946] - In some very rare scenarios, the Manage Items page for a collection could show a completely unrelated work instead of the bookmark that was really part of the collection. We've made it always show the right item.
• [AO3-6951] - We bumped our version of reviewdog/action-rubocop from 2.21.0 to 2.21.2.
• [AO3-6933] - We added spam checking for comments from new users on works and admin posts.

In February, we upgraded Ruby and Rails to their next major versions. In between those large upgrades, we made a variety of small bug and performance fixes all around AO3.

Special thanks and welcome to first-time contributors CJ Gorey, Connie Feng, Kayla Camacho, lou, marcus8448, and unsafe_deref!

Credits

• Coders: Amy Lee, Bilka, Brandon W, Brian Austin, calm, Ceithir, Cesium-Ice, CJ Gorey, Connie Feng, David Bilsky/Ironskink, EchoEkhi, Indes, Jake Faulkner, Kayla Camacho, lou, marcus8448, Potpotkettle, redsummernight, sarken, Scott, slavalamp, Stephen Lewis, unsafe_deref, weeklies
• Code reviewers: Bilka, Brian Austin, james_, redsummernight, sarken, slavalamp
• Testers: alien, Bilka, Brian Austin, C. Ryan Smith, calamario, Claire P. Baker, Deniz, Dre, Fishy, LilyP, Lute, megidola, Rhine, runt, Sanity, sarken, Tal, Teyris, therealmorticia, wichard

Details

0.9.394

On February 7, we deployed a release with some small improvements while the Systems team focused on the Ruby 3.2 upgrade.

• [AO3-5792] - The page that lists a tag set's tags had some unreadable text and oversized buttons in several skins due to some incorrect HTML classes. We've fixed the classes and therefore the display issues.
• [AO3-6518] - When an abuse report was submitted, the spam checker would run if the capitalization of the email listed in the report didn't exactly match the email listed on the user's account. Now, it doesn't.
• [AO3-6777] - It was possible to create blank and invisible tags. Now it's no longer possible.
• [AO3-6814] - The email sent to the creator when an Open Doors archivist adds their work to a collection can now be translated.
• [AO3-6820] - Sometimes when creating a bookmark, the information about who is creating the bookmark can get lost. This used to result in an ugly 500 error, but now it results in a nice error message that tells you what's wrong.
• [AO3-6859] - While we were limiting access to tag wrangling admin features, we accidentally restricted admins without certain roles from accessing tag landing pages. We've now let them back on those pages.
• [AO3-6872] - Open Doors archivists can now add bookmarks to a collection they control without running into an error.
• [AO3-6585] - We optimized the piece of code that displays work information in certain emails.
• [AO3-6870] - We updated the notice shown on proxy sites to include Russian and Ukrainian translations.
• [AO3-6766] - You can now use the color-scheme property in site and work skins.
• [AO3-6863] - The emails you get when someone adds you as or invites you to be a co-creator had confusing subject lines. We've made them clearer.

0.9.395

On February 11, we finished the Ruby 3.2 upgrade.

• [AO3-6884] - After the Systems team installed Ruby 3.2 (alongside Ruby 3.1) on our servers, we updated AO3 to use the new version instead of the old one.

0.9.396

On February 14, we deployed some performance and security fixes.

• [AO3-6880] - The gem we use for pagination on the site is no longer maintained, so we're trying a new gem on certain pages to help us decide if it's the one we'd like to switch to.
• [AO3-6901] - We changed an asynchronous process in an attempt to be nicer to the database server.
• [AO3-6905], [AO3-6908] - We upgraded net-imap and rack to address some potential security vulnerabilities found by our dependency checker.

0.9.397

On February 17, we upgraded to Rails 7.1.

• [AO3-6893] - We upgraded our gems and configuration files to Rails 7.1!
• [AO3-6904] - We added some logins to our default development environment so that coders can easily use those accounts for testing.
• [AO3-6909] - We updated the version of one of our automated code checks.

0.9.398

In the deploy on February 21, we made some small changes, fixed a few confusing 500 errors so they'll instead give nice error messages, and added a treat for the Tag Wrangling team.

