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

[cesperanza]

You know, between ff.net and LJ with its crap searchability, we already "lost" more than half-decade at least's worth of stories in the sense that you can't bloody find the stuff. I can lay my hands on a due South story from 1998 with *no problem*--its at the Due South Archive* or the due Slash archive--but try and find one from 2005. It's buried in someone's LJ who didn't tag (I don't tag, and anyway, I don't think there were tags then) or it's on a webpage that has norobots so if you're lucky that someone's linked to it: if not, tough!

*full disclosure: I am the mod of the DSA

[gchick]

This part really can't be said enough -- as much as I love journal-based fandom for connecting with *people* (and that's a much richer part of my fandom life than it was in archive-and-mailing-list days), it's ridiculously hard to find their creations when you aren't already following the person who happened to post it on the day they posted it. Even in the best case scenario where the creator tags everything assiduously and knows all the right comms and the newsletters pick the story up, and the READER also knows the right places to look, ALL of that is still backfill for the fact that you can't easily just go somewhere and look for it.

[boogieshoes]

yes, and also, i happen to severely dislike LJ/DW/whatever as a reading format for fanfic. it's ok for shorter pieces, but to me, 10k words is 'short' - and at that point, i def. want it on some kind of website/ webpage instead of as an LJ or DW journal entry.

so, to the OP, some of your readers have different style preferences, inherited from being 'round a while, or because of disabilities or bandwidth issues or whatever. it's not that you *shouldn't* use your DW to post your fic, just be aware that some of your potential audience won't actually read it there... hence, posting on an archive could - and probably will - reach more people. AO3 has the advantages listed in one of the comments below, although it's obviously not the only choice or style out there.

coming at it as an author, i really dislike LJ being the final format for my stories. it's always struck me that the best use for LJ/DW are for comments on draft pieces, especially if you don't have a, uh, full-time beta volunteer for your stuff. this has been a quite successfull usage for me. but i prefer to see the final piece on an archive. or several.

-bs

[jesse_the_k]

Chiming in:

I came to Due South almost a decade after the canon closed, and was able to find tons of fics because of DSA and Due Slash, as well as archived recs communities.

AO3 has tag wranglers who focus on making the content available to the future. It's a non-trivial task, and I hope that the frontiers the AO3 wranglers explore will provide a foundation for future archivists & future archivists.