Archive of Our Own ^beta

Start the party, the AO3 is turning 15 today! This year has been full of exciting new milestones. Our total number of users has passed 7.5 million, with the number of works on the archive surpassing 13.8 million! (with over 1.6 million of them written in languages other than English)

To celebrate AO3’s birthday, we prepared two fandom-related activities: a trivia game and a prompt challenge. You can find further details below!

Trivia Game!
How much do you know about AO3, beyond where to find your favorite works? About its history, infrastructure, or functionalities? Find out by participating in our AO3 trivia game. Who knows – you might win a cool prize!

For the next 15 days starting today, we will post a new trivia question every day (in this post and on our socials), along with a link to a Google form where you can submit your answer. We will check your submissions at the end of the 15 days, and randomly draw names from the highest scorers; they will receive AO3 merch as a prize!

• Day 1 - How many members does AO3 have (on the day of posting)? Submit your answer here!
• Day 2 - How old is the OTW, the parent organization behind AO3? Submit your answer here!
• Day 3 - What is the title of the fanwork, which currently has the most kudos on AO3? Submit your answer here!
• Day 4 - What is the most expensive donation reward for OTW donations? Submit your answer here!
• Day 5 - In what year was AO3 founded and who first proposed the idea for it? Submit your answer here!
• Day 6 - Which fanwork was bookmarked most by people last year (2023)? Submit your answer here!
• Day 7 - What are our two definitions of the word kudos? Submit your answer here!
• Day 8 - When did AO3 reach 10 million works posted on the site? Submit your answer here!
• Day 9 - The OTW (Organization for Transformative Works) is the volunteer-run parent organization behind AO3. How many volunteers does it have? Submit your answer here!
• Day 10 - What does the term "conceptual drift" mean in the context of metatags? Submit your answer here!
• Day 11 - What are three goals of the OTW Fanhackers Project? Submit your answer here!
• Day 12 - When did AO3 pass 10 million members on the site? Submit your answer here!
• Day 13 - AO3 is one of OTW’s many projects, along with Transformative Works and Cultures (TWC), a peer-reviewed journal on fanworks and practices. When does TWC publish its annual general issue? Submit your answer here!
• Day 14 - What was the first major donation brokered by the OTW Open Doors project? Submit your answer here!
• Day 15 - What is the maximum number of tags an author can add to their work? Submit your answer here!

Prompts!
As a fun challenge for fanwork creators, the AO3 Prompt game will run for 15 days alongside the trivia game. Each day, a new prompt will be posted on our socials and to the collection! Don’t worry about missing one: you can choose prompts as inspiration strikes, using as few or as many as you like. When you’re done writing, you can add your work(s) to our AO3 anniversary collection!

So make sure to keep an eye on our social media channels, where we will post every day!

Thank you for celebrating 15 years of AO3 with us!

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

Another International Fanworks Day has gone by and once again, we at the Organization for Transformative Works are grateful for the enthusiasm and participation of our visitors. IFD is all about celebrating the creativity of the fandom community and it was on full display this year!

The theme for #IFD2022 was Fandom Classics, and we encouraged you to post remixes of or tributes to classic fanworks as well as to to recommend your favorite fandom classics in our Feedback Fest. We're blown away by the number of recommendations we received: easily enough fanworks to keep us busy until IFD 2023.

We'd also like to thank everybody who participated in our chatroom games marathon, which ran from 21.00 UTC on February 14 until 03.00 UTC on February 16. Once again, we hosted the games on our dedicated Discord server and our volunteer moderators were entertained, amused, and impressed by the cheerful enthusiasm of everybody who participated (including the very many people who chose to play games instead of sleeping - we're sorry!). As usual, the fandom songs produced in the Lyrics Round Robin game rounds can be found at our dedicated IFD AO3 account.

If you didn't manage to participate in any of the above events, don't worry: the Fanlore IFD challenge will be running until Sunday, February 20th, with a different editing challenge each day. It's suitable for new and experienced editors alike, so check it out and join in!

Hurray! It’s International Fanworks Day, our annual opportunity to celebrate all things fanworks and fandom. As is now traditional every February 15, the OTW will be celebrating with a chatroom games marathon, hosted on Discord: you can find all the details below. And remember to check out our previous post for details of the rest of our #IFD2022 celebrations!

About the IFD games session

The OTW’s chatroom games session is a 30-hour party that lasts from 21.00 UTC on 14 February until 03.00 UTC on 16 February. The times listed below are in UTC, but you can click the time to find out how that converts to your own timezone.

The games will be hosted on our dedicated Discord server and moderated by OTW staffers throughout the day. Every hour you will be able to participate in a different fandom-themed game! The timetable and game descriptions are given below; (Update: The Discord channel is now closed). The games will be played and moderated in English.

