bibliophiles of the world, unite!

Posted by an

https://www.transformativeworks.org/five-things-linwelin-said/

https://www.transformativeworks.org/?p=291948

Every month or so the OTW will be doing a Q&A with one of its volunteers about their experiences in the organization. The posts express each volunteer’s personal views and do not necessarily reflect the views of the OTW or constitute OTW policy. Today’s post is with Linwëlin, who volunteers as a Tag Wrangler on the Tag Wrangling committee.

How does what you do as a volunteer fit into what the OTW does?

I wrangle tags for several smaller fandoms and I help with translating tags from Spanish to English so they can be wrangled. I mostly pick up fandoms to wrangle that have a majority of Spanish tags.

I think the most interesting part of translating tags is finding the different meanings of words in different regional dialects other than my own español rioplatense. It’s fascinating to me how within the same language a word can have a ton of different meanings, or the same concept can be named a ton of different ways. Look up all the ways you can say ‘popcorn’ in Spanish and you’ll see what I mean!

What is a typical week like for you as a volunteer?

It all depends on my energy and pain levels, but I usually break it up into smaller chunks of time (just an hour or two at a time) as often as possible because that’s what I can usually manage best.

Sometimes, though, I get in The Zone™ and I might only realise it’s been eight hours when my partner calls me for dinner!

What made you decide to volunteer?

I joined fandom later in life than most others I know, but I found the community just in time—it’s helped me through some of the roughest moments in my life. It’s provided an escape, a way to express my creativity when all my other hobbies were inaccessible to me.

I don’t have disposable income to donate, but I do have spare time, and I wanted to give back somehow to this community that has given me (and many others) so much. When I saw the call for Spanish-speaking volunteers back then, I decided to give it a shot!

What has been your biggest challenge doing work for the OTW?

Managing my own time and energy without burning myself out is the hardest part. I’m disabled, and my chronic pain (along with the medication I take and the side effects of it all) means that I have to be very careful about pacing myself if I don’t want to crash and burn.

I would like to spend a lot more time wrangling than what I can feasibly (and sustainably) do on an average week, but my health has highs and lows. Sometimes I can sit down for eight hours and have a blast translating and shovelling a ton of tags, and sometimes I can only sit for half an hour and only manage to do one or two tags. Sometimes I’ll only be able to do the bare minimum for a couple of weeks, and then I’ll bounce back.

The biggest challenge is accepting that not every day will be a satisfying marathon of productivity and efficiency, give myself some grace, and try to work with my limitations, not against them. I end up achieving a lot more when I manage that.

I mention all this because I was a bit afraid when I applied that my disability would make it impossible to keep up with the commitment of volunteering, but I’ve found that not only can I, but I enjoy it immensely. I’ve found community and support within the OTW, and personally I’ve never felt alone or lacking in help and resources. I hope this gives a new perspective to someone reading this who might be on the fence about it!

What fannish things do you like to do?

I read a lot of fic, and fandom is my main creative outlet, especially on hard days. I love writing, and lately I’ve been listening to and learning how to record podfic as well. I like to participate in drabble writing events, sprints, and other mostly-small challenges.

I’m also trying to learn how to draw! I have a lot of scenes I’ve pictured in my mind and I hope to someday be able to bring them out into the real world.

Now that our volunteer’s said five things about what they do, it’s your turn to ask one more thing! Feel free to ask about their work in the comments. Or if you’d like, you can check out previous Five Things posts.

https://www.transformativeworks.org/five-things-linwelin-said/

https://www.transformativeworks.org/?p=291948

Posted by an

https://www.transformativeworks.org/updates-to-no-fandom-additional-tags-october-2026/

https://www.transformativeworks.org/?p=291942

AO3 Tag Wranglers continue our processes for wrangling canonical additional tags (tags that appear in the auto-complete) which don’t belong to any particular fandom (also known as “No Fandom” tags). This post overviews some of these upcoming changes.

In this round of updates, we continued to adjust existing canonical “No Fandom” tags to add or remove new subtag and metatag relationships. We also continued to streamline creating new canonical tags, prioritizing more straightforward updates which would have less discussion compared to renaming current canonical tags or creating new canonical tags which touch on more complex topics. This method also reviews new tags on a regular basis, so check back on AO3 News for periodic “No Fandom” tag announcements.

None of these updates change the tags users have added to works. If a user-created tag is considered to have the same meaning as a new canonical, it will be made a synonym of one of these newly created canonical tags, and works with that user-created tag will appear when the canonical tag is selected.

In short, these changes only affect which tags appear in AO3’s auto-complete and filters. You can and should continue to tag your works however you prefer.

New Canonicals

The following concepts have been made new canonical tags:

• Acts of Service
• Acts of Service as a Love Language
• Bickering as a Love Language
• Gift Giving as a Love Language
• Making Tea as a Love Language
• Music as a Love Language
• Physical Touch
• Physical Touch as a Love Language
• Spending Quality Time Together
• Spending Quality Time Together as a Love Language
• Words of Affirmation
• Words of Affirmation as a Love Language
• Halloween Fluff
• Halloween Parties
• Pumpkin Patches & Farms
• Armpits
• Armpit Hair
• Armpit Licking
• Canon-Typical Body Horror
• Canon-Typical Horror
• Existential Horror
• Eye Horror
• Folk Horror
• Gothic Horror
• Horror Comedy
• Horror Movies
• Medical Horror
• Mild Body Horror
• Religious Horror
• Slasher Horror
• Space Horror
• Supernatural Horror
• Surreal Horror
• Jumpscares
• Scary Stories
• Otome Games
• Yumeshipping | Self-Shipping

Subtag/Metatag Revisions

Additionally, we continued to adjust existing canonical tags to add or remove new subtag and metatag relationships, which help users find related content and filter in/out content as they browse works on AO3.

