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Coal All The Way

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It's not like AO3 tells you whether edits have been made since you last viewed a fic, except that it does.

does it differentiate between an author changing the tags/summary vs actually changing the text?

Yeah, but there's no way to know if the edits in question were just fixing a single typo or adding a whole new scene.

it actually says minor/major for that.

You could also dig up the notification email, which would have the original wordcount.

DA

That's not necessarily helpful when it's a placeholder being replaced with a different fic.

My gift went from 1.5k (placeholder) after reveals to 1k (actual fic, unifinished) shortly after and then slowly back to 1.6k (actual finished fic) over the next couple of hours. Just comparing the word count would make me assume that the author did only minor revisions.

100 words is a lot though? Fixing typos and tense shifts are minor and that would usually add maybe 30 words. 100 would be some tangible edits.

If you reread a fic that made you feel crazy and then saw there was a 100 word difference, wouldn’t you assume whatever you don’t remember is new?

AYRT

Honestly, not really? My memory is terrible. I very likely wouldn't even notice a 100 word difference in a fic. My point is: in this case, the 100 word difference on paper (which to me is minor, tbh; I can see how you could get there just by fixing awkward turns of phrase and maybe adding a sentence) actually amounted to a much larger difference because the whole fic was replaced.

Sure, but since you understand that someone could literally do a 1-1 switch with an entirely different fic that has the exact same word count, it seems weirdly self-defeatist to still question yourself if you feel something is off. I’m sorry your memory sucks, but fanfiction is low stakes. You are allowed to blindly assume your memory is right and then author completely revamped the fic if doing so makes you feel more sound/comfortable.

the* author

AYRT

I'm just saying that the word count is a bad indicator for change, that's all.

Not to mention it requires that you kept the gift notification. Which someone who comes back to reread after a while would likely not have.

Like the coalie upthread said, if you do make significant changes on your fic for some reason, a short line or two in the author's notes is helpful. Not just to let the recipient know they didn't imagine things, but also because a note would potentially make the recipient more inclined to assume good faith than the author stealthily working on their fic after the deadline and acting like it's not happening. A 'oh damn, I uploaded the wrong word document, sorry!' may or may not be actually true, but I'll probably believe you had a complete fic all along.

A 'oh damn, I uploaded the wrong word document, sorry!' may or may not be actually true, but I'll probably believe you had a complete fic all along.

+1

I'll be much more forgiving of this than if a new story or major revisions show up. I'd probably go to the mods with that, not asking for a pinch hit but because I'm annoyed that it intentionally wasn't a complete story at the last possible due date.

I feel like whether 100 words is "a lot" depends on how long the fic is. Like if you go from 1000 to 1100, that's a 10% increase, and definitely a lot. If you go from 25,000 to 25,100, then that's a, umm, much smaller percentage increase and doesn't matter so much.

Uh, where does it tell you that??

In your history. eg ‘Last visited: 27 Nov 2019 (Minor edits made since then.) Visited 11 times’

^that’s copied from a fic in my history

DC I don't go to gifts through my history, though. I go through my Gifts page and as far as I remember, this doesn't show up there.

Beyond which, not everyone has their history turned on or even stays logged into AO3.

But there's no way to filter or sort your history, is there? In order to find out if your gift had changed, you'd have to remember when you last looked at it an then page through your history to find it, BEFORE you looked at it. I guess that's not too hard if it's only two days later, but again, it would mean deciding to check your history before you even reread your gift.

NC

Personally, I go to re-find the gift (and other fics) through my History rather than the gifts page (just a preference), so it's obvious.

DC I read a lot of fics and don't constantly re-read my gifts. It'd take forever to find gifts in my History.

Ah, yeah, the reading a lot of fics might be part of it. Especially during the holiday season I barely go through AO3.

+1

I forgot to bookmark a Yuletide fic (not my gift) I read after the archive opened and tried to find it through my history and it was all the way back on page twenty-something. I barely go to the history page because it's useless to me without some kind of search function.

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Coal All The Way

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