On a centennial
15 Jun 2025 12:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
( Miss you Grammy )
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Item the first: I have no idea what the hell made the ominous donk-slither-donk noise in the portaloo at about midnight last night, but the phone I'd convinced myself it was was in a neat little pile with my laptop, in the tent, in the morning -- after I'd spent some time being sad about inadequate backups of photos of tiny sleepy rhinos -- which was an enormous relief (though I am also very pleased with myself for how well I handled things). (Especially given that my conviction that this was what had happened was in part based on being as aware as I could be of how abruptly my cognitive function had deteriorated with Surprise Unscheduled Migraine Onset.) (Still haven't worked out what on earth the donk-slither-donk was, but it's none of the obvious Truly Upsetting things to have lost, so I'm Currently Fine With This.)
Item the second: it is hot. This field contains lots of chamomile, and also lots of people. I am really enjoying the way it smells.
Item the third: I am really enjoying the dark chocolate + salt + nuts snack bars that crew welfare is providing, which I'd not previously noticed.
Item four: THE HALBARD THAT IS A SHARK.
The Policy & Abuse committee (PAC) is responsible for enforcing the AO3 Terms of Service (TOS). To help users better understand the TOS, we’re posting a weekly spotlight series about the TOS and our policies. We’ll also be reading comments and answering questions on this and our other spotlight posts.
Today’s post from the Policy & Abuse committee is about harassment. As stated in Section II.H of our Terms of Service, “Harassment is any behavior that produces a generally hostile environment for its target. Examples include bullying, threats, and personal attacks by or towards individuals or groups of people.”
Harassment is not tolerated on AO3 in any form—regardless of whether it occurs in works, tags, comments, usernames, pseuds, profiles, icons, or any other type of content.
When directed towards other users, threats and insults constitute harassment, and we will act on them if reported to us. This includes when phrases such as “X/Y shippers are creeps” are present in work tags or summaries.
Some harassment is severe enough that it creates a hostile environment not just for the target, but for anyone who witnesses it. Engaging in severe harassment will result in harsher penalties.
The following are all considered to be severe harassment when directed towards other AO3 users:
Anyone can report these, whether or not they’re the primary victim. PAC will remove all instances of severe harassment that are reported to us.
A call-out is when someone posts a work (or a chapter or author’s note) that criticizes someone for their behavior in an attempt to draw public attention to that person.
We consider call-out posts to be harassment. If you see a call-out post, whether or not it is targeted at you, you can report it to us. Call-out posts are not allowed, regardless of what the target of the call-out has done.
If you encounter someone who has violated the AO3 Terms of Service, please don’t post a call-out and violate the TOS yourself. Instead, we recommend that you submit an Abuse report and use AO3’s blocking and muting features to avoid that person.
A blocked user is expected to cease all interaction with the person who blocked them. We consider attempting to “get around” a block to be harassment. If you’ve blocked someone and think they’re evading your block, you can report them to us.
What’s considered offensive and unacceptable varies from person to person. AO3 hosts a wide range of content that many users find to be offensive, and in our last post, we discussed some of the ways you can avoid such content.
You may not leave comments attacking the creator of a work you find offensive.
You can mute the user so you don’t see any of their works, bookmarks, or comments. If you want to make sure they can’t communicate with you, you should also block them.
We don’t consider criticism of a work, constructive or otherwise, to be harassment in and of itself. Offensive opinions and comments that aren’t direct personal attacks are also not harassment (for example, expressing negative views about celebrities or the content of a work).
If somebody says your work is bad, that’s an opinion about your work, not a personal attack against you. However, repeatedly leaving negative comments in a short period of time, pressuring you to delete your work, or encouraging others to engage in similar behavior could be considered harassment depending on the circumstances.
People are allowed to argue or disagree with your opinions. Argument is not harassment, and PAC will not intervene simply because users are arguing with or being rude to each other. If someone in the argument is using personal attacks, you can report them to us, but in general, PAC does not mediate disputes between users. If you want to end an argument, you should tell that person you will not respond further; if necessary, you can also block them.
If you are a bystander witnessing an argument rather than one of the participants, then we are unlikely to uphold your complaint unless someone is engaging in severe harassment. When it comes to rude or moderately antagonistic comment exchanges, we rarely act on third-party reports.
