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In 2007, a site called FanLib was created with the goal of monetizing fanfiction. Fanfiction was authored primarily by women, and FanLib, which was run entirely by men, drew criticism. This ultimately led to the creation of the nonprofit Organization for Transformative Works which sought to record and archive fan cultures and works. OTW created Archive of Our Own in October 2008 and established it as an open beta on November 14, 2009. The site's name was derived from a blog post by the writer Na

Hybrid tagging wrangling system

Stories on Archive of Our Own can be sorted into categories and tagged based on elements of the stories, including characters and ships involved and other more specific tags. Approximately 300 volunteers called "tag wranglers" manually connect synonymous tags to bolster the site'

Content ratings

Archive of Our Own allows users to rate their stories by intended reader age, by character relationship, and by the sexual orientation and pairings of featured characters. The archive also asks writers to supply content warnings that might apply to their works. Archive of Our Own

Reader feedback

Readers can give stories kudos, which function similarly to likes or hearts on other sites. Readers can also leave comments or make public bookmarks.

Archive of Our Own reached one million fanworks in February 2014. At that time, the site hosted works representing 14,353 fandoms, the largest of which were the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Supernatural, Sherlock, and Harry Potter. In July 2019 it was announced that the site had 2 million registered users and 5 million posted works. Of the top 100 character pairings written about in fic on the site in 2014, 71 were male/male slash fiction and the majority of character pairings featured white chara

In 2012 Aja Romano and Gavia Baker-Whitelaw of The Daily Dot described Archive of Our Own as "a cornerstone of the fanfic community," writing that it hosted content that other sites like FanFiction.Net and Wattpad deemed inappropriate and was more easily navigable than Tumblr. Time listed Archive of Our Own as one of the 50 best websites of 2013, describing it as "the most carefully curated, sanely organized, easily browsable and searchable nonprofit collection of fan fiction on the Web". Accord

On February 29, 2020, Archive of Our Own was blocked in mainland China, after fans of Chinese actor Xiao Zhan reported the website for hosting an explicit fan fiction novel with graphic sketches. The banning of the site led to several incidents and controversies online, in the Chinese entertainment industry, as well as to professional enterprises, due to heavy backlash from mainland Chinese users of Archive of Our Own. Users called for boycott against Xiao Zhan, his fans, endorsed products, luxu