Every year, multiple times a year, they convince ppl to fork out thousands of dollars and….literally nothing changes. There’s no doubt in my mind they’re pocketing most of this money lol
Yep
That’s what’s so wild to me. They’ve made exactly 0 changes other than adding the ‘Exclude’ tags and that def doesn’t take 130k.
You know if any of you actually bothered to click the link it’ll take you to their budget update and break down exactly what the spend the money on, over 70% of which is spent on server expenses, monitoring tools and system licences.
They also spent a good amount of the rest of the 30% budget on significant server overhaul costs.
AO3 is literally a service you get for free and the audacity you’d have to not bother reading the very open budget plan they have, but to then bitch and whine about people donating to keep the site running is wild.
hosts millions and millions of fanfiction at no cost to site users
hosts millions and millions user accounts at no cost to site users
is an extremely high traffic site that rarely, if ever, experiences crashes
is an extremely high traffic site that could profit immensely off ads, but keeps the entire site free of ads
maintains a consistent and elaborate tagging system that allows users easy navigation through fanworks
maintains a simple layout structure so the entire site is easy to read, easy to navigate, and easy to understand making it highly accessible to users – especially disabled users
maintains and updates the budget for users to know exactly where their donations are going to be used in the future and have been used in the past
works with the legal aspects of fanworks in order to keep their site and their users completely legal, and therefore not at risk of being shut down, or sued, or manipulated by large media/companies
works with users when it comes to decision making, includes members in voting processes, etc.
literally hosts millions of fanfiction at no cost whatsoever and doesn’t subject you to ads, honestly those are the only two points you need but the other ones are there to show how much they’re doing
y’all need to appreciate that – donations are completely optional and if you don’t want to donate then don’t, but spreading posts about how Archive doesn’t do anything for anyone and doesn’t do anything with all this money they’re getting is completely unnecessary and outright false.
AO3 does a lot of important work for very little money. As someone who knows a lot of the folks running the show, and knowing they’re volunteers, I can promise you this donation campaign is super important to keep AO3 ad-free, running, and in the hands of our own community.
They met their goal!! I’m so glad this has gained enough traction to help them meet their October Drive goal, but please remember to keep donating if you can and signal boost if you can’t!
English teacher culture is when you have to teach your students something you never actually learned in school because no one bothered to teach advanced english students basic grammar and assumed they’d know it inherently so you look up the rules five minutes before class and then pretend that yes, you are definetily an expert who knows what they’re talking about, haha
Just introduced a kid to her adoptive parents. They brought her a dozen roses. We met at a restaurant. I arrived early to get a private booth and told the waitstaff what was up. So all the servers were having a cry in the corner. I’m at a coffee shop a few miles away, giving them space and having my own cry.
Adoptive mom clarified to me later: roses were pink because pink means forever.
What’s more important than the roses, though, is they also brought her a luggage set so she wouldn’t be moving her things in garbage bags. The luggage matches theirs, cause it’s family luggage for family trips.
The Archery Range 