The Archive of Our Own, a popular fan fiction platform, will be offline for approximately 15 hours on Wednesday to implement updates. The scheduled downtime, which begins at 3:00 a.m. ET, will allow the platform to improve its bookmarks and series search functions, including the ability to filter and sort works by word count. Other updates include fixing bookmark search results and ensuring series’ blurbs can’t use tags that were only used on draft works.
Users were warned of the outage in advance through the platform’s official social media accounts and a yellow banner on the website. Despite the notice, fans are expressing their disappointment and frustration on social media, with some joking about the difficulty of coping without their daily dose of fan fiction. The outage is significant, as the Archive of Our Own is a Hugo Award-winning platform that hosts a vast collection of fan-created content.
The platform has experienced outages in the past, including a 2023 DDoS attack that took it offline for almost two days. However, the community has consistently shown resilience and creativity in the face of downtime, using social media to commiserate and share humorously about the experience. The current outage is expected to last until around 6:00 p.m. ET, although the exact duration may vary depending on the complexity of the updates.
The Archive of Our Own is a vital resource for fans of fan fiction, providing a platform for creators to share their work and connect with others who share similar interests. The updates aimed at improving the user experience are likely to be welcomed by the community, despite the temporary inconvenience caused by the outage. Fans can stay updated on the status of the platform through its official social media accounts and status page. Once the updates are complete, the Archive of Our Own is expected to return to normal operation, offering its users an enhanced experience and access to a vast library of fan-created content.
