Fanfiction.Net vs. Archive of Our Own

Meta
Title:	Fanfiction.Net vs. Archive of Our Own
Creator:	sockii
Date(s):	2012, with some small updates in 2013, other unspecified updates in 2017
Medium:	online
Fandom:
Topic:	fiction archives, Fanfiction.net, Archive of Our Own
External Links:	article, contains 2013 updates, Archived version article, contains 2017 updates
Click here for related articles on Fanlore.

Fanfiction.Net vs. Archive of Our Own is an 2012 article by sockii published at "Hobby Lark." The article was "updated" in 2013 and 2017.

Note: The author of this article was very active in Fan History Wiki, a project that was often very critical of The Organization for Transformative Works and its projects, one of which is Archive of Our Own.

See also Archive of our Own vs. FanLib: Why they are not succeeding.

Contents of the Article

• Are You Familiar With These Fan Fiction Archives?
• Books on Fandom and Fan Fiction History and Culture
• FanFiction.Net
• Criticisms of FanFiction.Net
• FanFiction.Net content purge update
• FanFiction.Net on Twitter
• Archive of Our Own
• News from Archive of Our Own
• Archive of Our Own on Twitter
• Criticisms of Archive of Our Own
• Make Your Choice: Which Archive Do You Think Is Better?
• Other Multi-Fandom Archives on the Internet

The Article's Highlights Regarding Archive of Our Own

Note: The article does not include a similar section for FanFiction.Net.

• Open to all kinds of fandoms, including Real Person Fiction

• Open to all ratings of fan-fiction, from general audiences to adult.

• As of February 2013, the archive now allows users to host meta fandom writings as well as fiction.

• Ability to lock story visibility to other AO3 members only, to minimize search engine inclusion (some authors don’t want their stories showing up in general Google searches.)

• Allowance of certain fandoms (include Anne Rice’s “Vampire Chronicles”) and story types (including songfic) which have been banned from FanFiction.Net.

• Ability to link various pseodonyms [sic] and names under one account, and to also “orphan” stories to remove your name from them

• A complex tagging system so that stories can be searched by theme (romance, hurt/comfort), trope (Steampunk AU, Aliens made them do it) or whatever an author may choose

• Backdating system, useful if one is trying to organize all of her fanfiction chronologically

• Ability to import stories from other URLs

• Collections and challenges

• A “Kudos” button to show that you read a story and enjoyed it, without having to leave written feedback

• Ability to add new fandoms if not already listed, without having to wait for a site administrator to add them

• A warning system for common fannish triggers and controversial subjects – which an author can choose or choose not to use

The Article Had Criticisms of Both Archives

One thing to keep in mind is that this article was written shortly after the Fanfiction.net Fiction Purge, something that caused many fans to leave that site and go to Archive of Our Own. One of the results of this exodus was a sudden overload of interest and traffic at AO3, and it caused a number of temporary technical problems.

The article's criticisms of FanFiction.net:

• Difficulty finding quality fiction amidst all of the dreck.
• Limitations on allowed content.
• Sorting multiple-character/relationship fiction is difficult.
• Annoying advertising.
• Disinterest in punishing/banning plagiarist authors and plagiarism.

The article's criticisms of Archive of Our Own:

• Too heavily focused on media fandom.
• No ability to sort out crossovers from non-crossover stories.
• Frequent downtime/slow server response.
• The tagging system is a mess.
• Lack of community/readers don't comment and review.
• Hard to keep up with what's new in a particular fandom.
• No filter "out" options, period and too much adult content/no way to filter out adult summaries and titles.
• Increasingly long wait for an invite code.
• Coding problems from the ground up/three years and the site is still in beta.

Some 2012 Fan Comments: Imbedded in the Article

I say....FF.net is ONLY better because of the number of views and reviews you can get there, the stat view and the PM-ing. I can't get half as many views on AO3, I don't like that my comments to reviews count as comments themselves, and I don't like that you can't necessarily "favorite" a story. But if I could get as many views, and PM people I would be perfectly content. AO3 would win, hands down. AO3 actually allows mature content and even so, I have a hard time finding mature content myself! So i have no idea why people complain about the sexual content or whatever.

