A poll

[sholio]

Let's say someone you're following on AO3 decided to put a bunch of their older fic on AO3 and so you get a whole slew of notifs.

Poll #23957

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: Just the Poll Creator, participants: 103

You find this large pile of notifications ...

Annoying
11 (10.8%)

Useful
39 (38.2%)

Worrying
0 (0.0%)

Depends on whether it's a fandom I'm into
35 (34.3%)

It's your account, do what you want!
68 (66.7%)

My response cannot be contained in your ticky boxes.
13 (12.7%)

If someone does this more than once, would you unfollow them?

Yes/probably so
2 (2.0%)

No/probably not
71 (69.6%)

Depends on if I'm into the fandoms.
24 (23.5%)

Other?
5 (4.9%)

Do you wish AO3 gave users the ability to turn off notifs on backdated fic?

Yes.
15 (14.7%)

No.
17 (16.7%)

Could go either way, but notifying them that it's backdated would be nice.
49 (48.0%)

No opinion.
21 (20.6%)

Comments

[rionaleonhart]

If you're thinking about posting a bunch of backdated fic yourself, I don't think AO3 necessarily sends a notification every time you post a fic; I think it sends out a digest of all the fic you've posted within the last hour. If you post twenty backdated fics within a couple of hours, your subscribers will only get two or three notification e-mails. So, if you want to post a lot of backdated fanfiction without flooding people with notifications, it's counterintuitively better to do it in intense bursts rather than spacing the fics out.

EDIT: From the AO3 FAQ:

Email notifications are sent out in batches periodically. If a work, series or user you're subscribed to updates once in that period, you'll receive one email containing a link to the update. If a work, series or user you're subscribed to updates rapidly, you'll receive one email containing links to all of the updates.

So it's not necessarily once an hour, but it's certainly the case that people will get fewer notification e-mails if you post fics close together.

[sholio]

I knew about the digest thing, but I wasn't sure what the interval was; I had no idea how close together it needs to be for it to group them. So this is very helpful; thank you for the info! <333

[sheron]

Yeah it sends a digest and so to me personally it's completely fine (and awesome even!) to get a notif that there's a bunch of fic. And I read dates on fic that is "unusual" (i.e. not from a typical fandom the author posts in) so I would often notice if it was backdated once I clicked on the email. There's even a 'backdated' word in the top of the email (that I often miss personally but then if I'm interested I will look harder).

[muccamukk]

The way to get them all into the one digest is post them as drafts, and then publish them all quickly.

The way to not send anyone notifs at all is to post them with a sock, then once a few hours have passed, transfer them to your main.

[sholio]

Yeah, posting as drafts and then "activating" all the draft chapters at once is what I was doing with the big chaptered fic.

I didn't even think of the sock workaround, though!

[muccamukk]

Discovered the sock thing recently while coming at it from the other direction (namely: if I want to move fic from one account to another, will that send a notif to subscribers of the account I'm moving it to. It didn't.)

[sheron]

You can transfer fic between accounts?? Wow I had no idea! That's interesting to know...

[muccamukk]

Post with account A
Add account B as a co-author
Confirm with account B
Take account A off as author.

[sheron]

Oh that makes sense! Thank you.

It doesn't notify anyone about any of this after the initial 'fic posted' email, right?

[muccamukk]

Nope! It'll send out the notif to whoever is subscribed to account a, and would probably send it to whoever is subscribe to account b if you added b as co-author right off, but if you leave it for a few hours until the subscription time is done, no one will get an e-mail.

I moved a bunch of fic from my sock to my main this spring, and didn't hear boo about it.

[rmc28]

Hey, I'm one of your subscribers and got the notifs this morning, and it's not a canon I've consumed. So I'm in the group you're probably worried about annoying, although I guess I may well not be representative.

First thing: they batch into hourly updates so I got I think three emails total, and it's fairly fast work to determine if I want to read any of the works in it.

Second thing: the notification email tells me against each work that it's backdated. The wording is literally "X posted a backdated work: [work details]"

Third thing: I find it kind of neat to find out an author has written a bunch of works in a particular canon. Sometimes it inclines me to seek out the canon. Sometimes (especially for very favourite authors) I just read the fic anyway.


Some notes on process in case it's helpful:

* I filter my AO3 emails into their own folder and delete what I'm not interested in reading, and then I read from that folder as/when I have time.
* I have a second email folder 'AO3wait' for where I seriously intend to consume the canon. Honestly. Someday. (see also, just read the fic anyway)
* I subscribe liberally to authors, rarely unsubscribe, and delete a lot of notifications on first skim. I'm sure it would be more "efficient" to cut back on my subscriptions but that's more work up front, so I live in a world of plenty.
* I really struggle to leave comments on fic. Sorry. Lots of mashing of the kudos button though.

