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English
Series:
Part 12 of How to AO3
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Published:
2022-05-17
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745
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1/1
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52
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333
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181
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How to Block a User or a Work on AO3

Summary:

If there are authors or stories out there that you'd rather not ever see in your search results again, you can create a site skin to remove them from your browsing experience.

This was first explained in an AO3 News Post, but I'm going to go into more detail so that anyone with an account can do it, with no need to do any coding at all. Just copy/paste.

Notes:

In order to make a site skin, you need to have an AO3 account. If you don't already have an account, you can get one by clicking on this link

If you logout of your account (or read AO3 on a computer or phone where you're not logged in), you will still see everything and everyone you have blocked. The blocking is attached to the site skin and the site skin is attached to your account. If you're not logged into your account, the blocking won't work.

Work Text:

Update 1: As of June, 2022 users can now block another user from commenting on their works or responding to their comments on other works.

Update 2: As of February, 2023 users now have the ability to mute another user of the site. This means that you won't see their works, their bookmarks, or their comments.

Since this tutorial might still be useful for some folks who want to block and individual work while not muting the author entirely, I'm leaving it up.


 

To start off, you'll need to make a site skin.

If you're already using a site skin, go to your Skins page by following steps 1-4. Then choose your current skin from the list (if you have more than one saved) and edit it. Then continue from step 7.

CREATE A SITE SKIN

  1. Make sure that you're logged in.
  2. Keep this open in one tab and open a new AO3 tab to create the site skin in.
  3. Tap on your name at the top of the page and select My Dashboard from the dropdown menu that appears.
  4. Next, select Skins from the list of links.
    1. If you're on a phone or a tablet, they'll be near the top of your screen (just below the Search bar).
    2. If you're on a laptop or other computer, they'll be along the lefthand side of your screen.
  5. Next, tap on the button labelled Create Site Skin
  6. Fill in a Title for your skin. Your title must be unique (not used by anyone else on AO3). I often add my nickname to the front or end of it, and that seems to be enough to make it unique.
  7. Copy the CSS code you want to use below and paste it into the big box labelled CSS. You can use one code or the other or both. It doesn't matter which order you paste them in.
  8. Click the button labelled Submit to save your skin.
    1. If you are editing an existing skin, the button will say Update instead.
  9. After you either Submit or Update your skin, don't forget to make sure you Use it by selecting the Use button on the next page. If you don't see the Use button, then you're already using it.
  10. You can edit an existing skin at any time to update or remove any of the CSS that you're using.

CSS CODE TO BLOCK A USER

.user-000 {
display: none !important;
}

CSS CODE TO BLOCK A WORK

.work-000 {
display: none !important;
}


EDIT THE CSS

The code that you copy/pasted is just sample code. It won't block anyone or anything yet. You need to tell the code what you want it to block.

The 000 in the code is the part that you'll need to change. You're going to replace that 000 with the user ID number of the person you want to block or with the work number of the work you want to block.

To find the user ID of any registered user, tap on their name. Their username is a link that will take you to their profile page. On their profile page, You'll see a box with information in it. One piece of information is My user ID is:

For example, if you go to my profile page, my user ID is 7910188

Copy that user ID and paste it into the CSS code where the 000 is. So for example, if you want to block me the code would look like:

.user-7910188 {
display: none !important;
}

If you want to block more than one user, you can list out each one with a comma in between. For example:

.user-7910188, .user-546504 {
display: none !important;
}

Some user IDs are short. Others are long. It just depends on when each person joined AO3.

To find the work ID, go to the work that you want to block and copy the url. For example, here's the url of a work I made full of CSS that might make reading AO3 easier.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/38193418/chapters/95420758

The work ID number is the number after works/

In my example, that would be 38193418. Copy that number and paste it into the CSS code where the 000 is. So if you want to block that work the code would look like:

.work-38193418 {
display: none !important;
}

And if you want to block more than one work, you can list out each one with a comma in between. For example:

.work-38193418, .work-36136576, .work-28379325 {
display: none !important;
}

Series this work belongs to: