Known Issues

Updated 2013-05-13 13:40:10 -0400

These are the major Known Issues that are currently affecting us on the Archive of Our Own. If you've encountered an issue you don't see here, or you'd like to give us more information or comments, we welcome your feedback via the Support and Feedback form.

The Archive is still a work-in-progress, and we'll be introducing a whole bunch of new features in the future. Since the Archive is designed, coded and tested by volunteers, the time it takes to introduce new features varies a lot, but we do listen to your requests and feedback and work to respond to it. If you are interested in helping us turn ideas into a reality, please volunteer to join the Archive team via the OTW's Volunteers page.

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General Issues

  • Share box always open: Some users have reported that the 'Share' button that usually pops up a pre-formatted block of work information has been replaced by the text it's supposed to hold. This severely messes up all work pages. It's due to a conflict with some userscripts people have installed in their browsers, which are interacting badly with a jQuery plugin we started using for our help boxes. The quick and dirty way of solving this problem is to disable AO3-related userscripts. For a little more information, see our Known Issues from Release 0.9.6.
  • Issues resulting from page caching: To counteract some of the site slowness and improve load times, we introduced more page caching for some areas of the site. You can read more about this in the Release Notes for deploy 0.8.17. While we're still ironing out any bugs and improving how the pages are cached, some issues might occur. Currently, hit counts might appear on your works even if you have set them to be hidden (or vice versa), and work blurbs on tag pages might take a while to update, meaning that a recently updated work might not move to the top of the list immediately or list the wrong number of chapters. The data will display correctly on the work page itself; on tag pages, reordering the works with one of the sort buttons will fix the listing.

Posting Works

Rich Text Editor

  • Formatting lost in some cases: Since our RTE upgrade in Release 0.9.0, which fixed several lingering bugs, we've had reports that formatting is lost when pasting with certain combinations of word processing program and browser. We know in particular that Google Drive seems to cause problems for many users. If you run into formatting difficulties, please contact Support.

Multi-Chapter Works

  • Title of first chapter doesn't appear until chapter 2 is posted: Ticking "This work has multiple chapters" allows you to enter a title for chapter 1, but it won't be visible on the work until chapter 2 is posted. Additionally, the boxes to enter a summary and beginning and/or end notes for chapter 1 won't appear until chapter 2 is posted. (The summary and notes boxes on the work posting form are for the entire work. In particular this means that any end notes entered here will be work end notes, attached to the end of the last chapter of the work.)

Editing Work Data

  • Can't edit gift recipients: Due to a recent bug, it's currently impossible to remove gift recipients from a work. A fix for this is in the pipeline!
  • Series order not updated: When the order of the works in a series is changed, this change is not properly reflected in either the work blurb or the summary at the top of the work. Clicking on the series title will show the series in its proper order, but the works will be labeled with the wrong part numbers. The series information at the bottom of the work text is updated correctly. This problem does not seem to resolve itself with time, but it's been reported to our coders to work on a fix.
  • Adding an anonymous work to a new series will break anonymity: If your work is part of a collection or challenge that is currently set to anonymous and you add the work to a series, the series will show up on your home page, leading to the blurb containing all information for your work, but with "Anonymous" set as the author. It will still display as a Mystery Work at the top of your home page and on your work listing.

Multimedia Embeds

  • Embedding video from Viddler: There is currently a flaw in Viddler's embed code – it leaves the "http:" off the front of the source location. If you are using Viddler, you will need to manually adjust the code to be: [...] src="http://www.viddler.com/[...]"
  • Pasting with quote marks: Several versions of the major browsers are inconsistently converting regular quote marks to angled smart quotes when pasting in code. These smart quotes will be stripped out by the parser, rendering the code unusable and causing the entire embed to be stripped out. You'll need to manually go through the pasted code and replace the “smart” angled quotes with "straight" double quotes. Unfortunately, we can't give reliable browser recommendations here, as this behaviour seems to depend heavily on browser versions on different platforms.
  • Audio Embeds using Google: It appears that Google has disabled the Flash file many sites were using for embedding mp3s. If you used Google's player to post podfic to the Archive, the streaming interface won't be available. Our Coders are aware of the situation and are looking into possible solutions. [Update: We have made available the open source player Dewplayer for embedding audio files in your work. Please see our post Just Press Play! (Podfic Embedding on the AO3) for more information.]

