Tutorial/Guide for Wattpad users who are migrating to AO3, have never used it before, and/or are unfamiliar with the culture/etiquette on AO3. Written by a Fandom Old who has been using the Archive of Our Own since 2011.
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The Archive of Our Own is part of the Organization for Transformative works, a non-profit organization formed by fans for fans to archive and preserve fanworks. As its own website words it: "A fan-created, fan-run, nonprofit, noncommercial archive for transformative fanworks, like fanfiction, fanart, fan videos, and podfic." It was thought up by astolat in May 2007 in her LiveJournal post titled "An Archive of One's Own", partly as a reaction to the startup of FanLib (a fic archive that was for-profit and viewed by many as attempting to make money off of its users' fanfiction) and partly as a reaction to Strikethrough and Boldthrough, which was LiveJournal's attempt to control fannish content (Strikethrough in particular was motivated by the Christian group Warriors for Innocence, who wanted to get rid of anything they deemed "immoral"--naturally, this included any sort of fan content with queer themes but especially slash).
Astolat's original post discussed instances of websites/corporations intending to profit from fandom, fans, and fanworks on their online platforms (see: FanLib) while not protecting or respecting fandom. I cannot understate the importance of AO3's legal team: It exists because transformative fandom has been repeatedly targeted due to the debated legality of fanworks (involving issues of intellectual property, copyright, and fair use). You know those disclaimers fan authors used to write at the beginning of their fanfics that were all, "All recognizable characters belong to X author/Y company. I own nothing but the plot. I am very poor; please don't sue me"? Yeah, that's because companies/authors would send Cease & Desist letters to fanfic authors and attempt to sue. (Anne Rice is notorious for this.) Because of the earlier debated legality of fanworks, other fic websites would mass-delete for a variety of reasons and would not give warning beforehand.
Anyway.
AO3 is currently designed to host text-based fanfiction as well as fandom nonfiction (aka meta) and allows embedding (but not yet hosting) for vids, fanart, and podfic. Fanworks are protected under fair use. AO3 permits underage sex, RPF, and other controversial content, as it is intended to be an archive for any and all types of fanworks. The archive's interface is planned to be translated into languages other than English in order to make it more accessible to an international userbase. It requires that the DMCA takedown notices be signed in order to be acted upon and says that the OTW "will remove the content upon satisfactory review of the merits of the infringement claim."
AO3 and the OTW (and by extension, everyone on the site) won a Hugo a few years back, too. So that's cool.