Okay, I joined ff.net a couple of years ago and it was quite recently that I discovered Archive of our own. The advantages are clearly the tagging system and the complex filter options. The lack of censorship is both advantage and disadvantage. You can post (practically) anything, and you are even given filter options such as "underage" or "rape/non-con" (ff.net for example blocks these searches) and search for these themes specifically. You also have the option of searching for one-chapters, so basically PWPs. FF.net on the other hand has longer stories, more motivated authors (due to the review option?) and since you can sort the stories by number of favourites you can easily distinguish the better from the worse FFs. The site however has banned some well written and complex FF with adult content that was crucial for the story. In conclusion: Ao3 is great for adult content and for some stories that authors have put on this site to flee from the purge, but if I want to read long, good (well, as good as FF can be) stories, I'd go to ff.net every day.

I just recently started using AO3 after being on FF.net for years, and I already like AO3 more. The layout is prettier, there are way more options for tagging genres, characters, and themes, and I just learned that I can include images in my works. Being a perfectionist, I especially love how much easier it is to edit works on AO3 when I find a typo. I lost a story to the purge on ff.net, which annoyed me a lot. For one thing, no warning was given to edit before the story was removed. For another, I lost years of story stats data and comments which disappeared with the story. As for the wait time for an AO3 invite code, they seem to have got that under control. I received my invite last month within a couple of days of requesting it. I plan to continue maintaining archives on both sites, but I definitely prefer AO3.

I'd say I'm actually a bit neutral on this one. Fanfiction is overall, I think, a better-designed site, and I can't say I don't LOVE the PM features and how it doesn't count author replies as reviews. However, I like how AO3 doesn't automatically filter crossovers from regular fanfiction because my stories are so much easier to find and read. Also loving the tags-seriously, it's a much better way to find what you're looking for without having to specify eighteen hundred million things like on Fanfiction. I'd say that if AO3 gets a PM feature, figures out that annoying Kudos thing (and the comments omg please stop counting my replies as comments), and generally just makes the system design slightly better, it will dominate the fanfiction community. But for now I'm going to have to say Fanfiction wins.

I have been a writer on FFn for about two years and I can say, I believe I would actually stick to FFn without even using AO3. I mean, the cons to AO3 is just WAY worse than FFn. Believe me, FFn is the site to go for hands down (or hooves if you are a brony, like me).

As a reader, I moved completely away from ff.net because AO3 is so much more flexible and fun to use. The AO3 tagging system adds diversity to my search results and gives me the freedom to find fix based on either a relationship or a keyword. For example, I might just want to find all the wingfic in the SGA category, regardless of character or romantic bent. On ff.net, and this may have changed since I last used it, I kept getting the same hits 99% of the time and that is just really boring for someone like me who spends most of their nights surfing the web for good fiction to read.

Well, I have to go with FF for alot of reasons. One, I myself write alot of fanfiction and the best part about it for me and what really keeps me going is getting a review. There is no way to actually know what the reader liked and didn't like or what they suggest if you only have to push a button. I understand that AO3 is just starting out, but they need to adapt to the needs of viewers. Which brings me to my second point; because AO3 is new, it has a smaller base of fandoms and not alot of fanfictiong written in general. I am a big fan of anime, but there is barely any on AO3 and that's really disappointing to me. The site needs to adapt to other cultures and the person who wrote this was right when she said that outsiders are feeling left out. I know that FF has flaws too, but nothing is perfect and people are just going to have to deal with that. I like FF better and probably always will, but everyone has their own opinions and I think people should respect that.

AO3 hands down. Tags, and no censorship.

Thing is, FF.net has a larger population than any other fan fiction site. If you want your story to get the most exposure, you would get it on FF.net. The problem is that now that they've done away with adult fan fiction, that's a real problem because this is the kind of fiction a lot of people want to write and read. For this reason I think it wasn't a good move on the part of FF.net to eliminate adult fiction. It's just silly. whatever you personally think about adult fiction, that was a significant portion of what people want.

