#if you know me
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AO3 Ship Stats: Year In Bad Data
You may have seen this AO3 Year In Review.
It hasn’t crossed my tumblr dash but it sure is circulating on twitter with 3.5M views, 10K likes, 17K retweets and counting. Normally this would be great! I love data and charts and comparisons!
Except this data is GARBAGE and belongs in the TRASH.
I first noticed something fishy when I realized that Steve/Bucky – the 5th largest ship on AO3 by total fic count – wasn’t on this Top 100 list anywhere. I know Marvel’s popularity has fallen in recent years, but not that much. Especially considering some of the other ships that made it on the list. You mean to tell me a femslash HP ship (Mary MacDonald/Lily Potter) in which one half of the pairing was so minor I had to look up her name because she was only mentioned once in a single flashback scene beat fandom juggernaut Stucky? I call bullshit.
Now obviously jumping to conclusions based on gut instinct alone is horrible practice... but it is a good place to start. So let’s look at the actual numbers and discover why this entire dataset sits on a throne of lies.
Here are the results of filtering the Steve/Bucky tag for all works created between Jan 1, 2023 and Dec 31, 2023:
Not only would that place Steve/Bucky at #23 on this list, if the other counts are correct (hint: they're not), it’s also well above the 1520-new-work cutoff of the #100 spot. So how the fuck is it not on the list? Let’s check out the author’s FAQ to see if there’s some important factor we’re missing.
The first thing you’ll probably notice in the FAQ is that the data is being scraped from publicly available works. That means anything privated and only accessible to logged-in users isn’t counted. This is Sin #1. Already the data is inaccurate because we’re not actually counting all of the published fics, but the bots needed to do data collection on this scale can't easily scrape privated fics so I kinda get it. We’ll roll with this for now and see if it at least makes the numbers make more sense:
Nope. Logging out only reduced the total by a couple hundred. Even if one were to choose the most restrictive possible definition of "new works" and filter out all crossovers and incomplete fics, Steve/Bucky would still have a yearly total of 2,305. Yet the list claims their total is somewhere below 1,500? What the fuck is going on here?
Let’s look at another ship for comparison. This time one that’s very recent and popular enough to make it on the list so we have an actual reference value for comparison: Nick/Charlie (Heartstopper). According to the list, this ship sits at #34 this year with a total of 2630 new works. But what’s AO3 say?
Off by a hundred or so but the values are much closer at least!
If we dig further into the FAQ though we discover Sin #2 (and the most egregious): the counting method. The yearly fic counts are NOT determined by filtering for a certain time period, they’re determined by simply taking a snapshot of the total number of fics in a ship tag at the end of the year and subtracting the previous end-of-year total. For example, if you check a ship tag on Jan 1, 2023 and it has 10,000 fics and check it again on Jan 1, 2024 and it now has 12,000 fics, the difference (2,000) would be the number of "new works" on this chart.
At first glance this subtraction method might seem like a perfectly valid way to count fics, and it’s certainly the easiest way, but it can and did have major consequences to the point of making the entire dataset functionally meaningless. Why? If any older works are deleted or privated, every single one of those will be subtracted from the current year fic count. And to make the problem even worse, beginning at the end of last year there was a big scare about AI scraping fics from AO3, which caused hundreds, if not thousands, of users to lock down their fics or delete them.
The magnitude of this fuck up may not be immediately obvious so let’s look at an example to see how this works in practice.
Say we have two ships. Ship A is more than a decade old with a large fanbase. Ship B is only a couple years old but gaining traction. On Jan 1, 2023, Ship A had a catalog of 50,000 fics and ship B had 5,000. Both ships have 3,000 new works published in 2023. However, 4% of the older works in each fandom were either privated or deleted during that same time (this percentage is was just chosen to make the math easy but it’s close to reality).
Ship A: 50,000 x 4% = 2,000 removed works
Ship B: 5,000 x 4% = 200 removed works
Ship A: 3,000 - 2,000 = 1,000 "new" works
Ship B: 3,000 - 200 = 2,800 "new" works
This gives Ship A a net gain of 1,000 and Ship B a net gain of 2,800 despite both fandoms producing the exact same number of new works that year. And neither one of these reported counts are the actual new works count (3,000). THIS explains the drastic difference in ranking between a ship like Steve/Bucky and Nick/Charlie.
How is this a useful measure of anything? You can't draw any conclusions about the current size and popularity of a fandom based on this data.
With this system, not only is the reported "new works" count incorrect, the older, larger fandom will always be punished and it’s count disproportionately reduced simply for the sin of being an older, larger fandom. This example doesn’t even take into account that people are going to be way more likely to delete an old fic they're no longer proud of in a fandom they no longer care about than a fic that was just written, so the deletion percentage for the older fandom should theoretically be even larger in comparison.
