#ao3 savior

[paradoxlemonade]

How To Permanently Filter Out Fanfics You Don't Like: MOBILE EDITION

Archive of Our Own mobile users! Tired of seeing your NOTP? An AU you don't click with? That one squick you'd like to avoid? Fear no more, because here is the solution!

No, it's not Ao3 Savior. (We've all tried, I know.)

Behold, Ao3rdr! A wonderful extension for filtering, bookmark managing, and making your Ao3 experience more user-friendly.

I've hidden pairings I don't like, crossovers that are common in my fandom but I'm unfamiliar with, and AUs that don't float my boat. It's been a real game-changer in my fic reading experience. It's very similar to Ao3 Savior, but it's entirely mobile-compatible and user-friendly.

How to install:

STEP ONE: Select a mobile browser that allows extensions. I currently use Kiwi, but this choice is just up to personal preference.

STEP TWO: Install AO3rdr from your browser's extension store. I'll include a link in the reblogs to AO3rdr's page in the Chrome web store, which should work for any Chromium browsers (this includes Kiwi!).

STEP THREE: Install and configure. Once you install the extension, you'll have to tell it everything you want to blacklist.

Select your extension from the menu

Click on "bookmarks page"

Open the "Tag Blacklisting" folder

Once you've opened the menu, you can add as many tags as you want to your blacklist.

[most of my tags are scratched out to keep post on topic]

Blacklisted tags can be anything—major warnings, fandoms, relationships, characters, and freeform tags are all covered by the blacklist.

Note the banner at the top that says: "Hide works by tag. The blacklist tag "foo" will match the AO3 tags "foo", "foolish", "FOOL", "barefoot", etc." This is an excellent feature that makes filtering out ships of whatever kind very simple. Notice I have "/reader" and "reader/" blacklisted. I am not a fan of romantic reader-insert content, so I use this to hide all of it. I haven't had a single miss, no matter if it's Alice/reader, Bob/reader, or reader/Charlie.

When you're browsing the archive, a hidden fics will be replaced with this blurb: "Hidden for [insert blacklisted tag here]" and it will tell you exactly what tag tripped the blacklist. For example, if you're blocking the tag "pickles" but a hidden fic is tagged "no pickles" then the blurb will say "hidden for No Pickles". On the far left of this box is the button to reveal a hidden fic. This is useful for false positives, such as the example above.

While navigating Ao3 using AO3rdr, you'll notice a few small symbols at the bottom of each listing.

These are your external bookmarks! The three stars are for fics you like (or however you choose to use them). Fics with a star selected will still behave as usual in the archive, but will appear in the list of bookmarks located on the extension configuration page. The flame, on the other hand, is used to hide fics not caught by the blacklist. Maybe a story isn't tagged well, or isn't to your tastes. With a single click, you can collapse it from view with the option to bring it back at any point. I've hidden stuff not caught by my blacklist, poorly written works, and stuff I just don't like.

After the pain in the neck that was trying and failing to make Ao3 Savior work on mobile, I'm really glad to have found a simple and effective solution to automatic blacklisting. I would highly recommend AO3rdr. Have fun, and happy reading!

[backofthebookshelf]

How To Blacklist Something on AO3

Have you ever accidentally left kudos on a fic and then realized you didn't want to interact with that person at all? Have you ever read something that left such a bad taste in your mouth that you never want to read anything like it again? Do you have a terrible memory for names and only realize halfway through a fic that you're doing it to yourself again? Allow me to show you how to block individuals and tags on AO3 so that you never have to see them again.

(Note: You can exclude tags from your searches in AO3 pretty easily, using the include/exclude filter! But that doesn't work for usernames, and again, if you're forgetful, it can be easier to set it once and never think about it again.)

(Second, more important note: I do not endorse the circulation of block lists. A block list is to curate your own experience, and perhaps to share with friends who have similar needs, never to be posted publicly.)

(Third note, a disclaimer: I didn't create any of these tools, I just use userscripts a lot.)

This isn't the most straightforward system, it's just the only one I've found that works. Grab a Sprite or something, get your phone and your computer, and we'll get this going.

You're going to need to use Firefox for this - it's the only mobile browser that reliably lets you use extensions, and if you want this to work on mobile, you need an extension. I know, it's a pain. I use Firefox on my phone pretty much exclusively for AO3, for what it's worth.

Go to the Firefox Add-Ons page and install Tampermonkey. Tampermonkey is an extension that basically lets you write little userscripts to tweak the way Firefox behaves - think of the userscripts as mini-extensions. In our case, we won't be writing anything, just installing some scripts other people have already written, bless them.

We're going to configure Tampermonkey first, then install and configure our scripts. Click on the Tampermonkey icon in your browser (it's a little square with eyes, no I don't know what it means) and select Dashboard, then go to Settings.