Tags

  • Tags are not case-sensitive: You may find that when you enter a tag, it defaults to the capitalisation which already exists in the database, which may be different from the one you entered. If you think a tag is wrongly capitalised you can submit a Support request and our tag wranglers will look into changing it (subject to internal guidelines).
  • Problem with diacritics: Tags with diacritics (accented letters such as à or š) are currently not recognized as separate from spelling variants with non-accented letters. If necessary, wranglers can disambiguate problematic tags (where accented and non-accented versions actually mean different things), so if anything seems wrong to you, please contact Support to let us know.

Importing Works

  • Imports from FF.net: Imports of works hosted on fanfiction.net are currently not supported, as the Archive has been blocked from accessing their site - see this post on FF.net problems for more information.
  • Problems with import from efiction sites: Imports from some efiction-based sites are producing undesirable results: only some information will be imported, but it will trigger the creation of multiple chapters. We're very sorry about this - we're looking into it, but right now if you get unexpected results you will need to delete the bad work and post the work manually.
  • Imported works post without preview: Importing multiple works in one go results in them being posted immediately instead of being previewed first. This is a bug and will be fixed in the future. You can work around this for now by importing works one by one.
  • Multichapter importing: Currently, if you import a multichapter work (either from a single URL, or using multiple URLs and choosing to import as chapters of a single work) only the first chapter is viewable/editable before posting. Additionally, choosing to Edit before posting will cause your work to appear with two copies of chapter 1 and no chapter 2. You can avoid this problem by choosing either "Post" to post directly or "Save Work Draft" to save the work to your Drafts (so you can edit it before posting).

Collections and Challenges

  • Can't add someone else's work to my collection: It is currently possible to add your own work to a collection, but not to invite someone else's work. This isn't a bug - we just haven't built the feature yet. Please bear with us while we finish and roll out the necessary code. In the meantime, you can work around this by commenting on people's stories and inviting them to add themselves to your collection.
  • I still have the option to submit a work to a finished challenge: At the moment, the dates functionality on the challenge settings page is for information only. If you're the owner of a challenge, you have to manually close the challenge at the finishing date.

Downloads

  • Some file downloads fail: Some works do not successfully generate a download file. Instead, when you try to download you get Error 500. We're looking into the problem.
  • File extension handled incorrectly: Internet Explorer has an issue with downloading .epub as .zip – the file extension has to be changed manually when saving the file. (Try right-clicking on the EPUB button and selecting "Save Target As" if a simple click doesn't give you the option to edit the file name.)
  • Problems with .mobi files: We are experiencing problems with the conversion tool we use to generate .mobi files from HTML, such as random characters appearing in place of spaces. We apologize for messy files and will look into better conversion options. In the meantime, you can try one of the other download formats that might be compatible with your device.
  • EPUBS missing chapter end notes: EPUB downloads of works with chapter end notes will be missing those notes. Until we can find a better conversion solution, the best work-around is to download the work in a different format and then use a program such as Calibre to convert it to EPUB.

Notifications

  • No notifications about related works going out: We're currently struggling with a bug that prevents all emails about related works from going out. If you have created a podfic or a translation of someone's work, and want to make sure they know about it, consider leaving them a comment or making your work a gift to them: the gift notification will reach them.
  • Edits to an already posted work don't trigger certain notifications to be sent: Notifications about related works/series subscription emails will currently not be sent if a remix or translation link/series name is added to a work after it's already been posted. You can monitor the numbers for Related Works in your Dashboard sidebar, and check series subscriptions manually if you are unsure. We are working on a fix!
  • Not getting any emails: We've been getting reports about missing subscription notifications even when we couldn't see any problems with the mailing queue on our end. In all likelihood, these emails are getting caught in spam filters. Please check your junk mail folder and add do-not-reply@archiveofourown.org to your address book to increase chances of successful delivery. You can also follow these unofficial instructions for whitelisting all emails from the Archive.

