I wish that ao3 had an option to filter warnings (and tbh certain authors) out like I will never ever want to read it and just seeing it puts me off so much that often I end up closing my browser because that content upsets me so much lmao
There is a way to do this but I canāt recall how to do it. itās something you type into the box for āother filtersā or something, I donāt remember. who knows?? Itās not a great option, and I donāt know if you can sort out authors that way, but itās better than nothing if someone can reblog this with how to do it!
Alrighty friends! It takes some specificity, but you can do this. Let me show you how!
So I started with going to the Sherlock (TV) section of Ao3. On the right we find this lovely section! ((I know Iām going over things you already probably know, but I figure this post may go to new Ao3 users, so bear with me.))
Underneath this, I chose sort by Kudos, because thatās a quick way to find most popular fics, for the sake of this demonstration.Ā
With those filters on, we end up with this being our first two results:Ā
As you can see, we have Nature and Nurture by earlgreytea68, and The Internet Is Not Just For Porn by cyerus. So what if I am utterly sick of seeing earlgreytea68 on my list? Letās pretend Iāve read all their fics, or that I just donāt like her, or whatever. I want this author out. I go to this section on the right:Ā
InĀ āSearch within resultsā I type earlgreytea68 into the bar, with a minus sign in front. This gives me the following page, upon hitting the sort and filter button:
There goes earlgreytea68! But now Iāve decided that Crack is just not my thing, Iām sick of that, too, for heavenās sake, I want something reasonable in my gay slash fanfiction about detectives that solve crimes about glowing dogs and irish megalomaniacs. Heaven forbid this get ridiculous.
Well, then I add this to my search:
Which gets rid of everything with that tag. My results are now:
Performance in a Leading Role is now my first result!
You can do this as many times as you want; the biggest problem I have is trying to filter out multi-worded tags. For example,Ā āSecret Relationshipā is hard to filter. Better to go with authors you dislike or with words likeĀ āDubConā.Ā
I hope this helps! Also remember that googling site:archiveofourown.org and then adding search terms will mean google searches Ao3 for you, and sometimes that works far better.Ā
Good luck!
An excellent in-depth guide! Thank you!!
omg changed my whole ao3 rarepair game
An excellent guide to filtering on AO3!
You can filter out phrases by enclosing them in quotes. For example, if ABO and Hydra Trash Party are not your things, try:
-āalpha/beta/omega dynamicsā -āhydra trash partyā
I have more advice!
Say, youāre in your random fandom- I went with theĀ Marvel Cinematic Universe, since Iāve been reading Iron Man stuff recently. Tony Stark is awesome.
But anyway, youāre on the page, and you see that there are 174,774 works!Ā That is way too manyĀ for a casual afternoonās browsing.
And you see that the first one is Peter Parker/Tony Stark and that is not your jam. It doesnāt work for you, or it squicks you, whatever. Wouldnāt life be easier if you could browse without seeing that pairing (or whatever pairing you donāt like)? You can!
First, click on that pairing tag(You may want to open this in another tab, actually.):
and itāll take you to the page for that pairing tag. Click this button:
and then look at the address bar! The actual page is unimportant. Copy the numbers located here:
and go back to the original search page! Down on the side, in the same place you can get rid of other tags, type -relationship_ids:āthe number you just copiedā
Then hitĀ āsort and filterā annndā¦ magic!
The fics with that pairing are gone! You can also do multiple pairings, get rid of any tags you donāt like, and sort it by date or length or kudos, or whatever.
Enjoy.
Iād just like to add that these sorts of search modifiers ALSO WORK IN GOOGLE AND MOST RESEARCH DATABASES. The more you know.
Just a quick reminder that AO3 uses Lucene as a search and index engine.
That means you can pretty much use all the Lucene Query Syntax in the āSeach within resultā field.
I donāt think AO3 indexes the whole fic for searching but definitely itās meta data. Combined with Lucenes awesome query syntax you can do pretty much every search you heart desires.
Addtional Lucene Query Syntax that has not been mentioned yet and you might find useful:
Wildcard Searches
You can use wildcard searches within single terms. For a single character wildcard search use the ā?ā symbol. For a multiple character wildcard search use the ā*ā symbol.
AND/OR
Lucene allows you to combin terms through logic operators. Youāre looking for fics that are either āreunionā or āenemies to loversā?
Just put in >āreunionā OR āenemies to loversā< into the field
and you end up with all the stories that are either or but not both.
But wait, now youāre looking for fics that are both āreunionā and āenemies to loversā at the same time? Now worries Lucene got you covered.
Just change it into >ā"reunionā AND āenemies to loversāā<
and youāll get all the fics that mention both āreunionā and āenemies to loversā somewhere in their meta data (note: itās not just tags. Itās also title, summary ā¦)
Boosting
You can also boost specific terms when doing a multi term search.
You can use the ā^ā Operator followed by a number to boost a specific term.
Say youāre interested in fics that are either āfirst kissā or ābed sharingā but youāre much more interested in ābed sharingā fics and feel they are more relevant.
You can use the search >āfirst kissā ābed sharingā^5<
to manipulate the order of your results in a matter that the score of every fic that contains beg sharing is multiplied by 5. Therefore all fics containing that term are given priority and shown at the top of the list.
You can also combine all of the above, target specifc fields (thatās what you did with the ārelationsship_id:xxxā) and many more things.
For more info about the Lucene query syntax check out Apacheās Lucene Query doc.
^ sharing this because we all love fanfics and @itsmajel is a freaking nerdĀ š