Requesting that someone does not interact with you is not harassment in itself, but it may be considered harassment if paired with an insult or threat (for example, “DNI you weirdos who ship this” or “no incest lovers allowed I will stomp you all to death with my hooves”).
If you want someone to stop interacting with you, you should block them. If you never want to encounter them again, you can also mute them.
PAC tries to prioritize urgent reports such as harassment, but there will always be a delay while we investigate and take action. We recommend that you immediately block any registered user who harasses you. We also recommend that you enable one or more of the Privacy options on your work(s) while you wait for our response.
To edit the Privacy options on your work, select the “Edit” button, then navigate to the “Privacy” section. If you want to edit the Privacy options on multiple works at once, you can do so easily using our “Edit Multiple Works” tool.
Changing your Privacy options does not have to be permanent; you can update them at any time. If you’re being harassed, we recommend changing your Privacy options at least for a short period of time.
The options available to you in the Privacy section are as follows:
You can use this feature to lock your work so only registered users can see it. If you are the victim of a mass-harassment campaign, this will prevent “drive-by” comments from guest users. Works that have been restricted to AO3 users will have a blue lock symbol displayed next to the title and are not accessible to guest users.
Comment moderation prevents any new comments (from both registered users and guests) from being publicly displayed on your work until you approve them. If you don’t approve a particular comment, then it will not be made public. PAC volunteers are able to see unreviewed/unapproved comments, so you can report a harassing comment without marking it as approved.
If you’re being harassed by a guest user but don’t want to disable anonymous comments entirely, you can use comment moderation to prevent harassing guest comments from appearing on your work.
If the harassment was posted by a registered user, comment moderation can help too. It not only prevents their comments from being shown to others, but also makes it easier for us to investigate, as long as you leave their comments unapproved and don’t delete them yourself.
There are three comment settings:
Changing these settings will not affect any existing comments.
Archive locking, comment moderation, and comment restriction can all be used in conjunction with each other. For example, you can enable comment moderation and set your work to only allow registered users to comment at the same time. This means you won’t receive any guest comments at all, and comments from registered users will have to be manually approved.
You can report harassment through the Policy Questions & Abuse Reports form, which is linked at the bottom of every page on AO3. If you wish to avoid future contact from a registered user, we recommend blocking and muting them.
If the harassing content has been deleted, we generally won’t be able to investigate unless you’re able to provide screenshots or other copies of the harassing content. While it’s not possible to upload images to our reporting form, you can include links to images hosted on third-party sites in your report description. You can also specify in your report that you saved copies of the harassment, which we may ask you to provide in our initial response to your report.
Comments can be reported through the Policy Questions & Abuse Reports form like all other content on AO3. You can get the direct link to a specific comment by selecting the “Thread” button on the comment and copying the URL of that page, or by clicking on the link in your email or AO3 inbox.
If you’re reporting moderated comments, you don’t have to approve the comments or link every single comment in your report—just give us the link to your work’s unreviewed comments page, and specify which comment(s) you’re reporting (if you have a lot of unapproved comments).
Please don’t submit multiple reports about the same user. When reporting multiple works or comments by the same user, please submit only one report with links to everything you’re reporting, so that all information about that user is in the same place. If the harassment is ongoing, you can turn on comment moderation—if you mention that you’ve done so and link your work’s unreviewed comments page in your report, we’ll check that page for any new harassing comments submitted, without you needing to file an additional report.
Link to the page you are reporting: https://archiveofourown.org/comments/000000000
Brief summary of Terms of Service violation: Harassment
Description of the content you are reporting:
USERNAME went on a slur-filled rant in this comment on my work.
If you are reporting additional comments, please include all relevant links and other information in your report description:
Brief summary of Terms of Service violation: Harassment (repeated nasty comments and block evasion)
Description of the content you are reporting:
USERNAME went on a slur-filled rant in this comment on my work.After I froze the thread, they commented with more slurs and insults here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1234/comments/123456789
I blocked them and turned on comment moderation but then they commented again as a guest: https://archiveofourown.org/ works/1234/comments/234567890
I have screenshots and copies of the email notifications if you need them.
