At Least the Fire was Contained to the Dumpster

Anonymous asked:

Hello! I don't know who else to asks that knows a bit more about ao3 but won't require me to go off anon. I came across this post recently: icantbebotheredsstuff(.)tumblr(.)com/post/681001917886906368 . I don't know much about maintaining sites so I'm not sure if this is true or not so I want a bit of an explanation (or debunking) of it. I block most anti-ao3 people cause they're usually antis and many of them are already spreading this post but I haven't seen anyone say anything against it yet.

olderthannetfic answered:

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Ah, what dumbassery will it be this drive season?

Oh, I see: it’s the nitpick the financial reports genre.

If you haven’t seen these, they pop up every 6 months and are the more faux-reasonable end of the anti-ao3 posts. People make them because combing through old tax reports to argue about what some particular dollar amount means is tedious, so they don’t get thoroughly debunked. In other words, they’re sealioning.

2014 was when I left the org because it was too time consuming and I had personal life shit going on. As I recall, it was a fairly wanky period with much worse management than now, and plenty of ex staff had beef, both justified and not. I’m not surprised someone left a salty review, but also… it’s 2022, and the org has been through major upheavals since then.

“with how ao3 hasn’t exactly updated their site in a major way in the better half of a decade and the fans over inflate server costs, that extra money has to be going somewhere.”

LOL.

That right there should be enough to tell you this person is an idiot. Sites shouldn’t be updating in a visibly major way. If they do that, it means they’re making a fucking mess like all the social media redesigns we all hate so much.

“But they haven’t updated!” is a favorite anti rallying cry. But all sites experience tech debt. All sites need to constantly change as browsers and server software change. I think some people imagine that code just works forever, but that’s not realistic when your code interacts with other people’s.

Note: This post was made on a dummy account to protect my identity. I will not be responding to this post on any accounts and just want to make these issues public. AO3 continuously makes more money than it needs and that money could be better spent supporting minorities. Have a nice day.

This is also telling. Someone who knew their shit and who wasn’t just angry that we’re donating to AO3 instead of to them would suggest another nonprofit with similar aims of preservation, free speech, and supporting the arts.

I have no idea what the $13k is. That amount is nothing. It could just be the expenses from an in-person board meeting. I remember the first time we had one of those, and people were beside themselves about how ever meeting in person (like all normal orgs do and like massively helps your online working relationship) was a tasteless luxury. (Never mind that we picked a spot where two board members already lived and housed everybody else in a shitty motel to keep costs down.) The second time, the most suspect expense was the plane ticket from Turkey. Why Can’t The Non-American Just Stay Home was the message. Gross.

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The biggest fallacy in all of this genre of post (and they pop up anew every year) is that AO3 made its drive goals, so it has “enough”.

AO3’s initial drive goals are always some lowball nonsense designed to make us feel good when we blow past it.

AO3 ought to be expanding to protect fan art more. AO3 ought to have some paid staff because of how this helps with longevity and not putting an unfair burden on volunteers. There are a lot of things AO3 could do if it had more person hours (which are generally more of a problem than cash for hardware).

AO3 has “enough” to keep the site open, yes. That doesn’t mean it should stop there. That’s what you do if you’re running an archive yourself and you ask users to pay you back hosting costs. It’s not what an arts organization does.

elfwreck

"AO3 has hundreds of thousands of dollars more than it needs! But it doesn't pay anyone! It should hire people!"

Err. How much do you think coders get paid?

"ao3 hasn’t exactly updated their site in a major way in the better half of a decade"

Release Notes announcements: https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts?tag=1

Exclude tags from search
GDPR compliance
Limiting tags to 75 to avoid STWW (and similar) killing everyone's mobile reading
Ability to turn off comments
Ability to not receive gifts
Better languages support
Better bookmark support
Improved search functions
Improved search functions
Improved search functions

...and so on.

Of course, the basic layout hasn't changed ever. And the look-and-feel hasn't changed in a very long time. (I miss the original font, but I suppose not many other people liked it.

AO3's major changes are not "we've rearranged half the site so you can't find anything and also all existing hyperlinks no longer work because we've changed the basic URL structure."

At Least the Fire was Contained to the Dumpster

See, that’s what the app is perfect for.

At Least the Fire was Contained to the Dumpster

Not to be a bitch on main but