• [AO3-2898] - We fixed the character count below the editing window so that it updates when you use the Rich Text editor.
• [AO3-3810] - We made it possible for admins to edit skins with the word "Archive" in the title.
• [AO3-4735] - Searching for a work title with a hyphen would result in a 500 error. We made it ignore the hyphen instead.
• [AO3-4820] - When users would try to create skins with the word "Archive" in the title, they'd get a 500 error page or even a blank screen. Now they'll get a nice error message telling them the word is reserved for official skins.
• [AO3-6004] - When an admin would hide a bookmark from public view, it would also be hidden from admins. That made it difficult to unhide. We changed it so that admins can now see hidden bookmarks.
• [AO3-6450] - Tags on unrevealed works used to show up in the wrangling bins, which made tag wranglers' jobs more difficult. Now those tags don't show up in the wrangling bins until the work is revealed.
• [AO3-6769] - The browser page titles for unrevealed series were missing the "| Archive of Our Own" at the end, so we added it.
• [AO3-6790] - We fixed a 500 error when a user or an admin would try to edit a pseud that didn't exist.
• [AO3-6810] - When our Policy & Abuse team manually marks a spam work as hidden, the creator now gets sent the correct email.
• [AO3-6846] - To make testing easier, we added a preview for the automatic email that's sent out when a Policy & Abuse admin hides a work.
• [AO3-6847] - We also added a preview for the email you receive about your work in a collection when the maintainer sets the collection as anonymous or unrevealed.
• [AO3-6850] - We removed some unused code from assignments in gift exchanges. We were happy to discover that this sped up loading the assignment pages for large exchanges.
• [AO3-6856] - Admins can no longer edit AO3's default language to change its name or abbreviation, or to stop including it in the list of languages Support and Policy & Abuse handle tickets in.
• [AO3-6868] - We fixed a 500 error when admins edited a language and provided an invalid abbreviation or display name.
• [AO3-6888] - We made sure that the tags and stats above a work are nicely left aligned after line-breaks.
• [AO3-6902] - We updated the after_commit_everywhere gem for a new feature that made our code a little cleaner.
• [AO3-6903] - We removed some pesky extra spaces after the colons of labels in a few emails.

At the start of the year, we upgraded our library for managing pseud and collection icons. To follow that large effort, we deployed some smaller fixes and improvements while we worked to address some performance issues due to increased traffic. We also did some preparations for the next big Ruby and Rails upgrades.

Special thanks and welcome to first-time contributors Indes, Jeslyn See, John Mathai, and Sekoia!

Credits

• Coders: Amy Lee, Bilka, Brian Austin, Cesium-Ice, Indes, Jake Faulkner, james_, Jeslyn See, John Mathai, lydia-theda, mystyrust, Scott, Sekoia, slavalamp
• Code reviewers: Bilka, Brian Austin, james_, redsummernight, Sarken, Scott
• Testers: Bilka, Brian Austin, Deniz, Indes, Keladry, Lute, lydia-theda, megidola, redsummernight, Rhine, Runt, Sanity, Sarken, Taki, Teyris, therealmorticia, Vio

Details

0.9.388

On January 14, we migrated to a new library for managing icon uploads.

• [AO3-5843] - The browser page title of the Invitation Requests page is now -- wait for it -- "Invitation Requests."
• [AO3-5578] - The library we were using to manage uploading pseud and collection icons, as well as skin preview images, was in maintenance mode and not getting improvements. Rails' built-in solution, Active Storage, got a lot of improvements with Rails 7, so we switched to it.
• [AO3-6873] - The Elasticsearch version we were using wasn't compatible with the newest Linux kernel when running in Docker for development, so we upgraded our development setup to a fixed version.

0.9.389

We deployed a fix for a performance issue on January 21.

• [AO3-6878] - By default, Active Storage tries to extract metadata from every uploaded image. We don't need or want that behavior, and it was causing major strain on the database because we'd just reuploaded every icon on the site as part of our migration from Paperclip, so we disabled it.

0.9.390

On January 26, we deployed a number of small fixes and improvements to take it easy while we recovered from the Active Storage changes.