I think I'll stay with ff.net. At least one can in fact FIND things...For example, I wanted plain Angel fandom and only got xovers -.- I don't like xovers and I certainly don't like xovers being xovers just to have as many pairings as possible. Though I have to admit that the category option (slash, het etc.) And the relationship option are really useful. People who don't like slash don't stumble into slash stories and start taking and slashers don't have to search for ages. Another thing I quite like, is that many old and abandoned fandoms are reappearing (like Highlander: The Series) and even updated. That's really one of the perks of AO3. Nonetheless,the fact that people seemingly just read fics and leave neither comment,not kudos, is really disheartening. Why would I want to put my stories on a page where One doesn't get feedback at all? There are stories with thousands of clicks and no feedback at all. Hell, even the worst fics on ff.net get some kind of response.I'll stay With ff.net,but only because there's no real alternative and it's easier Than Searching the whole inet for a story. I think ao3will turn into amore sophisticated version of adultff over time.

I've been with both sites since they began and FF.net is certainly the easier of the two to use. The random tagging status of AO3 feels more like tumblr than a professional site, and the the article is right that AO3 fosters less of a community aspect, in that, my works on ff.net that have hundreds of reviews, can have absolutely nothing on AO3, and as a writer, my big thing is reviews. Kudos don't mean anything to me in terms of understanding what someone did or didn't like, and I want to get feedback from the audience. As for the banned stuff on ff.net, no one enforces anything, but that makes it better, and the searching is so much easier!!! The idea that... there's a lot of crap, well, there's a lot of crap all over the internet, but ff.net is easy to search through the mess, especially with the advanced search options. Oh, and the few times I've been attacked by trolling, ff.net has come and shut down the troll account, so I love that.

I started out on FF, but since joining AO3, I haven't looked back. I used to have to have to sort everything by reviews just to get to the decent stuff on FF, but on AO3 I can just look through and know I will find gems. Plus, I love the tagging system. I don't know why people say it's hard to navigate - I actually think it's better laid-out, overall, than FF. Even visually, AO3 looks fresh and new, while FF just leaves me going bleh at the old-fashioned theme. To the people complaining there aren't enough of some fandoms - join up! Post your stuff there! Encourage others to do the same!

AO3 is much better. Because, tagging and the adult stories, etc, is really easy to avoid. Those complaints are full of it. I have an account, I think it's great, and best of all, you don't need systems like Word to post stories. I wish that had been a complaint in FF.net. I can show I liked it without having to just say I liked it. Why explain? Sometimes you cant, and if you simpy Kudo, no explination is needed and you don't have to clutter comments with simple "I liked it" posts. i have to go with AO3. It's so organized, at least to me. I couldn't understand FF.net.

I don't have a favourite, but there is no option for that. i was on Ao3 more recently, so that's what i chose. I enjoy both sites, and indeed, both have pros and cons, however, with practice, patience (that's the hard one), time, and a little bit of know-how, one can get around many of the problems. Ao3 definitely needs to have a method of filtering out a tag, but the restrictions on ff.net content drives me insane, given many of my favourite stories got deleted, and nothing of that type is allowed - they need to be aware of what the majority of the readers are interested in, and allow for that - if a 13yr old is reading smut, that is more the problem of the parents than the site - my parents made me, then aged 16, read any story my 10yr old sister wanted to read, and I was fine with that, even if I read a lot of drivel/***p. Just to put it out there, I also make regular use of aff.net, but it too has some major problems

AOB grants users greater control over their own works, and presents a simplified search system. Do I want to read about "Gothic Romance" or "Zany Antics," today? I can search those and am guaranteed a tag. While the excessive tagging can be problematic, that is more the fault of overzealous users than the site, itself.

FF pisses me off to no end because it pretends to be sympathetic to the anti-smut vendetta. Modern fan fiction arose specifically out of the desire to see two characters bang who normally wouldn't. Do I want to read all the filth people put out there? Not particularly, but it's an ignorant decision to simply ax everything someone out there finds offensive. Fan fiction is for the pleasure of the fan writing it, not some eleven year-old faking their age.

Also, this article is spot-on in its guess on the voluminous bag of crap fiction present on FF.net. Maybe it's the wait-time to join AOB that scares off everyone too impatient to find a good beta. Certainly, hands-down, I'm an AOB fan.

I'll vote FF for two main reasons: it's way easier to navigate, and people actually review on FF. As a writer, I like getting constructive criticism and words of praise from readers. Let's me know how I'm doing, and I can't get that on AO3. Plus, AO3 is just horrible to navigate. Too much time and effort has to go into sifting through the poorly assigned tags and actually finding what you're interested in.

