English Guardian Fic Masterlist

[naye]

With the help of flamebyrd's fantastic bookmarklet I went ahead and pulled all the Guardian fic listed as being in English off AO3 into one single spreadsheet, then manually weeded out all the non-English stories that had ended up in that list.

The curated result might be helpful for those who (like me) want to keep track of what they have and haven't read, and get an overview of all the amazing fics this fandom has to offer:

English Guardian fic on AO3 Masterlist [update available April 24]*

The curated list currently has 601 stories ranging from 100 to over 90,000 words, for a total wordcount of 2,662,170!

I recommend that those who want to use the spreadsheet go to File > Make a Copy, which should create a copy on your own Google Drive that can be filtered, sorted and edited.

As for updates, I will try to stop by with a new version in a while, but if anyone else feels that they'd like to do more regular upkeep then please do! The spreadsheet is absolutely free to use in any way, including reposting in an edited format.

* Thanks to those who pointed out a couple of duplicates and several missed stories (sorry to anyone who was on page 20 of the AO3 search results - it fell off the list!). I've updated the sheet with a new April 24 version that's at 606 603 stories. Going forward, story count will be included in the spreadsheet title to make it easier to spot edits and updates. And please do let me know if you notice any other errors!

Comments

[china_shop]

Ahhhhh, that is AWESOME! Thank you so much for doing this! <333

[naye]

Hee! When I realized how doable it would my librarian self couldn't resist. ♥

[trobadora]

Oh wow, that's an awesome resource! Thank you for doing this.

(And if I filtered correctly, we currently only have 362 Yuletide-qualifying fics?! Wow.)

[naye]

I've had that this information isn't properly organized itch every time I've looked at the AO3 pages for Guardian after filtering to "English", so it was about time. It just took me until today to have the brainwave that someone, somewhere must have made some tool to make it easier. (If you know anyone who knows Python there's scripts for scraping AO3 on Github! That would probably be even faster and more efficient.)

And if I filtered correctly, we currently only have 362 Yuletide-qualifying fics?! Wow.
Oh, interesting. Fandom is growing, so that's definitely going to change - but will it hit 1000 by October? I couldn't say! (If it doesn't, I hope Yuletide mods accept something like this spreadsheet to show that no, all of those stories are not in English.)

[extrapenguin]

I don't think we'll be at 1k this October. Yuletide mods have stated that they accept evidence posts ("this should be in, because half the fic is mislabeled and in Chinese") ... if the official filtered count is 1100 or less. I'll ask them what they think of this as evidence/a means of counting what's actually in English. (They might want to see the list of stuff that's secretly in Chinese instead?) I'll still start another spree of commenting to tell authors thet can and should choose the 中文 language option, though...

[trobadora]

Haha, yeah, I keep getting frustrated with all the mistagged fic, too. (Alas, there's no way to filter out the fic that's actually novel-verse, but tagged with the drama.)

Yuletide usually does accept this kind of evidence if someone submits it and makes an argument, so our chances are decent. And I don't think we'll get 650 new complete stories over 1k words by October, but if we do, the fandom's going to be so busy, we won't need Yuletide. :D

[extrapenguin]

Word of Morbane is that this sort of thing "sounds useful" for an evidence post, so yay! (I have already raised the issue of "what if there appear to be 2k fics filtered, but all of them are actually in Chinese?" before, so they Yuletide mods are at least aware of the issue.)

[trobadora]

Awesome, thank you!

[asya_ana]

Ha ha! My first thought was also "Yuletide evidence" :D :D

[trobadora]

Priorities, you know. :D

[kimboo_york]

If we make it into Yuletide I will 100% be all-in for writing and requesting Guardian fic!!

[trobadora]

Crossing all available fingers!

[kimboo_york]

Well that's just a damn blessing!!!! Thank you!!!

[naye]

I'm delighted to have been of service! ♥

[daroh]

Thank youuuuuuuuuuuuuu!!!<3

[naye]

I am so happy you're finding it useful! There's an updated version available as of a few minutes ago, too. :D

[teaotter]

Yay! I've been wondering if there's a way to do this!

[naye]

I'm sure there's actually a better way of doing it, which is to use a Python script. I think I spotted some on Github. But... I don't speak Python, so this was the next best thing. Also, just wanted to mention there's an updated version of the sheet available!

[asya_ana]

Wow! This is so generous of you and so amazing! <3

[naye]

Honestly I probably (probably!) wouldn't have done this if it was a manual cut & paste job, but with the bookmarklet it only took a couple of hours. I did miss one page of results though, so please get yourself an updated version of the master spreadsheet if you've got a local copy you're working on!

[lannamichaels]

Oooh, thank you so much for doing this!

Looks like you got a few duplicates, these links are in there twice:
http://ao3.org/works/16662357
http://ao3.org/works/16669984
http://ao3.org/works/16662427
http://ao3.org/works/16660318
http://ao3.org/works/16684147
http://ao3.org/works/16662017
http://ao3.org/works/16684393

[naye]

Brilliant, thanks! That's a page of results that got imported twice that I missed - I've fixed that now, and added the page I missed (!), so do get the updated version of the spreadsheet if you've got a local copy already.

[qikiqtarjuaq]

This spreadsheet is a damned treasure, especially for Yuletide!

You know, I currently have a webhost running. I'm very tempted to turn this into a database, and then recruit people who can submit updates to it. That might make the upkeep of this easier!

[naye]

For Yuletide it would probably make most sense to do a full spreadsheet tagged "English" and "Chinese" so the Yuletide mods could compare with the AO3 results and see at a glance what the situation is like... But yeah, definitely!

A database would be fantastic! I don't have the skills (or hosting) for it, but absolutely go for it!

Upkeep-wise, the one thing that made me realize I'll have to do an entire new search & import is that things like kudos and comment counts change constantly for all stories, not just the new ones. So if anyone were using those for sorting, that would start skewing the saved results compared to live ones (where new fic added but not updated wouldn't reflect the kudos/comment situation).

But if it's possible to get a database to pull live info from AO3 after you've added it in the first place, that would be the ultimate solution.

[qikiqtarjuaq]

Yeah, I was actually thinking of just excluding the kudos/comment counts. I can write a scraper, but I feel like it's more effort than it's worth. Do you think it's critical to have that info?

If I'm at the point where I'm coding something to scrape that much info off AO3, I'd be tempted to hook in a language detector and have updates done automatically.

[naye]

When I was poking around GitHub I spotted at least one script that seemed to be an AO3 scraper? So if you know how to run one you might not have to write anything... Worth a look by someone who knows something about coding, at least! (Which is to say not me.)

[qikiqtarjuaq]

I'll have to take a gander through GitHub then! (And pray for good documentation and code commenting and maybe a pony while I'm at it).

But yeah, if I could scrape a list of "Actually English" and "Actually Chinese" fics, that would be very compelling for the Yuletide evidence post, and also won't require so much work on your part! I've got a bunch of fic exchange deadlines coming up but once those pass, I'm gonna give this a serious look.

[naye]

Good luck with the deadlines! And do let me know if I can do anything to help - I literally haven't coded anything in over a decade, but I can do QC and manual stuff?

[qikiqtarjuaq]

Awesome! I'll definitely need people to look it over and test it once it's ready, so I'll give you a poke then. :D

[lynndyre]

Yaaay, thank you! (and I'm also not-so-secretly pleased at Yuletide possibilities XD)

One of mine didn't seem to make it on?

[trobadora]

Oh! I just checked, and one of mine is missing too.

[naye]

So sorry about that - I missed importing page 20, which is the danger of doing these things manually. I also had a couple of duplicates from a result page imported twice. I've updated the spreadsheet with the extra stories, and have removed a few duplicates. If anyone else spots any mistakes please let me know and I'll do another updated (with notifications in this post!).

[trobadora]

Thank you for the update!

[naye]

Thank you so much for pointing that out! I missed a page of results in the import - that's fixed now, so if you have a copy saved, make sure to get the fresh version of the spreadsheet with 606 stories. (I've decided story count is probably the best way of labeling the versions!)

[lynndyre]

Awesome, thank you! ♥

[solo]

This! This is what I needed! I have utterly lost track of what I've read and what it's called, so this'll allow me to go back and leave some feedback once I'm home again! Thank you for sharing!

[naye]

That's perfect! Don't miss the new version of the spreadsheet if you've already made a local copy - if not, the one linked is current with some results I'd missed, and minus a few duplicates. :D

AO3 collection?

[mecurtin]

This is wonderful!

I wonder, though, if it would be even more useful to make it an AO3 Collection, for easier searching, sorting, etc.? Not to mention adding more fics to it as they come down the pipe.

Re: AO3 collection?

[naye]

That sounds like a great idea? I don't know anything about making AO3 collections, and won't be starting one, but please feel free to use the spreadsheet in any way that might he be helpful. (And don't miss the updated version posted a few minutes ago if you've already made a local copy)

Re: AO3 collection?

[kimboo_york]

I don't have a lot of time to spare coming up on finals week but I'm happy to help build an AO3 collection if help is needed!

[firestar]

You and this are a blessing, omg. *_*

[naye]

Thanks! I'm very happy to help fandom find fic. <3

[firestar]

Organisation FTW. XD