QuirkQuess

From what I've heard and personally experienced, there are scammers leaving comments on fics, trying to get writers to commission them for art of their fics.

From my personal experience, either the comment will start off with the person offering words of praise about your writing before asking if you're looking for art of your fic or they'll just immediately start talking about all the great ideas they have for art for your fic that they'd just love to create.

They'll say they wanna "collaborate" with you, but what these particular people mean is they want your money in exchange for their art, so be very careful when a reader that you're not familiar with uses that word in their comment.

I've even been told that they'll give me art for "free" if all I do in exchange is pay for their art software, which obviously means the art isn't free at all 🤦‍♀️

I wanted to issue this warning to everyone cause these scammers can be pretty persistent regardless of how much you politely decline their offers, and I don't want anyone else to have to deal with this, especially if they end up becoming really rude about it like what happened with me today.

Now, that's not to say I'm against commissioning people cause that is not true at all. I've commissioned plenty of amazing artists, and I love being able to support the artists that I admire whenever I can.

However, in these circumstances, when you don't know who's behind the AO3 account, it's hard to tell if you're dealing with a real artist or a bot. Considering the way these people I've interacted with acted, it all just seemed very suspicious, so please be very cautious and do your research about the artist you choose to commission before making your decision.

I just wanted to warn y'all about this and remind everyone that there is a block feature on AO3. While I don't believe you can stop people from reading your fics, you can at least prevent them from leaving these kinds of comments which are a real downer for writers like me who always look forward to the feedback they get on their fics.

Before fic tagging was common, fics weren’t tagged. You had a pairing, if applicable, an author’s note about genre or general content, and if they were feeling charitable, a vague content warning. There are even a few genres of fic where even vaguely tagging literally spoils the plot and impact (such as horror, psyche thriller, in which the likely content is implicit to the genre). As a result, there is a basic category tag that permits this, as a courtesy to “old-fashioned” writers.

“No Archive Warnings Apply” means the fic is PG13 at worst, probably fluff, totally safe.

“Choose Not to Use Archive Warnings” is the polar opposite. It’s a glaring Enter at Your Own Risk billboard. It means: a shitload of warnings apply but I ain’t telling because this story requires shock value. It’s very important to read the author’s notes for those fics because they might be using that older format from above.

graphic depictions of violence

major character death

underage

rape/non-con

WHO IS USING THIS

AN APP??? THEY HAVE A FUNCTIONING WEBSITE

Look at me.

Look at me right now.

AO3 protects you.

AO3 protects you and your works. 

It protects your works from copyright strikes and DCMA takedowns.

It protects your work from advertisers.

It protects your work from overzealous legal challenges.

It protects your right to post adult content.

AO3 is non-profit and AO3 will never try to use you or your work to make a profit for themselves and AO3 will go to bat for you if someone tries to legally challenge you or your works.

2019 -> 2025

make an awful, ill-conceived, sponsored post about "responsible"/"ethical" uses of ai in writing

immediately get ratio'd in a way i've never seen on tumblr with a small swarm of chastising-to-negative replies and no reblogs

start deleting replies

reply to their own post being like 'agree to disagree!!!' while saying that ai can TOTALLY be ethical because spellcheck exists!! (???) while in NO WAY responding to the criticisms of ai for its environmental impact OR the building of databases on material without author consent, ie, stolen material, OR the money laundering rampant in the industry

when called out on deleting replies, literally messaged me people who called them out to say "We don't have a problem with folks disagreeing with AI. It's the tone of the discourse." So. overtly stated tone policing.

get even MORE replies saying this is a Bad Look, and some reblogs now that people's replies are being deleted

DISABLE REBLOGS when people aren't saying what nano would prefer they say

As a disabled writer? Specifically one with brain fog? FUCK the "saying you shouldn't use AI is ableist" thing. What's fucking ableist is implying disabled people can't write their own stories. What's ableist is implying the mediocre plagiarism machine would write better than I do. Fuck that and fuck them and their (gen)AI shilling bullshit.

Ollguest: Hi AirplaNed, We're enforcing our codes of conduct, an issue we just posted about. Following your post, we posted the following note: "We recognize that Al is a controversial issue in creative and other spaces. We know that some bad actors have exploited or marginalized writers through their use of Al. The fact that bad actors/uses of Al exist does not erase its legitimate uses (e.g., spellcheck is an Al; it's been around since 2003) or the right of writers to see how others may be using it. Along those lines, please adhere to our codes of conduct in your responses, even if Al isn't your cup of tea."

We really, truly don't care if people disagree with anything we post. It's more of a tone/civility thing

Airplanned: How many followers have you lost in the last hour?

ollguest: (start of message is cut off) NaNoWriMo being used by writers.

"How many followers have you lost in the last hour?" is a sarcastic comment that gets at our codes of conduct. Again, tone and civility

Airplanned: You're in my in-box. There is no code of conduct for my in-box

Ollguest: Our NaNoWriMo Codes of Conduct on our website specify that we enforce our community codes of conduct on all of our social spaces.

E.g., we enforce the codes of conduct that we put forth on our website identically on Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr...wherever we have a presence.

Airplanned: This is not your space. This is my space

@nanowrimo this is not your website. This is tumblr. We can say whatever the fuck we want about you and how we feel about your decisions.

Because we can't send invitations or account activation emails, we've had to disable account creation and pause the invitation queue. However, you can still request an invitation -- you just won't receive one until our email problem is resolved, nor will your position in the queue change.

While we don't currently have an estimate for when emails will return, please rest assured that no emails have been lost. They will be delivered eventually once we resolve this issue, although it will take some time to work through the backlog.