And if that wasn't bad enough, the author of this "study" KNEW the data was tainted and chose to present it as meaningful anyway. You will only find this if you click through to the FAQ and read about the author’s methodology, something 99.99% of people will NOT do (and even those who do may not understand the true significance of this problem):
The author may try to argue their post states that the tags "which had the greatest gain in total public fanworks” are shown on the chart, which makes it not a lie, but a error on the viewer’s part in not interpreting their data correctly. This is bullshit. Their chart CLEARLY titles the fic count column “New Works” which it explicitly is NOT, by their own admission! It should be titled “Net Gain in Works” or something similar.
Even if it were correctly titled though, the general public would not understand the difference, would interpret the numbers as new works anyway (because net gain is functionally meaningless as we've just discovered), and would base conclusions on their incorrect assumptions. There’s no getting around that… other than doing the counts correctly in the first place. This would be a much larger task but I strongly believe you shouldn’t take on a project like this if you can’t do it right.
To sum up, just because someone put a lot of work into gathering data and making a nice color-coded chart, doesn’t mean the data is GOOD or VALUABLE.
#ao3#ao3 stats#psa#my words#fandom#I doubt anyone is even going to read this but I needed to get it out of my system and at least try to stop this from spreading#if you know me#you know I get Big Mad about misinformation#don't take anything at face value#do your own research
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more of this kagome
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Decided to doodle Truth Virus Sun (AU by @garbagechocolate)
I don't like the drawing that much, but I enjoy his expression!!!
I am. so normal about him. Totally
#if you know me#you know I love me an unhinged sun#and HO BOY#Truth Virus sun is unhinged#Enjoy!#DCA AU fanart#Slime's fanart#<- new tag for fanart hehe#I spent like a few hours yesterday scrolling through the Truth Virus AU tag-#Anyway screw anatomy and screw accuracy I'll draw my dca blorbos no matter what
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JONAH HAUER-KING for Man About Town Magazine (2019) 📷👓
#jonah hauer king#british actor#photoshoot#man about town#b&w photography#tlm#the little mermaid#the tattooist of auschwitz#the song of names#world on fire#ashes in the snow#the flatshare#dogs way home#postcards from london#agatha and the curse of ishtar#old boys#a beautiful imperfection#rich flu#little women 2017#if you know me#you must be aware#that I love black and white photos!#🖤
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Has anyone done this poll? I can’t recall… so let’s give it a go!
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Idk man I'm just really comfy on my knees. 🤷♀️
Send me Anons, I'm bored.
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This panel changed the trajectory of my brain I think
"RIVALS??" *Never interact again*
*One of them DIES*
*All hope is lost*
#like damn okay au power ig#sonic the hedgehog#sth#sonic fandom#if you know me#you know i feel very strongly about their rival potential#shadow the hedgehog#starline the platypus#randomness
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Patreon Peeps will get the full rendered image first, but I could not resist posting the flat colored version of my Dragon King! Bakugou piece...
As always, click for better image quality!
#if you know me#you know i struggle really hard with bakgrounds#but i am so fucking happy with how this turned out#i did want to give him tattoos but i forgot oops#im still super happy with this piece#dragon king! bakugou#barbarian! bakugou#barbarian bakugou#goose.draws#goose draws 2023#goose draws it#my art#🤠draws#mha#mha fanart#bakugou fanart#Bakugou Katsuki
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TIL I can cut open my heart and attempt to reconnect with a person and they will immediately sit down and demand I Explain
Like,
I talked to you about shit from the past week I barely wanted to admit to myself and I also clearly (a) was in tears and (2) said I wanted to go to bed
And instead of taking processing time you want to bull ahead into patterns of behavior you think you’ve seen and demand discussion and resolution and you are a teen
lmao fuck you?
I love you I love you I love you but fuck you I love you leave me alone
#I am not my best self#if you know me#no you don’t#augh#i hate everything#I would like to die#I won’t because fuck your#but that is where I’m at babes
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gingers,,
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the only thing i’m excited for today is hot dogs
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for anyone wondering how bad the legend of zelda brainrot is
I could just say I've got it bad, but I think that's an understatement compared to "I am relearning piano after several years and me swearing I would never touch the instrument again because I associated it too much with my mom, specifically to learn my favorite character's theme."
probably not stopping there either tbh
#hopeposting#loz#I feel like#if you know me#you know exactly what song I'm learning#if you don't: may I direct you towards my ao3? <3#music
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I think i know u. Where are u from?
I am from Greece.
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dear ed,
i love everything about you =(^._.^)=
i love being near you :P
breathing the same air X3c
i think of you often >//////<
i hope youre thinking of me as well (/o^o)/
#if you know me#ignore this#i am unwell#i think this teaser actually made me go insane#probs will delete later#ofmd s2#ofmd season 2#our flag means death
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it is 2023 and i am in severe danger of being called cring to the point of death. good thing no one who i know irl has my tumblr (with the exception of juni)
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When You’re Slow to Make the Next Few Posts Because You’re Preparing for the Next Big Event That Requires More Than 150 Decos...
#Already have made 41....#Part of me regrets it#But Then#I Remember Who I am#The Crazy Storytelling Perfectionist#And if I didn't do this now#I would have ended up coming back to redo the entire scene later down the line#If you know me#You Know I would too#Pray for me
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