The MA purge on FF sort of bothers me, but I haven't any of my stories or any other favorite stories of mine get removed for the content. Many people still freely write the genre on the site and haven't gotten whacked for it yet. Maybe we're just lucky, and I'll agree that at least with AO3 there's no need to fear the possible reporting of your stories. But if I want to read something other than smut, AO3 doesn't really offer much in that respect. I'd have to run over to FF anyway to read something decent that's lower than an M rating.

All in all, I don't even see AO3 surpassing FF any time soon, if at all. FF is the go-to website for fan fiction, and there are plenty of other websites that you can search for that post fan fiction and that have a better tagging system than AO3 does. So I'll stick to where I started, thank you very much.

I think AO3 has (in the fandoms I'm interested in, at least), higher-quality work. It's true that it took me a bit to figure out how to efficiently search for what I wanted. However, now that I have I love their sorting system. The advanced search options make it easy to find exactly what you want.

There's also something about AO3 that makes authors more deliberate in their actions - I've yet to see one story prefaced by "Yeah this is a crappy story i wrot during math class dont hate me to hard lolololol!!1!" which I see all. the. time. on FF.net . Too many people don't care how awful their work is, they just want someone to acknowledge their existence. I feel like early on FF.net there was a spirit of fostering new fanfic writers that led to writers finding beta-readers and improving. I don't see that am much anymore, and I have on AO3.

So, in short. AO3 is my go-to when I'd like to read fanfic without slapping a hand over my eyes and peeking through my fingers (as if that would help me sift through the shlock. It never helps).

I started out on ff.net, and it will always be "home" to me, but the policy changes made it impossible for me to stay without fear of meeting the wrath of the mods eventually. There are things that i don't like about AO3, and certain features that I would love to see implemented (such as a better, more efficient search system) but I must say it is far superior. OTW is doing incredibly things for those that participate in fandom, and they are working hard to bring AO3 up to better and better standards. The site isn't going to be perfect right out of the gate, and it will take a while for them to implement everything that needs to be adjusted, but it's getting there. The thing I appreciate most is that AO3 offers authors SO much freedom when it comes to their works. I could never go somewhere and stay there comfortably if it didn't allow every author to express themselves in whatever way they saw fit.

I prefer ff.net, even since the purge I have cut explicit parts from my stories and posted them on deviantART and posted the URL in the authors notes available at the beginning and end of every chapter, so people can read passionate sex scenes and brutal battles there. I also am getting pissed waiting for my AO3 invite and their lack of a filter. Plus I enjoy reviews and the sense of community that ff.net offers.

I dislike them both. FF.net makes dramatic changes that affect readers and writers without any warning or consideration for its userbase, and it's true that it's full of absolutely terrible stories. AO3 is ugly-bordering-on-hideous and gives me a headache with the tagging mess. I prefer FF.net by the slightest margin, but my favorite archives remain the well-maintained niche archives that exist for specific fandoms or ships.

AO3, ALWAYS. I have limited internet access which means that if I want to read something later, I can load up the entire work of a story, or I can even download it to read on an iPad/iPod/Smart Phone, or even just save it to my computer if it's a favourite I'd like to keep forever.

I find FF.Net messy and it's layout difficult, and what I love about AO3 is you can search using the amounts of hits or Kudos the stories have, which means that if the numbers are high you know you're in for a popular (and [hopefully] awesome) fic. I waited a couple of months to get an account, but when the email did arrive if was definitely worth it; there's a great bookmarking feature and a email service which lets you know whenever a Work In Progress (WIP) fic you've subscribed to has been updated.

Also; AO3 has no ads, and I absolutely love that, and if the site stays in Beta mode or sometimes has some issues, I really don't mind because the lack of ads totally makes up for the maintenance problems the non-profit site has.

WHY IS THIS EVEN A QUESTION. If you're still reading on the Pit of Voles in this day and age, I pity you. I don't care WHAT problems are going on at AO3--and I agree with some of the ones that have been brought up here--but dear god, if AO3 is down, THIS IS WHAT OLD LIVEJOURNAL AND DREAMWIDTH COMMUNITIES ARE FOR. If you're seriously looking for fic on fanfiction.net, you're either very patient, very brave, very desperate, or have zero taste. Or maybe you're just trying to level up in SLO points very quickly. Quality over quantity, kids. Always.

