A small passing rec

[sholio]

I recently had some of my fics invited to be added to WoC Focused Fanworks, an Ao3 collection that I am now aware of and browsing through. There's lots of good stuff, including art and lots of F/F. I particularly liked this Black Panther AU with Erik and Nakia growing up as friends. Lots of MCU and MCU-adjacent fic!

Comments

[bonibaru]

Did they ever fix that bug with collections where it gives the collection owner weird control over your fic?

[sheron]

If you mean the ability for the collection owner to set their collection to anonymous and thus make your fic disappear, I don't think that's considered a bug. (It's obviously problematic behaviour but as a side effect of a feature)

ETA: the reason I mention this is because I'm not sure it's on their radar to fix, fwiw.

[bonibaru]

Fair enough. It makes sense for Challenges, but if the Collection is not part of a Challenge, I don't like having my works with the ability to be added on the off chance the Collection owner ever decides to be a jerk. I can remember someone doing that once a long time ago - making a sock account, adding a bunch of popular fics to their Collection, then changing the settings on purpose to hide all the fics and be a troll.

[sholio]

Yeah, I don't think it's thought of as a bug so much as a normal part of how collections work. And it's easy to avoid by just not putting your work in collections, or pre-vetting collections to make sure they're not anonymous - I mean, I don't usually AS SUCH, but I also like to click through and see what else is in the collection my work is being added to, so I would notice if everything was anonymous. You can easily take it out again. So I don't think it's something that is particularly high on their radar to address and might never be.

[sholio]

I don't know what bug you mean; can you explain? (Obviously as someone who participates in a lot of exchanges, my fic is currently in a ton of collections and I haven't had trouble so far, FWIW.)

[bonibaru]

If a collection is set to Anonymous or Unrevealed by the Collection Owner, that impacts the original work, and takes visibility out of the author's control. It's why some creators de-select the ability to have their work added to Collections by other people.

"This collection is unrevealed: If this box is checked, then any works in the collection will show up as Unrevealed: the work may show up in tags, but the summary will not be visible and no one other than the collection owners and the author will be able to access the work even if given a direct link. Works can be individually revealed or mass revealed by the collection owners. If you click this box, you may be unable to add works to your collection as an owner if the creator has not chosen to allow

This collection is anonymous: If this box is checked, then by default any works that are in the collection will be show the creator as 'Anonymous' and any comments made by the creator on the work will be shown as being by 'Anonymous author'. Work creators can be individually revealed or mass revealed by the collection owners."

[sholio]

Oh that! Yeah, that's not actually a bug, it's just normal AO3 collection behavior and it's what makes anonymous exchanges possible. You can avoid it by, as you say, not putting your work in collections you don't control or participating in AO3 exchanges that use collections. Beyond that I'm not sure if it's something they can change without making anonymous exchanges impossible, and a lot of people (me!!) wouldn't want that.