Archiving

[dani_the_girl]

I remember way back when I was young and green in the ways of web design, I wanted to re-do my website and learn from it at the same time, I started looking at web design blogs and they were all talking about the importance of creating table free designs. I had come in half way through and missed out on the establishing discussion so I was somewhat mystified and I ended up posting to my LJ saying "What is it about table-free design? Why is it good?" People linked me to a couple of posts and I got started from there and was converted pretty quickly.

I feel like I'm in a similar place when I ask the question "What is the point of fanfic archives?" If I've got a DW account with all my fic on it tagged under fic, do I need an AO3 account? What's the motivation behind building AO3. I feel like there are historical reasons for this stuff that I, so far, don't get. Anyone suggest where I can get started finding out? I am asking from a genuine desire to learn - I like the design and I've uploaded a couple of stories, but I'm not sure I have figured out the reasoning behind it yet.

Comments

[adina]

The motive is to make it easier for people to find stories. But honestly the idea makes me very, very nervous, because our current distributed system of stories presents no single, large target to either copyright holders or would-be censors, nor can a majority (or vocal minority) of fans shut out viewpoints or stories they object to, nor can server (or financial) trouble by one archive take out decades worth of stories.

Personally I find almost all the stories I read by searching Delicious.com bookmarks. I'd like to see a more organized database of fan fiction links but I'm not real enthused about a central archive of all fan fiction.

[(Anonymous)]

[i]...nor can a majority (or vocal minority) of fans shut out viewpoints or stories they object to...[/i]

I hadn't heard about [i]that[/i]. I'm guessing that AO3 has some kind of policy about removing potentilly racist/homophobic/sexist/transphobic/ableist content? I'm...not really sure I like that idea, to be honest. I mean, I agree that we need to work with people to try and help them become more aware of their own mindsets, but deleting fic?*

D'you have any links or anything you could give about this? I'd really like to see how it'd be implemented.

*I apologise if this wasn't what you were implying. I suppose you could be talking about some kind of public shaming thing, but that could be done on pretty much any archive, I imagine.

Passing Lurker

[adina]

I'm not implying or stating that AO3 does or would, merely that, a single archive, it could.

The thing is, a community needs standards, and that's not a bad thing. There are, of course, different ways to enforce those standards, from terms of service to public lynch mobs to merely making dissenters uncomfortable until they leave (a community frequently will never even know if they've done the latter). As long as there are other communities to go to, that's not (too much of) a problem. But a single archive says "This is the community, this is all of fandom, if you aren't part of us, you aren't part of fandom" and that makes me uneasy.

[jaaaarne]

I'm guessing that AO3 has some kind of policy about removing potentilly racist/homophobic/sexist/transphobic/ableist content?

There is nothing like that in the AO3 TOS. You can have a look for yourself.

I. Offensive content

As provided in part I.E.2 of the Terms of Service, the OTW is not liable to you for any Content to which you are exposed on or because of the OTW sites.

Unless it violates some other policy, we will not remove Content for offensiveness, no matter how awful, repugnant, or badly spelled we may personally find that content to be.

[windupbasilisk]

I hadn't heard about [i]that[/i]. I'm guessing that AO3 has some kind of policy about removing potentilly racist/homophobic/sexist/transphobic/ableist content? I'm...not really sure I like that idea, to be honest. I mean, I agree that we need to work with people to try and help them become more aware of their own mindsets, but deleting fic?*

As an Ao3 coder, I can assure you that while we strive to make the archive as inclusive as possible, we are utterly disinterested in censorship.

[nic]

Fandom USED to be like this, where each fandom had its own archive (this was before LJ etc). And I loved it. I could go to one place and spend HOURS browsing/reading.

Whereas with journals, or even Delicious.com bookmarks, people delete/change usernames/lock their fic/domain names expire/free sites get deleted/lj deletes communities. And once you've clicked on a story that looked exciting only to find it's not there any more, it gets very frustrating.

With a central archive, it was much less likely to go down and if it did, EVERYONE knew about it and made sure it was fixed. Therefore, the obscure stories would be preserved/restored just as easily as the popular stories. (Unless, of course, an author removed her work, and some of the bigger archives easily allowed this, as does AO3.)