Frequently Asked Questions about the AO3, Yuletide, and the Searching Thereof

[elynross]

Frequently Asked Questions about the AO3, Yuletide, and the Searching Thereof

Grey Bard, with the help of #yuletide, collected some questions about the archive and searching and asked if answers could be posted. Most of these questions are the type that should be directed to AO3 support, and should eventually end up in the Archive FAQs, but may

Comments

[doire]

Thank you for all this. I'm getting more and more interested in the wheels behind it all.

There is one more thing I've noticed that is probably a Yuletide rather than AO3 problem: Some stories are locked to archive members so, if the recipient defaulted and didn't already have an AO3 account, they can't see their story or comment on it. Do you think it's worth reminding people to check that setting? It is sad when the recipient doesn't comment, but they need to be able to.

[cesy]

And if the recipient wants, they can always just join the standard invite queue - it's a few days long at the moment, but still less than a week.

[elynross]

Oh, that's an interesting point! I'll try to remember and say something about that on my next post (which should be in the next day or so).

[elucreh]

One more, actually?

I'm a little confused re: former Yuletides. Should I upload my '08 and '07 stories myself? Can I tag them as Yuletide if I do that? Will they be somehow automatically uploaded at a later date as the whole archive is moved to AO3, and if so, will uploading them myself interfere with that or create redundancy?

[cesy]

They'll be automatically uploaded when the whole archive is moved. If you import them yourself first from the old Yuletide archive, it will auto-detect that. If you upload them yourself from elsewhere, you'll end up with duplicates.

[elucreh]

Oh, that's v. helpful, thanks!

So...if the authorname is the same as my handle on AO3, will it appear on my page under my "works" when the archive is transferred?

[elynross]

You'll probably have to "claim" the works in some fashion, so we make sure the right person has the right stories.

We'll also be posting in more detail when we're closer to the actual move, spelling out how it will work, what you'll have to do, etc.

hiding hits

[renne]

Note that the hit counter hiding is a bit buggy at the moment, hiding on some fic and not on others, I sent a bug report and got this reply:

We've recently introduced some caching for works on the Archive, meaning that instead of the work being fetched from the database every time someone accesses it, it's refreshed only every few minutes, or when it's updated. This is necessary in order to reduce the load on the server and speed up the site, but unfortunately the caching is still in need of some refinement. We think the problem you're encountering is due to the caching. We're working to improve it and resolve this problem; apologies for the annoyance in the meantime!

So it mostly works, except for the times it doesn't. ;)

Re: hiding hits

[elynross]

Thanks!

Re: hiding hits

[cesy]

That should be fixed in the next release, which we're hoping will be later today or tomorrow.

Re: hiding hits

[renne]

\o/ you guys are so awesome.

[thisissirius]

Thank you so much for this!

(and for all of your hardwork!)

You (guys) have really outdone yourselves this year!

[sherrold]

All of the work, all of the improvements -- it's really been amazing!

Re: You (guys) have really outdone yourselves this year!

[elynross]

Aw, thank you! I'm pretty excited to see how it all goes next year, too. *g*