I favor AO3 way more than I do FF. I've grown through fandoms with FF.com, it had been my best buddy to come to when I wanted to read all I wanted. Over the years, it basically became pure shit. There were horrid writers flocking in through the windows, some places - it felt absolutely dead. I couldn't take it, and the good fic writers left the site because they couldn't either. The admins I had completely forgotten about. It was as though they packed up and left us to our own devices.. Which they did, but then arrived back to their thrones to throw this M-rated ban on us. Hijacked the design of the site which was extremely annoying, and never improved the character system. Everything I tried to find was nothing I wanted to find at all. Also I hate their search system. You can't keypoint an exact genre like (anime, cartoon, television). You type in one word and all you see is bullshit. Now AO3, it was amazing. It beckoned to my fervent call for better writing. The place is alive. People thriving from tumblr, LiveJournal, and deviantART!! All these competitions, kink memes, and story series hyped my interests. Sure, they of course have bugs everywhere that will prolly get on anybody's nerves, but I don't even care. As long as I get to read a fic from my favorite fandom, it's all good. The one good thing from FF that I could thank them for right now is their M-ban. Everyone flooded from that site to AO3, so more people, and more good fics. I love the Kudos system, it's adorable and nice. Also their stats for bookmarks is perfect aswell, and even guests are mentioned in them too! The creators of the site are obviously alive, you know who they are - and overall you feel comfortable with your own fandom community. You're up to date, they're up to date. You miss nothing, and everyone has the same likes as you.

I do use AO3 but if I'm searching for something FF.Net wins hands down. I can FIND what I'm looking for, easily. I don't get rubbish that I don't want in most cases (except for people who tag something with say a slash pairing but have a Mary sue character). A lot of people claim the quality is better at AO3 but really it depends on where you are looking for stuff and the bigger it gets the more rubbish we will find.

Archive of Your Own is superiour in every way to me. I only ever switch if I find a link on Tumblr that is only posted on FF.net or when I've managed to read everything on AO3 and still crave for more.

Some Fan Comments: Regarding the Article Itself

They've wound up serving different purposes. Many of us hoped AO3 would be the answer to the problems of ffnet (almost wrote ficwad there, gack), but it introduced a host of new problems. Searching and the lack of community are the biggest ones, although the migration of most of my fandom to DW and some to Tumblr has the spillover effect that people are commenting a little more on AO3 where we'll see it. On the other hand, AO3 makes challenge communities and exchanges so much easier, and I am really grateful to be able to integrate my own illustrations and reader-submitted fanart right into the story -- or, heck, share my fanart! AO3's download and reader functions make it easier for those who have migrated to tablets (they are really helpful if one has minor vision issues). I like AO3 better. But in practice, I get more reedback on ffnet. So I cross-post.

I find both sites perfectly functional personally. I must say AO3 has recently become, at least for some fandoms, nothing more than a smut dump. I don't really see any quality increase in the fics either. If AO3 actually allowed for the ability to filter out a tag it'd be much more pleasant. Not everybody wants to read about an author's homosexual pedophilia incest fanfic filled to the brim with absolutely creepy kinks and personally don't even want to read the description of said fic. The fact that said fics are even allowed on the site is kinda iffy if you were to ask me.

You raise some good points, pro and con, about both sites. Several of the criticisms of my preferred site, AO3, are valid... but given the responsiveness of the AO3 staff, I'm optimistic about the biggest one (inability to set searches to *exclude* as well as *include* tags or ratings) eventually being addressed. Nothing I've heard or seen leads me to think the FF.net folks have much interest in pleasing fans... as witness this latest "purge". THanks for a great article!

I read from both but only have fic posted on LJ. My preference is for AO3. The silly purging on FFnet and the very childish, 'review or I won't post' peeves me off royally. Initially it seemed as if AO3 might be harder to navigate but as you use it you should find it very user friendly, My one complaint about AO3 is the frequently very slow loading of the fandom pages, the stories come up fairly quickly when you click on them. I assume it is because of the high volume of transfers they are getting right now both from FFnet and 852 Prospect. Hopefully it will ease up in a month or so aftewr all the stories are transferred.

