So as far as I understood (I come from Wattpad) Hits are views Kudos are votes/likes Bookmarks are libraries/playlists Words and chapters are the same And tags are the same as well
wattpad was easy to figure out, tumblr was a tiny bit difficult but I managed, but AO3... oh god. they make it so complicated for new users 😭😭 you're a lifesaver, thank you so much !!
getting into archive of our own was the weirdest thing for me because i refused to look up how it worked and i figured it all out by myself, then watched a video on it like a year later and learned even more its still quite an accomplishment for me to have understood it on my own tho, like i figured out the weird website because wattpad was too orange, im not kidding i read shit on wattpad for like a month before i got so sick of the colour scheme and the way people wrote and that i could barely find things i like that i moved to ao3, wonderful decision on my part
@@Out.ofpocket1 well i'm not too sure, what is the problem your having with ao3? i may have come across it myself but can't really help unless i have more information :)
@@Out.ofpocket1same!! I'm trying to figure out how to read the chapters bcs after I search something and I don't know how to use this, tried clicking diff areas on the screen multiple times still can't figure it out ( just started figuring out how to use this 5 mins ago) Edit: I'm so dumb- 💀 I was supposed to click On the title...
I actually hate wattpads formatting on mobile, so I stopped reading fanfiction on it lol- also it is harder to find good fanfiction, but it is where I started reading and writing fanfic so it'll always be close to my heart-
Top Priority after this finals season: finally get my AO3 account on track and bookmark all the good fanfics I've come across but was too lazy to log in for
*Good summary!* ❤ One thing though: sorting by Kudos is misleading: if you have one story with 1000 and one with 500, then the 1000 will come up first. Now posit that the first story has 100000 Hits and the second 1000. These give ratios of 1000 Kudos / 100000 Hits on the first and 500 / 1000 for the second -- i.e.: 1% rate even with more Kudos vs. 50% even with fewer. Worse, a good smut-fic might get low Kudos/Hits ratio because nobody wants their name on it, and a poorly written non-smut a higher ratio for any number of reasons. 😃
A good kudos ratio is basically just a guarantee that a work is a really good, not too smutty one shot. Long running stories are gonna rack up higher view counts just from people coming back to read the story multiple times, but only ever having 1 kudos to give. Not to mention there is a bit of fandom-dependecy for how kudos-heavy the readership for a particular story is in the first place. I find that an ~5% is a good rough kudos/views ratio, as its pretty easy math to do in your head (move the decimal, then half). Of course, if a story is only a little below that I’ll still give it a shot, that math is more just to see if a story is well off balance for kudos.
@@PineappleLiar Except for the guarantee of it being good (since some people re-read things), yup, that's about the same conclusion as I came to. The average background rate for a typical story (after having some time to stabilize) seems to be ~3-4%, so a 5% ratio is _probably_ a decent fic (with the usual exceptions of some having higher ratios but lower quality, or lower ratios and higher quality, of course). The variance is too wide for me to rely on it, but that just means that I might run into some fun fics that deserve more kudos (and there's always the back button). 🙂
@@PineappleLiarhey can you help me find a story... I read that years ago... Its about people who live in sky and underground... Its also love triangle
WHY DIDN’T I SEE THIS EARLIER! This would have saved me so many months trying to find good fanfics on Wattpad before finally registering on AO3 even if it didn’t look all that organized
I NEEDED THIS SOOOO MUCH THANK YOU!!! ONE OF MY ONLINE FRIENDS WHO ALSO READS FANFICTION RECCOMENDED ME TO GO TO AO3 BUT I COULDN'T FIGURE OUT HOW IT WORKED FOR THE *LIFE* OF ME IM SO GRATEFUL FOR THIS, THANK YOUUUUUU😭
…did you roll your mouse over AO3’s many question marks (which explain how various features work) or check out their extensive Q&A/FAQ section? A lot of questions are answered there
Thank you so much i really was having a headache trying to figure out how to understand ao3 but it’s so complex especially since i come from wattpad where everything is just right there for you.
