Every year, multiple times a year, they convince ppl to fork out thousands of dollars and….literally nothing changes. There’s no doubt in my mind they’re pocketing most of this money lol
Yep
That’s what’s so wild to me. They’ve made exactly 0 changes other than adding the ‘Exclude’ tags and that def doesn’t take 130k.
You know if any of you actually bothered to click the link it’ll take you to their budget update and break down exactly what the spend the money on, over 70% of which is spent on server expenses, monitoring tools and system licences.
They also spent a good amount of the rest of the 30% budget on significant server overhaul costs.
AO3 is literally a service you get for free and the audacity you’d have to not bother reading the very open budget plan they have, but to then bitch and whine about people donating to keep the site running is wild.
hosts millions and millions of fanfiction at no cost to site users
hosts millions and millions user accounts at no cost to site users
is an extremely high traffic site that rarely, if ever, experiences crashes
is an extremely high traffic site that could profit immensely off ads, but keeps the entire site free of ads
maintains a consistent and elaborate tagging system that allows users easy navigation through fanworks
maintains a simple layout structure so the entire site is easy to read, easy to navigate, and easy to understand making it highly accessible to users – especially disabled users
maintains and updates the budget for users to know exactly where their donations are going to be used in the future and have been used in the past
works with the legal aspects of fanworks in order to keep their site and their users completely legal, and therefore not at risk of being shut down, or sued, or manipulated by large media/companies
works with users when it comes to decision making, includes members in voting processes, etc.
literally hosts millions of fanfiction at no cost whatsoever and doesn’t subject you to ads, honestly those are the only two points you need but the other ones are there to show how much they’re doing
y’all need to appreciate that – donations are completely optional and if you don’t want to donate then don’t, but spreading posts about how Archive doesn’t do anything for anyone and doesn’t do anything with all this money they’re getting is completely unnecessary and outright false.
by asking for 130k dollar 2-3 times a year, that means they ask each account holding user for about 0,08 dollar 2-3 times a year -> 0,25 dollar altogether. this doesn’t even factor in the millions of users who don’t have an account but visit ao3, cos if they pitch in as well, it’ll be even less for everyone who enjoys the access ao3 provides to 4.000.000fanworks and to create more every day!
so yeah you fucking bet i send them at least 50bucks or more a year for all of that. and if out of the 130k they use my 50 bucks to buy themselves some coffee for all the work hours they dedicate to ao3 running as smoothly as it does, keeping it free of harassment and adds without selling my data for it, and fighting for fanworks to remain accessible for everyone now and in future, then be my guest!
Ok ALSO.
‘literally nothing changes’ is one of the things that really gets me so mad. They are in a development stage when they are solidifying everything before launching the 1.0 version. Which might seem they are not working but they are probably working way more than they did in the past.
Stability, performance, and scalability improvements
Improvements to searching and browsing, including better filtering for media type, category, and language
A new header and footer layout, for easier site navigation
Improvements to tag wrangling management features, and enhancements to the tagging system to allow for improved handling of international sources and fandoms
Refinements to the collection and challenge code, including major bug fixes for gift exchanges, prompt memes and tag sets
Review and rewrite of existing code to prepare for art, video, and audio posting, and non-fiction fanworks
Improvements to the handling of work relationships (remixes, translations, gifts…) across the site
Improved and expanded tools for Open Doors to allow for easier imports of at-risk archives
[….] Interlude
Within the 0.9 release cycle, we want to take some scheduled time to review and assess our code base, documentation, resources and plans. During this time, active development will be kept to an absolute minimum and we’ll avoid launching any new features. We will continue to monitor the site for any emergencies and keep sending out invites to people on the waiting list, but will focus most of our attention on laying the groundwork for good stability going forward. This is something which we always try to factor into our plans, but during very busy periods it’s easy to build up technical debt and harder to make sure everything is shipshape and well-documented. This interlude will help ensure both our code and our procedures are well organized and sustainable.
It is a fundamental step to make sure than in the future everything will be easier to implement and they won’t need more hours to put in and more works. And everything won’t crumble on itself when everything is too much to handle.
Also, do you all realize how STABLE ao3 is? and fast? That shit requires so much manpower and so much server optimization and maintenance and it’s so detached from reality to think that that doesn’t require the money they are asking for. The exact fact that you have nothing to complain about ao3 except ‘booooh no new features!’ is a statement on how well they do their job.
All the work they are putting out there is open for you to read and check. you can see what they are working on.
So basically people are complaining ‘aaaah there are no new flashy improvements: they are not doing anything!’ meanwhile you’re all enjoying a mostly bug-free fast website-that rarely has any crashes-with tons of features that mostly work and those that aren’t working are getting fixed daily by people who are donating their time to you and you all are shitting on it. that is the very definition of entitlement.
marlowfication 