Me vs Ao3

[razielim]

I wish there was a way to upload a fuckton of fics to Ao3 with a spreadsheet or something. Column A is the Title, all the way to column K or wherever where I'd paste the text. They're short works, and going through 200+ short fics' worth of Fandom/Ship/Language/Collection/Publication Date is going to be a nightmare, especially considering most of these fields have a couple seconds wait time while they retrieve data. Can't import the fics either because they're not already online anywhere.

The mandatoriness of the Language drop-down especially is irritating. It's been irritating ever since it was made mandatory a few years ago, but I really wish that I as an author could, I don't know, set my default language in account settings? I think I'd remember to change it to German from my default if I started writing Dark fic or whatever. Would be kind of hard not to. Even writing fic in Russian would be enough of a mental strain that I'd use that dropdown triumphantly. And if anyone does switch a lot and runs the risk of forgetting, all they'd have to do is leave the default language blank in their global settings, and the unpopulated dropdown would be mandatory every time.

The less mandatory fields the better, even when I'm not archiving 24958049 gazillion old fics. Hell, I'd set my current fandom and ship in a global setting if I could. Not like I change OTPs so often to justify having to constantly fill all that info out. Less to retrieve from the database too. The reason those fields are slow is because it's sitting there trying to piece together what I mean by "Super" based on everything that's ever been wrangled, when it could just be like "This guy set his default fandom to Supernatural, and he's one of those SamDean shippers, eh?"

Badabing, badaboom, lots of archiving time saved.

Comments

[ex_flameandsong751]

I really wish that I as an author could, I don't know, set my default language in account settings?

SAME. I always forget it and then AO3 does that error message of making me choose a language and I just. -keyboard smash-

[liriaen]

Now that you say it: so much yes! I mean, hello, in “tags” and “pairing” the thing suggests to me every possible variation of unspeakable acts, themes and couplings, but it can’t recognise the actual language said acts and couplings are wont to happen in? Gnarf.

[waterfall8484]

Setting a default language sounds like a really good idea! I guess most people write exclusively in one language, so it would save a lot of people some clicking.

[bluedreaming]

I’m not sure if this Ao3 poster might work? It was designed for auto bulk posting podfics. I haven’t tried it, but it was shared in the context of crossposting vids to Ao3.

There’s also a script on greasyfork that auto-sets the language for you. I’m at work so I don’t have the link, but you should be able to find it if you search the Ao3 scripts. Again, haven’t tested it but it might be helpful!

There’s also the Ao3 podfic post helper extension (on chrome and Firefox). Wile it’s designed to do related works, you can turn the podfic & tags off and the summary import, and just clone the tags from a previously-posted work (remember to delete the related work too).

Hope something of this might be helpful! I definitely resonate with your frustrations.

[dreamersdare]

I really wish that I as an author could, I don't know, set my default language in account settings

That is an awesome idea that I now really wish I could do.

[kalloway]

iirc AO3 used to default to English, but so many people were forgetting to change it when posting to other languages and it was causing a ton of abuse reports, they changed it.

It would be nice to have a default per user though. When I went through a couple years ago and archived like 1000+ works, I just got very fast at tab+ee or whatever it was to get English to pop up without scrolling. ^^;;

[spiralicious]

I agree with all of this! Especially the default language setting thing. (Has it really been two years already since the mandatory language drop down thing?)