Thank you so much for your hard work, guys! You’re doing an incredible job keeping this site running, and I’m truly grateful for everything you do. I was just wondering : any chance we might get an update soon regarding the comment rate limit that was put in place on July 15? No pressure at all! I just wanted to check in because I understood it was affecting the number of comments authors receive, and I really miss being able to interact freely with my lovely readers. Thanks again and take care.
We've checked with Policy & Abuse. In order to be affected by the comment rate limit, someone would need to be commenting in rapid succession. Therefore, most users are extremely unlikely to encounter it. For example, if someone reading a chaptered work comments every time after they finish reading a chapter, they would almost certainly not encounter the rate limit unless chapters are very, very short. Only a small percentage of AO3 users are therefore likely to be impacted by the rate.
It took a couple of minutes for the reply box to pop up for me - I have been very blessed to received quite a number of comments on a recent chapter I posted, yet as I try replying to them, I get the black screen 'retry later'. The small percentage of users who do get impacted by this do matter and I hope y'all could consider coding to be inclusive of authors with published works as an excemption - spammers and bots won't have a published work history.
That small percentage of users includes authors who are replying to comments at once, because it only takes 3-5 comment responses to trigger the 'retry later' - that there's no exemption for authors who want to engage with readers kind of sucks, honestly, because we've been consistently ignored in this as 'only a small percentage of AO3 users.' I know it doesn't seem like we count, but we do.
It's true that most people who access the site are probably readers, and not authors, and of the authors, only a certain number are probably active enough and enjoying fandom enough here to be active on a regular basis. But in the latter category, it means the most active AO3 users trying to communicate with readers get treated like spambots and throttled out of the site. Yes, I can reply to some comments quickly, because some are thanking someone for taking the time to read, or expressing gratitude, and that's not going to take me 10 minutes to write. Just like writing this response to you is not going to take me long. But part of fandom is enjoying the time and energy people take in reading my stuff, and not wanting them to feel like I don't see them or care for the time they spent. And that's what rate limiting does. I've had to post multiple Author's Notes about this, and I know I'm not the only writer/author in this situation.
I sent a help ticket about this in March ago because I thought the 'retry later' was a bug, and I never got a response. The 'retry later' page doesn't explain what's happening, and I had to learn secondhand that I was being treated like a spammer for using the site just to reply to readers.
To borrow from the above OP, I really miss being able to interact freely with my lovely readers, and I would appreciate it if, in lieu of my help ticket ever actually being acknowledged, the code is looked at re: a way to exempt authors with published fics, because we are not likely to be crossing over with spam and bot accounts and we would make up the majority of 'small number of good faith AO3 users' being directly impacted by this. I know it's 100% affected my willingness to participate in donation drives, and similar, because honestly getting that 'retry later' over and over again does make me feel like I'm not welcome here when I'd just like to reply to folks.
I also know from seeing the many hundreds of responses from authors on X, Bluesky, Tumblr, and Reddit re: rate limiting that I am definitely not alone in being directly impacted by this. Perhaps it's just not being noticed because we're such a small part of AO3 :/
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