I can't stand FFnet, stopped using it six years ago, removed all my fic and won't touch anything posted on it. Apart from the eye-watering bad writing on the site, the reason I read or write fanfiction at all is because I appreciate how creativity flourishes in spite of external controls, so when a pack of highhanded and self-entitled authoritarians try to control what gets posted, it defeats the purpose and what little enjoyment might be had out of that steaming pile. The censorship and purging actually started years ago.

ff.net is older and a lot more popular, so I go on there to post my works.

So far, on AO3, the stories I've read are fine grammatically. The adult content on there versus the adult content still stuck on ff.net are equally bad. As for reading, I read on both. AO3 is still relatively new so I can't find a lot of stuff on there, but most of what I do find is good enough. As for ff.net, there's a significantly greater percentage of bad stories, but the good stories are very good - and simply due to the huge amount of stories on ff.net, even a small fraction of the good stories outnumber those on AO3. There's a lot more sifting to do to find them, though.

I'm pretty sure that AO3 is just so much cleaner of poorly written fanfiction because a majority of authors (that is, the terrible ones) haven't found it yet. Once it becomes more popular it will clog up just like ff.net.

I use both sites for reading, writing, and initiating discussions with other authors. My experience has been the opposite of many who have commented here. I do not feel the least bit lost on AO3 and I find it easier to get from one place to another there. I have also received at least ten times the written reviews on AO3 as ff.net after being warned by users of both sites that AO3 readers do not review. I love that ff.net has private messaging and that Ao3 has automatic downloads. As far as finding quality work, what has worked best for me has been to look at the subscriptions, favorites, and bookmarks of an author I respect. It really grows from there, and it seems a little ridiculous to me to rely as heavily as some folks do on tag searches to find what they want. But that's just me and I get it. I enjoy reading variety within my fandoms. When I go skipping around, Ao3 has the higher proportion of well-written fics.

Wow, this is quite the impressive lens. There's tons of well researched info on here. I've spent a lot of time on FFnet as a reader and writer, but have only read one story on AO3. It takes an incredible amount of time to truly become familiar with either site outside of just one fandom.

I've had an account with FF.net since 2001 and by 2010 I virtually stopped going there preferring LJ or any place to read fanfiction because of the abundance of complete shit on that site. I stayed on after the original purges for loyalty sake but it just became to much. Some of my favorite authors who actually wrote worthwhile fanfiction were leaving because of the loss of stories (trust me, when they originally did the purges they lost stories that weren't even NC-17 or M rated, wiped some stories of comments completely due to one belligerent review and they're servers were also lagging when they began putting advertising up).

When I found AO3 it was a godsend for me because I found authors who had left FF.net and new ones. The quality of fanfiction is much higher, I have no problems with the tagging system and adore the the community because alot of community is connected with Tumblr.

The lagging, server issues and adding new content are just AO3 evolving which I am completely comfortable to wait for it be fine tuned while enjoying their content. It will pass like FF.net's fine tuning days and as long as AO3 keeps to their mission statement then I will be supporting it over FF.net for years to come.

You can easily dowload any story from AO3, while now in FF.net they don't allow you to select and copy the content of every chapter to save the story in Word for your personal use. It's also easier to find the kind of fanfiction you want in AO3, which have many more searching options. And the content of the story can be just as explicit as the reader wish, thus the warnings. Hovewer in ff.net you can find a higher amount of stories by far, and the readers are more used to leave reviews for the author. The feedback is better. I believe that a question of time, though. AO3 is booming quickly, and ff.net is suffering a slow but decisive decline since the last couple of years.

I prefer AO3 over FF, and not just because of the adult content, but also because I can read fics even when I'm not connected to the Internet ( you can easily download them ). I read on both sites, but I can't be bothered to post anything on FF because I'd have to censor some parts or completely remove some chapters and that doesn't sit well with me. There are some mature stories that aren't just porn without plot, but if you start removing the key parts of such a fic, then you're simply censoring yourself for the sake of posting it on a site, and that's not something I wish to do. I don't mind the lack of reviews on AO3, especially since the fandom I'm writing for isn't even that big, but the Kudos button is nice, so that's enough. I also find it really hard to edit fics on FF, or maybe I'm doing something wrong, I don'y know, but AO3 is much easier to use and I simply adore the interface.