#ao3-anon

[ao3-anonymous]

I too am curious what happened in the Sherlock fandom this week, as it's extremely rare for a fandom that big to show up in the Fastest Growing Fandoms.

I did a quick check and nothing seems odd about the data -- the count matches the count showing on the site, the previous week's numbers were in line with normal growth patterns (it had been hovering around 135k for a bit before that). I even checked locked fic numbers to see if somehow that was playing a role - it shouldn't - but those aren't related either.

So my best guess is either an archive migration (some other fanfic archive porting over fics) or some sort of tag wrangling which brought something else under the "Sherlock (TV)" umbrella. If anybody knows the answer, please tell me!

[ao3-anonymous]

Good news y'all! Whatever bug AO3 had last week (that caused the fic counts on each category page to not update for over a week) seems to be fixed, so you should be seeing the weekly post shortly!

Note: The percentage change numbers might be a little higher than usual, since it's basically counting 2 weeks of change.

[ao3-anonymous]

there is a dip in the fic count of all fandoms between february 26 and march 3, is there a reason for that? just something I noticed while looking at the dashboard

So I finally had time to look into this properly - at first I couldn't figure it out, because I didn't make any changes to my workflow around that time.

However, I had a hunch and checked everyone's favorite RPF fandom (Hockey RPF) and the drop was wayyy more dramatic there. This confirmed my theory that my stats were no longer including locked works (since RPF fandoms tend to have a way higher percentage of locked fics).

It looks AO3 made some changes to how web scrapers can interact with their site, likely due to the DDOS attacks / AI scrapers they've been dealing with. That change caused my scraper to pull all fic counts as if it was a guest and not a member, which caused the drop.

~

The good news: I was able to leverage the login code from the unofficial python AO3 api to fix it, so future fic counts should be accurate.

The bad news: I haven't figured out what to do about the drop in old data. I can either leave it or I can try to write some math-based script that estimates how many fics there were on those old dates (using the data I do have and scaling up based on that fandom's percentage of locked fics). This wouldn't be a hundred percent accurate, but neither are the current numbers, so we'll see.

~

Thanks Nonny so much for pointing this out! I wish I would've noticed & had a chance to fix earlier, but oh well!

[ao3-anonymous]

AO3 Fandom Roundup

Ever wondered which fandoms are the largest on AO3?  

Do you want to know which fandoms are still going strong with new fics all the time, so you can decide if you wanna add another one to your roster? 

Ever been curious how a fandom has grown over time?

....then do I have a dashboard for you:

      AO3 Fandom Trend Analysis

Here, have a preview, as a treat:

[expectiations]

Hi Tia!

Thank you for answering my questions! I have decided the fics work within your dnw-s as framed in your answers - or rather I've rewritten them a bit with help from a friend to make everything even more fluffy - so you should have seen a few more gifts appear on your ao3 ;)

I hope you'll like them!

ao3-anon

(I know for a fact there are at least 2 people writing you fics, so that would have been another person, then? But all my questions have been answered now)

(also please your headcanons in the answer?! Are you trying to give me more inspiration and prompts to work with?! I don't have time to write you 100 fics, much as I'd love to!)

Thank you for consistently following up on it! Am so sorry I left you "on read" for so long 🥹🫶🏻

which reminds me I should get my ass moving on those assignments

And yes!! I'm glad you love those headcanons!! It's my apology gift basket of sorts 😁 my brain just loves going "what if" but my hand is lazy af at transforming them into fics 🥹

[ao3-anonymous]

Fastest Growing Fandoms on AO3 This Week (01/20/2022)

Every week I pull data on how many fics are in each fandom and compare to the previous week, then calculate the percentage increase to determine fastest growing fandoms.  Since this naturally skews towards smaller fandoms, I have included the same data filtered to Over 1k, 5k, & 10k fics.

Overall:

Over 1,000 Fics:

Over 5,000 Fics:

Over 10,000 Fics:

Source: AO3 Fandom Analysis Dashboard