[sholio]

Ohhh, I had no idea that it actually DOES tell you it's backdated! (It hasn't come up for me with the people I follow.) I did know about the digest thing but I wasn't sure what the interval was.

I know what you mean about email filtering. I do that with a number of sites that tend to send out a lot of emails. It's helpful!

No worries about comments! <3 I mean, comments of course are appreciated, but it is always fine to read my fic without commenting.

Anyway, this is very useful information; thank you! <3

[rmc28]

I think it's very slightly under an hour: the timestamps on the three today are 00:50, 01:48, 02:43 (all BST). But that's close enough to hourly.

[booksarelife]

I think it’s that it’s every hour-probably on the hour, not “an hour between emails”

[trobadora]

If I subscribed to an author, it's because I want notifications about their work! And it makes no difference to me if it's backdated or not; if it wasn't on AO3 I likely won't have seen it before, so it's new-to-me either way.

[sholio]

This is good to know; thank you!

[yalumesse]

I'm not really bothered; Ao3 lumps them into a few emails with 60+ entries each so it's not like my inbox gets flooded. It is annoying if it happens three or more days in a row, so I'd say get it all out of the way in one sitting, but I wouldn't unfollow for it unless I'd already gone off the author's style/had forgotten I was following them at all/etc.

I'm not into the fandom/s you just mass posted for but I'm not bothered. I scanned the emails to see if there were any fandoms I knew, then deleted it. No fuss.

[bemused_writer]

I always think it's kind of neat to see people put their backdated works on AO3 personally and I've definitely done it myself. Also, if you upload it all at once, I think AO3 usually puts it together in one e-mail? At least, that's how I've received that kind of stuff in the past when people update multiple stories and such.

Also, I think they do get marked as "backdated" it's just not a super obvious notification.

[liz_mo]

If you put a publish date on the fic when you post that is prior to today, the notification reads: so and so posted a backdated work.

So that should answer your last question :)

[aroberuka]

i'm mostly still laughing over "Sholio posted The Killing Frost and 64 more" :p

but yeah, as others have said: the notif email does say it's a backdated work, and since ao3 doesn't send one individual email for every single work/chapter, there's not really any spam issue to worry about if you do it all at once ^^

[lannamichaels]

I specifically want these notifications. Aside from the general fact of "if I subscribe to them it's because I want to read their writing", there are people I am subscribed to specifically for their backlog in hopes they ever upload it from its current stage as 40 different parts on LJ and their website.

Also, if they date it in the past, it already shows up as a backdated work in the email.

So I have no problem with these whatsoever and in fact want them to happen more than they do.

[the_rck]

It occurs to me, after the fact, that my responses depend a little bit on how many notifications 'a slew' is intended to cover. Up to a certain point, I'm not going to be too bothered. If it gets heavier than, say, the Yuletide initial pinch hits emails, then I might object.

AO3 will compress notifications on things that are all posted within a certain time frame. I'm not sure how long that window is, but it might be possible to use that to decrease the number of notifications by saving a lot of things as drafts and then posting them all very rapidly.

[cathexys]

As long as it's backdated, I think it's wonderful. The only thing that drives me up the wall are dozens of old stories coming up in the most recent searches. (Plus, I like knowing when stories were actually written, so the backdating seems useful to me)

[booksarelife]

As some other people have said, I’ve gotten good at skimming AO3 update emails with multiple works to see if there’s anything I’m interested in and not minding if there isn’t

[amalthia]

I liked it when I'm notified that an author is posting fics, even if it's back-dated because a lot of older fics were only on LJ/older archive/personal site and if the author's moved them to A03 I'd like to know.

[lea_hazel]

If it's a slew of fic for a fandom or pairing that really raises my hackles, I might temp-unfollow, like when someone gets into a fandom I don't like on Tumblr.

[indywind]

I don't follow creators on AO3 because I don't want to get notifs every time they post things. If I ever liked someone's work soooo much I wanted to be notified whenever they posted anything, I guess I would like notifs about old fic as much as new fic (because maybe I missed it before?) and I'd tolerate getting a great heapy heap of notifs at once becauseI don't see a way to get only ones I'd be interested in -- unless maybe there was an option to digest-ify notifs for posts made within the same day, or something like that.

[brightknightie]

When I get a slew of notifications for stories I read 2 decades ago on a mailing list, I do roll my eyes. But I clearly don't need any service to tag them for me, because I remember them, and that's why I'm rolling my eyes. And... they frequently aren't backdated, because the author just today discovered the AO3 and doesn't yet know how everything works.

If I were newly into a fandom, and an author I loved uploaded a slew of her old stuff... I might well love it!

The experiment is waiting to be run. ;-) I don't seem to have "new" fandoms, probably because I used to have more time to watch TV, and I don't fall out of love with the old ones.