14th Feb

21.00 Lyrics Round Robin - hosted by C Ryan Smith
22.00 That’s Life - hosted by C Ryan Smith
23.00 Linkee - hosted by Claudia Rebaza

15th Feb

00.00 List Builder - hosted by Claudia Rebaza
01.00 20 Questions - hosted by Julie Bozza
02.00 5 Things - hosted by Julie Bozza
03.00 That's Life - hosted by Zoey
04.00 Lyrics Round Robin - hosted by Zoey
05.00 Trivia - hosted by Chrome
06.00 List Builder - hosted by Chrome
07.00 20 Questions - hosted by iManga
08.00 5 Things - hosted by iManga
09.00 Trivia - hosted by Anhaita
10.00 Lyrics Round Robin - hosted by Anhaita
11.00 That’s Life - hosted by Wishopenastar
12.00 List Builder - hosted by Wishopenastar
13.00 20 Questions - hosted by Jonny H
14.00 5 Things - hosted by Jonny H
15.00 That's Life - hosted by Jess H
16.00 Lyrics Round Robin - hosted by Eskici
17.00 Trivia - hosted by SecurityBreach
18.00 List Builder - hosted by SecurityBreach
19.00 Linkee - hosted by Teo
20.00 20 Questions - hosted by Teo
21.00 5 Things - hosted by C Ryan Smith
22.00 Trivia - hosted by Izzy
23.00 Lyrics Round Robin - hosted by Izzy

16th Feb

00.00 That’s Life - hosted by Jess C
01.00 List Builder - hosted by Pokestine 02.00
20 Questions - hosted by Pokestine
03.00 END

Game Guidelines

5 Things
How to Play: During this game, the host will name a topic and players in the room will call out examples from their favorite fandoms. This will repeat for at least 5 rounds. Be prepared to explain why your answer counts (maybe you’ll recruit someone new to your fandom!)

Lyrics Round Robin
How to Play: During this game, we’ll collectively write FANDOM lyrics to replace those of a familiar song. The host will choose the song and type out an alternate first two lines. Then those in the room will write the next lines until the song is finished.

That’s Life
How to Play: This is an RP game. Participants will first name a character that they know well for each round. Every round will consist of two random questions posted by the moderator. Participants share how the character they chose for that round would answer the questions as if answering from their point of view. For each round, participants will name a different character to answer the new questions.

Trivia
How to Play: Like most trivia games, the host will ask a question and the first person to answer correctly wins that round. Because we’re online and you’re free to do searches we’re going to add another factor, which is time — you must answer within 3 minutes. But you can call out your answer as soon as you think you know. If you have the correct answer, the host will type your name and award you a point. At the end of the game, whoever has gotten the most points will be named the winner!

20 Questions
How to Play: The host will think of a person, place or thing. Your task is to guess what it is. The first person in the room roster (on the upper right side) gets to ask a question that the host will answer with a YES or NO. As soon as the host replies, the next person on the list can ask their question. Players can call out a guess at any time but the host will only answer if it’s correct so that the next person gets their turn. The game will continue until someone has guessed the person, place or thing.

List Builder
How to Play: List Builder is a collaborative game in which players work together to come up with a list of items belonging to a particular genre, starting with consecutive letters of the alphabet. Start at A and work your way through to Z (you can be as flexible as required on the difficult letters!)

Linkee
How to Play: The host will read a clue and each player should guess (to themselves — shhh!) what the answer is that fits into the [BLANK]. The host will then read 2 more clues. After each one, players can call out a guess about what they think links the clues together. The first person to guess correctly gets a point. When we have completed all clue sets, the person with the most points wins.

We also want to hear from you about other celebrations taking place today. Leave us a comment here to tell us about what your fandom communities are doing!

The Organization for Transformative Works is a labor of love. It was created by fans, for fans. We are a nonprofit organization, and we rely 100% on donations: the donation of time from our volunteers, and the donation of funds from the community we serve. Today marks the beginning of our biannual membership drive, when we ask that those of you who are able to do so consider making a financial contribution to support our work. You can read about how we spend your money in our budget.

Your donations to the OTW support our work across all our projects: from the Archive of Our Own to Fanlore; from our academic journal, Transformative Works and Cultures, to our fanworks rescue project Open Doors and our Legal committee’s advocacy for transformative works worldwide. Donors also benefit more directly. With any one-time donation of US$10 or more, you can choose to take up an annual membership of the OTW, giving you the right to vote for our Board of Directors in the election that we hold in August every year.

Members also receive a digital icon which can be used on your AO3 or on social media profiles; and those who have maintained OTW membership for three, five, or ten years are eligible for exclusive commemorative gifts. Find out more about membership and voting here.

Those making donations of US$40 or above are able to select from a number of thank-you gifts. New this year are an OTW tumbler in limited-edition white, and a brand-new sticker set. If you can’t afford to make a donation of this size, don’t worry: we’ve got you. You can opt to set up a recurring donation at a level that suits you and let our Development and Membership team know which premium you’d like to save up for. Once your donations hit the eligible level, they will dispatch your gift.

The Organization for Transformative Works is a registered non-profit in the US, and donors in this country may be able to take advantage of matched giving schemes from their employer. Please consider speaking to your workplace to find out whether this is a possibility for you!

If you aren’t able to make a donation this time, please consider sharing this post with others, and know that we appreciate your support however you are able to give it. Thank you for your money, your time, and your love. We wouldn’t be here without it!