• [AO3-5977] - Admins who can access unreviewed moderated comments on works could see the "Approve All Unreviewed Comments" button even though they absolutely do not have the ability to approve unreviewed comments. We've hidden that button.
• [AO3-6238] - The "Random Items" button didn't work on the collection's homepage. We've now made it work, like on all other collection pages.
• [AO3-6378] - The browser page title when looking at all series by a pseud didn't mention series at all. Now it does!
• [AO3-6874] - The browser page titles for the TOS pages and the TOS FAQ were missing the "| Archive of Our Own" at the end, so we added it.
• [AO3-6755] - We removed some unused stylesheets.
• [AO3-6871] - We updated one of our Rails dependencies to incorporate a small security fix.
• [AO3-5502] - We made the browser page title on the adult content warning page for chapters more informative.
• [AO3-6529] - It was possible to import a work from a URL on AO3, resulting in two copies of the work. Bookmarks are much better suited for saving other AO3 works, so we prevented importing works from AO3 and the error helpfully mentions bookmarking the work instead.
• [AO3-6587] - When our Policy & Abuse team edits a user's pseud or profile in response to a ticket, they have to enter the ticket ID to authorize the action and create a log of the changes. To make it easier to copy and paste the ID from the ticket tracker, the field now accepts a leading #.
• [AO3-6774] - To make testing easier, we added a preview for the email that is sent when an admin manually grants invitations to users.
• [AO3-6848] - We also added a preview for the email sent when you're assigned a request in a challenge.
• [AO3-6801] - We clarified the text of the error message banned and suspended users receive when they try to do something they're not allowed to do (e.g., posting a work).
• [AO3-6862] - We updated the example URLs in some of our help text to use example.com, which is a domain that exists specifically for that purpose.

0.9.391

With our deploy on February 3, we prepared to upgrade to Ruby 3.2 and addressed some performance issues.

• [AO3-6882] - To prepare for upgrading to Ruby 3.2, we made it possible to run the Archive with both Ruby 3.1 and Ruby 3.2.
• [AO3-6889], [AO3-6890] - We added some gems to try to work around some performance issues.
• [AO3-6892] - We did a schema dump to capture what the current data structure looks like before we upgrade to Rails 7.1.
• [AO3-6897] - In an attempt to address regular database load spikes, we adjusted the schedule of a regularly running task.

0.9.392

In an attempt to address some more performance issues, we deployed a second release on February 3.

• [AO3-6898] - We disabled some functionality in Active Storage that may cause some threading issues, but allowed us to cache icons to reduce traffic.

0.9.393

And then, on February 4, we undid the change we made on February 3.

• [AO3-6900] - Our previous change led to some 500 errors related to missing pseud icons, so we took the change back out.

We had quite the list of releases to close out 2024 here at AO3! There were improvements to the user experience for our administrators, and a massive improvement for our tag wranglers, meaning they won't have to deal with those pesky tags from draft works anymore. We also deployed a number of things laying the groundwork for some exciting technical improvements and upgrades in the new year.

Thank you and welcome to first-time contributor Jake Faulkner! We'd also like to thank Sekoia for pointing out a security issue.

Credits

• Coders: Amy Lee, Bilka, Brian Austin, calm, Cesium-Ice, Jake Faulkner, james_, Nisha
• Code reviewers: Bilka, Brian Austin, lydia-theda, Sam Johnsson, sarken, Scott, ticking instant
• Testers: Amy Lee, Anh Pham, Bilka, Brian Austin, C. Ryan Smith, calamario, Claire P. Baker, Deniz, Gloria L, Irina, Jenni D., Lucia S., Lute, lydia-theda, megidola, Nary, Rhine, Runt, Sam Johnsson, Sanity, Taki, Tal, Taylor Clossin, Teyris, therealmorticia, wichard

Details

0.9.383

On November 25, we deployed the first in a series of changes to (gracefully) finalize the Rails 7 upgrade.

• [AO3-6812] - Our first try at upgrading cookies to the modern Rails format did not go well. This time, we are preparing by deploying some code to force all servers (new and old) to work with the old format first.

