an AO3 question

[ratcreature]

When you post a work and filled in the "inspired by" field, does the author of that get an automatic alert of some kind? (as default setting, I mean, I suppose you could turn off all notifications) Or do you need to check the "gift for" field? I'm asking because so far I haven't heard anything from the author of the Pinky & Brain story I illustrated, not even a kudo or anything, which is slightly discouraging. But then I didn't actively comment on their story with a link to the picture, I just assumed they'd get a notification of "ratcreature posted X inspired by yours" and then see my illustration, but didn't mark the extra gift ticky box. Along similar lines, I guess the author needs to approve related works somehow before they get linked from theirs to prevent trolling or such? Because I notice that my illustration is not just automatically linked from the bottom of the story. Of course they could simply be offline over the year-end period.

Comments

[somnolentblue]

(via network)

I linked some of my own works with "inspired by", and I did have to manually approve the connections between them. The pair I did for this Yuletide I did receive an automatic notification ("Related Work Notification") about, and the email mentioned needing to approve the relationship. However, I never received a notification about the paired works I did earlier last year; I only discovered the need to approve the linkage when setting up the Yuletide pair.

[ratcreature]

Huh. That's not encouraging that notifications don't always happen. I noticed that "inspired by" notifications are not mentioned in the preferences where you turn things on and off either, just collection emails and gift emails. Maybe I should just manually comment saying that I liked and illustrated it.

[sholio]

You do get a notification, but it seems to glitch sometimes and fail to deliver it. For example, aqwt101 recently translated a bunch of my stories into Russian, and I got notifications on most of them, but not all. They were all uploaded at the same time, and most of the notifications arrived, but not all of them.

When you get the notification email, there is a link to give approval, which creates the automatic link back.

I'd leave a comment just to be on the safe side. As well as notifications not being 100% reliable, things are so busy over the holiday season that someone could easily have failed to notice it, especially if they have notifications turned on for *everything* (kudos, etc).

[ratcreature]

Yeah, I now left a comment (also sneakily ensuring that readers who look at the comments can see that there's art without the inspired by link).

[sqbr]

Another data point: I didn't notice that someone had dedicated a work to me until I happened to notice and check the "related works" tab in my profile.

...and just now, checking it, that story appears to have vanished! It's not in the gifts tab either, maybe I imagined it o.O

[ratcreature]

That seems indeed glitchy! I've left a comment to be on the safe side.