I’m currently building a new fanfiction archive and recommendation platform, heavily inspired by AO3 and FicHub.net. My core architecture is based on AO3’s model, but I’m expanding it with the ability to scrape and download fics from multiple other sites, alongside integrated forums and a recommendation engine.

My motivation for this project came from using Reddit user u/NTaya’s recommendation engine. While brilliant, it was too slow for my liking because it had to scrape AO3 bookmarks in real-time every time I requested a rec. A local database would make this process nearly instantaneous, but I quickly realized I couldn't easily source that volume of data on my own.

That realization led me to build a community-driven archive: the more people use the platform, the better the recommendations become. With that in mind, I started adding features I believe users would appreciate, such as a forum for discussion, built-in translation tools, and a few ideas I picked up from the AO3 roadmap.

To help guide my development, I’d love to hear your thoughts on the fanfiction ecosystem. What do you think the various sites (FFN, Wattpad, etc.) do well? More importantly, what are the worst parts of AO3 specifically? Since I’ve based my archive heavily on AO3’s structure, I want to know what pain points to avoid and what features are truly essential to the user experience.

Thanks in advance for your feedback.