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

[entropy_house]

I'm kinda hesitant about this for reasons of exposure. On LJ I feel reasonably invisible, but I have seen names harvested from large fan archives and put up in a place I am REALLY not comfortable with as it exists to publicize & make fanficcers more easily identified. For this reason I had decided not to join AO3.

I would not have signed up for Yuletide if I'd known I was going to be required to post to AO3. It's just too... large and public. I'm timid. I do not have have the nerve to fight copyright battles.

Is there any way I can write my story & have it posted with a sort of... anonymous name without giving OT3 any information that could lead to me being outed?

[entropy_house]

I don't want to put the YT name on AO3 at all---oh, well... what I was hoping was to invent a name entirely new & only tell the YT folk to connect it with my sign-up so they'd know I'd fulfilled my commitment. I have no idea how they're going to work the hiding/revealing...mmm... this is giving me a headache. :^P

[impactbomb]

While I may have gotten the fiddly details bit wrong, as I understand it, when it comes to connecting your names, the Yuletide mods are not responsible for that this year - so don't poke at them going "connect my names please" when that option is under your account options, but not theirs.

On AO3, you don't have to rely on the time and ability of the mods to do stuff - you have the power, you, the user. Let it go to your head! Abuse all the options you want to abuse for your stories! THAT'S WHAT WE WANT YOU TO DO.

[entropy_house]

I do not want my YT sign up visible to others on AO3, and from what I *think* I understand of the AO3 system, no matter what pseud you use, the name you have on your account is visible to anyone looking at the pseud. A pseud that says Clark Kent (Superman) isn't really a secret identity.

ATM my thought is to make up a new name, use that, and ask the YT folks to count me as having fulfilled my story commitment under the other name, just for their records- which AFAIK is not something the AO3 is set up to do.

[franzeska]

Yes, that's correct. Currently, pseuds do all show your account name. (They're useful if you don't mind connecting different identities but you want to use your old name from fandom A on that set of fics and your old name from fandom B on that other set of fics.) There was some talk of making them not show your actual account name at one point during the development process, but that's not how they've ended up working

[entropy_house]

Thank you for your input. I have no idea what will happen when I get the invite- if the account name's a blank or changeable, then great. If they require me to use the YT signup name, then I'll invent a new name & ask a proxy to put up the story under it, with them as co-author & then remove their name.

I never participated in the main Yuletide, but there's a slim chance I did a short 'after Yuletide' fic, but I can't check until the Yuletide archive is open, that's something I need to remember to do, thanks. If I have got an old one, I'll just orphan it.

[impactbomb]

Ah. Misunderstood that part of the FAQ, then, whoops! Thanks for clarifying, now I feel silly.

[few]

No problem!

Basically, the idea behind pseuds on AO3 is not for anonymity, but to allow readers to find all of your works even if, like me, you've used different names in different fandoms. Your pseuds are connected so that a reader who knows you as A from fandom X can see that you're also B in fandom Y, and so on.

[elynross]

This again is something that is better asked directly to the AO3 support team, but as deconcentrate says, it should be something you'll be able to do yourself once you have your invite as a Yuletider. It's not something we can do at this point, because we aren't changing any more details on the old database, and there's not yet anything in the new one to change.

[zebra_in_dream]

Unfortunately Pseuds don't work like that on AO3. The original account is still visible, the Pseud is just attached to it, it's for the role players to differentiate characters.
It displays like "Pseud (Real Account" and you can't turn that off.

[elynross]

I believe I misspoke when I said accounts would be created using your Yuletide name; I don't handle the technical details, and I'm not yet fully aware of how those details will work. I think that instead, people will get invites, and will then be able to create accounts, which means they'll be able to choose the base username they want, and whatever pseuds they want. So that entropy_house should be able to set up her account so that the name she doesn't want to have display won't, once she establishes pseuds and changes the names on her existing stories.

Again, I'm not absolutely sure that's how it will work, though. I hope so.

[zebra_in_dream]

The only way the name she doesn't want isn't display is not to give it at all. It doesn't matter how many pseuds she sets, the main account will always be shown alongside them. I think the name "pseud" for these "name tags" is giving the wrong impression on how they work. I know that it did confuse me when I could set a pseud, but my user name was still right next to it.

[elynross]

That's my point, and that's why I carefully used "username" and "pseud," the terms the archive itself uses.. If that name isn't used as a username, and isn't used as a pseud, it won't display. Period. If she can create with a clean username, she can change the name on all her stories, and the name she doesn't want to use won't display anywhere.

[cesperanza]

Stories can also be locked to registered archive users only--a lot safer than LJ.

[doro_chan]

I do not have have the nerve to fight copyright battles.

I don't think anybody wants to fight a copyright battle and I'm very sure nobody will force anybody to participate in one against their will. The OTW definitely isn't pressing for a case.

[entropy_house]

If I can post under a new pseud, I'd be fine. I started out with my real name before I even knew anyone considered fanfic something to attack & there's overlaps between each of my pseuds, so I would be traceable if my paranoid luck held true.

It's not fun being paranoid, but my RL experience has been that the least likely rotten stuff always happens to me.