FAQ: When Will We Find Out about Uploading for Yuletide 2009?

[elynross]

And the answer is...not quite yet. There's still a bit of testing and migrating of tags and other information that has to happen before the AO3 is ready for us

Comments

[attempt_unique]

I was just reading through the proxy uploader post. I am not super familiar with the Archive of our Own, so this might be a silly question but you mention that 4 warnings are enforced.

Is there more detail to that? like, how are they enforced (could a yuletide fic be kicked off the archive for not complying?) and who does the enforcing? also how does canonical character death work in terms of the major character death warning?

sorry if this is just splitting hairs, but it would be nice to know.

Not-a-mod

[miss_prince]

The answer I found in the Ratings and Warnings section of the AO3 FAQ:

"If we sustain a complaint about ratings, the fanwork will remain available on the archive, but it will have the "not rated" label. If we sustain a complaint about warnings, the fanwork will remain available on the archive, but it will have the "choose not to warn for some content" label."

I have no idea about the policy on canonical character death. But for the record, you needn't specifically include the "character death" warning if you don't want to; there's a "choose not to warn" option that covers everything.

Re: Not-a-mod

[lesserstorm]

I'm not involved with AO3 either, but further down that page there's a question -

"What if there's only a brief reference to rape in a story-am I required to use either "rape" or "choose not to warn," or can I still choose "none of these warnings apply" if I think that's a better description?
This is the kind of decision that is up to the discretion of authors. In general, we will not recategorize a fanwork in response to a complaint when the content at issue is a reference or is otherwise not graphic."

I'd extrapolate that to mean that a character death warning would only be enforced if the death was a significant part of the story or onstage in some detail and that the author would get quite a lot of discretion in deciding

/still not associated with AO3

[telophase]

I believe it's enforced as in the code is written so you can't upload the fic without choosing from a set of warning options: *(ETA; Or, looking at the other reply, perhaps not?)

1) Pick 1-4 of the standard warnings
or
2) Pick "No warnings apply"
or
3) Pick "I choose not to warn"

As to the canonical death question, I don't know.

[aka_arduinna]

I believe that's correct - one of them must be chosen (and I think "choose not to warn" is the default). The enforcing would come in if someone picked "No Archive Warnings Apply" on a story with, say, underage sex in it; at that point, the archive admins could change it to "Choose not to use archive warnings".

Or if someone warned for Rape/Non-Con but forgot to warn for Underage; "choose not to use archive warnings" would be added as a heads-up to readers that there *may* be more of the four archive warnings in the story than just rape/noncon.

[telophase]

That makes more sense, thanks.

[elynross]

My understanding is that if a story is reported as not having an appropriate specific warning or the general "Chooses Not To Use Archive Warnings" when it's applicable, AO3 support will apply the general warning. I would hope that everyone would choose one or the other; the general warning is intended as a compromise for those who prefer not to warn, since it's the equivalent of "Chooses Not to Warn."

And it's possible that "Choose Not To Use..." will be the default setting, so if someone forgets to choose an applicable warning or indicate "No Archive Warnings Apply," they're covered.

As for the Character Death question, I honestly don't know; that would be a question for AO3 support, but I'd assume that if the character doesn't die within your story, you wouldn't have to warn for character death. You could put a "post ## ep" note in the summary to indicate it happens after a canonical death, and as miss_prince says, you can always put the "Choose Not to Use Archive Warnings" tag (the warnings are changing slightly from the actual current

[cirrussundog]

I'm not part of the AO3 staff, but I have been posting over there. As I understand it, you can either warn or pick an option telling everyone that you're choosing not to follow the archive standards (so they're on their own if they go ahead and read the story). If you do choose to warn but don't mention that your story includes any of the big four when it actually does, that warning can be enforced. (I *think* that means the warning should be added if someone complains, since you claimed in the first place, under this option, to provide standard archive warnings.)

I believe the policy is meant to provide the maximum of authorial freedom combined with the minimum of someone who can be triggered or who has qualms running into "SURPRISE! Bwahaha!"

[blackmagie]

If there is no actual character death within the fic itself (ie it simply references a character death that happened within canon but not in the story), the character death warning is probably not necessary although the suggestions made by the folks above are certainly fair and reasonable if you're worried.

Another option is to include an additional tag (what gets called "tags" in Elyn's post at the main Yuletide comm). I looked at the list of additional tags and there's already a "Canonical Character Death" in place which can be used. People browsing the archive can see the additional tags in addition to the warnings so readers who'd like to avoid character deaths of all kinds -- both in-canon and in-fic -- they'll still have access to that information.

(Full disclosure: Not a Yuletide mod but am a tag wrangler for AO3.)

[elynross]

Full disclosure: Not a Yuletide mod but am a tag wrangler for AO3.

And thus you are one of my HEROES!!! Truly.

[blackmagie]

But that's like a neverending loop because you're one of my heroes for running Yuletide!

[elynross]

And I'm okay with this! *g*

[doro_chan]

Thanks for telling me about it. I have a story with canon character death in it (right at the end) and since it isn't an AU, it isn't exactly unexpected. It's not very graphic either, so I left the warning off. Truth be told, I completely forgot about it when I uploaded the story today. Now I added the tag, to provide at least some warning.

What fandoms do you wrangle?

[blackmagie]

Mostly smaller anime & manga fandoms with a couple book fandoms thrown in.

[franzeska]

The Abuse Committee does the enforcing. (We're who you get if you use the "Report Abuse" link at the bottom of Archive pages.) We don't actually go looking for violations of policy, so we're only going to hear about things if someone complains. And we're not going to delete someone's yuletide present. After all, it might be one of ours! ;D