Please don't post a 'fake' fic in order to be able to talk to other fans. Posting a work that is not a fanwork is a violation of AO3's Terms of Service and may result in penalties being applied to your account.
AO3 is an archive for fanworks, so that's what we focus on providing a platform for -- we're not a general social media platform. If you want to talk about off-topic things, we suggest using social media platforms like Tumblr, Reddit, or Bluesky.
It is absolutely important to read the TOS. AO3 recently did a spotlight on the TOS, breaking it down for those new to the site. You can find links to these spotlights in the AO3 16th anniversary post. I implore any new users/young users to check these rules before treating the archive like it is social media ala Tumblr or Discord.
Something I may have suggested before would be the ability to have a user's profile have comments. While that wouldn't address this specific sort of situation, it would address the gap between comments on specific works and completely off-topic comments: that being, it would give a place for comments that relate to multiple stories or for authors to solicit feedback on ideas or suggestions.
Of course, it should probably be opt-in. I can imagine people abusing it if users don't know such a feature exists.
After all, social media sucks, and most social media sites are far more censorious than AO3. Some types of works aren't allowed to be discussed on them.
What!! I'm not alone! I definitely agree with you! Commenting on bios/profiles is something that would improve ao3 for sure.
If you could have private conversations with other users, though, maybe to work on fanfictions that people are co-creators on, that would be great, too.
But while I do very much want the feature to comment on profiles, it wouldn't necessarily improve AO3 as a fanfiction platform, would it? People would often misuse it.
If this feature would eventually come to AO3, I think that there should be a part where you can block certain users who spam you from commenting on profiles only, but not everything. And maybe comments need to be approved?
Yeah, I think AO3 is far better than any type of social media.
And, in my opinion, AO3 has more polished features and I agree with AO3's beliefs much more than fanfiction.net or wattpad.
For example, on fanfiction.net, explicit works are not allowed. While I personally don't care, I think people should not be too censored.
Not many fanfiction websites have the great things like the many search terms to find very specific works you're looking for!
And I'm grateful that AO3 never tries to advertise or sell me features; I think Wattpad does that often.
Aside from that, thank you so much to the volunteers!!
You can already do most of that. Muting / blocking already affect commenting on a user's works and you can also hold comments for approval ("Enable comment moderation" on the post works page). You can also allow/block anonymous comments. I'm not certain, but I get the impression these news stories are basically implemented as works under the hood, so regular users get all the same tools that news moderators do (for their own works, of course).
I can maybe see not wanting private messages because those can be more heavily misused, but I feel like a non-work-specifc place for authors to communicate would be beneficial to the core mission of AO3. It would facilitate people being able to discuss ideas and cooperate. It might also reduce the amount of off-topic discussions on works themselves (like requests or just general comments directed at the author rather than the work). Most of the downsides probably already apply to comments on works as they exist now.
Perhaps they could be time-limited to avoid excessive amounts of data usage if people use them a lot; like maybe comments only last a month on profiles before being auto-deleted.
Anyway, this is fairly off-topic in itself, but I did want to mention it. I was thinking about this yesterday (about how I wouldn't mind some input on a story I was considering writing), and the opportunity sort of presented itself here.
OTW News Post Moderators do not handle nor have authority over feature requests. If you'd like to make a formal request for this feature to be added to AO3, contact Support as they handle feature requests in addition to providing technical support to AO3's users.
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