AO3 Announcement: Disabling filters: Information and search tips

[lucyrp.livejournal.com]

Key information: As an emergency measure to deal with recent performance issues, we have disabled browsing filters on the site (the grey box of choices which appears on work index pages). This is a temporary measure to ensure that as many people as possible can access the site. You can still use our tags and advanced search feature to find the works you want. As an additional bonus, removing the filters has allowed us to remove the 1000 works cap on lists of works, so you can browse through all the works in your fandom! Read on for more information!

What's happening

As detailed in our recent post on performance, our coders and sys-admins are continuing to work on the performance issues we've been experiencing. We've made some server adjustments which have alleviated some of the worst problems, but we still need to make some substantial changes to fix the issues. We're aware that lots of users are still unable to access the site; as an emergency measure, we've decided to disable tag filters, which put a very heavy load on our servers. This means that the grey box with tags you can check to filter a list of works will no longer appear on the work index pages. We know this will be an inconvenience for many users, but the filters are really the 800-pound gorilla sitting on top of our database. Removing them for now will mean that people can access the site, even if they can't browse quite as easily as usual.

We've been working on significantly redesigning the part of our code that handles filtering for a while - because it's a major performance burden on some of the most popular pages of the site, refactoring this code to make it more efficient has been a priority for some time now. We're almost done with the rewritten version, but it needs more work and extended testing before we roll it out. (We want to be sure it doesn't introduce new bugs.) So, the filters will go away for a few weeks, and will then be replaced by the new, rewritten version.

One major disadvantage of the way the filters were designed was that they needed to retrieve the tags from the list of works found in order to build the filter options. This meant that we had to limit the number of works returned at one time to 1000, because otherwise building the filters would take too long. A side bonus of removing the filters is that we've been able to remove the 1000 works cap! The browsing redesign in progressaims to work around this issue, so we hope to avoid re-introducing this limitation when filtering returns.

How can I find the works I want?

Although the removal of the filters will make it harder to browse the works listings for specific things, there are still lots of ways to find the works you need.

Fandoms page

If you're looking for a specific fandom, you can browse the Fandoms page. Fandoms are organised by media type; the easiest way to find a particular fandom is to use Ctrl + F (or Command + F on a Mac) to search the page in your browser. The fandom pages will give you a list of all the works in your fandom; unfortunately there will be no way to filter that list down further.

Tags

Clicking on any tag will still bring up works with that tag, or with any tag marked as a synonym. So, if you click on Riza Hawkeye you'll get all the works tagged with 'Riza Hawkeye', 'Riza', 'Riza is awesome', etc. Again, while the filters are disabled there'll be no way to filter this list further.

Advanced Search

If you want more refined control over which works you find, you will need to use our Work Search. This feature could use a little bit of prettifying, but the underlying search is quite powerful. Use the following tips to help you find exactly the works you want:

• A space equals AND. So, entering Fluff Friendship would find you works tagged with both 'fluff' and 'friendship'
• | equals OR. So, entering Homestuck | My Little Pony will find you works tagged with 'Homestuck' AND/OR 'My Little Pony'
• - equals NOT. So, entering Supernatural - Castiel/Dean Winchester will find works tagged Supernatural, but will exclude those tagged Castiel/Dean Winchester.
• Fandom, Character, Relationship, Rating, Category, and Warning are all classed as tags (as well as the 'Additional tags'). So, you can search for works which are Explicit, or exclude works tagged 'Major Character Death'.
• Using quotes around a phrase will search for that exact phrase. So, "Harry Potter" will get works tagged with 'Harry Potter', whereas Harry Potter will get works tagged with 'Harry' and works tagged with 'Potter'.
• Entering a term in the tag field will only find works with exactly that tag - so searching for Charles/Erik will bring up only the few works tagged with exactly that tag, not the ones tagged 'Erik Lehnsherr/Charles Xavier' (whereas if you click on the 'Charles/Erik' tag you'll get works with all variations of that pairing).
• The search has trouble with tags which have dashes in them. If you search for X-Men, for instance, you noticed you'll get lots with X and no X-Men. To get around this, put the tag in quotes: "X-Men".

As well as searching tags, titles, and authors, you can also search for specific word counts, hits, kudos, and dates - including ranges, which is a useful tool for finding fics in a fandom. For example, you can search for all Stargate Atlantis fics published 5-6 years ago.

Some search examples!

• Find an explicit Fullmetal Alchemist work with the pairing Riza Hawkeye/Roy Mustang, with no Archive Warnings: Enter "Fullmetal Alchemist" "Riza Hawkeye/Roy Mustang" "No Archive Warnings Apply" Explicit.
• Find works with Rodney McKay but without John Sheppard: Enter "Rodney McKay" -"John Sheppard".
• Find works tagged with "Alternate Universe" in either the Homestuck or White Collar fandoms: Enter "Alternate Universe" Homestuck | "White Collar".
• Find all explicit works tagged as angst, but excluding M/M pairings: Enter Angst Explicit -M/M

Search bookmarklets

If you find yourself re-using the same search parameters (only T-rated works, only works under 5,000 words, only works with over 10 kudos) for new fandoms or characters you fall in love with, you could give these custom search bookmarklets a try. They are not official AO3 tools, but made by one of our own and utilizing the Advanced Search functionality. Think of them as a saved search that lets you enter a keyword (such as a fandom name or specific kink) and spits out only the kind of work you want to see. For help in putting together your own saved search, don't hesitate to comment on the post or here.