The only annoying thing about exclusion filters is not everyone tags constantly. I have to exclude A/B/O, Omegaverse, and Alpha Beta dynamics and I still get ABO stuff.
i’ve always used wattpad since like- maybe the beginning of Covid? Anyway i wanted to start using other websites/apps and i have! But Ao3 is so confusing to me- so this helped a lot! Thank youuu
thanks so much for this, I've been on quotev for the longest time because I just couldn't *bear* to leave it I grew up with it but I'm so excited to finally get into (from what I've heard) the best place for fics!!
thank you so much!! I wanted to get into reading fanfic on ao3 but i was soo confused at first. I'm also easily triggered by some things so I was too scared to mess about and learn by trial and error. again, tysm!!
Yo this is a lifesaver for me! Recently migrated from FFN and tbh I prefer their UI a lot more, it's more simple and timeless ig and works aren't flooded with irrelevant tags and what not.
Thank you for this video omg😭 English is not my first language and I didn't know how ao3 worked for a long time and I figured out a few things myself but I didnt know about the whole bookmark section till now 😭 so thank you
Thank u sm. I used to read ff on wattpad for years, but it really went downhill with premium and stuff a few years ago, so i stopped reading ff. I recently remembered the good old days and i want to get into ffs again, but wattpad sucks, so i came across ao3, but i literally couldn't really find anything that good, because it was so confusing. I'll definitely try those tips :)
Thank you so much for explaining ao3, I will start with reading fanfics on it now I think but when I first got my account it looked so complicated and too difficult for my brain but thanks
Ty so much!! English isn't my native language but I'd like to read something beside fanfics on my own language, so I joined ao3. But there are so many buttons and I didn't know where to start 😭 You helped me a lot!
The FAQ is translated in many languages you can just open it and select your language and whenever you have a problem you can also write the support team in your native language
@@kunjute when you open the FAQ there is a drop down menu in the top right corner that is on english by default. Just click on it and a list of languages should appear!
when i forst looked up ao3 i was like what am i on the right website 😭 everything looked so complicated like what were kudos and bla bla but ur vid rlly helped me!! ao3 💯 % has the best fics put there
I tried to get into it a few months ago but only a few works would come up instead of thousands even tho Ik for a fact it was a popular fan base ;-; THANK YOU
As a brazillian teenager, Im glad I learned english. The spirit and wattpad fanfics that are in portuguese are not enough, I NEEDED TO LEARN HOW TO USE AO3. Thank you, so much.
Tbh AO3 has great fanficion but it is complicated af for beginners. Tumblr I can see being subjected as “better” bc it has good fanficion but has a lot of issues (now even gonna mention wattpad) but if you actually put in the effort AO3 is amazing and top tier ong
just started reading fanfic and read a 450k word fic in like 4 days but... i didnt actually read it on site, i downloaded it to epub (after seeing the dowload button) and read it on my kindle still have no idea how to actually see and search the site (which is why im here!) so thanks :D
Fantastic video! Thank you :) By the way, I'm super curious. What is the origin of your accent? It's lovely. It almost sounds Irish. But you did mention something about English words, so perhaps you aren't from an English speaking country. Either that, or you grew up speaking Gaelic. I'm usually great with accents, but yours is an intriguing mystery. Let me know! :D
@@arthoefmann Oh wow! I was close. Lol. Central Europe did cross my mind as a possibility. I should've mentioned it, haha. Also, you looked very cute. :)
I’ve used that page like 4 times in the last 7 years and I used it in times I loved a series so much and a couple so fcking much that I had the physical NEED to read something about them but I always stopped Anyway, now i just watched the dumpster battle and after it I just needed some good KenHina fics So for me not to be stopped im here how to learn THE ao3 🙏🏽
As much as I like the app, it sucks that I have two wait for like what, AUGUST 31?!?, HOW IS IT SO LOOOOONNNGGG, welp gonna just stick with Wattpad until it gives me an email TWT
I never search for kudos because then you'll never see the newer stuff. Nothing wrong with reading the best though, I just want to appreciate the under dogs too (like myself😅)
Yep, you can! Scroll down to the bottom, where you’ll see “customize”. Press “choose skin”, a menu will show up. Reverso is basically dark mode, so that’s the thing you’ll need to click on.
yes! I ended up making a custom skin with a dark gray background and sepia writing, So much nicer on my eyes in the evening. If you don't want to mess around with simple coding, you can just chose a different skin from the huge list of pre made ones.
