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

[ilyena_sylph]

I saw your post and wanted to pipe up with my two cents, but I see a lot of people have already said it better.

I'm still talkative enough to want to throw in, though.

I’ve been in fandom in some way or another since-- lord, 1997 or so? ((where does the time go?)) -- and so my answer is: I miss archives with lots of exclamation points all over. Maybe big sparkly text. I quite literally grew up in fandoms that were based in archives – I actually have a post about that over here on my DW. But all of those archives were personally run, and a lot of my old 'home bases' are dead, now. AO3 is set up so that it won't go defunct, which is a delight and a perpetual joy for me.

I didn't start posting fic until I was on Livejournal, mostly because I considered everything I wrote horrible, but it took me ages to get used to the livejournal interface and presentation of fiction. It still feels vaguely unnatural and wrong, despite that I’ve been around LJ (and now DW) for five years or so. It's counterintuitive to me, and especially on Livejournal, it kind of forces a closeness that I'm not actually at all interested in having with a lot of writers.

[dani_the_girl]

Thanks for piping up! I feel like I'm in the reverse position here - I started posting on LJ and my initial reading experiences were all on LJ so it's archive posting that feels vaguely clunky and odd to me. I guess I'll get used to it though :)