Up at the very top, change the Config mode to Advanced. This should give you some more settings. Scroll down to Script Sync, and check the box by Enable Script Sync. Pick whichever system you want to use to get your scripts to communicate with one another - Google Drive and Dropbox are probably the easiest, if you aren't the kind of person who logs into browsers. Give it your info and log in to your preferred service.

And that's it! Now we're going to install our scripts. You're going to want both ao3 savior and ao3 savior config. On each page, click on the Install link, and then click Install on the new page that pops up. When you're done, go back to your Tampermonkey dashboard (refresh it if you kept it open in a background tab), and you should see something like this:

Now we've got everything installed, it's time to start configuring. ao3 savior you can leave as it is: by default, it'll update itself and do its thing, you don't have to do anything. ao3 savior config is where we make our changes. Go all the way over to the edit button on the far right of the screen.

First you want to make sure that this script doesn't update itself - because when it downloads an update, it'll erase your blocklist and you'll have to reenter the whole thing, and that's a pain. Click on Settings, and uncheck Check for updates in the Updates section, then click Save.

Now go back to the editor. This part is pretty simple, the comments are good. If you want to see a placeholder that tells you that ao3 savior hid something from you, leave the showReasons line set to true; if you want to be able to look at something ao3 savior hid from you anyway, change showPlaceholders to true. alertOnVisit gives you a notification if you clicked on a link to something ao3 savior would have hidden from you, if you set it to true. Then you've got five lines for whatever you want to block: authors, titles, tags, and summaries, plus a whitelist for tags. The whitelist overrides all of the blacklists: if you've blocked all works from an author but whitelisted a tag, and that author uses that tag on one of their works, you'll see it.

Go ahead and fill this in however you want. You can update it in the future, as well - it's not the easiest thing to update, but once you've done it a couple of times it's not too hard. I recommend copying the text you want to block directly from ao3 and pasting it into the config file, that seems to work best for me.  

When you've entered everything you want, go ahead and save (ctrl+s or File->Save from within the script editor). Then you'll want to make sure you don't have to do this all over again on your phone. Close the editor tab, then click on Utilities. Under Cloud, select the same service you picked for syncing, then click Export; this will make a copy of the script you can pull straight onto your phone.

Now, same thing on your phone, but a little simpler: install Firefox, then install Tampermonkey. Now, rather than installing the scripts again, we'll download our backup. Go to Utilities, select your service in the Cloud section, and log in. Tap Show backups, and tap Import (there should only be one file, unless you've done this before). Now go back to Installed Userscripts - you should see the same scripts we installed and set up before! You will need to uncheck Check for updates in ao3 savior config, for some reason that setting doesn't travel.

Now go to Settings, turn on Advanced Settings, and turn on syncing here as well. Make sure the service is set to the same one as you set up before. Be sure to hit Save.

And you're done! Now you have a blacklist that's fairly easy to update on your computer and will sync automatically to your phone. To update, just click on Tampermonkey, select Dashboard, and Edit ao3 savior config to add whatever it is you don't want to see to your blacklist. Be sure to save, and the sync should happen automagically.

[tzalmavet]

i used to use ao3 savior a lot but one day it updated and i just dont know how to make it work anymore, like now its a lot of coding stuff and im just lost on how to make it work

Hm, I thought it was always a bunch of code stuff, but I can offer a little advice on it, maybe?

Ao3 Savior is currently made of two parts: ao3 savior and ao3 savior config.  The first one is useless without the second one.  It used to be only one part, and the update to the current 2-part system is what cleared out my previous blacklist.  You don’t really mess with ao3 savior at all anymore; all the editing stuff is exclusively under the config part, now.

The coding part is a little annoying, but it’s simple as far as code stuff goes, and is easy to get used to.  Once again, I’ll show my summary keyword blacklist as an example:

 // Exclude works with summaries that contain at least one term  summaryBlacklist: [‘highschool au’, ‘high school au’, ‘highschool AU’, ‘Highschool!AU’, ‘’,]

The top line, which I’ve bolded, isn’t an influential piece of code, and tells you what the below line is for.  Also, it’s displayed in a brown-yellow color (at least, it looks that color on my screen) so it’s easier to tell apart.  Tags/terms are displayed in red.

Also, something I discovered is that, due to how it’s set up, ao3 savior has a bit of an issue with tags that have apostrophes in them.  However!  You can solve this simply by using quotation marks instead (so you would use “It’s Bad” instead of ‘It’s Bad’).Tags that have quotation marks already in them can just use the typical apostrophes (one would type ‘Big “Bad” Wolf’ and not “Big “Bad” Wolf”).  I don’t know what to use in the case where a tag has both, but I haven’t found one like that yet.

Hope I’ve helped!

[tzalmavet]

theoriginalvoidthoughts replied to your post “tampermonkey updated and thank GOODNESS I didn’t lose all my...”

Can you block fics that say "I'm bad at descriptions just read the story" cause I've never heard of Ao3 Savior and now I'm curious

I think so?  Ao3 Savior can blacklist by author, title, tag, and summary keywords.  You can also whitelist certain tags, just in case you have exceptions to your usual fic-perusing preferences.

