What Does Comment Moderation Mean?
AO3 PlatformAO3 settings that let creators control commenting on their works: holding comments for approval before they appear, restricting comments to registered users, freezing threads, or turning comments off entirely.
Comment Moderation in Practice
AO3 expanded its moderation toolkit over the years in response to harassment and spam waves. Authors can enable a moderation queue so each comment requires approval, block guest comments to stop anonymous drive-bys, freeze individual threads to end arguments, delete what crosses lines, and mute specific users. The settings acknowledge a structural reality: the comment box is the author's space, attached to their work, and writers facing dogpiles needed levers short of deleting their fics. Moderation choices carry mild social texture — moderated comments are common on controversial ships — but fandom broadly accepts them as ordinary self-protection rather than fragility.
Example usage
"After the discourse hit her fic, she turned on comment moderation and guest comments off, and honestly, fair."
Related Terms
Kudos
AO3's one-click appreciation button — the archive's equivalent of a like, each account limited to one kudos per work. The word is both singular and plural, and fandom argues about that too.
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Anon
Short for anonymous — a person posting, commenting, or sending messages without an identifying name. Fandom anons range from shy admirers to prompt-fillers to, occasionally, harassers.
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Anti
A fan defined by opposition — to a ship, a character, or a category of fan content. In current usage, anti most often means someone who campaigns against ships or fics they consider morally wrong.
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Flame
A hostile, insulting comment or review attacking a fic or its author — abuse, not critique. The verb is flaming; the senders, flamers; the genre, ancient.
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AO3 (Archive of Our Own)
The largest fanfiction archive on the internet, run by the nonprofit Organization for Transformative Works. It is fan-built, donation-funded, ad-free, and famous for its powerful tagging and filtering system.
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