As many but not all AO3 users know, the site is currently unstable. Basically, AO3’s system is being stressed to the limit by the HUGE NUMBER OF USERS lately, thanks in part to general growth and also in part to fanfiction.net’s latest efforts in support of censorship, which have driven a lot of people to look for friendlier alternatives in the realm of fanfiction archiving.
Bottom line is that they have to do a lot of coding and also install some new equipment to get this dealt with, so it’s probably going to be at least a couple of weeks before the problems are completely dealt with. In the meantime, they’re trying to adjust things to optimize the site’s core functionality, but that means they’re having to temporarily disable some of the functions that a lot of users have come to find convenient.
Such as:
Key information: As an emergency measure to deal with recent performance issues, we will shortly be disabling the 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….
If you’re somebody who wants to get on AO3 but can’t, I hope you won’t hold this against them. It’s a great site run by good people who really have their act together (there are major for-profit companies that could take some lessons from AO3 on systems administration and communicating with their users), it supports an even better cause, and this is really down to growing pains and unfortunate timing.
Though I suppose this is a good time to point out that if anybody wants to read any of my fic, I keep copies on my LJ at arbitrary_fic.livejournal.com, as well as on AO3. Because it’s the internet, and things like this do happen.
AO3 News on site instability: Disabling filters: information and search tips