Fanfiction lovers, your global crisis is over. Archive of Our Own (AO3), the popular nonprofit, volunteer-run site for transformative fan works, is back online after a 17-day outage.
The site went offline on Oct. 29 following a reported security incident that prompted a wave of maintenance. The Organization for Transformative Works (OTW), which runs AO3, estimated that the maintenance could take up to a month.
That the site is back after just over two weeks is a relief to fandoms all over, especially as the site’s outage highlighted a larger divide between fanfiction authors and readers. However, there are still a few key things to know about AO3’s earlier-than-expected return.
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AO3 wants you to change your password.
In an update about AO3’s return, OTW addressed the security incident that caused the outage in the first place.
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“We will not be sharing specifics about what mitigating changes are being made at this time,” the update read. “However, we do want to share that we’ve partnered with a security firm to review the incident and analyze the site to help prevent future incidents. AO3’s security is deeply important to us.”
As of now, OTW does not believe that user data was compromised, although it “cannot rule out that possibility.” Because of this, it encourages users to take some simple safety precautions: Change your password on AO3, as well as on any other sites where you may have reused your AO3 password, and make sure your email is up to date.
Some AO3 features aren’t operational yet.
In the same update, OTW stressed that “some features have been temporarily disabled to allow us to bring the site back earlier than the four-week mark.”
Among the features that have been temporarily disabled are icon displays and external importing. If you want to download any works, you can only do so in HTML format. These features will return, and no AO3 data has been deleted in the security incident or subsequent maintenance.
AO3 also made a temporary change to draft deletion. Usually, drafts that are 30 days old get deleted automatically. However, in the wake of the outage, draft deletion has been paused until Nov. 29. Starting Nov. 29, AO3’s standard draft deletion rules will be back in effect.
If AO3 doesn’t load for you, don’t panic!
In the wake of coming back online, AO3 has implemented intentional traffic management measures to weather the surge of users. That means it might take longer for the site to load. When I tried to access the site, I was directed to a Cloudflare waiting room, where I spent two minutes before being sent back to AO3.
Logging into the site may initially prompt a bad gateway error as well, but this is due to a high volume of people trying to log in and no further outages. Keep refreshing and trying, and you’ll be back to your beloved ships in no time.