0.9.384

We deployed an array of improvements to the admin experience on December 6. We also added some email previews to help our translators when they translate them into languages besides English, in our ongoing effort to introduce language options to the AO3 interface.

• [AO3-6709] - Policy & Abuse admins can now view comments in user inboxes.
• [AO3-6771] - The email that AO3 creators receive when Open Doors imports one of their works didn't respect the user's locale preference. That is now fixed. (The locale preference is currently only available in testing.)
• [AO3-6773] - To make testing easier, we added a preview for the email that gets sent out if your request for invite codes to share is denied. (Please note that it is not possible to request shareable invitation codes at this time.)
• [AO3-6835] - We also added a preview for the email confirmation you receive when changing your email.
• [AO3-6854] - And what's a release without updating our trusty code linter?

Several of the changes in this release fall into the bucket of "making sure only the admins who need access to something have access to it":

• [AO3-5520] - Modifying the Wrangling Guidelines is now restricted to admins from the Tag Wrangling team.
• [AO3-6697] - Updating the Known Issues page is now strictly the domain of our Support team.
• [AO3-6698] - Modifying the English FAQ has been restricted to the Support and Docs teams, while the Translation team can modify any of the languages the FAQs are translated into.
• [AO3-6760] - Admins from the Policy & Abuse and Tag Wrangling teams can access the unsorted tags bin to see tags that were created by bookmarkers and haven't been assigned categories yet, but only Tag Wrangling can actually sort them into categories.
• [AO3-6761] - Now only admins from the Tag Wrangling team can wrangle tags from the mass wrangling bins or access certain information about wrangling tools, while Policy & Abuse admins can still access the mass wrangling bins but not do any wrangling.
• [AO3-6762] - Similarly, read access to fandom bins and tag edit pages has been restricted to Tag Wrangling and Policy & Abuse admins, but only Tag Wrangling admins can actually make changes to tags.

0.9.385

On December 8, we deployed a single change to continue the process of gracefully finalizing the Rails 7 upgrade.

• [AO3-6686] - We updated the Archive's configuration to use Rails 7's brand new defaults. This only includes some of the changes to cookies this time around, since doing everything all at once last time was definitely a Bad Idea.

0.9.386

On December 9, we prepared to upgrade our web servers to more modern software.

• [AO3-6858] - Added support for Puma, so we can transition away from Unicorn and god for our web servers.
• [AO3-6861] - You'll never believe this, but we also updated our code linter again.

0.9.387

On December 23 2024, we deployed some changes to make work easier for the Support and Policy & Abuse teams. And we snuck in a treat for Tag Wrangling and a security fix along the way.

• [AO3-6211] - Tags on unposted (draft) works used to show up in the wrangling bins, which often made tag wranglers' jobs more difficult. Now those tags don't show up in the wrangling bins until the work is posted.
• [AO3-6232] - When a Support ticket is submitted, we now record which site skin you're using and what page you were on. We've also started including your IP address in the copy of the ticket our Support team receives (it was previously only shared with our automated spam checker).
• [AO3-6308] - When a user is temporarily suspended, an error message tells them when their suspension is supposed to end. The old message sometimes gave an incorrect time, so we've fixed that.
• [AO3-6622] - We decreased the margin sizes on definition lists in FAQs to make them more consistent with styling elsewhere on AO3.
• [AO3-6717] - In order to prevent abuse, banned and suspended users can no longer change their usernames.
• [AO3-6792] - The Support and Policy & Abuse forms each have a list of languages the teams can answer tickets in. We've given admins from those teams the ability to update those lists.
• [AO3-6832] - When people reported a comment to our Policy & Abuse team, a copy of the work the comment was left on was sometimes mistakenly attached to the ticket PAC receives. We made sure that doesn't happen anymore.
• [AO3-6855] - We upgraded rails-html-sanitizer from 1.6.0 to 1.6.1 to address a potential security vulnerability found by our dependency checker.
• [AO3-6864] - We changed the CSS sanitizer to disallow sneaking naughty code into URL values.
• [AO3-6866] - We updated the code that creates our testing database to make sure the test data contains user roles that are similar to the current setup on AO3.