• Consensual Possession is now a subtag of Consensual and Possession
• No Use of Y/N for Reader-Insert is now a subtag of Reader-Insert
• Pyromania has been removed as a subtag from Psychopathology & Sociopathy
• Serial Killers has been removed as a subtag from Psychopathology & Sociopathy

In Conclusion

While some of these tags may be tags and concepts you’re intimately familiar with, others may be concepts you’ve never heard of before. Fortunately, our fellow OTW volunteers at Fanlore may be able to help! As you may have seen in the comments sections of previous posts, Fanlore is a fantastic resource for learning more about these common fandom concepts, and about the history and lore of fandom in general. For the curious, here’s a quick look at a few articles about concepts related to this month’s new canonical tags:

• Body Horror
• Gothic Fiction
• Holiday Fanworks
• Horror
• Otome Game
• Self-Shipping

While we won’t be announcing every change we make to No Fandom canonical tags, you can expect similar updates in the future about tags we believe will most affect users. If you’re interested in the changes we’ll be making, you can continue to check AO3 News or follow us on Bluesky @wranglers.archiveofourown.org or Tumblr @ao3org for future announcements.

You can also read previous updates on “No Fandom” tags as well as other wrangling updates, linked below:

• Past “No Fandom” Additional Tags Updates and 5 Things Said by Wrangling Volunteers
• Past Fandom-Specific and “No Fandom” Tag Wrangling Change Posts

For more information about AO3’s tag system, check out our Tags FAQ.

In addition to providing technical help, AO3 Support also handles requests related to how tags are sorted and connected.​ If you have questions about specific tags, which were first used over a month ago and are unrelated to any of the new canonical tags listed above, please contact Support instead of leaving a comment on this post.

Please keep in mind that discussions about what tags to canonize and what format they should take are ongoing. As a result, not all related concepts will be canonized at the same time. This does not mean that related or similar concepts will not be canonized in the future or that we have chosen to canonize one specific concept in lieu of another, simply that we likely either haven’t gotten to that related concept yet or that it needs further discussion and will take a bit longer for us to canonize it as a result. We appreciate your patience and understanding.

Lastly, we’re still working on implementing changes and connecting relevant user-created tags to these new canonicals, so it’ll be some time before these updates are complete. If you have questions about specific tags which should be connected to these new canonicals, please refrain from contacting Support about them until at least three months from now to give us adequate time to do so.

https://www.transformativeworks.org/updates-to-no-fandom-additional-tags-october-2026/

https://www.transformativeworks.org/?p=291942

Posted by therealmorticia

https://www.transformativeworks.org/translated-ao3-notification-emails/

https://www.transformativeworks.org/?p=290215

For many years, our coders and translation volunteers have been working to internationalize AO3. Today, we are excited to announce that registered users will now be able to receive notification emails from us in another language! If you are logged in to your AO3 account, you can go to your Preferences page and choose the locale that we will use when sending you emails, such as kudos or subscription notifications.

We are starting off by enabling the option to receive notification emails in Simplified Chinese (中文（简体）). After we are sure that the new preference is working correctly and the translated emails are going out smoothly, other languages will be enabled – hopefully very soon!

Note that we are not translating user-created content, such as fanworks or comments. For example, in a translated kudos email, the subject “You’ve got kudos!” and the number of guests who left kudos will be translated. However, the list of usernames and the titles of your works will remain in their original languages.

When will my language be available?

Simplified Chinese (中文（简体）) is currently the only available language, because we wanted to focus on enabling the locale preference. More languages will be made available once we’ve confirmed that the new preference is working correctly. This staggered rollout allows us to get the completed translations to you as soon as possible, instead of delaying them until everything is fully coded, tested, and translated.

Why are some emails still in English after I select a locale?

AO3 has over 30 different types of emails, but not all of them are translated yet. Instead, we are focusing on the most common emails, as well as some emails that are needed for technical or security reasons. As translations for more emails become available over time, we will start sending out the translated versions based on the locale you’ve chosen instead of the default, English text. This means that some emails may remain in English for some time, or be partially in English, even after you select a different locale in your preferences. Enabling a language as soon as the most used emails are translated helps get translations to you faster.

Additionally, we can’t send translated emails to guests, such as notifications for replies to comments you left without logging in.

Can I volunteer to translate emails in my language?

Yes! The Translation committee accepts translator applications year-round, and would love to hear from you, whether you’d like to join an existing language team, or pioneer a team for a language we don’t cover yet! Please note that our translators work on a variety of content, including AO3 email localization, FAQs, news posts, and other documents, and if you pass our selection process, you’ll receive several different types of tasks to work on. If you enjoy working in a team and would like to help make even more content available in your language, please get in touch with Translation!

Why isn’t the rest of the site translated?

We chose to translate notification emails first, because they are relatively self-contained and thus simpler to translate and technically implement compared to the full website interface. This has allowed us to use the emails to develop coding standards and translation processes which we can now utilize for the interface. We’re already making progress on this, but we can’t promise anything yet.

If you have experience with web application development, especially in Ruby on Rails and internationalization, you can become a code contributor to help us further this and other initiatives.

I spotted an incorrect translation, how can I tell you about it?

Please contact Translation with the following information, and they will review your suggestion.

• the subject line of the email notification
• a full quote of the text that you believe is incorrect
• and an explanation of what you think it should be changed to and why

We’re excited to move forward with this important work to make AO3 more accessible to our international user base, and we look forward to adding more languages, as well as internationalizing the main website interface, in the future!

https://www.transformativeworks.org/translated-ao3-notification-emails/

https://www.transformativeworks.org/?p=290215