What next?

This is definitely a short term measure, but we think it will have a big effect on site performance. In a few weeks we hope to deploy our all new search and browse features, which will restore more browsing functionality without placing the same load on the servers. We thank you for your patience and understanding while we continue to work on the problem areas.

Mirrored from an original post on the Archive of Our Own.

Comments

[randrews25.livejournal.com]

*Added to memories*
Thanks for the info, appreciate it :)

[lucyrp.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

Lucy
AD&T / Communications / Support

[monicaop.livejournal.com]

Thanks a lot for letting us know!!! I hope things can improve soon, and tons of thanks for your hard work!! Be well!!

[lucyrp.livejournal.com]

Thank you! We appreciate your support.


Lucy
AD&T / Communications / Support

[jenna_marianne]

Thanks for all the info, especially all the handy tips on searching. Glad to hear the 1000 works limit is getting fixed, and that the code for filtering is getting a faster leaner replacement.

[lucyrp.livejournal.com]

Thank you! Removing the 1000 works limit was a nice bonus side effect. :)


Lucy
AD&T / Communications / Support

[navaan]

Thank you for this update! I mostly browse by tags, so this won't afffect me as much as it might affect other users. I'm looking forward to the new deploy. :)

Kudos to all you lovely people for keeping up the hard work and keeping us posted!

[lucyrp.livejournal.com]

Thanks for your support!

Lucy
AD&T / Communications / Support

[thevetia.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the primer on using "Work Search: Beta". How much time, aggravation, and ill humor I could have been spared had you posted this ANYWHERE on the AO3 site anytime in the last year or so I am unable to estimate. Until today I thought that AO3's search was too lame to accommodate Boolean terms; and that AO3 was designed for a certain type of fan who enjoyed searching on cutesy tags or unlikely pairings or was able to spend an hour or two on a fast connection paging through a hundred or so pages of tag search results.

So I shall bookmark this post, hell, I think I'll print it out. Who knows when or where I'll find it again.

[ruuger]

There is actually an FAQ about using Boolean terms, if that's what you were looking for, though it's not quite as comprehensive as this post.

[lucyrp.livejournal.com]

Apologies: there is some information on Boolean searches in our Search and Browse FAQ (http://archiveofourown.org/archive_faqs/13), though as ruuger notes this post is a bit more comprehensive. (The post itself is actually adapted from an older post (http://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/160), which is linked in our Tutorials (http://archiveofourown.org/archive_faqs/25) section but should really be linked from the Search FAQ as well). We're currently working on updating all the FAQs so we'll make sure this information is incorporated more clearly.

If there's ever information you can't find, or some feature you'd like to see (or think must exist if you could only find it), please do get in touch with AO3 Support (http://ao3.org/support). With such a big site which is still in active development, it can be hard for us to keep up with documentation, and we're also aware our FAQs could be more navigable than they are (this is something we're working to improve right now). It's really helpful to us if you flag up gaps, and Support are more than happy to help.

Thanks!

Lucy
AD&T / Communications / Support

[thevetia.livejournal.com]

Oh, wait, I found it. There is a tiny help box, if you click the question mark next to the (presumably) terms box on the "Tags" page. Oh, thanks. Since tags are precisely what I DONT'T use to find fic, and have been trying to search on "People" (by which I meant Authors: oh, I just give up!) and "Works" (which I thought meant Titles: gave up that too) this solitary icon did not leap out at me.

Pretty clearly, AO3's search functions were not designed for me. I'm not sure I really want to make myself rethink how I classify fanfiction into a series of tag boxes. When I want something to drink in the morning I want Orange Juice, possibly made by Minute Maid, and that's what I look for. I don't start looking for "beverages supplemented with Vitamin D" + "beverages not made from concentrate", and hope that somewhere in that list I'll find Orange Juice instead of Goat Milk Kefir.

But that's just me.

[(Anonymous)]

There's info on search including the Booleans in the FAQ (http://archiveofourown.org/archive_faqs/13) as well, and they've mentioned it in several admin posts in the last year. And if you actually do any search, the little question mark pops up there, too (not just on the tag search page).

I agree the search help could be easier for new users, but if you'd ever tried to look for it you should've been able to find it.

[oxoniensis.livejournal.com]

Thanks so much for the regular updates and handy tips, Lucy and team!

[lucyrp.livejournal.com]

Thank you! <3


Lucy
AD&T / Communications / Support

[talimenios79.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much for all your hard work.

[lucyrp.livejournal.com]

Thank you!


Lucy
AD&T / Communications / Support

[(Anonymous)]

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