Navigating the Site

Redirects

  • Commenting: Occasionally after commenting or leaving kudos on a chapter users will be booted back to the first chapter or full work, depending on the preferences set.
  • Deleting a work from your history: Using the page navigation to go back in your history and deleting a work from there will boot you back to the first page of your history. We realize how annoying this is and are looking into a fix.

Error and Success Messages

  • Misleading "Mark as read" message: Clicking the "Mark for later" button on top of a work will result in a success message, although you might have to little while until the work shows up in your history and the button changes into the "Mark as read" button at the bottom. However, clicking that one will bring up the same message: "This work was marked to read later." This is a bug; however, the work will be correctly added to and removed from your history if you hit either button once. Clicking it again (due to the misleading message) might give you wonky results! Please keep in mind that due to caching, you might need to wait up to ten minutes to see it vanish from your list once you've marked it as read.

Skins

  • Problems with the wizard: The skins wizard is behaving erratically and inserting undesired code into the generated stylesheets. We're looking into ways to fix this!
  • Skin: One Point Faux: This skin was created to reconstruct the old site design on the HTML structure implemented on 2011 November 11. Since then, we've found a number of visual inconsistencies in it. We're working on getting it as similar to the old design as possible, though due to accessibility reasons it won't ever be exact.
  • Skin: Archive 1.0: This is the old skin from before the site redesign on 2011 November 11. It is marginally functional, but its basic structure is incompatible with the new site code. While it may get adjusted in the future, we do not offer support for it and recommend transitioning to using One Point Faux or Archive 2.0 as a parent skin.

Specific Browser Issues

Internet Explorer

  • Tags in the work blurb: The commas separating tags are not showing up in older versions of IE.
  • Replying to comments: Some people are reporting problems replying to comments in IE. If you run into this issue, consider contacting us with the steps you were taking, so we can try and reproduce this bug.
  • Internet Explorer 6 and 7: We realize that some of our users are forced to use IE 6 or 7 and are doing our best to make the site as functional as possible for them. However, some portions of the site will look broken or behave erratically. If you can, please upgrade to a newer version of Internet Explorer, or use a different browser.

Chrome

  • Tag feeds displaying as code: Clicking the "Subscribe to the feed" link on fandom/relationship/character tag pages will open a page of raw code instead of letting you choose a feed reader to subscribe with. This is a problem with Chrome and not something we can fix on our end. Please consider installing an extension such as RSS Subscription or Feedly, or using a different browser to subscribe to tags.
  • Unable to add notes/series/chapter information to a work: If some elements of the posting form won't open for you when ticking the respective box, it's possible that a browser extension is interfering with the site Javascript. In particular, some users have reported that disabling the Troll Emoticons add-on took care of the problem for them.

iPhone/iPad/iPod touch

  • Unable to scroll after leaving kudos: On mobile Safari (and possibly some browsers on other mobile platforms), leaving kudos on a work will trap you at the bottom of the page, unable to scroll back up or access the comments section. This problem doesn't occur in iOS 6, the latest software update for iDevices. We have tracked down a possible fix on our end and will deploy it as soon as possible. As a workaround, you can just tap the back button after leaving kudos, which will allow you to continue browsing.
  • Problems with the help boxes: The iBox pop-ups we use for our help content don't display well in mobile Safari, and other mobile browsers. We've been looking into fixes, but might have to change the way to display help content entirely to accommodate mobile devices. Please bear with us in the meantime. As a workaround, you can tap and hold on the question mark symbols to open these links in a background tab.