π Archive of Our Own etiquette 101
ao3 has been under a lot of pressure lately. more users, more traffic, more reports, more confusion. which is great in one way because fandom is alive and people want stories, but it also means we all need to breathe and remember how the site actually works.
this is for everyone. old readers, new readers, writers, lurkers, people who just discovered fanfiction last week, and people who have been here since dial up.
let us talk about how to exist peacefully on ao3.
I think, perhaps, the funniest part of the AO3 outage for me is watching the fandom discord server I'm in immediately turn into a blackmarket for fic epubs/pdfs
-whispering suspiciously- "Psst, hey - you got any fics?"
It's kind of funny seeing everyone crashing out over Ao3 still being downπIt has me really thinking about how this goes to show how much fanfics mean to people (escapism, a hobby, freedom, etc) and I hope that when Ao3 is back up that people make more of an effort to leave
@AO3_Status 1 hr before the closing of ao3 and ive already downloaded 1 month worth of fanfics BUT IT STILL FEELS LIKE IT'S NOT ENOUGH AND OH GOD IT'S ALMOST TIME IM STILL PANICKING ???!!?!