Huh! Thanks for the clarification on the non-advocacy of AO3, because I had no clue (I only used it once for Yuletide) and had all this time thought that because AO3 was created by OTW, and because it's called an archive of our own meaning (I assumed) not hosted by a company that would pull it at the first tap on the shoulder from the copyright holder, that its primary purpose was being a legal safe haven for fanfic (or at least one that would fight if a work were challenged). Like you say, it seemed obvious. I'll have to go back and reread the pro and con arguments of the ongoing debates.

I don't know how I feel about the likelihood of an original versus a fannish work being bad; I think it depends on the writer (I guess that, should this go ahead, the original work submitted would be written by authors who otherwise specialise in fanfic and have used the archive before) and the main - if not only - reason a particular writer's fanfic could be better than their original stuff lies in the plethora of things s/he doesn't have to write because it's already familiar to readers. If the writer is worth their salt, I should think their original fic would be worth my time.

I just filled out the poll, and while a few questions made me think hard (and then go with the less invalid option, if I'm making sense) I used the non/originality of the world rather than the characters as the main criterion.