As I see it... you need to put your fic somewhere, right? Back in the day it might have been a Geocities webpage, or you might have your own web server or one you share with other fans, or whatever. There were also smaller (often fandom-specific) archive websites, usually run by an individual or a small group of volunteers. More recently it's been LJ or similar journalling sites, incl. DW.
The downside to your own webserver (or one shared with friends): you have to maintain it and probably pay for it. If you aren't pretty familiar with web technologies, it can be a big hurdle to learn how to do all the coding and stuff. If you get tired of hosting it and take it down, people will be sad because your fic has disappeared. And people have trouble finding your fic because it's on some obscure little website somewhere.
The downside to a small/fandom-specific archive run by a single person or small group: the same as all the above, except that maintenance is a somewhat bigger pain in the arse, because sometimes the archive software breaks for some reason, or you have to deal with user support for the people who are uploading fic to your site, or whatever. And this is just a hobby for you and your dog just died and augh! Hosting expenses are likely to be higher, because you will need better hosting features and more bandwidth. And, OK, the fic is a little easier to find than one-website-per-author, but unless you host an enormous archive like wraithbait (with all the maintenance overhead that entails), it's still not all that findable.
The downside to commercial hosted services like LJ or, yes, DW: any business offering some kind of hosting facility wants to make money. If at some point they decide that your fic is not making them enough money, or reducing their ability to make money, they will take it down. For example, advertiser pressure might make them decide that they no longer want sexually explicit fic. Even businesses that seem especially fan-friendly at first can succumb to these pressures after years and acquisitions and changes in business plan (since 2007 this has happened to (at least) LiveJournal, Geocities, and imeem). I don't really expect it to happen to DW, but it's something people are wary of, and not without cause. Also, unless a hosting service is highly fan-specific, the search facilities for finding fic may not be all that great.
So AO3 is better than a self-hosted website because:
* saves you the trouble of having your own web hosting * saves you having to mark up your fic in HTML and know all that web stuff * won't go away if you get tired of maintaining it/get hit by a bus/etc
It's better than a small archive because:
* all of the above, plus * findability -- easier to search one big archive than many small ones * larger pool of volunteers for maintenance/support
And it's better than a commercial hosted service because:
* not subject to commercial pressures (incl. advertiser pressures) to take down fanworks * run by an organisation committed to defending fic against legal challenges (copyright, obscenity, etc) * search and other features are specifically tailored to fannish needs
As princessofgeeks said, AO3 isn't trying to be the only archive, but it is a pretty good one IMHO, and for all the above reasons, I'm making it my main fic repository.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2010-03-12 05:42 pm (UTC)The downside to your own webserver (or one shared with friends): you have to maintain it and probably pay for it. If you aren't pretty familiar with web technologies, it can be a big hurdle to learn how to do all the coding and stuff. If you get tired of hosting it and take it down, people will be sad because your fic has disappeared. And people have trouble finding your fic because it's on some obscure little website somewhere.
The downside to a small/fandom-specific archive run by a single person or small group: the same as all the above, except that maintenance is a somewhat bigger pain in the arse, because sometimes the archive software breaks for some reason, or you have to deal with user support for the people who are uploading fic to your site, or whatever. And this is just a hobby for you and your dog just died and augh! Hosting expenses are likely to be higher, because you will need better hosting features and more bandwidth. And, OK, the fic is a little easier to find than one-website-per-author, but unless you host an enormous archive like wraithbait (with all the maintenance overhead that entails), it's still not all that findable.
The downside to commercial hosted services like LJ or, yes, DW: any business offering some kind of hosting facility wants to make money. If at some point they decide that your fic is not making them enough money, or reducing their ability to make money, they will take it down. For example, advertiser pressure might make them decide that they no longer want sexually explicit fic. Even businesses that seem especially fan-friendly at first can succumb to these pressures after years and acquisitions and changes in business plan (since 2007 this has happened to (at least) LiveJournal, Geocities, and imeem). I don't really expect it to happen to DW, but it's something people are wary of, and not without cause. Also, unless a hosting service is highly fan-specific, the search facilities for finding fic may not be all that great.
So AO3 is better than a self-hosted website because:
* saves you the trouble of having your own web hosting
* saves you having to mark up your fic in HTML and know all that web stuff
* won't go away if you get tired of maintaining it/get hit by a bus/etc
It's better than a small archive because:
* all of the above, plus
* findability -- easier to search one big archive than many small ones
* larger pool of volunteers for maintenance/support
And it's better than a commercial hosted service because:
* not subject to commercial pressures (incl. advertiser pressures) to take down fanworks
* run by an organisation committed to defending fic against legal challenges (copyright, obscenity, etc)
* search and other features are specifically tailored to fannish needs
As