You can read the post here for more info, but I wanted to just add a bit about what this entails from my POV, on the Support team. Somewhere between ¼ to 1/3 of all our tickets last month were in Chinese (somewhere upwards of 300 out of 1200 or so), almost all from users just setting up their accounts or trying to find out how to get an invitation. A lot of the tickets are what I’d characterize as “intro” tickets - they say hi, list favourite fandoms or pairings, or provide samples of fic they’ve written. Although this isn’t necessary on AO3, this is not uncommon in Chinese fandom sites that you have to prove your credentials to get in (in fact it wasn’t uncommon in English-language fandom sites 15-20 years ago). We respond to all of these tickets, even the ones that just say hi. We check whether the user has managed to receive their invite or get their account sent up, and if they haven’t, we help them do so. This means taking every single ticket through our Chinese translation team twice, once so we make sure we understand the initial ticket, and then again to translate our reply.
This is a challenging process, although we’ve found ways to streamline it and can normally get a reply out pretty quickly (like within a few days). We do it because this is part of why AO3 exists in the first place - to provide a safe haven where users can post their works without worrying about censorship or sudden crackdowns on certain kinds of content. We do it because this is important, and helping these users get their accounts and be able to share their works safely is why we’re here. We hope that we’ll be able to help as many of them as possible.
There have been a few (thankfully few, that I’ve seen) complaints about these new AO3 users not always knowing how things work - what language to tag with, or what fandom tags to use, for instance. To this I would say:
1. Have patience and be considerate. They are coming to a new site that they aren’t familiar with, and using it in a language they may not be expert in, and it might take a while to learn the ropes. You can filter out works tagged in Chinese if you don’t want to see them. Or just scroll past.
2. You can report works tagged with the wrong language or the wrong fandom to our Policy and Abuse team using the link at the bottom of any page. This will not cause the authors to “get in trouble” (a concern I’ve heard before, as people are reluctant to report for these reasons). It means the Policy and Abuse team will contact them to ask them to change the language/fandom tag, and if the creator doesn’t, they can edit it directly.
If you remember Strikethrough or the FF.net porn ban or similar purges, please keep them in mind and consider that these users are going through something similar or potentially worse. This is why AO3 exists. We are doing our best to try and help make the transition smooth.
janainaart
romaincrisis
origamiaround
discoholicmusic
blakekathryn
stormborns
dededos
prguitarman
ellievsbear