Thank you for this, I'm a Wattpad we are through and through, but sometimes I go through all the hashtags and still don't find what I want, AO3 is a bigger platform, so I have had a hopes. My best friend is over it, and when I was getting 25. Which one's better oh, she tried to tell me how to use it but she just kept rambling oh, so I turned to RU-vid
THANK U FOR THE HELP i kept tryna find good soukoku fics but the search system always told no searches found 😔 i would have to search up names😂 you have really helped me thank you ❤
You go onto ‘My history’ (pretty sure you click your profile, but don’t quote me on that) and when you get there, there’s a button on every work that’s says delete.
the thing is my search bar history on AO3 keeps showing up and I cannot delete it so I have to see my 13 year old self's " ShrekXReader, Obama XReader" search everytime I open Archive. HOW DO I DELETE THEM oh god
i wish i knew about this years ago. i just jumped head first and struggled for a year, but now my account is all neat and tidy which shouldn't really be a flex, but it's the only thing I'm proud of
Does anyone know if you can filter out works you’ve already read? If you are logged in of course. Or filter out works you’ve already bookmarked or left Kudos on.
@@siriusbIack yes sadly it seems not to be a feature at the moment. What I have started doing is if I think I might have read a fic before, try leaving kudos before I start reading. Also, I bookmark fics once I have completely finished them!
well you can filter only the fandoms that you like, that way you don't come across those you don't like. otherwise exclude the fandom tag in the exclude tag list :D
you can filter out stuff, but I don't think you can make it a default. If you are in a fandome tag and don't want a specific crossover or pairing go to filters, then go to the exlude section, and add the thing you don't want to see in the 'other tags to exlude' text box. But you have to re apply those filter parameters each time you look threw the fandome tag.
I think I have an issue with my ao3 Eversince I made an account, it would take ages to load something. I would type "name/reader" or something and it would take more than one mintues even though my wifi is completely okay(I can open other stuff other than ao3 and it loads in less than a few seconds) and using mobile data doesn't work either. This has been going on eversince I made an account. I tried deleting my account but it didn't worked! Is there a way to solve this issue?? :(
to answer you ; i read ABO and id say thats for two reasons. 1: idk just,, p0rn wih plot ig ? 2: i like the whole magical type of element but i dont like reading magical stories in which i dont understand how it works prior. Its the same as why id read like a vampire au or something. (except again, its still normally a p0rn with plot lmao i have no shame in that)
I used wattpad for my reading but good stories was getting harder and harder to find so I thought maybe ao3 would help oh my god it is so hard to figure out how to use it without any help ur a life saver 😭😭
really random question, but where are you from? your accent sounds like a mix between british and scottish lol but on another note, you are an absolute godsend. i got an ao3 acct to publish anne with an e fanfics and have been delaying it because i can't figure out the system as a wattpad user. thank you!!!
Yeah the collection part of A03 is really quite difficult, that's why even I never use it. As far as I know you can apply for a collection but then have to wait for 3 days until you can actually add works to it. Also there's no such option as to make it a private collection they are always open access (But if there is a bigger expert in the comments maybe somebody else can help out as I am also not very knowledgeable about this)
Hi! I recently started using collections to sort my bookmarks into each fandom so I'm not an expert yet but from my understanding, the parent collection is the main collection you have (eg. The Owl House), you can then add subsections into that collection (eg. Lumity)! By "that you maintain", it just means a parent collection that you own/created as you can't add subsections to other people's collections unless you've been given access. Just a heads up, if you're making a collection you should tick the boxes 'moderated' and 'closed' as that will allow only you to add to your collection. If your collection is open rather than closed it will allow anyone on the website to add to it. Once you've created a collection, you can start sorting your bookmarks into them right away!
Omg I thought I was the only person who loves fanfiction. Like I'll look for a story that I'm sure would be on there, example a Wonkapiercer story (Its a Willy Wonka and the chocolate factory as the beginning of Snowpiercer,RU-vid rabbit hole) and its not so I'm like, well there's another story I have to write. Also ill be watching a movie and ill think omg what if this happened instead,..to the point I have like 50 half thought out stories in my head and no time to type or write them out. I got 2 kids, who don't like quiet, or know how to use their inside voices. But there're adorable and sweet, so you let some things go.