Link to the page you are reporting: https://archiveofourown.org/works/00000000
Brief summary of Terms of Service violation: Harassment in tags and notes
Description of the content you are reporting:
USERNAME has a harassing tag: “go away x/y freaks or i’ll call the cops”And in the end notes they have more harassment: “incest lovers do not comment or I will slice your toes off”
If you are reporting additional works or comments that are part of the same incident, please include all relevant links and other information in your report description:
Description of the content you are reporting:
USERNAME has a harassing tag: “go away x/y freaks or i’ll call the cops”And in the end notes they have more harassment: “incest lovers do not comment or I will slice your toes off”
One of their other works (https://archiveofourown.org/works/23456789) also has harassment and I think is not a fanwork? It’s a long rant about why x/y shippers are idiots.
The comments of this work are full of harassment, mostly by guests, but the creator calls a bunch of people pedophiles in these threads:
https://archiveofourown.org/comments/123456789
https://archiveofourown.org/comments/234567890In the second thread linked above, there’s also a “kys” (kill yourself) comment by USERNAME2, which the creator responds to with “u first”.
You can add more details if you like, but these examples provide the basic information we need:
You’ll receive an automatic email confirming that we received your report, and our volunteers will investigate when they get a chance. Please be patient and do not submit another report about the same incident. While PAC investigates every report we receive, it can take several months for us to process a report.
PAC follows a strict confidentiality policy. Therefore, while you are welcome to ask general questions in the comments of this post, we will not give information on specific cases, publicly rule on a work, or update you on the status of a report you have already submitted. Comments on this post that discuss specific works or users will be removed.
If you are being harassed, think you’ve found harassing content, or if you want to know whether a particular work or comment qualifies as harassment, please report the work(s) or comment(s) to us as described above. For more information, you can read our TOS FAQ on harassment.
If you are still uncertain, you can comment below or submit a question through the Policy Questions & Abuse Reports form.
RULES: 1. One secret link per comment. 2. 750x750 px or smaller. 3. Link directly to the image. More details on how to send a secret in! Optional: If you would like your secret's fandom to be noted in the main post along with the secret itself, please put it in the comment along with your secret. If your secret makes the fandom obvious, there's no need to do this. If your fandom is obscure, you should probably tell me what it is. Optional #2: If you would like WARNINGS (such as spoilers or common triggers -- list of some common ones here) to be noted in the main post before the secret itself, please put it in the comment along with your secret. Optional #3: If you would like a transcript to be posted along with your secret, put it along with the link in the comment! |
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(And didn't we have something similar, like, maybe 20 years ago on LiveJournal?)
Thing going round on bluesky recently-
'Ten authors you've read five books by'.
*Looks around just one room and its bookshelves*
Me: Maybe I could break this down into groups, I dunno, perhaps?
Thrillers? Sff? Litfic? (might break this down further into Obscure Victorian/Edwardian Novelists, Middlebrow Women Writers of the 20s/30s, the 60s Generation???) Bloke writers for whom I have a weakness? Beloved childhood faves?
And then I think, nah, this is too much effort.
I was a bit took aback by suggestions that people might be curating their 10 to look Cool or SRS or at least, not given to ingesting The Wrong Sort of Book, perish the thort.
Which of these look interesting?
This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me by Ilona Andrews (March 2026)
18 (40.9%)
The Swan’s Daughter: A Possibly Doomed Love Story by Roshani Chokshi (January 2026)
11 (25.0%)
Storyteller: A Tanith Lee Tribute Anthology edited by Julie C. Day, Carina Bissett, and Craig Laurance Gidney (June 2025)
23 (52.3%)
The Storm by Rachel Hawkins (January2026)
3 (6.8%)
What Stalks the Deep by T. Kingfisher (September 2025)
23 (52.3%)
Red Empire by Jonathan Maberry (March 2026)
2 (4.5%)
The Two Lies of Faven Sythe by Megan E. O’Keefe (June 2025)
13 (29.5%)
The Young Necromancer’s Guide to Ghosts by Vanessa Ricci-Thode (April 2024)
12 (27.3%)
The Poet Empress by Shen Tao (January 2026)
6 (13.6%)
Shroud by Adrian Tchaikovsky (June 2025)
23 (52.3%)
Some other option (see comments)
0 (0.0%)
Cats!
28 (63.6%)