Collections

[gwyn]

A while ago, when AO3 started allowing people to make their own collections, I remember something about people collecting works and then deleting the collections would make your own fic disappear, and it was suggested we set our requirements to "must ask" before adding to a collection. Which I did--I don't recall why that was an issue, or if it was ever resolved, because it wasn't something that I figured would ever affect me, but I got a request to add a fic to someone's Stucky collection recently but wasn't sure if that was a good idea or not. The FAQ info about collections is woefully outdated and doesn't include personal ones, or information about this issue.

If you allow someone else to add your fic to their collection, and then they later delete that collection, will it still delete your fic too? Or has that been fixed?

Comments

[astolat]

The most annoying bits of the bug have been fixed:

https://www.ao3.org/admin_posts/12134

And it never deleted your story: the issue was that when your story gets added to an unrevealed/anonymous collection, it makes your story unrevealed/anonymous, which makes it disappear from your dashboard and only be available through the more obscure "Collected Works" link.

The annoying bug was that if the collection got deleted while still unrevealed/anon, that setting remained on your story, and sometimes even if you took it OUT of the collection. That's now fixed.

The issue has been fixed;

[gwyn]

Oh thanks for this! I had thought that the "trapped in anon" thing was related only to anonymous collections like Yuletide or something, and didn't realize it extended to someone's own personal collection of, say, stories they like and made a collection out of. I think I first read about it when copperbadge found one of his stories went poof! and that was the last I heard of it, except for that thing where some Yuletiders got trapped. You know how untech savvy I am--I guess everything was conflated in my brain as "someone adds your story to their collection, they either cancel their account or delete the collection and your fic goes bye-bye." This is definitely the one fic I didn't want that to happen to!