In the “ao3 savior config” the part you mess with to block stuff in summaries like that is under “Exclude works with summaries that contain at least one term”.  However, it isn’t perfect.  Although it can handle multiple words per entry, iirc unlike the tag blocker, it’s case-sensitive, and you have to be kinda specific.

Example: I dislike high school AUs, and people don’t always tag them properly.  My summary keyword blacklist looks like this:

['highschool au', ‘high school au', ‘highschool AU', ‘Highschool!AU', ‘’,]

So, theoretically, you could blacklist fics with summaries that say ‘I suck at summaries’, “I’m bad at descriptions”, and so on.  But I can see that you’d probably wind up stumbling into fics that have the same thing worded slightly differently, and having to blacklist their variation on it.

tl;dr  It is definitely possible, but it would probably take a while before you’d be able to avoid them completely.

[tzalmavet]

I’m real glad that I installed Ao3 Savior.  It saves you a ton of stress and disappointment, like when you’re looking for fics, and find one with a cool-sounding summary but it’s tagged as your NOTP or an AU you hate.

You can also blacklist authors.  Someone problematic and you don’t wanna see a damn thing they’ve written?  Or maybe you just don’t like their writing style but they’re clogging the fandom tag?  Bye.

Some things I wish it had are whitelisting by title or author, and fandom-specific blacklisting.

Like, maybe a fic in a tag you blocked was an exception to your usual distaste, but just using the tag-specific whitelist would also inevitably unblock a bunch of stories you don’t like. And maybe you’re okay seeing fics with the “Gore” tag for Osomatsu-san, but want to avoid it at all costs in My Little Pony fics.  Also tag+tag blacklisting: like, for when you’re okay with some tags on their own, but don’t want to see fics with those things together.

But otherwise it works pretty well, and I recommend it.

[tzalmavet]

Has anyone else’s Ao3 Savior extension been acting up?? Suddenly all of the tags I’ve blacklisted aren’t blocked anymore, I checked its settings and they’re all just gone! I’m not sure how to put them back yet but dammit it’s gonna take forever to type back in every variant tag for all those ships, AUs, and authors I don’t wanna see.

[alllwritenow]

So I’m finally configuring my AO3 savior and did not realize how different the tag blocking works from AO3′s blocking which had this unintentionally hilarious result thanks to me blocking sterek:

sorted by kudos and have gone 50 pages and seen three whole fics 😂

[ao3commentoftheday]

AO3 blocking

Do you wish you had the ability on AO3 to block works by tag, author, title, or words in the summary? You need AO3 Savior. 

Step One: Install the Tampermonkey extension on your browser (link is for the Chrome extension, so if you use a different browser, just search for it). This will allow you to install the AO3 Savior userscript. 

Step Two: Install AO3 Savior. Click on the link and hit the Install this Script button (image below)

This will open the userscript in Tampermonkey. Click the install button there too (screenshot below)

Step Three: Install AO3 Savior config the same way. It’s a separate file because if you update the code, it resets all of your blocks so you need to input them again. By having the config separate from the rest of the code, the other code can update while leaving your block settings in tact. 

Step Four: restart your browser 

Step Five: Click on the puzzle piece at the top right corner of your browser.  Click on Tampermonkey and then into your Dashboard. From there, find ao3 savior config in your list of installed scripts and click on the edit button (screenshot below)

Step Six: edit the code to block the things you want to block. This might sound intimidating, but it’s okay! 

In this config file, scroll down and read through the text. The first settings are turning options on or off. Use “true” to have that feature or “false” to turn that feature off. For example:

// Set to false if you don't want to see why works were hidden.    showReasons: true,

When the code starts with // that means that it’s a comment or instructions to you. Read that line and then make the change on the line below it. In this case, change the word “true” to “false” if you don’t want to see the reason why the work was hidden from you.

To block on author, edit this part:

// Exclude works with an author that exactly matches at least one term.    authorBlacklist: ['Hated Author 1', 'smeyer'],

Find the author’s name on AO3 and copy it so that you get the spelling right. Then paste it in here. To make sure your syntax is right, make sure that the author name is inside the square brackets [ ] and also inside apostrophes ‘. Separate each author name with a comma , like you see in the example provided. 

You can do the same thing with tags by copy/pasting the full tag and putting it inside apostrophes in the tag blacklist section. Same thing for specific fic titles or for words that appear in summaries.

Step Seven: After you have made all of your changes, go up to File and remember to Save. 

Step Eight: You can now close that tab and head on over to AO3 where the only sign of those fics/authors/tags etc you blocked will be a little box telling you a fic has been hidden, and why. If you don’t want to see those boxes, change those settings to false in step 6. 

In future, if you ever want to block a tag, author, or work from your AO3 experience, just go back into your config file and edit them in there. 

Note: in order to get this on mobile, use Firefox. Other browsers do not allow userscripts on mobile